Kolkata: It was a tsunami of people yesterday in Kolkata at the call of the Students Federation of India (SFI) and the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), red and white flag bearers today took virtual control of all thoroughfares in the heart of Kolkata metropolis at Esplanade east.

People from all walks of life especially young people flocked to Kolkata on the account of the Insaaf rally wearing masks of Anis khan (the student leader who was thrown from the roof of his house allegedly by the police on 18th February at midnight). They also sought Insaaf (justice) for the others dead like Barun Biswas of  Sutia, Student leader Sudipta Gupta, DYFI activist  Bidyut  Mondal and others.

Police as usual had dilly-dallied with giving permission for the rally before the Victoria house at Kolkata in the junction of the city’s heart. Ultimately, they gave permission for the rally to be held at Y channel where a stage was constructed. However when the rally started the Y channel was crammed with people, and DYFI leaders announced that the rally will shift to Victoria House despite prohibitory orders by the police in this regard.

The entire crossing of Jawaharlal Nehru road (chowringee) was then thronged with common people carrying red flags or dressed in red attire. Three huge rallies each from Sealdah,  Howrah and from Kolkata south came to the rally venue filling the venue to the brim.

They carried placards seeking freedom from the kingdom of thieves as they said and greeted the SFI-DYFI leadership with constant slogans like Pishi chor Bhaipo chor, Trinamool er sobai chor ( Aunt thief- nephew thief, Trinamools’ are thieves ) in an apparent reference to the number of scams which were unearthed in Bengal implicating Mamata Banerjee and many of their  immediate family in them.

Present in the rally was injured Salman Khan- Anis Khan’s brother who was recently attacked by miscreants as he is a major witness in Anis Khan’s murder. His father Salem Khan, the late Bidyut Mondal’s mother, and Barun Biswas’s sister were also present at the rally.

In his speech, Anis Khan’s father Salem Khan highlighted that one Anis Khan has gone but has given birth to thousands of Anis Khan. He spoke of the police oppression still looming over his family members and requested that they be served justice.

Present at the rally was All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) leader Fullora Mondal who was imprisoned for 2976 days in jail with frivolous charges and has become an icon in the state. She caught a train at 3 am in the wee hours of Tuesday morning to attend the rally today.

NewsClick spoke with  Runu Banerjee, 45, a teacher with Douglas Memorial School of Barrackpore who had come to the venue. She spoke of oppressive conditions that exist in the state. To Sayeed Gurfan Ali of Howrah, a silk screen printer, it is a matter of prestige for the state of West Bengal. 

For Tamal Sil, a daily wage earner who works on a construction site as a mason, today’s rally is an eye opener that so many people want Insaaf together in a disciplined manner. 

Piru Sheikh from ward number 134 of Kolkata corporation area. He, a left activist has been tortured much, in the last 10 years as his son’s shop was attacked as he is a Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M) supporter. To him, “Insaaf means the end of this torturous reign of thieves,” he told NewsClick.  

‘Mamata has surrendered to Modi’

Speaking at the rally CPI(M) State secretary MD Salim who is also the Former General secretary of DYFI said that Mamata is not any soldier against the BJP Government rather she has surrendered to Modi. 

In reference to Mamata’s recent comment in the assembly that she does not believe that Modi is at all bad, he said that Mamata recently has also said that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not bad. 

However, the common people won’t allow the  RSS to rise from the water and they will have a water-borne death in the state.  “How can the next gen of Nathuram Godse  (Gandhi’s killer ) evaluate the next generation of Martyr Khudiram bose?”  he said. “Mamata is now finding good in Modi who is wreaking havoc in the country by giving freedom to the rapists of Bilkis Bano, and taking bulldozer policy throughout the country in the BJP ruled states. RSS has done a BPO through the TMC in the state,” he quipped in the rally.

The rally was presided over by DYFI state President Dhrubojyoti Saha and by Abhas Roychoudhury former secretary of the DYFI state committee who the state Government wrongly imprisoned for taking part in a law violation programme in Burdwan city recently. 

He also saluted the unarmed people of Burdwan that day who fought like war horses that day against the oppressive police with empty hands for over one and half hours in a true valiant manner.

Speaking at the rally  DYFI state President Meenakshi Mukherjee highlighted that the government in the state is a rotten one and in the new Bengal that is going to come the cow smugglers and coal smugglers won’t have any place to live.

Courtesy: Newsclick

The post WB: Lakhs of People Take Part in ‘Insaaf’ Rally Organised in Kolkata appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Yet another instance of fake news being spread about Kerala has come to light as Sangh Parivar-aligned social media handles sought to portray scenes from a street play as video footage of an actual murder.

The play, titled ‘Silence is Dangerous’, was staged in Kalikavu in Malappuram district by members of the left-wing Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI).

The performance was about the rising attacks against secular, left-wing and rationalist activists, in the context of the recent murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh.

A Facebook page named राष्ट्रवादी Zee News [‘Rashtrawadi Zee News’] posted a video clip of the street play, with the description, “Dangerous. Leftist Muslims in Kerala have killed a Hindu woman in the middle of a road. Hindus left stunned. Has Kerala become Syria?”

“Muslims have shot dead an RSS supporter Hindu woman in Kerala”, says the text overlaid on the video posted by the page.

The street play shows a woman being pulled out of the car and being shot down, in a clear reference to the brutal murder of Gauri Lankesh who was gunned down a week ago.

DYFI Kalikavu Area Secretary CT Sakkariya told Newsclick, “The play was organised as part of a campaign against RSS violence. It talks about the violence and physical attacks unleashed by the Sangh Parivar on secular people.”

“The RSS brands anybody who talks about RSS violence as “anti-national”. For them, anybody who criticises the RSS is an anti-national”, said Sakkariya, who also played the lead role in the play.

The video has been posted by Sangh Parivar-aligned handles in Twitter, and shared numerous times.

Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader and Lok Sabha MP MB Rajesh lashed out against the propaganda which sought to propagate communal hatred. He said that such pages are circulating lies against Kerala on the occasion of Janmashtami. There have been several instances in the recent years where Hindutva outfits have tried to instigate violence in the run-up to religious festivals.

Earlier in February 2016, the Zee News television channel had been caught red-handed for broadcasting fake videos about the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. The channel is yet to issue any apology for this act.

The post on the Rashtrawadi Zee News page has disappeared after the duplicity of the propaganda was exposed.

Watch the circulated video below, with English subtitles added by us for Malayalam dialogues to remove all confusion.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in
 

The post Video of street play portrayed as actual “Murder of Hindu Woman by Leftist Muslims in Kerala” appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Kanhaiya Kumar made his first public speech in Mumbai. Almost a full hour. Gripping and Sensitive

Amidst a Galaxy of Other Student Leaders and Speakers: Justice Kolse Patil, Teesta Setalvad, Anand Patwardhan, .Irfan Engineer
Kanhaiya Kumar, Richa Singh, Shehla Rashid, Ajayan Adat, Zuhail K P

Threats and Rumours from the Hindutva brigade attempted a disruption of the programme as no colleges wanted to "allow" Kanhaiya their space for his speech. Finally after last minute dramas, the Adarsh Vidyalaya at Tilaknagar east, Chembur were hosts for this historic occasion

While talking about the various issues facing the nation, he also said, "I have great respect for our PM….but….
Video Recording By Satyen K. Bordoloi

".

Text of the Pamphlet
Friends,
Institutional murder of Rohith Vemula and cold-blooded killings of Dr. Narendra Dabholkar,  Comrade Govind Pansare, Professor M.M.Kalburgi,  Mohsin Sheikh of Pune, Mohammad Akhlaq of Dadri, Mohammad Majloom of Jharkhand along with a twelve year old boy Inayatullah Khan – all these crimes are perpetrated by forces who  keep calling themselves as ‘nationalists’!  Murderers masquerading as ‘nationalists’ seem to believe their time has come. But Students and youth of India shall not let them pass!
 
We are the custodians of India’s true nationalism which is derived from the people’s struggle for independence from imperialist Britain and the great rebellions against caste system. The national movement was the quest to create India as a modern republic of equal citizens carrying the legacy of  all those struggles for justice and equality spanning many centuries of our past but also freeing ourselves from cultures of cruelty which had also been very much part of India’s history.  
 
It is a fact that economic development of our nation has been left to the mercy of ‘market forces’. But the very same ‘market forces’ have impoverished our people, denied affordable education and employment opportunities to millions of young Indians but also reinforced the shameful hierarchies and systems of discrimination received from pre-modern times. Progressive student-youth movements are offering stiff resistance to policy of commoditization and jobless growth. But, in the endeavor to build an egalitarian India free from pre-modern regimes of inequality and discrimination, we find the combination of ‘market forces’ and ‘Hindurashtra’ politics as the immediate obstacle.
Obviously, Hindurashtra is an ideology of disenfranchising religious minorities. On a daily basis, some or the other leader of Sangh Parivar , BJP – Shivsena ministers and Saamna paper abuse and threaten citizens of India belonging to minority communities under some or other flimsy pretext. The latest one is about ‘Bharat Mata’. How can a Chief Minister threaten anyone to worship the nation as a goddess or else leave India? Bharat Mata Ki Jai is just one of the many slogans that came up during our freedom struggle. For that matter 'Nara-e-Takbeer Allahu Akbar' was also a slogan which inspired anti-British uprising in India like the Khilafat movement and the historic Malabar rebellion. Bhagat Singh and his comrades gave to India the slogan ‘Inquilab Zinabad’. Will Fadnavis be ready to expel from India all those who refuse to shout ‘Inquilab Zindabad’!
Cultivating prejudices against minorities, trapping ordinary citizens in perennial suspicion and hatred along religious lines – all these are part of SanghParivar political project which is to ensure that the rule of capital and corruption continue unchallenged.
Hindutwa is inimical to reason and scientific temper; it stands for subjugating the downtrodden; it is a vision of perpetuating caste system and institutionalizing discrimination. This ideology seeks to trap women in male-dominant traditions and make them objects of everyday violence and exploitation in multiple forms.
Islamic fundamentalism and communal forces operating amongst other religious minorities are also serious obstacles in the path of building a modern secular India. The work of Hindutwa forces help minority communalists to unleash their divisive propaganda. The reverse is equally true: all the rhetoric and politics of Islamic fundamentalism helps Hindutwa forces to mobilize more support. Both the forms of communalism – majority as well as minority – must be rejected emphatically.
But we must not lose sight of the fact that Hindutwa forces have the backing of big business and also government patronage. That is why they feel emboldened to unleash violence at will, crush the voices of reason, destroy premier educational institutions, disallow open-minded debate in universities, criminalize dissent and physically assault courageous student leaders like Richa Singh and Kanhaiya who dare to speak out against the ruling establishment.
But the forces of darkness are not going to be left unchallenged. The wave of protests created by writers and intellectuals has not yet subsided. The institutional murder of Rohith Vemula galvanized the student community. Every institution that the RSS chose to attack – FTII, AU, HCU, JNU, Jadavpur University, Fergusson College – became sites of heroic resistance.

It is a matter of great pride that students and youth are coming out in a big way to challenge the regimes of discrimination not only in campuses but in the society at large.  Sangh Parivar and its government are using all tricks and terror-tactics against the resistance movement. But they are not going to succeed. They cannot suppress the voices of reason, they cannot kill the fight against discrimination, they cannot take away from us the dream of building a nation of equal citizens.
The gathering on 23rd April is going to be an important milestone in this struggle to defend the dream of a true Republic against a lunatic force that has big capital and state power at its disposal.  We solicit your whole-hearted support in making it a huge success. 
 
Organisers:
SFI   AISF   AISA   PSF  Chhatrabharati  AIRSO   RYA   AIYF   DYFI

 Photo Credit: Not only was the second floor hall of the Adarsh Vidyalay, where Kanhaiya Kumar spoke, packed to capacity, but special arrangements were made to accommodate supporters on the ground floor where a screen was arranged at the last moment. Photograph: Uttam Ghosh/Rediff.com

The post Kanhaiya Kumar in Mumbai: “I Have Great Respect For Our Prime Minister..but…” appeared first on SabrangIndia.