Saibaba has devoted his life to advancing the new democratic and socialist revolutionary movement in India. His work and resolve serve as an example to revolutionaries around the world.
Saibaba worked tirelessly for the oppressed and downtrodden. Seeing these efforts as an existential threat, the Indian state tried to extinguish his flame. To move him out of sight and out of mind, the Indian government prosecuted Saibaba under a colonial era anti-sedition law called the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for a plot to overthrow the Indian government. He was sentenced to life imprisonment based solely on the testimony of dozens of police officers. But Saibaba’s flame was not snuffed out, and the public’s memory of his efforts did not fade.
Despite the Indian state’s efforts to degrade and discourage him while incarcerated, Saibaba persevered. Knowing Saibaba is almost totally disabled from a childhood bout of polio, the state confiscated his wheelchair, forcing him to crawl across his cell. When he suffered from two COVID infections and the swine flu, many feared the Indian state would execute him via medical neglect. Sick and disabled, he continued to write and speak out against injustice from his cell. Saibaba not only survived these conditions, but is now able to live freely once again.
Dr. Saibaba is one of the General Secretaries of the Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), a federation of revolutionary mass organizations led by students, workers, peasants, and women. The RDF became a prominent voice throughout the country after the Indian government launched the military campaign “Operation Green Hunt” in an effort to crush the Adivasi resistance to the expropriation of their tribal lands to multinational companies. Saibaba is outspoken about the imperialist nature of this struggle and how the Indian government, comprised of neocolonial lackeys, does the imperialists’ bidding. In a 2012 interview, Saibaba said:
“In India, too, the imperialists have the same designs as in Afghanistan and Iraq, and elsewhere, i.e., to grab all the natural resources, be it natural gas, petroleum, bauxite, coal or any other available resource. They have not yet sent in their military forces to India, even though imperialists are aiding the Indian government with military strategists, army generals, intelligence input, weapons, surveillance equipment, and so on. These imperialist warmongers think that these resources which belong to the people of India can be grabbed without directly involving themselves in a war. This is because Indian rulers are completely subservient to the imperialist forces and are fighting this war on behalf of the imperialists. The Indian government is fighting a war for the US and European imperialists and others by using the army of India and the paramilitary of India. The servile Indian rulers are sending our own army against our own people. The imperialists are planning and conducting this war in India by simply sitting in their own countries and executing it through the Indian government in waging their war. This is the true nature imperialism since beginning of 20th Century.”
Saibaba clearly expressed the responsibility of those in the belly of the imperialist beast to support the oppressed people of India through international solidarity efforts. He emphasized that these efforts strengthen the struggle in India by assuring the people of India that they are not alone in their fight and humiliate the Indian government on the international stage. He called for solidarity efforts to unite all workers and oppressed people of the world against their common enemy: the imperialists and monopoly capitalists. In this spirit, we salute the struggle of all freedom-loving people in India that led to Saibaba’s release. It is partially due to these international solidarity efforts that the unjust imprisonment of Saibaba was publicized to the extent that even a UN official denounced the Indian government’s fascist maneuvering. This victory clearly demonstrates the power of the organized masses.
Most importantly though, Saibaba was released due to the efforts of the revolutionary movement in India. This movement not only wages an armed struggle outside the laws of the bourgeois state, but also a legal struggle to save its many captured comrades.
Particularly relevant for those of us located in the US are Saibaba’s remarks regarding need for revolutionaries in the imperialist core to go beyond solidarity efforts and build genuine working-class parties in their respective countries. In the same interview, he states resolutely:
“What is necessary today in the imperialist countries is to build strong Marxist-Leninist parties. It is time for such parties to take up campaigns straight away on socialism as the only alternative, dispelling decades of propaganda against socialism and socialist projects undertaken by the working class since Paris Commune to the historic strides made in China. It is also important to unlearn the mistakes made while making these revolutionary strides and armed with that insight move forward. It is important for the working classes of the advanced capitalist/ imperialist countries to develop deep relations with the revolutionary movements of the oppressed countries.“
Saibaba’s leadership of the oppressed people of the world is an inspiration that energizes us to dare to struggle and dare to win. We must follow his example and share his achievements and contributions with the rest of the world revolutionary movement as we struggle down the tortuous path of revolution.
