India: Gandhi reaains some old sparkle

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Bhutto-Gandhi spares him a thought in the midst of her own legal problems In her steady climb back towards power, Indira Gandhi has paused to spare a thought for her less fortunate fellow dictator of former days, and generously suggested that he should not be hanged.

Gandhi has legal problems of her own. The Shah Commission of Inquiry into the Emergency period is due to publish its report very soon, and this is bound to be severely critical of her conduct.

But it is equally certain that the ruling Janata coalition will be unable to act on these findings as it had originally intended.

The leaders of the government are trying desperately to put on a show of unity as internal frictions and external pressures are ripping the coalition apart.

Demonstrations

On the one hand, the election of opposition administrations in many states has threatened the ability of the central government to execute its policies--particularly its ramshackle economic plans.

But these decorous antagonisms stand in violent contrast with the crashing wave of demonstrations and riots that has broen across major towns and. cities throughout India in recent weeks.

Some 200 people have been killed and many seriously injured in these incidents. Picket lines have been viciously attacked by police, colleges closed down, demonstrators arrested hundreds, and martial law imposed in certain areas.

While these eruptions have their underlying cause in the accumulating political frustration experienced by Indian workers and peasants, the immediate catalysts have varied.

Fabricated

Some cases have been spontaneous confrontations between sections of the Indian masses, and the forces of the state.

Some show distinct signs of having been fabricated by agents provocateurs (such as the fighting in the Punjab), while others bear the hallmark of action inspired and paid for by both the Janata and the Congress Party (Indira).

Gandhi is clearly trying to ferment a situation such as she claimed existed when the Emergency was declared-one of a sustained campaign of subversion against the elected government and the state.

This, of course, enables her to then attack the Janata for its weakness and inefficiency.

Rhetoric

When highlighted against the abysmal record of the present government the populist rhetoric this highly accomplished oppoitunist has regained all its old attraction.

The Congress (I) followed up its sweeping gains from February's elections with a spectacular result in a recent by-election held at Karnal, in Haryana.

This was an area particularly hit by the forced sterilisation campaign brutally waged under the Imergency.

as Last March the Janata gained a majority of 270,000 over the still united Congress: this April they held the seat by only 18,000 votes over the The depth of the Janata's crisis can be gauged by the fact that this was generally regarded as a victory for the coalition which showed that the tide was perhaps returning in their favour.

Gandhi's Congress (1) has now been recognised as the official opposition in both Houses of Parliament. But the apparently inevitable return to power of Nehru's daughter is actually far from assured.

Far from united

The Indian bourgeoisie is far from united in a belief that Gandhi would be able to carry through the colossal attacks and repression on the workers and peasants that they objectively require.

Many eyes are no doubt turning to neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh to feed thoughts of a possible military takeover.

One thing is crystal clear: any belief that a Gandhi or a Bhutto is a lesser evil than naked dictatorship can lead only to a massive defeat for the masses of south Asia.

These demagogues have nothing to offer workers and peasants but broken promises renewed repression and sharpening attacks.

Their baneful influence can be destroyed only by a resolute and consistent fight for the revolutionary socialist programme which can unite workers and peasants in the struggle to end their oppresnina harr tha nonethane. SION Dy Lie overthrow of capitalism.

The Eritrean Popular Liberation Front has announced that Ethiopian forces are now using Russian Mig fighters to drop napalm and fragmentation bombs around the beseiged towns of Asmara and Massawa.

The Soviet and Cuban bureaucracies have consistently maintained that the Eritrean struggles should be resolved by negotiation, and not, as in the Ogaden, by war.

Another struggle inclin union expulsions is still. takine place among striking restaurant staff in the Kalundborg-Aarhus ferry.

The strikers' stewards were expelled from the union, but reinstated after backing from the local membership, and voted into the leadership of the local branch.

The ousted leaders attempted to take off the membership files and block the new leaders from entering the union offices. But rank and file opposition to them forced the national officials to intervene on the side of the strikers.

While union bureaucrats do their best to harass these workørs, the police too are playing thei part and beating up pickets on the docks and on the ferry itself.

Another blow against the labour bureaucracy was struck when the leadership of the biggest branch of the Women Workers' Union in Copenhagen was removed for nepotism and misuse of union funds (for personal pay increases, etc).

Meanwhile 20 skilled scaffolders who have shut down their firm since before Christmas remain on strike, after 86 fellow scaffolders won a complete victory over employers last week.

At the height of the strike the scaffolders organised patrols that dismantled any scaffolding erected by scabs-and some went as far as attacking scabs and throwing scaffold poles into the docks.

These sharp expressions of the class struggle in Denmark highlight the continuing crisis of working class leadership that can only be resolved through the construction of Trotskyist n brief These reports indicate yet again the desperate shifts to which the Stalinists have been driven by their support for the repressive military dictatorship in Ethiopia.

In next week's Socialist Press we hope to publish a translation of a declaration on the intervention of Cuban troops by the • Eritrean Popular Liberation Front.

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•11... • PHOTO: Andrew Wiard, Report