Volume 6, No. 9, September 2005

The police hordes swooping on the workers of a Japanese multinational subsidiary, Honda Motorcycles and Scooters India (HMSI), baton charging and dragging them savagely on the roads on July 25 were seen and condemned by millions who happened to see it on the news channels live or came to learn about it in the next day’s newspapers. Hundreds of workers were injured, dozens seriously, many allegedly thrown into the gutters and hundreds arrested. No doubt the workers had not been violent throughout their months of struggle. But when the police attacked them in thousands many of the workers fought back valiantly though they were no match for the police who were well prepared for that day of atrocities. The next day, workers, their relatives and city dwellers that had developed concern for the workers and their cause fought with the police pitched battles in the streets around the government hospital when they found that they could not find many of the injured and missing workers.

Though the law forbids policemen to hit above the shoulders many workers had their skulls cracked by the baton blows. Numerous had their legs, arms and ribs broken. Multiple injuries spoke of unceasing brutalities even to those who were knocked down. According to eyewitnesses, dozens of lathi-wielding hands (police and hired goondas by the company) battering a single worker, was a common scene. And the workers fought back with stones and batons snatched from the policemen themselves. Wherever there was a counter-attack the policemen had to run away and seek shelter. The workers were unarmed and unprepared yet they did whatever they could like those who are attacked suddenly and answer the attacker’s offence when trapped unaware. Only one would expect more ferocity from the workers who were being denied justice for a long time.

The oppression and exploitation of the workers at this factory have been acute. The confrontation began since Nov. 04 when a member of the management hit a worker. The workers have been poorly paid and face insults and humiliating behaviour from the management. Large numbers were not made permanent. Often illegal cuts were made in their wages. They were not unionised and it was from Feb.15 that the struggle for their rights intensified when the workers moved an application to the local labour authorities to register their union, affiliated to the AITUC. Here, in Haryana forming a union is de facto treated as illegal. The registration was delayed by over one month. In this process the company dismissed four office bearers of the union. As the anger of the workers grew the company suspended 54 more. In May the workers went on a go-slow when prod-uction dropped from 2,00 cars per day to just 400. It was then that to management dismissed 1,000 workers and brought in hoodlums and contract workers. Thereby they were able to increase production to 1,000 units. As the struggle intensified the workers gheraoed the President of the company.

The recent agitation got precipitated on July 24 when the workers were asked to sign an undertaking of "good conduct". Instead on July 25th a procession was taken out. By 9 am about 5,000 had gathered at the Kamla Nehru Park in Old Gurgaon. From there they began marching towards the Honda show-room on the Gurgaon-Mehrauli highway. The police tried to stop the procession saying it was illegal. The workers then resorted to a rasta-roko (road-block) around 11.30 am. From a scuffle it turned into a violent clash when the police sort to forcible lift the road-block. The police were attacked with sticks and stones. They burnt the vehicles of the sub-divisional magistrate and two police vehicles. The DSP was thrashed and his two hands broken. The police fled and for two hours the workers went berserk with their pent up anger exploding. During this agitation no AITUC leaders were to be seen.

As things quietened the police laid a trap for the workers. They told them that they had been called to the mini-secretariat for talks. In a pre-planned conspiracy the entire mini-secretariat area was encircled with massive re-enforcements of police and para-military. As the workers reached there at about 5 pm, without any provocation they were pounced upon and then followed three hours of mayhem. The brutality was unbelievable. Workers were beaten by the hundreds, many were thrown into the gutters. By the night the media reported that over 100 workers were missing and 700 injured. Many lay unconscious on the road. Till today there is no record of the missing and the number injured was officially brought down to 54. Sixty one were arrested including their lawyer. The next day the Gurgaon Bar Association went on a flash strike demanding the lawyer’s release. He too was charged with attempt to murder though he was not even present at the time of the procession. When he requested hospitalisation, this too was not granted by the courts.

On the next day there was again a lathi charge when the police refused relatives from entering the hospital and account for the missing. Here even women fought back. Finally the whole issue was pacified by the political vultures, union leaders, and NGOs where the workers were forced to sign a humiliating agreement.

But the battle was heroic, but for the docile leadership, it could have definitely been a spark for the workers of Gurgaon to ignite a fire of workers’ struggles in the region. In a statement issued by the CPI(Maoist), the attack on the workers has been strongly condemned. The statement added that "this heinous incident brings back the memories of the British colonial era and the appalling conditions of the 19th century when the workers had to wage a life and death battle for organizing their own trade unions. That such a situation exists even to this day in our country, and the fact that such a shocking atrocity has been enacted by the Haryana police upon the dictates of an imperialist company, is an insult to over thousand million people of our country. The Gurgaon atrocity has not only shown the anti-people and mercenary nature of the Indian police, but, what is even more important, the fact that economic liberalization is inevitably accompanied by fascist political repression."

They were being led by those who would put every effort to keep them in the legal mire no matter what oppression and atrocities are perpetrated by the authorities. Keeping workers within the bounds of the parliamentary garbage has been their practice for long. They prefer dancing to the tune of parliamentary drums rather than the real struggles of the working people on the streets. The whole thrust of Gurudas Dasgupta, who heads the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) and is a CPI member of parliament, was to move through the parliament to contain the goondaism of the Haryana Chief Minister Hooda and the police and local civil administration, while not showing any serious concern to further organise and expand the resistance of the workers in and around Gurgaon. He termed the "gangsterism, barbarism and police brutality" in Gurgaon as "unprece-dented." Yet he merely considered peaceful ‘opposition’ to this mafia force!! A judicial enquiry by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court was enough for him rather than to go for building up resistance. He even did not utter a single word against the servile and pro-imperialist policies of the central government. Two days of resistance by workers was of their own making. Had they not been contained by the trade union bosses of this country and were left to themselves they would have given us some more glorious days of militant resistance.

The left brigade in parliament accused the Haryana government that it was "placing the interests of multinationals before the worker’s welfare" and pleaded that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should prove that he is a patriot. We have now this new sermon from the parliamentary "left" that World Bank appointed Manmohan does not look after the interests of the multinationals in this country and he now has an opportunity to prove himself a patriot by not condoning the Haryana government’s behaviour which went "mad" in ordering its troops to act as private armies of a multinationals like Honda Motors. In fact today this is a common trend. For example, in Kashipur (Orissa) as well, the police and local officials have functioned as the private army of the mining companies.

But a foreign ministry spokesman of these ‘patriots’, referring to the Gurgaon incidents, said that "the legal interests of foreign investors will be fully safeguar-ded." The rulers are no doubt worried as Gurgaon itself has 70 multinational companies and the head offices of such companies as Pepsi, Coke, Gillette, Nestles, etc and is also an important IT hub.

And this is a fact known to all, that Hooda himself took up charge to unleash the attack on the struggling workers at the behest of Honda Motors management. It is almost universal in common conversation among the Gurgaon people that chief minister, Hooda, was bribed to the amount of Rs.18-23 crores of rupees to safeguard the multinational’s interests. His brother is on the managerial board of the HMSI and these kind of local agents are paid handsomely out of the profits earned through the exploitation of workers. This kind of legalised bribery is to secure the services of the State’s forces as private mercenaries. Hence the barbaric police brutalities on Honda workers. But Hooda is not alone in the crime against workers, it is the state administration as a whole, it is a policy of the pro-imperialist state — whether at the state level or at the central.

The CPI(Maoist) statement further said "The Gurgaon incident has also revealed the stark fact that the police in India act as mercenaries to whoever pays them, in this case, the management of the Japanese imperialist-owned Honda Company. The Indian police and the Armed Forces has acted as British mercenaries until 1947 and to the various imperialist powers since then. These mercenary forces have no nati-onalism and are trained to arrest, torture and kill the people upon the orders of the political establishment. It is upon the orders of the Haryana Chief Minister, Bhupinder Singh Hooda, and the Honda management that these mercenaries were set off against the workers giving them full liberty to create a reign of terror and bloodshed."

The chief minister and his colleagues and the civil and police top brass under his control have defended the police action fully saying the police did what was required in the situation. The state booked 61 workers on the charge of attempt to murder (CrPC 307). Ironic, workers with attempt to murder charge, while the behaviour of the police, they said, was lawful. Then what is the enquiry Hooda has ordered without even suspending (they will be put on leave, Hooda said) the police and civil officers under whose orders the police operation was carried out? Usually, it is a way to douse the people’s ire and to stop the intensification of the fight back. The fate of most of the enquiries which go against the interests of the capitalists and power wielding elements always end up either in smoke or the garbage can.

They all spoke in the same language with different tunes and in different words. First with the Japanese envoy, Yasukuni Enoki: "It’s an unfortunate incident and should be sorted out by both parties amicably. Unfortunately, it will affect India’s image and that’s something that needs to be taken care of." His threat to the Indian government was that if labour unrest is allowed to spread, the environment for foreign direct investment (FDI) would suffer. Not only Honda but also Gurgaon is special to him because seventy percent of Japanese companies in India operate from the corporate lanes of Gurgaon. Japan is the fourth largest imperialist exploiter in India through FDI, with $2 billion invested here since 1991. He further warned that the issue should not be "politicised" beyond a point. Well, he set the parameters for the behaviour of the Indian ruling classes. He expressed his views while participating in a workshop organized by the Indo-Japanese Initiative and the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) on July 26. The Japanese multinationals have faced working class protests in Suzuki (Maruti Udyog), Sony and Honda’s cars ventures. They want an end to "labour problems" on Indian soil.

Another Japanese corporate boss, Kiyomichi Ito, managing director of Toyota Kirloskar Auto Parts, had his own warning to the Indians: "I’m afraid that such incidents would influence investor perception and may have an indirect effect." He also said: "Indians should understand that the capital investor has varied choices and China still remains an attractive investment destination." Nothing veiled. The message is loud and clear: take care of imperialist corporate interests or we have other destinations. This is definitely a worrying warning for the Indian rulers. And they will listen.

Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan, and others regretted that such an event had happened in Gurgaon. They expressed "concern and anguish" at the incident and asked the Hooda government to take care of the injured. Well, the injured were taken care of by directly taking them away from the hospital to the police stations and beating them again there. Those who remained in the hospital (six of all those admitted) complained profusely of negligence, unsatisfactory medical care and even being served with expired medicines and preferred to leave the government hospital for the private ones to have better medical care and facilities.

The so-called patriotic prime minister did not utter a word of condemnation of the Haryana government or the Honda management. Their first priority was to limit the damage to Gurgaon and that too within the Manesar (where HMSI is situated) constituency and not to let it snowball into wider protests in other industries around and throughout the country. When the Haryana Bandh call was given by the official left parties it was converted into a Gurgaon Bandh on the day it was to be held, i.e., July 28. Though there was heavy police bandobast in Gurgaon, Haryana and even Delhi, one could see that there was no serious attempt by the "left" to convert that day into real protests. The struggle had raced to the corridors of parliament through "left" collaboration so the streets largely remained deserted of the presence of working class protests.

The second priority was to not let it acquire political overtones of anti-imperialism. The whole thrust was to limit it to a mere worker-employer ordinary dispute of a specific industrial concern. Nothing against imperialist penetration, exploitation and control; nothing against the comprador and servile nature of the Indian rulers and the classes they represent. What the Japanese ambassador had said, was achieved.

In other parts of India where the workers and democratic people protested one could hear the voices: "push out multinationals from the Indian soil." The revolutionary and progressive forces at many places politically went beyond that point. This needs to be further intensified to carry the message among the workers. And this is the crux of the matter. The struggle against multinationals has to break from that point to bring workers to real anti-imperialist consciousness.

But the official left was silent on this issue. They took care that it should not get linked in any way to anti-imperialism. So, the political advice of the Japanese envoy was well heeded. Instead, this ‘left’ and one of its icons, Buddhadev, boasted that other states should learn how the West Bengal government has been successful in containing working class agitations and the industrial environment there is conducive and peaceful for the capitalists and multinationals to flourish. In fact WB industries minister, Nirupum Sen, said "our experience with Japanese as investors is quite pleasant..… I can assure you that the Japanese will not face any problem, because the Left Front is in power in West Bengal". The left leaders tried to focus on West Bengal as an ideal haven of industrial peace, and so, condemned Haryana’s Hooda more sternly that he had acted as a brainless boss. In fact, West Bengal has large Japanese investment and the CPM excellent relations with the Japanese TNCs. The West Bengal government is also the recipient of a huge loan of Rs.400 crores from the Japanese Bank of International Cooperation for infrastructure development (flyovers, bridges, etc)

The main thing which the Japanese envoy had wanted to be assured of was about peace of the industrial environment. Geetanjli Kirloskar, chairperson of the Indo-Japan Initiative, echoed the Japanese concern by saying, "Investors are bound to exercise caution but it should not affect the scale of investment." Indian big capital-ists are worried that the foreign direct inves-tment in India is only 4 billion dollars per year while the post-Maoist capitalist China attracts 50 billion dollars annually. They want India to exercise as barbaric a control over the working class as exists in today’s China to attract investment — a free hand to hire and fire and make all trade union rights of the workers worthless and illegal.

They say that no Gurgaon should recur. Thus the so-called labour law reforms are being awaited eagerly by the industrialists and foreign investors and Manmohan Singh is being accused of keeping further ‘reforms’ on the shelf. We know these reforms are temporarily being withheld due to the fear of worker’s anger, but, it is only a matter of time before they will be on the table. With Gurgaon events the clamour for speeding up World Bank dictated labour rules has increased the under pseudo sympathies for the victims. Not only did Sonia and Manmohan shed crocodile tears for the workers, even the HMSI manage-ment has done the same while accusing outside forces (read parliamentary left) for misleading and instigating the workers. So for a peaceful climate for multinational corporations and for increasing the FDI even the spineless "opposition" of the "left" is considered as unwelcome.

The post-protest atmosphere in Gurgaon also included NGOs to diffuse and dampen the protest movement. These organisations could be seen helping victims a bit and preaching for a settlement, even if dishonourable.

And the agreement that ensued, though basically anti-workers, is not being implemented. The agreement was reached between the Honda management and some representatives of the workers’ Union at the advice of Sonia Gandhi and in the presence of Haryana chief minister, Labour Secretary, and four leaders from the CPI-CPM combine.

The agreement includes (or does not include) the following:

The goonda forces employed by the Honda management are not to be expelled. The muscle power of the Honda management would ensure "industrial peace" within the factory premises while the police would look after the streets. Such is the situation for the Honda workers. It is like a prison inside the factory. They even have to take permission in writing before they leave for relieving themselves for a few minutes. This has been part of the conduct which the management had enforced on the workers.

As the CPI(Maoist) statement concludes "History has proved time and again that the reactionary rulers cannot subdue the people by resorting to barbaric, repressive policies. Such repression will only beget more resistance. The workers elsewhere in the country will emulate the militancy shown by the workers of Honda and their families and will wage bigger battles to eliminate all imperialist-comprador capitalist exploitation. As the comprador rulers of the country, in collusion with the imperialists, prepare to unleash more and more such atrocities on the struggling masses to push through their liberalisation agenda, the people of the country led by the working class, should prepare themselves to confront the State in bigger political battles."

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