OURS is of course not a blind battle over past history. It is part of a larger war. The war for a fair today and a just tomorrow. For, as the Communist Manifesto declared one hundred and fifty years ago, “in the movement of the present” we also “represent and take care of the future of that movement”.

1947 did not mark the end of imperialist domination in India. It only changed the context and imperialism changed its forms and methods. Today India and most of the countries known collectively as the third world are faced with a renewed imperialist offensive that comes with the brand name of liberalisation and globalisation. It is all very well to argue that in the changed world situation it is impossible for any imperialist power to recolonise India. But as a people whose basic needs and interests are being daily trampled upon in the economy, as a nation whose economic sovereignty and very dignity have come under such a dark cloud, can we really draw any comfort from any such 'guarantee' against recolonisation?

1947 did not put an end to the sordid saga of bourgeois betrayal and bankruptcy either. It only opened a new chapter. And fifty years down the line, the signs of betrayal are today strewn all around.

Look at the audacity with which the Indian bourgeoisie and their trusted political representatives are selling away our very dignity and key national interests. Look at the vicious venom with which communal fascism is again raising its ugly head in the India of the 90s. Look at these shameless schemers and scamsters who are ruling the roost in our much trumpeted parliamentary democracy. And look at the appalling conditions of the overwhelming majority of our people, languishing in their own homeland without land and freedom, bread and jobs ...'

Yet we cannot go on lamenting and complaining about all this. No messiah is going to dear this mess for us. We will have to do it ourselves.

On the occasion of the golden jubilee of the country's independence, when we pay tribute to the great heroes and martyrs of our freedom movement and recall with pride the glory of our predecessors — workers, peasants and other progressive patriotic Indians — who had fought so valiantly for the liberation of this country, we also rededicate ourselves to this revolutionary task of transforming the present and the future.