( Message delivered by CPI(ML) General Secretary Dipankar Bhattacharya at the inaugural session of the 25th Congress of the CPI in Chandigarh on September 22. ) 

It is my great pleasure and honour to get this opportunity to greet you all in this inaugural session of the 25th Congress of India's oldest communist party. What makes me especially happy is the fact that this congress is happening in the centenary year of the foundation of the Communist Party of India. I take this opportunity to pay my deepest respects to the great martyrs and all the departed leaders of the communist movement over this long period comprising a glorious chapter of India's freedom movement in the colonial era and protracted battles for the deepening of democracy and actualization of freedom in every sphere of life in post-colonial India. 

My list of communist martyrs of India is not limited to formal members of the communist party, it also includes the great martyrs of the early years of the twentieth century like Ashfaqullah Khan and Bhagat Singh who were greatly inspired by the Russian revolution and integrated India's freedom movement with the emancipatory vision of socialism. I pay my heartfelt homage to Comrade Sudhakar Reddy, former General Secretary of CPI whom we sadly lost just on the eve of this Congress. I humbly remember Comrades Indrajit Gupta, AB Bardhan, Chaturanan Mishra, Bhogendra Jha, Jagannath Sarkar, Nripen Bandyopadhyay and many other leaders and scholars of the CPI I had the opportunity to interact with since my younger days in the communist movement. Today's generations of communists in India are deeply indebted to all of them. 

As we observe the centenary of the CPI we cannot but be aware of the other centenary that is being observed today with so much fanfare and the fullest backing of the current regime. It is the centenary of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which has been lauded as the biggest global NGO by Narendra Modi in his latest Independence Day address. At the time of the adoption of India's Constitution and the consequent proclamation of the Republic of India, the RSS had explicitly rejected the Constitution instead advocating the Manusmriti, the code of slavery that Babasaheb Ambedkar had burnt publicly three decades before he went on to chair the drafting panel of the Constituent Assembly, as modern India's ideal constitution. 

If the founding generations of India's communist movement were inspired by the Russian revolution, the RSS was founded in 1925 drawing inspiration from the fascist model of Mussolini in Italy and then Hitler in Germany. Since then it has been relentlessly at work looking for opportunities to inflict its fascist imagination on India in stark contrast and outright opposition to the constitutional vision of modern democratic India, socialist, secular and inclusive. After decades of groundwork and piecemeal opportunities, with the Modi regime's ascent to power in 2014 the RSS-BJP brigade has been trying to redefine India wholesale. From education to economy, and climate to culture, India is facing disaster and destruction on all fronts. 

The battle today is between the concentrated power of all that has been rotten and regressive in Indian history and the continuing quest of we the people of India for an emancipatory and egalitarian social and political order. It is a battle that has to be waged and won on all fronts and as communists we therefore need to forge closer unity not just among ourselves but with the entire ideological-political spectrum that fought for India's freedom and for the development of a modern democratic India. We need to harness the full energy of India's fighting millions in every sphere - for the rights of all sections of India's oppressed and exploited people and for comprehensive justice - social, economic, political and environmental. 

Nothing short of a second freedom movement is going to save democracy in India today from the clutches of fascism. Indeed, democracy and diversity are the key to India's survival as a united country. If fascism gets to consolidate itself, it will not only dismantle democracy, it will also disintegrate India. The freedom movement which had ended the British colonial rule had also given us a constitutional democratic platform for India's post-colonial advance. But today that constitution is facing its gravest challenge. Also at stake is the anti-imperialist legacy of our freedom movement which produced the Constitution. Bhagat Singh had called upon the youth to guard against the danger of the rulers of independent India degenerating into brown inheritors of white colonialism. Never before has this danger been so real as today when the Modi government abjectly surrenders to the imperialist aggression and arrogance of the Trump Administration. 

As the Modi government mortgages India's economic and strategic sovereignty to the US-Israel axis, India faces its worst ever isolation in the international arena and growing alienation from all our South Asian neighbours. The shocking remarks made by BJP leaders in the wake of the recent youth revolt in Nepal questioning the very independence and sovereignty of the Himalayan republic and the desperation shown by the dominant Indian media to project the youth unrest as a movement for restoration of a Hindu monarchy starkly illustrate the disaster the Modi government has brought to India's foreign policy. Add to this the rapid erosion of electoral democracy and alarming corporate plunder of India's natural and human resources and we know how prophetic Ambedkar was when he had warned us against the calamity we are facing today. 

Till the early 1960s, there was essentially only one united communist party of India. Historical circumstances have led to the emergence of different streams of the once unified flow of the communist movement. History has also shown that the diversity in the Indian communist camp has not necessarily weakened the communist movement, perhaps it has helped the movement spread wider and grow deeper. But diversity must not mean disunity, and today, more than ever before we should close ranks against the fascist offensive. 

Even if we have to march separately at times, we must strike together by all means. The energy and unity of the Left ranks has contributed significantly to the historic struggle of India's farmers against the pro-corporate farm laws which compelled the Modi government to repeal those sinister laws. We must play a similarly energetic and effective role in the ongoing working class struggles against the four labour codes of slavery, in the student-youth movement for education and employment for all, in the struggle for equal rights for women, equal citizenship for India's minorities and full liberties for dissenting voices

We wish the 25th Congress of the CPI every success. The CPI(ML) will stand with you in every struggle for the common cause of the communist movement and the Indian people.