TROTSKYIST DECLARATION AGAINST INDO-PAKISTAN WAR
[The fcllowing statement of position on the war between India and Pakistan was issued by the Socialist Workers party in Bombay September 19.]
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What started since August 5, 1965, as a mopping up operation directed against “armed infiltrators" into Kashmir from Pakistan-= held territory has escalated into a major war between India and Pakistan. In the first week of September, the Indian troops crossed the cease-fire line ostensibly to prevent large-scale entry of the infiltrators and prevent them from fomenting an internal revolt in the states of Jamrm and Kashmir. This led to an attack by the regular Pakistani troops into Jammu in the Chhamb region. The Indian troops retaliated by entering Pakistan at several points in the Lahore sec-~ tor and along the Sind-Rajasthan border.
During the last two weeks extensive military operations.have been undertaken by the governments of India and Pakistan against each other, engaging their ground and air forces in a big way. Although no war has been formally declared, a heavy toll of human lives, both military and civilian, has been claimed on either side. Several towns and villages in both countries have been subjected to heavy bombings and an unprecedented war hysteria has been worked up in the entire subcontinent.
Attempts made by the UN Secretary General U Thant, with the support of all major powers including the USA and the USSR, to bring about an immediate cessation of hostilities has not succeeded. While the government of India, insistent that Kashmir has been an integral part of the Indian Union since its accession in 1948, agreed to an immediate cease-fire as proposed by Thant, the government of Pakistan wanted the cease-fire proposal to be linked with immediate withdrawal
of Indian and Pakistani troops from Kashmir, induction of an Afro~ Asian force and holding of a plebiscite within a specified time limit,
[on September 22 India and Pakistan agreed to a UN-sponsored cease-fire, Both sides have accused the other, however, of repeated violations since then, and the truce remains an uneasy one. --Editor. |
As the UN Security Council and the imperialist powers, including the USA and Britain, are engaged in considering steps to pressurize both the governments through economic and military sanctions to end the war, a new situation has been created by a Chinese ultimatum to India pertaining to military installations along the Sikkim Tibetan border, obviously intended as a pressure tactic in favor of Pakistan. It is obvious that any Chinese intervention in the conflict would escalate it into a global conflagration with U.S. imperialism deci-= sively intervening on the side of India. In the present conflict China has been openly supporting Pakistan while the Soviet Union despite its avowed neutrality has been partial towards India,
It is unfortunate that both the Soviet and the Chinese bureau cracies have renounced their responsibilities as representatives of the two major workers! states and are trying to gain temporary factional advantages in their ideological conflict by supporting one bourgeois state against another, at the cost of international solidarity of the working-class movement and the workers states, thereby objectively strengthening imperialist reaction.
The present armed confrontation between India and Pakistan, both fundamentally allied to the world capitalist system and both dependent on substantial economic and military aid from imperialist powers, cannot be continued till a decisive victory is won by either side. While the Indo-Pak war has helped U.S. imperialism to divert world attention from its criminal and barbarous war against the people in Vietnam, it has also helped the ruling bourgeoisie of both India and Pakistan to stifle the growing discontent of the masses which had found widespread manifestations in the subcontinent in the recent period.
The workers, peasants and other exploited masses of the entire subcontinent, who are denied their minimum essential needs of life, like food and shelter, eighteen years after independence, have nothing to gain from the present conflict. They will have to face greater miseries and hardships and only the capitalist class will prosper, It is in the interest of the exploited masses that the hostilities are ended as early as possible and normal relations are established between the people of the.two countries. As Kashmir has been made the bone of contention between the two countries, the only course open is to let the people of Kashmir themselves decide their own future on the basis of their democratically determined will under peaceful conditions. In any case the government of Pakistan which has denied the right of self-determination to the people of Pakhtoonistan and the fundamental democratic rights to its own people has no
right whatsoever to speak on behalf of the people of Kashmir, nor dictate a plebiscite for Kashmir by force, —
The theocratic military dictatorship of Ayub Khan has ruthe lessly suppressed all democratic opposition and banned working-class -political parties. It has been sustained hitherto by the massive military aid received from U.S. imperialism. In the absence of any democratic opposition, the Ayub regime has managed to work up tem~ porarily a chauvinistic war hysteria against India. Unfortunately the traditional left parties in India, including the Right and Left CPI's, SSP and RSP [Communist parties of India, Samyukta Socialist party and Revolutionary Socialist party] have also succumbed to anti- Pakistani war hysteria and have completely identified themselves with the bourgeois regime in its war of attrition. Thereby they have forfeited their right to speak to the exploited masses of Pakistan in the name of the Indian masses, What is worse, the traditional left has surrendered the rights of workers, peasants and middle-class wage earners in India to defend themselves against their own capitaliste landlord exploiters.
The government is fully utilizing the present war-like atmosphere to liquidate all vestiges of civil liberties in the name of national emergency. Reactionary communal elements are trying to foment communal disturbances in the subcontinent. But the chauvinistic hysteria cannot last long. We have no illusion that our voice ‘of protest on behalf of the revolutionary Marxist movement will have any appreciable impact in the context of present war hysteria and utter collapse of the traditional left leadership. But we are con-= fident that the exploited masses both in India and Pakistan will soon realize the futility of the present conflict and will bring pressure on their governments to end the hostilities. The communal partition of the country, effected eighteen years ago as a part of the "Independence deal" between the Indian propertied classes and British imperialism, has been the basic source of friction between the people of the two countries and we are convinced that only a socialist confederation of India and Pakistan can eradicate all the causes of friction. .
We therefore call upon, to the extent our voice can reach, all working-class, kisan and youth organizations in both India and Pakistan not to lose hope but remain alert, not to succumb to the war hysteria, preserve communal harmony and defend the democratic rights and liberties of the people against onslaughts by the capitalist rule ers in the name of war.
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