CHARU MAZUMDAR
From Liberation, July 1971-January 1972.
At midnight of 4th and 5th August the police captured Comrade Saroj Dutta[1] and on that very night shot him dead secretly.
Chairman has said : “It is not hard for one to do a bit of good. What is hard is to do good throughout one’s life and never do anything bad, to act consistently in the interest of the broad masses, the young people and the revolution, and to engage in arduous struggle for decades on end. That is the hardest thing of all !” Comrade Saroj Dutta was such a comrade and his entire life was spent in working for the revolution. There is no reactionary force which did not fear his pen which was as sharp as a razor. That is why the police force did not even dare enact the farce of a trial, they murdered him on that night itself.
Like all reactionary powers of the world the Indian government and its accomplices — all the reactionary and revisionist parties — want to arrest the march of revolution by resorting to mass murders on a wide scale. In the Cossipore-Baranagar area[2] they unitedly entered into a conspiracy and murdered over a hundred youths. The police and the goondas who committed the murders were engaged for the purpose by all those rogues who, in the name of restoring ‘Law and Order’, were holding conferences with a view to preserving this draconian system and uniting against the revolutionaries. Today when their mask is falling off their faces before the people, when it is no longer difficult for the people to recognize the blood-stained hands of the murderers, they have come forward to show sympathy for the murdered revolutionary youths to hide their devilry. They executed the same conspiracy in Barasat[3] and Uttarpara.[4] The orgy of murder in which they indulged in the Cossipore-Baranagar area has surpassed all previous records of their demoniac acts.
In jails also they are killing revolutionary cadres by opening fire on prisoners or lathi-charging them. They are thinking that in this way they will be able to arrest the progress of revolution. In South Vietnam the Diem clique wanted to stop the onward march of revolution by carrying on killings in this manner. The result is, the strength of the National Liberation Front has increased and it has defeated the American aggressors repeatedly. In India this killing will rouse the anger and hatred of men and a new India will be built on the destruction of the murderous system — this is the law of history. The reactionaries will have to repay in blood the blood debt that each act of murder accumulates.
Comrade Saroj Dutta was a leader of the Party and he died a hero’s death befitting a leader. His revolutionary steadfastness should serve as a model for youths. Overcoming all weaknesses, the youths will have to take to the path of revolution more resolutely and avenge these killings by integrating themselves with the workers and poor and landless peasants.
August 16, 1971.
Notes :
1. Saroj Dutta was then Secretary of the West Bengal State Committee of the CPl(ML) and a member of its Political Bureau. He edited Deshabrati from its inception.
2. Cossipore is in North Calcutta and contiguous to Baranagar, which is in the suburbs of the city. For the carnage, See “Indian ‘Democracy’ and State Terrorism” below.
3. A town in the North 24 Parganas district.
4. A town in the Hughli district.
