I am extremely happy to participate in this magnificent festival to celebrate the patriotic and progressive traditions of the people and honor the memory of Ghadri Babas. On behalf of the activists of the Indian Progressive Study Groups spread over North America, Britain, the Caribbean and Australia and the Association of the Indian Progressive Study Groups, I am honoured to bring militant and revolutionary greetings to Ghadri Mela 2000 and convey the best wishes for a successful festival.

The holding of Ghadri Mela 2000 is a living proof that the spirit of struggle against injustice, the spirit of defending the dignity and honour of the people, the spirit of liberation is a sound basis for all of us to come together, to unite and contribute towards creating a new society. These were the same ideals that inspired the Ghadrites in the early part of the 20th century when the colonial domination of India and the racist persecution of Indians in Canada and the US brought them together to found the Hindustani Ghadar Party. It is the same ideals that inspired martyrs like Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru, the peasant fighters of Telengana and Naxalbari, and the youth of Punjab who put saffron turbans to defy the terror of the rulers in Delhi after Operation Blue Star and so on.  What is most apparent is that the struggle that the Ghadri Babas were engaged in did not end with the formal independence of India in 1947 and that struggle has to be taken to its conclusion by our generation, the Ghadrites of today.

Friends, 
The formal independence India gained in 1947 was on the basis of accepting not just the partition but more importantly by accepting the institutions, systems and values of the colonialists. Today, these very things are the basis of the tragedy facing the people. The conflicts that rage in India and South Asia, the poverty that lingers and the threat of war that looms large over the region are the end-result of what was not done in 1947 and in 1950 when the constitution came into force. The constitution of 1950 legalized everything that the British had given rise to and against which the Ghadri babas and all the martyrs of the anti-colonial struggle had fought against. Now people of India have fifty years of experience with these institutions, these systems, these theories etc. Today is an opportune time for people to examine them in the light of their experience so that they can find answer to the main question that many of us are asking – what should people do? What should we do?

It is becoming clear by day that all the institutions of India need renewal or renovation to be able to serve the needs of the people. The renewal is not a refurbishing of what does not work for the people but only serves the requirements of a handful in society to become richer. Such a refurbishing will only prolong the past in new forms. People want to start afresh, by making a break with the past so that they can build an India that should have been built starting in 1947 in the first place.

With these considerations in mind, the Association of Indian Progressive Study Groups (AIPSG) has just launched its program to engage people in discussing how a Break with the Past can be made. In a public meeting at MIT in Boston on October 1, 2000, the AIPSG initiated the discussion on The Last Reform-Breaking with the Past. This is the title of the presentation made by Hardial Bains to the public meeting in Delhi on August 15, 1947 on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of India’s formal independence. 

Both our Chief guest Mr. Chain Singh Chain and I were there in Delhi when that thesis was presented, calling upon to people to take up the task of renewal of India because her institutions have become anachronistic. These institutions are outdated not just in India to which the colonialists had imported them but also in the countries where they first arose – the institutions of party-dominated representative system of government, the institutions that do not permit sovereignty to be exercised by the people and so on. 

On the 50th anniversary of the constitution, the AIPSG has taken up the task to involve people to elaborate that thesis so that people can acquire the consciousness that they need to solve the problems of today. Hardial Bains marched on the same path that our martyrs had traversed and when he founded the HGP(OIMLA) in 1970, it was to take the struggle of the Ghadrites to the modern times and under modern conditions. On this thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the HGP(OIMLA), we carry on the same path.

In the opinions of the AIPSG, the Time is for India. The Indian industrial houses and the world powers also think the Time is for India. But there is a very big difference between the two conceptions. These forces who took power in to their hands in 1947 want to use this post Cold War disequilibrium to emerge as a big power, a super power in Asia on the basis of taking control of all the resources that rightfully belongs to the people, by destabilizing the region and stoking conflicts so that people are never able to unite and fight for their own aims. 

They are attacking the living conditions of the people by their economic reforms, arming themselves to the teeth and taking their rule by decree and rule by force to new heights. They are preparing to make this new century a century of wars. They are imposing a new value system that to be an Indian you have to take up the aims of the government, support its war preparations and rave against Pakistan. You know how the Canadian rulers promote Canadian chauvinism by calling upon people to take up anti-Quebec, anti-immigrant outlook and you know very well that people reject such chauvinist values. The same way, people reject the values, aims and aspirations of the Indian rulers as well.

For the people, the content of the phrase The Time is for India is that the time is for the people to make India a factor for peace in South Asia and Asia, to vest sovereign power in the hands of the people and to make the 21st century a century of liberation of all the peoples.  To translate these words to deeds, already various forces are rising to the occasion.  As you have heard, earlier this year, on the occasion of the 88th anniversary of the founding of the Hindustani Ghadar Party organised by the Deshbhagat Yaadgar Hall in Jalandhar, the communists of India got together and placed on the agenda the need for one communist party to lead the struggles of the people. 

You just have heard one example of how the AIPSG is taking up the program to create the consciousness among the people for breaking with the past on the basis of summing up the experiences with the present system over the last five decades. You are all part of this magnificent Mela which embodies the principle of unity of the people. With the unity of the people, a consciousness reflecting their own experience and a leadership born out of peoples’ struggles, there is nothing which can stop us from completing the unfinished program of the Ghadrites. In this project, we are all united, whether we live in India or in North America, in Australia or in the Caribbean. That is why we say The Time is for India, The Time is for South Asia. The time is to make the new century a century of liberation and not a century of wars. 

Glory to all our martyrs!
Inquilab Zindabad!