Indian Trotskyists campaign for Kolkata meeting to mark the 80th anniversary of the Fourth International
By
Arun Kumar and Ritwik Mitter
26 January 2019
International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) supporters in India have been campaigning among university students in Kolkata, capital of West Bengal, for the forthcoming March 10 public meeting to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Fourth International.
The Indian Trotskyists hosted a similar public meeting on November 18 in Chennai, which was addressed by Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka) assistant national secretary Deepal Jayasekera. The Kolkata meeting will also be addressed by a leading member of the Socialist Equality Party, which is the Sri Lankan section of the ICFI, the world Trotskyist movement.
“I support all the things that this party is doing,” Suman, a Jadavpur University student, told ICFI supporters. “The struggle for socialism should be conducted on an international scale or else it will collapse like the Soviet Union.”
Suman, like several other students at Jadavpur University, agreed that there was an urgent need for the development of an international revolutionary party of the working class to fight the US-led preparations for war against China and the Modi government’s austerity attacks on Indian workers and the rural poor.
Suman was contemptuous of all other Indian political parties, including the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPM, which he said were completely indifferent to the plight of working people. He spoke strongly in favour of a revolutionary transformation of the capitalist system and said he was interested in joining the Trotskyist movement.
ICFI campaigners explained to students the significance of resurgence of the…