Eternal Glory to El Commandante Fidel Castro!

  Nasir Khan, November 26, 2016

The death of Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro is a sad occasion for all those comrades and friends who for decades have shown solidarity with the people of Cuba and the Cuban revolution.

Since the victory of the Cuban revolution, the U.S. rulers did their utmost to stifle the revolution and kill its leader. To this end, they hatched some 638 schemes to assassinate him and also made actual attempts to this end. However, the criminal syndicate of US rulers to carry out subversive acts in the world, the CIA, did not succeed. As we all know, Fidel Castro died a natural death in his mature age.

The American rulers could not face the fact that the Cuban revolutionaries who overthrew the US-ally, dictator Batista, were to choose the path of Socialism. In the eyes of Washington this was an unforgivable offence. To keep their hegemonic control of the Caribbean they organised the invasion of Cuba in 1961. But the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion failed.

In 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world closer to a nuclear war but luckily the American military hawks did not send us into the nuclear inferno! In fact, it was the Soviet leadership that showed restraint by pulling the recently-placed missiles in Cuba that were placed there in the first place to defend Cuba against American military aggression. In this way, a major crisis was averted that had the potential to ignite a global war.

Despite all the hostile American policies and sabotage, the Cuban revolution stood its ground. Fidel Castro rose to every challenge and heroically mobilised his people to confront the American imperialism.

The collapse of the Soviet Union drastically changed the world political scene with far-reaching repercussions for the Socialist movement. Now Cuba was alone and many thought the end of Socialism in Cuba was just a questions of time. But the resilience of the Cuban people under the inspiring leadership of Fidel Castro and the Communist Party of Cuba did not slacken. Notwithstanding many economic hardships, the rallying cry of Castro was ‘Socialism or death’. That meant no compromise with the neighbour, the only superpower and bully that wanted its hegemony accepted without question.

Another disconcerting factor for the Cuban revolutionary government was to see China and Vietnam taking the path of ‘raw capitalism’ while they still retained the name of socialism for their one-party bureaucratic system. Yet, this did not dampen the spirit of Fidel Castro. The revolutionary remained firm in his resolve to lead the fight for Socialism and an independent Cuba. His example inspired Latin American revolutionaries like Hugo Chavez and others.

His name and legacy will endure and continue to inspire new generations of revolutionary workers and activists for a socialist future.

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Aracelia del Valle

Religions are for People, not for any State

Nasir Khan, November 16, 2016

In 1971, the people of East Pakistan achieved their political separation from West Pakistan at a very high cost. The country since then called Bangladesh like many Asian countries has been a traditional country where religions in the lives of its people have played an important part as a cohesive force. There are Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Buddhists and others living in this country.

It is good to see a state adhering to the principle of non-partisanship in matters of religion and treating the followers of all faiths as equal citizens where the followers of minority religions have no fears of discrimination and recriminations. Obviously, the role of state in modern times is much different from what it was in the middle ages.

In democracies, religion and state are separated. No person of sound mind any longer stands for a coercive state that imposes its own version of religion on its citizens. Only the misguided and indoctrinated people oppose the separation of state and religion. However, a democratic state remains neutral in matters of religion; it does not favour or patronise one section of the population over the others merely because of religion. This is the path of secularism in which state respects all religions without letting any religion dictate its political and social policies in any way. Under such a system, people can practise their religions and follow their religious traditions without any intervention from the state.

If Bangladesh follows the democratic model and allows the people to follow whatever religions they want to follow without patronising one religion as state religion then the country has taken a major step in the right direction. No doubt, conservative and retrogressive forces within the country will oppose any such democratic and humane path.

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http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/bangladesh-islam-state-religion-government-considers-dropping-a7418366.html

Government officials in Bangladesh are considering dropping Islam as the country’s national religion after a senior politician claimed Bangladeshi people have embraced “a force of secularism”.

Dr Abdur Razzak, a leading member of Bangladesh’s ruling Awami League party, proposed the religion be withdrawn from the country’s constitution during a discussion at the National Press Club in the capital Dhaka.

“Bangladesh is a country of communal harmony. Here we live with people from all religions and Islam should not be accommodated as the state religion in the Bangladeshi constitution,” Dr Razzak said in his report.

 “I have said it abroad and now I am saying it again that Islam will be dropped from Bangladesh’s constitution when the time comes.

“The force of secularism is within the people of Bangladesh. There is no such thing as a ‘minority’ in our country.”

Dr Razzak added he believed Islam had been maintained as the state religion for “strategic reasons”, but declined to elaborate on this during the discussion.
Islam is the largest religion in Bangladesh, with a practicing Muslim population of approximately 150 million - making it the fourth largest Muslim population in the world after India, Pakistan and Indonesia.

According to a national survey from 2003, religion was the primary way Bangladeshi citizens identified themselves, and atheism was found to be rare.
During a recent speech, Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina highlighted the importance of “taking care” of those who follow minority religions.

 “As a Muslim majority country it is the moral responsibility of the Bangladeshi citizens to take care of minorities,” she told a conference.

“Bangladesh is a country of communal harmony which should be maintained at any cost for development and brighten the country’s image.”

The prime minister also condemned the recent actions of the militant group Isis, who have carried out various violent attacks against religious minority communities this year.

“You have to remain careful so that no such incidents, which are taking place sporadically in different parts of the country, take place anywhere in the country,” she added

Making of History

Nasir Khan, November 11, 2016

“Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.
The tradition of all dead generations weighs like an nightmare on the brains of the living.”

-- Karl Marx, Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)
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The social, political and economic factors in shaping history have been emphasised time and again by socialist theorists. Here in this short extract, Karl Marx points to the importance of prevailing objective conditions that determine the course of history. How he sees a logic in the social developments is part of his philosophy of history.

The conscious efforts of human beings sometimes set in motion the wheels of history and sometimes accelerate the speed of that process. But these variables are also dependent on the major trends that already exist. What exists is not independent of what has gone before but is rather a result of the earlier conditions under which historical events took place and the steady historical processes that have been in operation. Even in the realm of speculative thought and old metaphysical issues, we are profoundly conditioned by the old modes of thought and traditions.

Even a great thinker like Marx elaborated his thought by imbibing the ideas of the French Enlightenment, from Montesquieu to Linget and Condorcet, and by the Scottish historians. He took from Hegel the idea that history is the progressive self-realisation of man by practical social activity. While Hegel’s ideas were couched in somewhat obscure language, Marx was able to find the essential meanings they contained. As a result he developed his ideas by subjecting Feuerbach and Hegel in matters of the role of religion, State, civil society, bureaucracy and the class structure of the industrial society.

His ideas of revolutionary Socialism became clearer in his thought by his critical assessment of the older socialist thinkers. The same thing applies in his understanding and explanation about the capitalism by his close scrutiny of the earlier economists.