Under the garb of Hindutva chauvinism, the rhetoric of development, poverty alleviation and gimmickry of anticorruption, the Modi regime in today’s India has launched an aggressive onslaught against India’s proletariat and the oppressed masses ever since it has come to power. These brutal assaults on the working class are worsening with every passing day. It is trying to prove to the imperialist bosses and corporate capital that it’s doing the job for what they had doled out money from their ever-bulging coffers. India now is going through a rather cumbersome phase for the toilers in this class war.
On Saturday 10th March 2017 Gurgaon session’s court sentenced thirteen Maruti Suzuki workers to life imprisonment. Four others have been given five-year prison terms, and 14 more sentenced to three-year jail terms. The 13 workers condemned to life in prison include the entire leadership of the Maruti Suzuki Workers Union (MSWU). Life imprisonment in Indian prisons notorious for their harrowing living conditions, abuse and torture, as elsewhere in the subcontinent, is no less than a protracted death sentence. Many of the workers were previously subjected to torture, including severe leg stretching, electric shocks and water immersion, carried out in an attempt to extract forced confessions.
The Judiciary’s class bias was laid bare during this conflict. The Haryana High Court in rejecting the bail application had observed that, “The incident is a most unfortunate occurrence which has lowered the reputation of India in the estimation of the world. Foreign investors are not likely to invest money in India out of fear of labour unrest”. Nevertheless by backing of this Japanese vehicle manufacturer, the largest in India, during this dispute the then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi struck a deal with Maruti Suzuki to set up a new factory in Gujarat with his aggressive stance against such strikes.
In 2011, the Manesar assembly plant had emerged as a centre of militant struggles against low wages, a brutal work regimen and the widespread use of contract and temporary labour — conditions that prevail today throughout India, Pakistan and elsewhere that are economically dependent on foreign investment. The Manesar assembly plant workers mounted a series of walkouts and sit-down strikes in the summer of 2011. Their determined stand galvanized support from workers across the Gurgaon-Manesar industrial belt, a huge auto-making and manufacturing centre located in Haryana, in the outskirts of Delhi.
On July 18, 2012 the newly elected union had begun negotiating with the management team at the plant. The negotiations broke down and violence ensued with a large private security instigating it. In the melee, fire broke out in the campus and gutted down a section of the factory. The General Manager, Awanish Kumar Dey, lost his life and about 90 others injured. Some international labour activists have acclaimed that the General manager’s killing were a premeditated murder conspired by the bosses.
While police arrested MSWU leaders on the basis of company-supplied lists of “suspects,” the management backed by the state government, purged its workforce. They dismissed and replaced more than 2,300 permanent and contract workers. With over 1500 police officers deployed, the Manesar plant was temporarily converted into a veritable fortress. In addition evidence was fabricated. Prosecution witnesses repeatedly failed to identify those against whom they had given evidence. The frame-up started under the Congress Party-led Indian and Haryana state governments, and has continued with vengeance under these BJP-led governments now.
Maruti workers at the Manesar plant have continued to lend their support to the imprisoned workers — financially, emotionally and morally. When Judge Goyal delivered his castigatory sentences, workers in four major Manesar factories, including Maruti Suzuki’s Power-train plant and a Suzuki Motorcycle plant, staged a one-hour “tool-down” strike. On the 29th of March up to a 100,000 workers in the Manesar-Gurgaon industrial belt from over 50 plants came out in a show of solidarity.
While the Indian state and political establishment have backed Maruti Suzuki bosses in the frame-up of the militant Manesar workers, the leaders and mainstream trade union federations remained elusive of the struggling Maruti Suzuki workers. These leaderships’ only ‘advised’ the victimized workers to take the path of appealing to the bourgeoisie parties and rely on the corrupt and biased anti-people judiciary. The frame-up of the Maruti Suzuki workers is but one example of the vicious attacks of the corporate capital on the working class across the world. It is a class obligation for the workers across India, Pakistan and around the world to come to the defence of the framed-up Maruti Suzuki workers — ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’. The subcontinent’s massive proletariat is in thousands of struggles every day.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]