World Affairs:
Foil Imperialist Conspiracy
Seventy Leaders including
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin
met on November 11, 2018 in Paris
to mark the Centenary of the
Armistice of First World War. They
sat together at the Tomb of
‘Unknown Soldier’ at the Arc de
Triomphe for a memorial. The
programme included the playing of
classical music and the reading
aloud of letters of soldiers who died
in this war.
A statue commemorating the
role of Indian soldiers in the First
World War was unveiled in the town
of Laventie in France. This statue
is the first of 57 similar statues
planned to be unveiled around
France where the soldiers died in
the war were buried. The program
was concluded with a bugle call
signaling the end of War. The
leaders of Common Wealth –
whose forces fought under the
British command 100 years ago –
also sounded a message of peace
and hope for the World.
Ceremonies were also held around
the world in Australia, New Zealand,
India, Hong Kong, Mayanmar and
other Countries. M. Venkaiah
Naidu, India’s Vice President
unveiled Indian War Memorial at
Villers Guishan, 200 km from
France.
According to Squ Ldr Chhina,
the Secretary, Centre For Armed
Forces Historical Research at the
United Services Institution of India
(USI), the USI is on the job of
focusing India’s contribution in
Wars. As a part of it, it is preparing
“battlefield guides” of India’s major
wars such as 1857 revolt, Kohima
and Anglo – Sikh wars to promote
battlefield tourism. Chhina
revealed that the “local economy
December - 2018
of a number of places in Europe is
sustained by battlefield tourism.”
As we have commented in the
November 2018 issue of The Class
Struggle, the First World War was
fought between two groups of
imperialist powers to decide the
question: Who should rule or
dominate the world. Millions of
people from the colonies were
forced to die as sacrificial goats in
their predatory war: It is a matter
of shame for the Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi to claim on
Twitter that the Indian soldiers
fought the First World War “for the
cause of peace.” This claim is
nothing but a cheating of Indian
people. It reveals only the
persistence of the mindset of
colonial servitude.
In his memorial speech on Nov
11, 2018, the French President
called his fellow leaders “not to
forget the lessons of the past and
the hopes of worldwide for peace.”
He also said: “Ruining this hope
with a fascination for withdrawal,
violence or domination would be a
mistake for which future genera-
tions would rightly find us
responsible.” This talk seems as an
admission of the fact that the First
World War was fought to gain
domination over the world. If this
admission means a realization of
the great crime of waging a
devastating war 100 years back,
they must at the minimum seek an
apology of world people for the
same. But the imperialist powers
are now celebrating the war as a
great historic event and eulogizing
those who fought and died for them
in the war as great heroes and
sacrifices. Through celebrations,
they, in reality, are keeping alive
their colonial bondage with the
people of their erstwhile colonies.
They are spreading a monumental
lie that dyeing in the service of
colonial and imperialist masters is
a matter of honor and pride. The
words like peace coming from the
mouths of imperialist masters
sound like sermons of demons.
These imperialist powers have not
abandoned nor can be expected
to abandon their imperialist nature.
They pursue their interests in the
changed conditions as well as in
accordance with their changed
positions in the world. In the
changed balance of powers today
and in the present competition
between the imperialist powers, the
old colonial powers like Britain and
France occupy a secondary
position. New actors like US and
Russia have come to the fore with
capabilities and designs to
compete for world domination. So,
while chanting sermons of peace,
against the politics of world
domination, the imperialist powers
of Europe – separately as well as
in combination compete for a better
share in the control of the loot of
world resources.
The imperialist powers today
are engaged in a massive and
worldwide gamble against the
people; conspiracy to distort the
history and to wipe out the real
history of people where the people
had shed their blood, and shown
great valour and sacrifice in the
struggle against colonialism,
imperialism, feudalism and
reaction. In the face of this
situation, it is the task of working
class, oppressed nations and
people in the world to rise in an
unrelenting united struggle to foil
them.
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