New Delhi, November 22: The Left parties — the Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (ML)- Liberation, Revolutionary Socialist Party, All India Forward Bloc and the Socialist Unity Centre of India (Communist)–have issued the following statement:

The wilful demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 remains in the historic calendar of independent India as the Black Sunday. This brazen act, accomplished under the direct gaze of the authorities and law enforcing agencies under a Congress central government and a complicit BJP government in Uttar Pradesh, remains the severest of attacks on the secular democratic foundations of the modern Indian republic. It highlighted the reality that far from consolidating the modern republic there are rabid forces who are determined to destroy its very foundations and to bring in an autocratic, rabidly intolerant, fascistic “Hindu rashtra” which is the RSS’s ideological project.

RSS sponsored Hindutva private armies led by BJP leaders perpetrated the Babri demolition then – and today such private armies, emboldened and patronised by the BJP in power, are acting like a law unto themselves. The gau rakshaks of today are on a rampage, attacking dalits and Muslims over fabricated allegations of cow slaughter. Moral policing squads are prescribing what our youth should wear, what they should eat, or whom they should befriend. Instead of upholding the law of the land and proscribing such private armies, senior BJP leaders, including Ministers in the Central and various State Governments have openly endorsed, patronised, and promoted such private armies and rationalised or even celebrated their violent actions.

Though a quarter of a century has passed since this blot on India’s secular democracy, no action has been taken till now against the organisers and perpetrators of the demolition who have brazenly violated the law of the land and irreversibly damaged India’s secular democratic foundations. Democracy-loving people in India will never forget this injustice and will fight till its perpetrators are brought to justice.

December 6 is also the death anniversary of Dr. Babasheb Ambedkar, the Chairman of the drafting Committee which gave independent India its Constitution. The Left parties will observe this day by mounting a campaign against the intensification of the assaults on dalits across the country and on the secular democratic values of our Constitution by the communal forces. This assault must be resisted and defeated through popular mobilisation and struggles to defend the secular democratic principles, our composite culture and resist every attempt to divide people on communal lines.

The Left parties call upon all their units in the country to observe December 6 as a Black Day and to strengthen in the current context the struggle against communal polarisation being patronised and encouraged by the central as well as many BJP led state governments.The form of protest actions in various states will be decided by our respective state level units.