New Socialist Movement

The New Socialist Movement in Gujarat along with the Muslim Intellectuals Forum (Mumbai), the Aman (Ahmedabad), the Bahujan Sangharsh Samiti (Nagpur) and other organisations, organised the National Conference against Fascism, Terrorism and Fake encountersin Ahmedabad on 1-2 Sept 2007. The Conference attempted to begin a campaign on the question of the growing fascisation of the state and the increasing encounters and the openly partial stand against muslims being taken by all wings of the state machinery including the judiciary.

Conference began with the screening of the film ‘Come see America’ by Sashi, highlighting America as the root cause of violence and oppression all over the world and ‘Dharamveer’, an animation film by Pravin Mishra of Jan Sangharsh Manch showing how religious sentiments are used by organizations like Sangh Parivar to create the lumpen soldiers of violence.

The first day of the Conference saw the inaugural session which was attended by Mahesh Bhatt, film director, who spoke about the targeting of muslims, especially in Gujarat. Dr. Mukul Sinha of the NSM spoke about the way in which encounters were being manufactured. The inaugural session was chaired by Justice A.P. Ravani, former Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court. The first day had sessions on “Global Terrorism” and “National Terrorism (Gujarat)” and “National Terrorism (other)” which were Chaired by Mahesh Bhatt, Advocate, Girish Patel, and Jimmy Dabhi. It was addressed by Firoze Mithiborwala and Suresh Khairnar of the Dharmanirpeksh Nagrik Manch, Nagpur, while the sessions on “National terrorism” were addressed by Dr. Mukul Sinha, Nirjhari Sinha, Zakia Jowher, Maya Valecha, (all on Gujarat) and Dr. Hamida Nayeem (Kashmir) and Adv. Colin Gonsalves (Delhi).

The first day ended with a massive rally which was taken out from the Town Hall and ended in Sardar Baug. The rally and ensuing public meeting was attended by about 5000 people.

The second day of the Conference was started with the continuation of the session on “National Terrorism” when Ghaffar Shakir, Aravind Ghosh and Maulana Azari spoke on incidents in Maharashtra like Malegaon, Nagpur, etc. This was followed by a session on exposing the truth of encounters which was chaired by Suresh Khairnar in which Amrish Patel, S. H. Iyer, Sabbir Jamal and Hamida Nayeem spoke.

The last session was on the “politics of terrorism”, which was chaired by Dr. Mukul Sinha and was addressed by Aditya Nigam (Delhi), Firoze Mithiborwala, Sanjay Singhvi, Central Committee member, CPI (ML) and Suresh Khairnar. Speakers stressed the links between, zionism, terrorism and imperialism. The point was to put up a fight globally against terrorism. The Conference ended with a open session in which many persons from the audience participated and finally ended with the passing of various resolutions against the Indian Government and imperialism and also against the Sangh Parivar and other fomentors of terror and calling for the immediate withdrawal of black acts and of the Indo-US Nuclear Treaty.

The original article is found here.