(The following article is from the September 16-30, 2008, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By B. Prasant, PV correspondent in India

KOLKATA, September 1 - A vast sea of people advanced in waves, riding on the strength of anti-imperialist feelings down the streets and lanes of Kolkata, a people's march was organised by the Bengal Left Front. Despite injuries to his right foot, LF chair Biman Basu led the marchers by example, unhindered by the blazing sun above and the molten tar underfoot.

     The march commenced amidst rousing anti-imperialist slogans from the Suhrawardi Avenue near the Brabourne College grounds. As the first columns, banners, festoons, buntings, tableaux, and countless Red Fags fluttered in a welcome breeze, Biman Basu released a single white dove into the glittering blue mid-day sky.

     Walking along the A.J.C. Bose Road, we were astounded to see another equally long column marching along the opposite footpath in the "wrong" direction. Polite enquiries revealed that these streams of men and women, many carrying children carefully shielded from the sun, were going to Park Circus to join up with the eternally long "tail" of our procession.

     Police wireless buzzed to speak of numbers. The "guesstimates" were constantly revised upwards, from "one lakh, sir" (100,000), to finally, with a bit of surprise in the voice, "over five lakhs, sir" (500,000). Did we not note a hint of glee in the voices of at least some of the men in uniform?  

     The lengthening line of people soon merged into a single wave of humanity, a bit clumsy, a bit boisterous, and a tiny bit belligerent, calling upon the central government to stop kneeling down before US imperialism, the perpetrators of crimes all over the world.

     Faces in the crowd we saw aplenty as we dodged in and out of the procession. We saw Sudeshna Paul from Belghoria, a former student who is now a young sociology professor at a college in faraway Nadia. She had come to Kolkata braving the train services that suddenly but not strangely started running well behind schedule on this particular day. Quickly snatching up her shopping bags from a roadside stall, she ran swiftly join the marchers as the wave advanced, soon lost in the sea of faces. We saw garage mechanic Akram-ul Huq - an underpaid helper, actually - forego a day's wage to join in, for the marchers are "talking about meri desh (my country) being sold out to videshis (foreign imperialists) of a faraway land." This is grassroots nationalism in action.

     We espied a clutch of budding entrepreneurs, among them Dwijendralal Banerjee, all the way from the far side of the E.M. bypass, braving a fever and a cough. They were soon joined by a couple of thousand young men and women, neatly but unsuitably dressed for the Kolkata summer - ties and jackets and formal trousers - who had left the drudge of seven-days-a-week-work in the secluded comfort of air-conditioned IT offices in sector V of Salt Lake.

     Heading towards the Sealdah flyover, the procession was swelled by a very large number of unorganised workers, mostly mutia-mazdoors (headload carriers), auto-rickshaw drivers and "mechanics," shouting slogans, waving the Red Flag, CITU banners held high as always. Khet mazdoor (agricultural worker) Paran Mondol appeared a bit bewildered. "How could these many men and women come, and who called upon them to come out on a holiday, and how, babu?" was his innocent enquiry.  

     He himself had come with a hundred-odd group of his fellow agricultural labourers from the extreme southern fringe of Kolkata, the unending green stretches of rice paddies from where the metro citizens have their steady supply of seasonal vegetables and rice.

     Why have you come, Paran? Well, dada, I understand the Delhiwallah's government is actually engaged in buying rice from videshis and allowing those "nasty" (that was not the colourful Bengali invective he actually used, of course) "blackers" to get away with their "nasty" (ditto) ways.

     The march went on and on. School students joined in somewhere, holding up photos of the eternal inspirational Che Guevara, banners emblazoned with the immortal words "egobo, jotokhhon na jitbchhi!" (onwards, until we achieve victory!), and photos of Bush adoring Singh, and the other way around.

     The marchers included black-jacketed lawyers, engineers, artists, intellectuals, students from every tier of education, housewives, sports persons, film personalities. Above all, it included the common people, shouting out slogans from the core of their hearts, making the procession a living protest against imperialist forays and the betrayal of the people by the Singh government. On this day, the people had the final say.