Thanks for being here today to mark 150^th anniversary of the events of 1857 in the sub-continent.

Some of us who have been involved in struggles against racism, colonialism and imperialism originating from the sub-continent were prompted by the current events like the Iraq war and the occupation of Afghanistan etc to come together to look at the significance of 1857.

We saw the similarities of what is happening around the world today to what happened 150 years ago in the sub-continent.

The terminology and the language are not that very different. 

The geographical area involved than and now is just as large.

Than, Britain was involved in the wars in Persia, China and the sub-continent. Quite apart from what it was doing in Africa and the Americas.

Today US Britain and its allies are involved in Iraq, Afghanistan and areas of Pakistan with ambitions in Iran.

The area covered is not dissimilar in size and influence.

As we have already heard, 1857 was a result of the similar processes that we see developing today, globalisation, multinationals and their impact and the West’s thirst for resources.

 Than it was the East India Company.

Today it is Halliburton and its likes.

Than it was cotton - the driving force for industrialisation. 

Today oil the necessary ingredient to keep the economy moving.

Others before me have dealt with the history of the events and players of 1857.

I am going to concentrate on what we have been promised by modern day colonialists or imperialists.

They have said they are committed to fighting this war on “terror” for fifteen or so years and that it will be fought more viciously than the cold war that ultimately lasted around half a century.

I have little faith in the time-scales of some of the western leaders. Bush declared the War in Iraq, Mission Accomplished within a few weeks of the Invasion of Iraq

Yet, some four years later, it continues with the only likely outcome the defeat of the American giant and Mission abandoned.

The non-partisan British Minister for securities, an ex-navy person, has already asked people to tell on their friends and neighbours who exhibit any qualities of would-be terrorist. 

Already teachers in British Universities are asked to report any character likely to be radicalised. And we thought you do not qualify to go to university if you are not going to be effected by the radical environment at the Universities.

Perhaps I was wrong.

Universities are no longer places you go to get new ideas that influence your life.

May be some of the other speakers would illuminate what that means as some of them would have lived under dictatorships where similar tactics were used to terrorise dissent. 

First of all let us be clear on terror and what it means and to whom.

The imperialists themselves are deliberately vague on the definition of the word terror.

They are afraid they might expose themselves and their allies as the main instigators of terror.

What Israel does to the Palestinians, on a daily basis, cannot be classified as anything other than terrorism.

Terrorism is using or threatening to use force to get others to do that they would not do otherwise.

Therefore, if you blow up a General’s car to force him to be President no more, that would be an act of terror.

Similarly, if the same general used his military boots to acquire power over you that you would not have given him under normal circumstances would also be classified terrorism.

The use of force to move people out of their villages would be terror, no matter what the justification.

However, keep in mind that terror can be a response to terror itself. 

I think I cannot put it better than Marx did writing about the events of 1857, in of all the papers, the New York Daily. 

In the 4^th September 1857 edition of the paper. - Note there was a lot of talk about the brutality of the rebels in the British press of the time as it is today about the so-called Jahidist and others. Marx was trying to answer that.

He writes “However infamous the conduct of the sepoys, it is only the reflex, in a concentrated form, of England’s own conduct in India, not only during the epoch of the foundation of her Eastern Empire, but even during the last ten years of long settled rule. To characterize that rule, it suffices to say that torture formed an organic institution of its financial policy” – end of quote -

What is Marx alluding to? I think he is talking of the method of collecting taxes in India where the authorities, to be specific, The East India Company, actually used terror to collect taxes to the extent that questions were raised in the Houses of Parliament on behalf of some of the Indian victims of terror. There are several references in Hansard and even reports of various committees etc alluding to terror being used as part of the administration process in India.

The Governor of Bengal, Warren Hastings, later to become First Governor General of India, wrote to the directors of the East India Company in 1772:

"Notwithstanding the loss of at least one-third of the inhabitants of this province, and the consequent decrease in cultivation, the net collections of the year 1771 exceeded even those of [pre-famine] 1768." - End of quote –

Perhaps, this violent method of collecting taxes contributed to the 11 million people who perished as a result of the famine in his Presidency. 

Note Bengal, than incorporated more than East and West Bengal. I think it included Orissa, Jharkand, and Assam as well as both East and West Bengal.

Hastings was clear on why and how this was achieved. It was, he states

And I quote him from a report he made to the East India Company Directors "owing to [tax collection] being violently kept up to its former standard."  End of Quote – 

By violently, if there is any doubt, he meant torture that Marx referred to in his article in the New York Daily I quoted earlier.

Incidentally, RC Dutt, an economist of the late 19^th early 20^th century wrote an excellent book on the famines of India. It is available on our website www.1857.org.uk

Let me illustrate the use of terror by the colonialist powers of the mid nineteenth century in their own words – it will give some idea of the terror the peoples in occupied lands endured.

in the "Bombay Telegraph" (The Paper was English owned) and subsequently reproduced in the British press testified to the scale and nature of the retaliation: following the re-occupation of Delhi by the East India Company forces.

".... All the city people found within the walls (of the city of Delhi) when our troops entered were bayoneted on the spot, and the number was considerable, as you may suppose, when I tell you that in some houses forty and fifty people were hiding. These were not mutineers but residents of the city, who trusted to our well-known mild rule for pardon. I am glad to say they were disappointed".

Another brief letter from General Montgomery to Captain Hodson, the conqueror of Delhi exposes how the British military high command approved of the cold blooded massacre of Delhites:

He wrties "All honour to you for catching the king and slaying his sons. I hope you will bag many more!" End of Quote

 So the terror we are talking about is not the one executed in the heat of the moment but one sanctioned in the cold light of the day by the top command. Exactly, like Rumsfield approving torture at Guantanamo and Abu_Ghairab.

The nature of the attrocities were such that even the British soldiers were forced to comment on them. Captain Hodson himself in his book, Twelve years in India: He says

"With all my love for the army, I must confess, the conduct of professed Christians, on this occasion, was one of the most humiliating facts connected with the siege." – end of quote –

(Hodson was killed during the recapture of Lucknow in early 1858).

Another young soldier - Edward Vibart, barely nineteen, also recorded his experience:

He says

"It was literally murder... I have seen many bloody and awful sights lately but such a one as I witnessed yesterday I pray I never see again. The women were all spared but their screams on seeing their husbands and sons butchered, were most painful... Heaven knows I feel no pity, but when some old grey bearded man is brought and shot before your very eyes, hard must be that man's heart I think who can look on with indifference..." End of Quote

Put this in the context of what is happening today.

On a daily basis, in villages in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan, cities in Iraq and the occupied territories in Palestine suffer casualties of men women and children because the “Coalition of the willing” – including our Enlightened moderate Muslim General Musharraf are bent on removing any opposition to the West’s occupation of the region.

In the absence of an alternative as Marx suggests, the response, call whatever you will, is inevitable.

It is inevitable that the response, in the form of resistance would have several features and we must be careful not to allow or even join in the demonizing of those features.

For example, a great deal has been made of the word Jihad. In what way is it different to struggle? The language is different. The meaning is the same. For those of us coming from the sub-continent know from our historical experiences those of non-Muslim faiths use the word jihad to imply struggle.

For example, some of the most well known Shaheeds of the liberation struggle in the sub-continent, like Bhagat Singh and Uddham Singh did not belong to the Muslim faith.

As Pakistani workers Association, in the eighties and nineties, when we were looking at the history of the sub-continent and the British occupation, we concluded that those giving fatwa’s against Jihad during British occupation were disarming the people’s resistance to occupation.

Whether they were the modernist, like Syed Ahmed Khan, or the Sufis talking about international brotherhood or to be more precise brotherhood of the elite. Perhaps, in the context of the India, the most well known sufi is Aga Khan.

Allama Iqbal was very negative of this Sufism and yet was appreciative of the early Sufis, like Rumi, whom he considered progressive elements within Islam.

Also, note that Gordon Brown is also talking about British values.

That is his attempt to mobilise what he thinks is his constituency.

Why should the resistance also not be allowed to use the language that its constituents can understand?

Prof Akbar, ex-ambassador to London for Musharraf, in his recent book has divided Islam into three types.

The Modernist, according to him, has adopted the globalisation agenda. In my opinion, they lack any constituency today. In the early part of the last century, some of the Nationalist with the modernisation agenda had some constituency but soon lost it as a result of the failure to deliver on the modernist agenda including in Turkey.

The Sufi Islam, again a preferred type of Islam is more acceptable to the global agenda because it disarms the resistance.

The Fundamentalist trend, Akbar associates with the Deoband tradition. The tradition started after the defeat of the 1857. It was a response to the British occupation of India. It was an attempt to build a defensive wall against the colonialist onslaught. It still today represents that as the onslaught continues.

Given all that, as progressives what should be our response?

I think we also need to return to basics. We need to understand the contradictions and the nature of those contradictions to work out strategies that will take us all forward.

We need to translate our understanding of these contradictions into alliances that can be formed today to help international resistance, especially in our own region. 

Anti-imperialist alliance is the most obvious and fundamental one in today’s context given the contradictions and their relationships.

Around Anti-Imperialist alliances we should be working in broad fronts where different peoples can come together on an anti-imperialist agenda irrespective of their ideologies or political orientation.

In Britain, and possibly in other imperialist countries some form of anti-imperialist alliances exists.

However, some of the left tendencies, specially those originating from our regions are critical of such alliances.

To some extent it is understandable due to the recent history between some of the Islamist groups and the left.

However, let us not forget that some of the so-called left were also not very kind to each other before the war on terror for example, in Afghanistan. 

The current situation in Afghanistan was brought upon primarily by the adventurism of the left in Afghanistan and the opportunism of the Russians.

The Russian invasion of Afghanistan ultimately resulted in the destruction of the socialist camp in whatever form it existed and brought about the conditions that allowed the only super-power to launch its globalisation process.

That Super Power, THE USA, began to think itself as invincible. 

I think it is learning from its experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

However, it is not going to give up.

It might withdraw from some parts, modify its strategy and tactics and that is why it is returning to the language of the cold war.

However, its onslaught in certain areas might intensify and it might bring about new alliances.

We have seen this happening in Pakistan. It seems Begum Sahiba(Bhutto) might be brought back via the United States.

Instead of trying to appease the forces in Pakistan against occupation of Afghanistan Pakistani military is being pushed to send its troops into the tribal areas to sort out the difficulties NATO faces in Afghanistan. It will make Pakistan into Cambodia or Laos of the Vietnam War period. 

One American analyst, conservative commentator William Kristol, known to reflect the current administration's thinking, had predicted US strikes inside Pakistan to disrupt terrorist sanctuaries.

The analyst says:

"I think, frankly, we won't even tell Musharraf. We'll do what we have to do in western Pakistan and Musharraf can say, 'Hey! They didn't tell me,"' he said in a TV talking heads show.

In response Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S Mohammed Ali Durrani defiantly told a US network, "They are not welcome. We can do the job ourselves."

This is what the Lal Masjid episode was all about. Well I think if Musharraf cannot do the job, certainly the Americans are losing the political will to do the job, as the cost is likely to be higher than it already is for the Americans if they try to do the job themselves. The casualty the Pakistani army has suffered in the last few days proves this.

Musharraf did not want a peaceful solution because he has to prove to the West he can do the job. Pakistan has possibly lost more soldiers than the whole of the coalition of the willing put together in this war on terror. Just this week it has possibly lost scores of soldiers in the North West, Islamabad and Balochistan. 

United States wanted a war in the West of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan. Musharaf needed the Lal Masjid to develop as it did to bring it about.

Our demand in the context of the Lal Masjid would have been a demand for justice.

A Peaceful resolution of the Lal Masjid episode, followed by a trial through a judicial system where everybody could have been made accountable.

What happened instead, as Asma Jehangir puts it, was an extra-judicial killing at a large scale. She has demanded an enquiry and among the Pakistani progressives one of the very few who has possibly, properly judged the nature of the military operation.

This brings me to the second point. We must also form alliances on the basis of justice and we must struggle against injustice.

Lal Masjid, irrespective of the individuals involved was an injustice, even if the two mullahs were guilty of everything under the sun, because they did not get a proper trial. The extra judicial killings at the Lal Masjid did not only deny the two Mullahs justice, the peoples of Pakistan still do not know what happened, why it happened. Perhaps, the real guilty went free. There is too much speculation on the real reasons behind the events of the Lal Masjid. The resolution favoured by the General has further increased the level of speculation to a stage where anarchy can easily become the norm in Pakistan. Perhaps that is what he wanted.

Our voices, by that I mean the voices from the left, should have been heard against all this but they were not because of the confusion on the issue.

Musharraf was relying on just such confusion.

If the left had correctly accessed the situation and demanded a peaceful and judicial solution, they would have strengthened the anti-imperialist alliance in Pakistan.

Instead, they continued to live in the past and failed to outwit the General.

Let us see how events develop in the next few weeks. Already, it looks things are going to get worse.

I think, as the leaders of western powers tell us, we are for a very bumpy and a long ride.

This struggle would determine the nature of the world that humanity would have to face in fifteen or twenty years at the conclusion of their war on terror.

What the left does, in terms of the anti-imperialist alliances, its stand on justice and its opposition to oppression would determine the nature of that world.

If it stood for so-called modernity it risks being on the wrong side of the alliance and totally ineffective. It will be standing by its elite financed by the imperialist powers.

If it continues to be confused with the rhetoric and does not answer the needs of the time it is destined to be in the wilderness.

We cannot expect that modernity, in its positive and genuine sense would be delivered to us via imperialism. It has a capacity to bomb us back into history as it has so often threatened our self appointed leaders.

It cannot propel the occupied forward and it has no intention to do that, as it is not in its interest.

Let me finally talk about some of the things we are doing as individuals from the sub-continent in the West. We are first of all, part and parcel of the Anti-War movement. We may have differences with some of them on politics and ideology.

We are opposed to any occupation and stand firmly on the side of the occupied.

We are against injustice.

We oppose imprisonment without trial and are vigorously involved in the closure of all illegal prisons known or unknown.

In this respect, Guantanamo and Abu-Ghairab are possibly the most visible.

Some of us are actively involved in getting Guantanamo closed. Primarily, because a large number of our people are in these prisons. Also, our General has kidnapped most of them and handed them to the Americans without a legal process.

We should be doing more on other prisons, especially the ones unknown or new ones being built in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Morocco etc.

Again, this should be an opportunity for us to build alliances against imperialism based on commonalities across the ideological divide.

We are against globalisation and in this respect have begun to look at the economic processes, especially in India, like the setting up of Special Economic zones in Bengal and other states.

These zones resemble the special powers bestowed on the early arrivals of the East India Company in the 17^th & 18^th century.

Indeed, in Bengal, some of the land is acquired for SEZ using colonial law that the British created to obtain lands in India for their military cantonments.

We are also looking at the situation regarding minorities and other nationalities within India.

In this respect some of us are campaigning to get reprieve for Afzal Guru from the President of India. We see this as part of our front for justice and also the unfinished business of the National question on the sub-continent level. Again, it is something on which we can come together across ideological, political and even national divides.

Our choice, internationally, is not to stand-alone in our ideological island or joining the imperialist.

The real choice is between being part of the anti-imperialist front or the imperialist front under several guises.    

I have concentrated on what the left needs to do because I belong to that constituency and I want to be part of a force that helps build a progressive and just world with a left vision.

Also, I expect most of those present here today belong to the left tradition and would want to hear how we can relate 1857 to today in a practical form. However, if the left fails to respond to the new imperialist onslaught with a strategy that meets the requirement of the times it faces being ineffective and unable to shape the world of tomorrow.  I think very soon, the battle ground for this war on terror would move further east into the sub-continent, if it is not already there and we need to be ready for any such shift to be able to properly mobilise our peoples into an effective opposition to the onslaught.

Thank you.