News from the Karnataka State Farmers' Movement (KRRS)

 

1) Introduction

2) KRRS enters a new phase

3) Destruction of Monsanto seeds and plans for November 30

 

1) Introduction

***************

You have just received the first issue of a new publication, the irregular

newsletter "News from the KRRS". We have started this newsletter in order to

keep our friends from around the world informed about the developments of

our movement.

Since the beginning of the 90s, the KRRS has realised that the roots of most

of the problems facing the men and women in rural Karnataka (and for that

matter, in the whole world) stretch far and wide. These reflections and

discussions led us to strengthen our local work on global issues (such as

the GATT/WTO and the presence of multinationals) as well as our efforts at

global networking, aimed at bringing together the efforts of movements from

the whole world fighting capitalist globalisation.

We were involved in a number of initiatives to that end. We have been for

several years an active part of Via Campesina, the worldwide network of

small and landless peasants' movements, which will hold its third global

conference in Karnataka in the year 2000. We participated actively in the

process that led to the creation of Peoples' Global Action against 'Free'

Trade and the WTO (PGA) and in PGA's first global days of action against

capitalist globalisation in May 1998 (co-organising a massive rally of about

200.000 people in Hyderabad along with other Indian movements, which

launched the Joint Action Forum of Indian People against the WTO and

Anti-People Policies, JAFIP). We also co-organised along with a large

network of European friends the Inter-Continental Caravan for Solidarity and

Resistance in May-June 1999, and hosted the Second Conference of PGA in

Karnataka in August 1999.

Now we start this irregular newsletter in order to maintain the contact and

information flow with the large global community of friends that we have met

in these years. From time to time we will send you news about the

developments in our movement, with some brief news about developments in

India in general (from our perspective).

If you want to receive this bulletin regularly, please send us a message to

<swamy.krrs@vsnl.com> and we will add you to the mailing list. Please note

that you have to send us a message if you want to continue receiving this

newsletter, otherwise we will *NOT* send you any more messages.

For those who do not know the KRRS yet, here you have a short description.

KRRS is a Gandhian socialist movement. This means that the final objective

of our work is the realisation of the 'Village Republic', a form of social,

political and economic organisation based on direct democracy, on economic

and political autonomy and self-reliance, on the participation of all

members of the community in decision-making about the common affairs that

affect them, and on the creation of mechanisms of representation that ensure

that affairs affecting several communities are decided upon through

processes of consultation involving all communities affected by the

decisions. An important element in the concept of the Village Republic is

that the autonomy and freedom of the village should be based on the autonomy

and freedom of its individual members. This requires the elimination of the

caste system, of patriarchy, of religious intolerance and of all other forms

of oppression, discrimination and exploitation.

The process towards the realisation of this ideal goes through major changes

at many different levels: economic, political, cultural, etc. Accordingly,

the KRRS understands its function as tool for collective organisation and

struggle for economic, political, cultural and social change. It is not at

all a sectorial or corporativist movement: our work goes beyond the specific

problems of farmers, since it is aimed at social change at all levels.

The work of KRRS is very diverse. Since the creation of the movement in

1980, we have been involved in all kinds of campaigns and actions. Some of

them are aimed at limiting the exploitation of rural societies by traders

and the agribusiness industry. This field of action has traditionally been

the most important one, since the movement was created precisely in order to stop the intensified transfer of wealth from rural societies into the hands

of traders and industrialists that came about with the introduction of

so-called 'Green Revolution technologies' (i.e. chemical- and

capital-intensive agriculture). The actions that we take against this kind

of exploitation range from massive road and rail blockades to protest

against the sinking prices of agricultural products, to direct actions

involving the destruction of plants and offices of multinational

agribusiness. Examples of the latter include the occupation by 1000

activists of the Cargill office in Bangalore (that ended with a big bonfire

fed by all the equipment of the office that had made its way to the street

through the windows), the physical dismantling with iron bars of a seed unit

of Cargill that was being constructed in Karnataka, or the occupation of a

Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Bangalore (to protest against the

anti-farmer cooperation between the TNC Pepsico, owner of Kentucky Fried

Chicken, and the Indian government).

Now we have incorporated a new element to this tradition of rural resistance

to the Green Revolution by opposing also the introduction of biotechnology.

Last year we set on fire 2 of the 3 field trials of Bt-cotton that Monsanto

was conducting in Karnataka and triggered similar grilling activities in

Andhra Pradesh. We brought our rejection of biotechnology, through the

Inter-Continental Caravan for Solidarity and Resistance, to the centres of

power (transnational corporations, the WTO system, governmental research

institutions, etc.) which are forcing this destructive development on us. We

are committed to stop any research activities of Monsanto in Karnataka, and

to continue giving fuel to the debate on these issues among the population

and roasting the field trials of biotech TNCs that venture into this country.

Besides the campaigns to stop destructive agricultural systems, we also take

other forms of action aimed at preserving the environment upon which we

depend, like the massive campaign in the 80s to uproot the eucalyptus

plantations sponsored by the government and their replacement by local trees

(which forced Rajiv Gandhi to stop a national programme for the promotion of

eucalyptus in India), campaigns against road construction (like the

opposition to a new motorway between Bangalore and Mysore), mining (for

instance, against the mines of iron ore in the Western range of Karnataka),

etc.

Very related to agricultural issues, trade liberalisation has also been a

basic target of KRRS mobilisations for a long time. We were the first

peoples' movement in India to organise massive mobilisations against the

GATT, with demonstrations of up to half a million people (in 1993, during

the negotiation of the Uruguay Round of GATT), which helped raising the

issue for many more movements and organisations. We are obviously against

capitalist globalisation and in favour of self-reliance, but this does not

stop us from denouncing the neo-fascist use of the 'Swadeshi' concept, the

originally very positive Gandhian concept of self-reliance that has been

perverted and abused by the Hindu far-right of this country to boost the

most stupid nationalism and intolerance with their xenophobe discourse on

Swadeshi. We reclaim the internationalist roots of the Gandhian concept,

which we do not see as an objective to achieve at the national level, but at

community level. We have had enough years of over-bureaucratic, centralised,

corrupt, inefficient and industry-biased 'national self-sufficiency'.

Instead of the 'national Swadeshi' so loudly proclaimed by the Hindu

nationalist fanatics of BJP, we fight for the economic self-management and

freedom of Village Republics (being fully aware that this is a very long

term battle).

Since its beginning, the movement has defined itself as anti-caste and

anti-Brahmin. We see the elimination of the caste system as a necessary step

towards social justice in India. Among other things, we organise 'simple,

self-respect weddings' without Brahmins (the Hindu equivalent of priests or

rabbis), preferably of couples of different castes, as alternative to the

very expensive and extravagant regular weddings (where peasants usually

spend a fortune). We also fight against Hindu muscle-flexing by giving

particular importance to the representation of Muslims, Christians and other

religions in the movement. This has not made us very popular among the Hindu

fundamentalists of the BJP, the RSS and similar gangs. The BJP (the Hindu

fundamentalist party controlled by the worst breed of Brahmins which is now

in power at the central government) has used all kinds of means in its

attempts to weaken the movement, offering positions such National Minister

of Rural Development to office-bearers of the KRRS in exchange for their

defection from the movement. A group of BJP activists even went to the

extent of stopping the car of KRRS' president in the road and setting it on

fire (1).

One of the elements of our movement to which we will give more priority in

the future is the anti-patriarchal work. Some small work in this direction

has been done already since years. For instance, the movement participated

along with feminist organisations from the whole country in the

mobilisations against the celebration of the Miss Universe ceremony in

India. It also has for a long time demanded and mobilised for the creation

of women's constituencies so that a minimum percentage of the parliament

seats are reserved for women. Small anti-patriarchal details are also

included in diverse activities of the movement; for instance, the ceremony

of the simple, self-respect weddings include taking an oath where both

husband and wife state that men and women are equal and should respect each

other, and the movement has campaigned against alcohol since years (alcohol

is one of the main problems for the rural women of India). Women already

have own structures, mobilisations and programmes within KRRS, organise

women's rallies, lead men to take oaths in the rallies stating that they

will not drink alcohol anymore, etc. However, we want to strengthen the

anti-patriarchal work in the new phase of the movement (see next section).

We are also working on alternatives to the destructive system. Growing

numbers of KRRS members are shifting to organic agriculture; this is a slow

development since the whole agricultural policy of India is designed to keep

farmers hooked to agrochemicals, and it takes quite a lot of economic risks

to do the shift, but the number of organic farmers is growing steadily. In

order to make things easier for the farmers who opt for traditional

agricultural technologies, the farmers' movement in Karnataka is building up

a Global Centre for Sustainable Development, which will include the in-situ

conservation and development of traditional varieties of seeds, a centre for

traditional technologies, a centre for traditional medicines, a green

school, etc. The traditional varieties preserved and reproduced in this

centre will be available for Karnataka farmers who opt out of the Green

Revolution cocktail.

The basic unit of organisation is the village unit, the only level where

there exists membership (no central registers can be kept given the size of

the movement). The village units decide on their own forms of organisation

and finances, as well as about their programs and actions (like forbidding

the entry of government officials to the village without the permission of

the residents, stopping mining operations, etc). Above the village level

there are several other levels of organisation: the Taluk level, the

district level and the state level. The principle of autonomy applies

throughout the structure of the movement regarding decision-making, and the

finances of the movement are decentralised, with each village unit having

its own resources and contributing to the activities that take place above

the village level. As a matter of policy, the KRRS has never accepted money

from any source other than farmers from Karnataka.

 

2) KRRS enters a new phase

**************************

These are times of quick change within the KRRS. Since the end of last year,

we have been debating extensively about our priorities and methods of work,

addressing a number of questions on how to bring about fundamental social

change. The main debates so far have centred on the participation of the

movement in electoral politics, on the focus of our work (particularly

regarding patriarchy, property and caste) and on the relationship between

local and global work. Though the discussions are not yet over, they have

already provoked a political earthquake in the movement, fuelled among other

factors by the personal and collective experiences we made during the

Inter-Continental Caravan for Solidarity and Resistance. Some changes are

already underway, and more are about to come, taking the movement into a new

phase of its development.

The source of these debates was the discussion (started already late last

year) about the participation in electoral politics. In line with the best

Gandhian tradition, the KRRS has since its creation been committed to civil

disobedience and non-violent direct action (2), as well as the construction

of local alternatives by local communities, as the most effective tools to

bring about fundamental social change and dismantle capitalism from below.

However, in 1987 we took the calculated risk of registering the movement as

political party and contesting elections. We did so after seeing that a

number of government policies, which were affecting farmers very negatively,

were not being changed in spite of a constant and continued effort based on

massive civil disobedience. At that time the movement was regularly

mobilising hundreds of thousands of people, and massive civil disobedience

jail-courting actions were taking place almost all the time (every single

day in a certain period), with up to 37.000 people being arrested in a

single day. In view of the totally shameless arrogance shown by the

government, which was not even acknowledging the movement due to the fact

that it was extra-parliamentary, and in view of the size that the movement

had reached at that time (when its mobilisation capacity was estimated at 10

million people out of the 40 million that lived in Karnataka at that time),

we decided that we should take the challenge of going into the machinery of

the state to change it from within. However, we gave ourselves a number of

conditions in this electoral experiment, to ensure that the party would not

take over the movement:

* KRRS candidates were not allowed to pay the deposit (an amount of money

which you have to pay when you file in your registration as candidate, and

which you only get back if you get elected) with their money; their

constituencies had to pay the deposit. This gave the constituencies much

more control over whether to run for elections, eliminating the risk of

wealthier candidates having more access to power than poor ones.

* Since the beginning, we followed a strict non-alliance policy. This means

that no alliances were allowed either at local, district or state level; the

principle was that no other political party should ever receive a vote from

KRRS. This position has major consequences, since the electoral system in

India is directly inherited from Britain, which means that in each

constituency the party or coalition that gets more votes for the state

parliament gets the seat and the votes received by the other candidates

simply get trashed. In most of the constituencies different coalitions are

formed by mainstream parties to secure the seat in the state parliament,

while the KRRS has been faithful to its non-coalition policy.

We gave ourselves these conditions to ensure that if KRRS was to obtain the

power it would be on the basis of no compromise with other political forces

and full implementation of its programme, and that electoral politics did

not grow more important that and remained under the control of the

agitational work done by the movement.

However, these 12 years of electoral experiment have demonstrated that the

risk was greater and the destructive vigour of electoral politics more

powerful than we had expected. Our experience as political party has led us

to a couple of conclusions that we would like to share with you.

The *first conclusion* is that even the strict conditions under which we

decided to participate in electoral politics has no influence on the

spectacular capacity of the electoral system to degrade and corrupt the

small group of people that reaches positions of power at the state legislature.

We have seen how some exceptionally committed and honest people, who after

years of sincere grassroots activism came to form part of the leadership of

the movement and contested elections under the banner of KRRS, have

transformed themselves within extraordinarily short periods of time in

power-mongers willing to betray, deceive, abuse and misuse the movement and

their former friends, as well as to instantly forget the ideas that they

were fighting for, just in order to obtain or maintain the privileges that

come attached to a seat in the state legislative assembly. Their fascination

for power forced the movement to regularly rediscuss the non-alliance

policy: before every election there was always people in the leadership

proposing to 'be realistic' and engage in alliances with mainstream parties

in order to multiply the amount of seats that KRRS could obtain in

parliament. This question was always brought back to the basis of the

movement, to be consulted at village level. All the six times that this was

done there was nearly a 100% opposition to electoral coalitions. This of

course generated quite a lot of frustration among the "middlemen of the

movement" hooked to their positions of power, whose accumulated ambitions

made it easy for other political parties to lure them, by offering them a

red carpet into the putrid domain of mainstream politics in exchange for a

betrayal to KRRS and a public declaration saying that the movement was

split. Fortunately, all these people have sooner or later invariably had to

face the anger and disrespect of their communities. For instance, the former

General Secretary of KRRS who defected to the to the Hindu fundamentalist

party BJP in exchange for the National Ministry of Rural Development, was

physically dragged out of his car by the local population in three different

occasions (while he was still a national minister) during the last electoral

campaign, that he lost despite the multi-million campaign unfurled by BJP,

which included the usual elements of money plus free alcohol for BJP voters.

The defection of such cunning power-mongers was never considered as a big

problem for the movement. Most of us were actually quite relieved to see

them leave in four successive waves; there has always been a handful of them

joining BJP or other parties just before the elections. This periodic

cleansing of the movement has always been presented by the defectors and the

Brahmin-controlled media (and occasionally by people like Vandana Shiva) as

major splits in the movement, but in fact each defecting group could only

take groups of up to 20 people with them. However, the cleansings did on the

long run have an eroding effect, due to the large amount of time and energy

consumed in senseless discussions within the movement about coalitions

before the defection takes place, in countering the confusing effect of the

misinformation campaigns generated by the mass media when it takes place,

and in electing new people into the higher cadres of the movement after the

cleansing (since those who defected were frequently in relatively high

positions in the movement, most typically the general secretaries). Given

the recent trend in Indian politics to hold elections every few months

(thanks to the stupid dysfunctional coalitions cello-taped by the BJP that

have been ruling this country for far too long), this amounts to a lot of

time and energy that are taken away from grassroots agitational work.

We have been discussing the idea of retreating from electoral politics since

November 98, when one of our last general secretaries (now fortunately

expelled), who at that time was member of the state legislative assembly,

unilaterally broke the policy of KRRS by voting for the government in a

confidence motion, ignoring the expressed will of the overwhelming majority

of the KRRS activists and bases to stay away from governments formed by

other parties. The debate was quite heated throughout the whole year, but it

could not be carried out properly due to several factors (3). Given the lack

of time and conditions to take the debate to the end in a decent manner, the

KRRS contested these elections, against the will of some of the candidates

and in a very strained atmosphere (the heated difference of opinions about

electoral politics was already propagated by the media). The voters made

their opinion (and wisdom) very clear by not electing any KRRS candidate,

neither from the pro-elections side nor from the anti-elections front, to

the state assembly, even in traditional KRRS strongholds, in what amounted

to a vote against elections; all the people who left the KRRS in the past to

join other political parties also lost the elections.

Soon after the elections, the majority of the Taluk and District units of

the movement were expressing their desire to leave electoral politics behind

and concentrate on grassroots agitational work. While this was happening,

one of the two general secretaries of the movement was expelled from the

movement due to his proven unsuccessful attempts to strike an undercover

electoral deal with BJP. The other general secretary (the one who voted for

the government in November 98), along with the small minority of

pro-coalition members of the State Executive Council, took sides with him

and started a filthy campaign of mud-slinging and slander against the

president of the movement, Prof. Nanjundaswamy (4), who has always been

strongly against coalitions of any kind and had made the proposal to abandon

electoral politics that started the debate in November 98. The obvious

purpose of this exercise was preparing the field for their collective

defection from the movement in order to stay in electoral politics, trying

to legitimise with baseless accusations a decision that is motivated solely

by their desire to stay in the nasty mainstream politics that have corrupted

them (5). They have been joined in their efforts by the four people who were

kicked out of KRRS before the elections for joining or supporting BJP, three

of whom are now about to go abroad to internationalise the slander campaign

against the movement (6).

Our *second conclusion* is that on the long term it is not possible for a

movement to pursue a struggle for self-rule and decentralisation while

participating in the structures of power. The so-called 'democratic'

elections are a perfect tool to kill any kind of lively grassroots movement

challenging power from below, transforming it into a guarantee of continuity

for the system characterised by a profoundly undemocratic internal structure

and aimed only at preserving the privileges of its leadership.

Our own experience shows how contesting elections, which we defined as a

minor element in the work of the movement when we decided to do it, slowly

leads to a number of systemic problems of extraordinary dimensions.

Obviously one of these problems is the spectacular capacity of power to

corrupt individuals discussed in the previous paragraphs, but there are also

other side effects on the movement as a whole, which have actually much

worse consequences on the collective process than the moral and political

decay of a handful of ambitious people.

The most important of these effects is the silent redefinition of power

relations that takes place within the organisation as soon as some members

are in high positions as parliamentarians. This redefinition of power

invariably reduces the democracy and equality within the movement. By its

own nature, it is already extremely difficult to practice some kind of

grassroots democracy within a process that involves millions of people, and

hence some mechanisms of delegation and representation are necessary for

taking decisions at levels other than the village level. However, these

mechanisms tend to get totally distorted when the influence (and ego) of

some of the members of the State Executive Council (composed of almost 400

representatives of district and taluk units) start growing due to their

presence in the parliament and the media.

This imbalance tends to give a disproportionate weight to the opinions and

preferences of the handful of individuals holding seats in the state

assembly, intensifying the hierarchies in the movement instead of reducing

them. It leads to a situation in which the movement is held hostage to a

great degree by its representatives in parliament, whose influence continues

to grow thanks to their position as the most visible faces of the collective

process, even when their opinions and concerns are not necessarily shared by

the movement (as became evident every time that the participation in

coalitions was discussed at the village level). Such a situation inevitably

leads to electoral discussions and activities (as well as related concerns

which should be alien to the collective process, such as the image of the

movement in the media) becoming the most important matters of the movement,

either openly or camouflaged under the guise of other discussions and

activities. As a consequence, the agitational activities, which are the true

blood of the movement, get increasingly neglected. What is worse, these

unfortunate developments take place not only at the level of the State

Executive Committee, where the members of the legislative assembly have

always been represented, but also at the local levels, since the movement

also takes part in local elections.

On the long term, instead of stimulating and giving new tools to the

struggle for self-rule and decentralisation, the participation in elections

leads the movement to demobilisation, and to replicate at least to a certain

degree the structures of power that it was intended to fight against.

Such degradation obviously does not remain without consequences. After the

first few sweet years when the people at the grassroots of the movement do

identify themselves with the participation in electoral politics, the change

in the priorities and methods of the movement becomes increasingly apparent

for everyone. Increasing numbers of people at the grassroots react

negatively to this change, and former supporters and activist start viewing

the movement as yet another political party. This (and not the defection of

some individuals) is the only reason why KRRS has lost some of its strength,

though the loss is by far not as dramatic as the BJP and people like Vandana

Shiva would like us to believe. We see this lost momentum as a temporary

problem, which will soon be solved as the movement goes back to its roots by

concentrating again on civil disobedience, non-violent direct action and the

construction of alternatives to the problems faced by people on the ground.

We were in the middle of these discussions when the Inter-Continental

Caravan for Solidarity and Resistance took place. The impact of this

programme on the 200 members of KRRS who attended it helped to shape the

later development of the discussions in the movement.

In Europe we witnessed an emerging movement that reminded us of the origins

of the KRRS. We saw extremely committed young people facing the system and

constructing their decentralised alternatives, some of them in countries

where there are all kinds of incentives to be accommodative, consume

whatever piece of the big cake that might be allocated to you, and live like

cattle in a well-heated stable. We got to know fantastic young women deeply

involved in solidarity and resistance due, among other reasons, to their

higher degree of emancipation from the oppression of patriarchy, which they

continued fighting along with other struggles. We were hosted in dozens of

squats that posed a direct challenge to the very concept of private

property. We saw that the non-hierarchical organisational model attempted

with respectable degrees of success by our European friends was, despite

some eccentricities and a couple of serious problems, more attractive and

interesting than the twisted relations between the high ranks of our

movement, and definitely worth trying out.

Most of the participants of the caravan thought that the time had come to

change a few things in the movement. To abandon elections and concentrate on

massive decentralised agitational action. To intensify the anti-patriarchal

work in order to fully release the wings of the women of the movement. To

tackle with renewed strength the issue of property, which so far has been

limited to the occupation of unused governmental land. To increase our

engagement in the fight against the caste system, making organisational

changes to give Dalits (the so-called untouchables) a special space in the

organisation to fight for their rights. Last but not least, to reduce the

hierarchies in the movement, not only by getting rid of parliamentary feuds,

but also by changing the structure of the movement, making it more horizontal.

The discussion about how to make these changes a reality has started very

recently (since those who were insisting on electoral politics did not

'leave' us until the middle of November), and we still need a lot of debate

to decide how to put all the new programmes into practice. But we are

certain that we are finally on the right tracks after years of impasse, and

that the year 2000 will see the movement flourish with new strength.

 

3) Destruction of Monsanto seeds and plans for November 30

**********************************************************

As the Economic Times (Karnataka edition) reported on front page, 18 tonnes,

eight quintals and 25 kilograms of the 'c-71' variety of sorghum seeds of

Monsanto were destroyed on Wednesday the 17th of November 1999 in Bellary

(Karnataka) following a court order. This was the happy end of a litigation

started by KRRS almost one year ago.

The entire crop of this variety failed in the 30.000 acres (aprox. 12.000

hectares) where it was planted, ruining more than 1.000 families. KRRS

activists seized the remaining unsold seeds (a bit more than 18 tonnes) and

filed a case against Monsanto. It turned out that this mysterious variety,

that had just been introduced, was not tested according to the Indian laws.

Monsanto declared that the seed was infected by a fungus and the court

ordered the destruction of the remaining seeds. However, on the day set for

the destruction the Monsanto officials tried to destroy other seeds instead

of the c-71 variety, but were stopped by KRRS activists, who denounced their

attempt to deceive the court order. Now the remaining c-71 seeds are finally

destroyed, but Monsanto still has to pay compensation to the affected

farmers. Although the Department of Agriculture had estimated the damage at

30.000 Rs per acre, Monsanto wanted to pay only 5.000 Rs per acre as

'ex-gratia payment' which they consider an appropriate 'charitative gesture'

towards the affected families. We will continue fighting this case until a

decent reparation is paid by Monsanto.

We are planning a demonstration against Monsanto at the Indian Institute of

Science on November 30th, as part of the global day of action against

capitalism and against the WTO. It will not be very large, with only a few

thousand participants, since in the last period we have been very busy with

internal discussions and did not have the chance to organise a well-planned

state-level mobilisation. We are targeting the Indian Institute of Science

because it has provided accommodation to Monsanto for developing genetically

modified seeds for the Asian markets. We will issue a notice to Monsanto to

quit India and to the IIS to kick them out, letting them know that failure

to do so will lead to non-violent direct actions in their establishment.

Monsanto India is already taking quite a defensive position towards KRRS.

The last issue of the national magazine 'Frontline' (November 13-26)

includes a rather amusing letter by the Communication Manager of Monsanto

India. Here you have some excerpts: "This refers to the report 'Monsanto's

Retreat' published on November 5. I must, most regrettably, lodge a very

strong protest with you - not on the views expressed in the report, but on

the baseless and unsubstantiated allegations made by the president of the

Karnataka Rajya Raitha Sangha who has publicly taken a political and

ideological stand against the company. Monsanto has been in India for 50

years and never once has it done anything that would blemish its track

record in this country. It has always respected and operated within the laws

and regulations in force. It has been a part of India's efforts to boost

agricultural productivity, providing farmers with products and technology

that have contributed positively to agricultural production and management.

It is unfortunate that a magazine of your standing should have published

such unsubstantiated remarks against a company which enjoys the trust and

confidence of millions of farmers because they know from experience that it

will not do anything against their interests..." as the farmers of Bellary

recently had the chance to appreciate in their own fields.

---------------------------------------------------------

Published by the Karnataka State Farmers' Movement (KRRS)

2111, 7-A Cross 3rd Main, Vijayanagar 2nd Stage, 560040 Bangalore, India

Tel +91-80-3300965, fax +91-80-3302171, email <swamy.krrs@vsnl.com>

##########

Footnotes:

(1) The BJP is not just one more political party, it is the political

manifestation of Hindu fascism. Until 1994 it was a minor political party

that counted only on the support of Brahmins and other high castes. Since

then, it has followed an aggressive strategy to come to power, a strategy

based on the manufacturing of conflict, hatred and violence against Muslims,

Christians and other religious minorities. Their nationalist discourse is

based on the idea of a Hindu India with no place for people of other

beliefs. The process that led the BJP to the government started in December

1994, when BJP activists destroyed a Mosque in Ayodhya where they claimed

that the Hindu god Rama was born. This was followed by progroms against

muslims throughout the country, organised by activists of BJP and its

satellite organisations, which led to countless killings, rapes, evictions

and to levels of inter-religious conflict not seen in India since it became

independent. These conflict-engineering programmes, along with a broad and

aggressive coalition strategy (in which ideology plays absolutely no role

and the only criterion is getting hold of seats in parliament), enabled them

to become the largest faction in the parliament; before 1994 they only had 2

members in the parliament. They have since them kept their relative majority

with the help of abominable macho-man designs to boost the most horrible

nationalist feelings, such as the latest nuclear bomb tests (which they

loudly celebrated as the symbol of national pride and independence) and an

engineered war with Pakistan. Recently the BJP has redirected its white

terror against the Christian community: churches have been destroyed, nuns

raped, and communal conflict manufactured in the wake of the general

elections at which Sonia Gandhi (a christian-born Italian woman) was their

main political threat. Last but not least, the BJP also has a long

tradition, which they have recently intensified, of repressing all

revolutionary and democratic movements in India, especially in their feudal

strongholds, with the help of paramilitary satellite groups and the official

armed forces. As an action call of AIPRF (All-India People's Resistance

Forum, the national forum of liberation struggles) states: "AIPRF views that

the brutal repression that is being unleashed on the revolutionary movement

in India could be considered to be a fall-out of the increasing

fascisization of the Indian state with the greater clout that the Hindu

fascist forces have come to possess upon the state machinery in the country.

(...) The armed forces of the state are killing the family members of the

revolutionaries, raping women and banishing youth from the villages. Houses

are demolished or burnt down, the crops of farmers are destroyed. The armed

forces loot the houses and families are sent out of villages. (...) The

state police are now using grenades, crude bombs, poisonous gases, and even

land mines to kill the revolutionary activists and people. (...) The most

oppressed people of this region [Dandakaranya], the Adivasis (indigenous

people) are targeted by the police and the women are raped. (...) The Bihar

Government, under the direct supervision of the Central Government, has been

advancing direct or indirect support to the Ranveer Sena and other private

armies of the feudals (...) Their prime target is the revolutionary and

democratic organisations. The BJP, the party in power at the Centre, is the

main supporter of Ranaveer Sena. (...) During the last three years, more

than 100 massacres were organised in which about 1000 people were killed

brutally by different feudal forces and their private armies with the active

connivance of the police."

(2) Our complete commitment to non-violence is based on the understanding

that one can only speak about violence when it is directed against living

beings, not against inanimate objects. We hence consider the destruction of

office material or buildings as perfectly non-violent actions, as long as no

human being or other living beings are attacked. However, we do not destroy

buildings all the time, we try to use other methods if there is a chance.

For instance, once we 'laughed away' the government of Karnataka with a

massive concentration in front of the government building, where activists

from all over the state spent a whole day giving speeches about the

government and its policies and laughing their heads off. The government was

replaced the following week.

(3) The most important one was the large amount of work associated with the

preparation of the Inter-Continental Caravan for Solidarity and Resistance,

as well as the whole month that a couple of hundred of the most active

members of the movement spent in Europe during the Caravan in May-June 99.

[The Caravan had a number of other effects on the movement besides delaying

the debate about elections; more on this will follow below.] Another was the

preponement of the elections to September 99 (due once more to the break-up

of a stupid dysfunctional alliance), which was announced in the middle of

the preparations to host the second PGA conference.

(4) Since they could not make any allegation of a political nature, they

came up with a catalogue of utterly absurd accusations against the president

of KRRS, the most important being that, according to them, the European

organisers of the Inter-Continental Caravan paid the flights of all the

Indian participants and Prof. Nanjudaswamy kept all that money. Any European

involved in the organisation of the caravan, and any Indian participant,

know that this accusation is totally false. Even those who made the

allegation contradict themselves, since in the same catalogue of senseless

accusations against Prof. Nanjundaswamy they also say that the contingent of

free tickets to participate in the caravan was not distributed -- which

contradicts their claim that all the tickets were free. These free tickets

were given to representatives of the South Zone Adivasi Forum, the Narmada

Bachao Andolan, the National Fisherfolk Forum and to poor activists of

farmers' movements who could not afford the flight, such as Dalits, landless

farmers and marginal farmers.

(5) The latest move of this group has been to convene a meeting of the State

Executive Council, which was attended by 20 of its nearly 400 members and

boycotted by the rest (but filled up with supporters, to make it look good

in the pictures), where they decided to expel Prof. Nanjundaswamy from the

organisation and to go for elections as one more political party. These

decisions were backed by the representatives of only one of the 19 districts

where the KRRS operates (where one of the ex-general secretaries comes from)

and by one Taluk out of six of another district (where the other ex-general

secretary comes from). This meeting was followed by a meeting of the real

State Executive Council, at which it was decided to stop participating in

elections and to kick out the 20 people who had attended the previous

meeting, who were also the ones that launched the slander campaign against

Prof. Nanjundaswamy. The local media is of course enthusiastic about the

whole thing, reporting generously in front page about the so-called 'split',

although they know that it amounts to nothing else than the previous defections.

(6) Given the fact that in the last years the KRRS has evolved a very

dynamic international work, this time the efforts of BJP and other people

who would like to see the movement disappear will not be confined to India.

Three persons, Mr. C. Nanjundamurthy, Mr. H.K. Mahendra and Mr. Vivek

Cariappa, will soon travel to Seattle and Europe to spread false information

about the situation in which the movement is right now, praise the former

general secretaries that have now been expelled from the movement and tell

all kinds of wild fantasies about Prof. Nanjundaswamy. The first two are

registered members of BJP, the third one is intelligent enough not to take

their membership card but was an extremely active worker in the election

campaign of BJP in his Taluk. We are sending photocopies of election ads of

BJP with the picture of Nanjundamurphy as candidate and of newspaper reports

about the defection/expulsion of these three persons to the places that we

know they will visit, we can send them to more addresses on request (they

are all in Kannada, the local language, but the pictures and the logo of the

BJP are very well recognisable). If you have been approached by them to

arrange a meeting during their visit to the USA and Europe, please bear in

mind that working with these people means supporting a religious

fundamentalist, nationalist, conflict-engineering right-wing party, as well

as a bunch of power-mongers with no ethics trying to undermine a whole

grassroots movement just for their personal benefit. As a cautionary note,

we have to add that Mr. Vivek Cariappa was working closely with Vandana

Shiva when she started defaming the KRRS about one year ago, spreading

widely by email the kind of misinformation about KRRS that BJP distributes

within India, and openly stating in her mails that KRRS should work together

with BJP. It would hence not be very surprising if Dr. Shiva would support

the efforts of the international team of this slander campaign, though we

hope that this time she will not indulge in misinformation activities.