INDIAN AND CEYLONESE TROTSKYISTS MEET IN BOMBAY
Bombay
Representatives of the Socialist Workers Party of India and the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (Revolutionary) met in a three-day conference in Bombay in March. A representative of the Fourth International also participated in the talks.
Apart from considering several organisational questions of interest to the Fourth International movement in India, Ceylon and other Asian countries, the conference reviewed the present political situation in India, especially after the general elections and the situation in relation to the struggle of the Vietnamese people.
The postelection situation in India has been characterised in a resolution adopted by the conference as one of instability of bourgeois class rule. The failure of the working-class parties like the CPI and CPI (Marxist) [the pro-Moscow and pro-Peking Communist parties] and the "socialist" parties like the Samyukta Socialist party, Praja Socialist party, etc., to take advantage of the widespread unpopularity of the Congress among the masses and develop anticapitalist struggles prior to and in the election campaign has not only helped reactionary capitalist political parties to make electoral gains but also has helped to strengthen the illusions of the masses in parliamentary solutions to their real social and economic problems.
In the present situation, the conference was of the view that the capitalist class in India might adopt three alternatives in its attempt to achieve a stable class rule: (1) so-called National Government, comprising bourgeois political parties and the working class and the so-called left parties; (2) a coalition of capitalist parties; or (3) some form of military rule.
The continuation of bourgeois class rule in any form will only mean more misery for the people and the aggravation of their problems. Coalition governments of bourgeois parties and working-class parties, whether at the state level or central level, will only mean a betrayal of the interests of the masses by the working-class and "socialist" parties and the strengthening of the rule of the capitalist class.
The conference stated that none of the basic problems of the Indian people can be resolved within the present capitalist framework. The only road open for the workers and peasants is the one of struggle against the Congress and other capitalist parties, including the Swatantra party and Jan Sangh in the perspective of establishment of a workers and peasants government in India.
On the Vietnam question, the conference decided that the "most urgent and immediate task facing the revolutionary Marxists on a world scale is to strengthen the struggle against imperialist aggression in Vietnam and to support the Vietnam revolution."
The conference stressed the necessity of organising and extending demonstrations against the U.S.-led imperialist aggression in Vietnam and for solidarity with the national liberation struggle.. It also stressed the need for an anti-imperialist united front on an international scale. It was felt imperative for the Trotskyist movement to take every possible step through the workers and toilers to pressure both the Soviet and Chinese government to cry halt to their calamitous policies and call for the forging of a united front in relation to the Vietnam struggle.
Among those who attended the conference on behalf of the LSSP(R) were comrades Edmund Samarakkody (general secretary) and Prins Rajasuriya (member of the Political Bureau). The SWPI was represented among others by comrades M.D. Parija, Magan Desai (Gujarat), R.N. Arya (Uttar Pradesh), P.K. Vasu (Kerala), Sitarem Kolpe and G.S. Joshi ombay). . . .
PEARSON