From A World to Win News Service:
Justice for K Murleedharan (Ajith)!
September 19, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Revcom.us editors’ note: We received the following article, dated September 12, from A World to Win News Service, about a global campaign demanding proper medical care for K Murali/K Murleedharan (Ajith), who is being held in jail in India. Last May, the editors of Demarcations: A Journal of Communist Theory and Polemic (demarcations-journal.org) issued this statement shortly after the arrest of K Murali:
May 23, 2015
On May 8, the Indian state arrested K. Murali, also known as Ajith. He was undergoing treatment in a hospital near Pune in southern India. Murali, along with an assistant, was seized from the hospital by the Anti-Terrorism Squad, hauled before a court, and remanded to police custody. Murali has been publicly associated with the Communist Party of India (Maoist). As of this writing, no formal charges have been filed against Murali and he is facing draconian conditions of detention, with his health and safety matters of grave concern.
The arrest by the reactionary Indian state of K. Murali is utterly unjust. We support demands that he be immediately released and that he receive all necessary medical care and legal representation.
Read here (PDF)
We say this even recognizing that Ajith has recently played a very negative role in the international communist movement. Writing under the name Ajith, Murali has unfolded an attack on the new synthesis of communism brought forward by Bob Avakian. While containing issues of substantive disagreement his essay “Against Avakianism” is marked by rank distortions, baseless accusations of “revisionism” and ad hominem attacks against Avakian. Its purpose is to block the vital advance of the science of communism that is concentrated in Avakian’s work.
Demarcations, which bases itself on and fights for the new synthesis of communism, has featured three responses to Ajith’s essay. These carefully dissect and comprehensively refute his philosophical outlook and method, political line, and program (demarcations-journal.org).
This is a sharp ideological struggle that has great implications for the international communist movement. In carrying out this struggle with Ajith, we proceed from the interests of advancing the world revolution to emancipate humanity; and we demarcate right from wrong on the basis of principled and substantive analysis, argumentation, and polemic. These are standards of debate that we insist on for this journal and that we fight for in the international communist movement.
Our criticisms of Ajith are acute. At the same time, we give no quarter to reactionary state authority and attempts to suppress and silence voices, including those with whom we have severe disagreements. Here too we stand on principle. The arrest of Ajith must be strongly condemned.
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September 12, 2016. A World to Win News Service. The following is from the Web site of the Indian journal Sanhati (posted September 12). Globally renowned feminist thinker and philosopher Judith Butler, Professor, University of California, Berkeley, has supported the global campaign for providing proper medical care to ailing Maoist under trial prisoner K Murleedharan from Kerala, lodged in the Yerawada Central Prison near Pune for the past 15 months. Prof. Butler had endorsed the call in an e-mail message to Justice for Murali, a global collective, demanding medical care and bail for the 62-year-old Muraleedharan, suffering from cardiac related ailments.
Globally renowned public intellectuals and social scientists such as Prof. Noam Chomsky, Prof. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Prof. Partha Chatterjee have already endorsed the call.
Prof. G Haragopal of the Defense Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners and poet Varavara Rao called for granting bail for Mr. Muraleedharan on medical grounds immediately. “As a heart patient he requires timely treatment and medical assistance. The authorities are denying even these basic rights for him”, they said. Prof. GN Saibaba, Prof. C Sheshayya, President Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee, Prof. G Lakshman President, Telengana Civil Liberties Committee are amongst the persons came forward to demand proper medical care and bail for Mr. Muraleedharan.
Justice for Murali (Com. Ajith)
Justice for Murali is a global collective that has emerged for ensuring proper medical care and treatment and bail for Muraleedharan. K (Murali Kannampilly), a radical political activist for the last four decades and a distinguished scholar of political economy, Dalit studies and author of ‘Land, Caste and Servitude’, a path-breaking analysis of agrarian relations in Kerala, languishing in the Yerawada Central Prison near Pune for the past 15 months as an under trial prisoner.
The health condition of the 62-year-old Murali, who has already undergone an open heart surgery, has been a matter of great concern for his friends, comrades, family members and well wishers ever since his arrest. As feared, his health condition took a turn for worse forcing the jail authorities to admit him in the Sassoon Government Hospital in Pune on September 4, 2016. But the jail authorities got him discharged from the hospital on September 6, 2016 following his advocate filing a petition to ensure proper care to him at the hospital and permitting his son to attend to him there as there was no one to even take urine sample that the doctor had instructed to be tested, to the lab.
The jail authorities have taken such a step even as globally renowned intellectuals and social scientists such as Prof. Noam Chomsky, Prof. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Prof. Partha Chatterjee supported the call for proper medical care to Mr. Muraleedharan.
Justice for Murali has been formed to extend this campaign on a further wider scale to ensure proper medical care for the ailing prisoner as well as demanding his release from the prison. We seek the help and support of all persons believing in democracy, human rights and individual liberty to join the demand for proper medical care and release of Murali from prison. After his arrest on the charges of being a leader of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) he was produced to an open court only once in the past 15 months. Lodged in a high security prison, the jail authorities have also prohibited access to books and other publications to him.
The action of jail authorities is against the fundamental rights guaranteed under the Indian constitution, the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Convention against Torture. We once again seek the support of all people believing in freedom, human rights and individual dignity to join the campaign for ensuring proper medical care and release of Mr. Muraleedharan from prison.
List of prominent persons who have already joined the campaign
1: Prof. Noam Chomsky: MIT
2: Prof. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: Columbia University
3: Prof. Judith Butler: University of California, Los Angeles
4: Prof. Partha Chatterjee: Columbia University
5: Prof. Anand Teltumbde: IIT Khargapur
6: Prof. Prabhat Patnaik: Emeritus Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University
7: Bernard D’Mello, Deputy Editor, Economic and Political Weekly
8: Dr. KT Rammohan: Former Dean School of Social Science, Mahatma Gandhi University
9: Dr. TT Sreekumar: Professor, MICA, School of Ideas, Ahmedabad
11: Dr. J. Devika : Assistant Professor, Centre For Development Studies, Thiruvananathapuram
12: Prof. AK Ramakrishnan: Professor, Centre for West Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi
13: K Satchidanandan: poet writer
14: Meena Kandasamy: poet writer
15: Kanam Rajendran: State Secretary, Communist Party of India, Kerala
16: BRP Bhaskar: Eminent Journalist and Writer
17: K Venu: Writer and social commentator
18: MM Somasekharan: Writer and social commentator
19: Njamal Babu (TN Joy): Public Intellectual
21: PK Venugopal: Janakeeya Kala Sahitya Vedi
22: Prof. G Haragopal: Defense Committee, Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners
23: Varavara Rao, President, Revolutionary Democratic Front, Founder, Revolutionary Writers Association
24: Rajkishore, General Secretary, RDF
25: Prof. G N Saibaba, Deputy Secretary, RDF
26: Varalakshmi, Secretary, Virasam (Revolutionary Writers Association)
27: Prof C Sheshayya, President, APCLC
28: Prof. G Lakshman, President, Telengana Civil Liberties Committee.
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