The overthrow of the Nawaz Sharif government by the armed forces led by General Musharraf marks another step in the deepening crisis engulfing Pakistan. It indicates that even more difficult times lie ahead for the people of Pakistan as well as all of South Asia, as the imperialists and reactionaries of the whole world are sharpening their claws and preparing to escalate their intervention in Pakistan and in South Asia and to step up the exploitation of the peoples of this region.

Unrestrained loot and plunder of the masses of people by a narrow and self-serving ruling class has characterised the situation in Pakistan for the last 50 years. Moreover, under the banner of globalisation in the last few years, the Pakistani economy has been wrecked with steep increases in prices and other measures which have created enormous insecurity of livelihood for the toiling masses, even as the ruling class and the imperialists have fattened themselves through unrestrained plunder. Simultaneously, massive cutbacks in social spending have been imposed, together with a rise in taxation, and the handing over of key sectors of the economy to private interests, both Pakistani and foreign. State violence supplemented by sectarian violence has been the means used to keep the people disoriented and impose this course on them. The militarisation of the economy and the stoking up of the Kashmir dispute has also played the same role. In the name of keeping up with India, Pakistan accelerated its costly armaments program, exploding nuclear bombs and testing a range of new missiles. It has been obvious that there was massive discontent among all sections of society with the regime of the overthrown Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, whose rule was marked by the height of arbitrariness. While in power, his government launched numerous vendettas against its predecessors and against its rivals, as well as systematically tried to manipulate its loyalists into positions of power in the Presidency, the armed forces as well as in the judiciary, without even a fig leaf of popular approval.

However, the newly imposed military rule does not mean change in any of these features of the situation in Pakistan, but only means that the rule of arbitrariness, of selective persecution, is being further extended. Military rule is no new thing for the people of Pakistan, who have experienced it for nearly 40 of the 52 years since the founding of the state of Pakistan. Today there are various forces in Pakistan as well as around the world who are prettifying the military rule, but this merely reflects the bankruptcy as well as cynical designs of these forces. From 1947 to date, both under military rule and under civilian rule, it is the minority of exploiters and the foreign imperialists and the military caste who have fattened themselves at the expense of the vast majority of toilers. This is the source of the crisis in Pakistan, which the military rule of General Musharraf can only aggravate. It is Pakistan’s history that whenever the military rule has become discredited, the multi-party parliamentary system has been foisted on the people in the name of ‘democracy’, and whenever this multi-party system has become discredited, as has happened many a time in the past and is the case once again today, military rule is re-established. Between military rule and the multi-party system, both serving the interests of the exploiting minority, the people of Pakistan have been caught between the frying pan and the fire.

Located in a strategic region of Asia, the politics of Pakistan has always been very much subject to the compulsions of imperialist geopolitics. One of the major factors behind the ongoing crisis in Pakistan and South Asia is that the geopolitics of this region has been in a flux since the end of the Cold War, and various powers are maneuvering to establish their ascendancy here by manipulating the politics within and between the various states in this region. During the Cold War era, Pakistan had an important role in the US strategy in South and West Asia, as part of the SEATO and CENTO alliances which were aimed at encircling the Soviet Union on the one hand and crushing revolutionary uprisings of the peoples in Asia on the other. In the eighties, Pakistan also played an important role in the US strategy to embroil the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. While during the Cold War, India was widely perceived to be aligned with the Soviet Union, the situation is no longer the same, and the US is readjusting its policy towards both India and Pakistan as well as the other states of this region. In the meantime, the various European powers also have their own imperialist aims in Asia, while India has made its intentions clear to emerge as the preeminent power in the Indian Ocean region and China is pursuing its own ambitions to emerge as the main power in Asia. The interests of all these powers are clashing, and each is looking for opportunities to gain an upper hand. The calculations and active interference by all these powers, particularly the US and India, are major factors in the destabilisation of Pakistan at the present time. They are factors hindering the emergence from within Pakistan of any solution to the crisis in the interests of the toiling masses there.

There is a clamour originating in various imperialist countries as well as India for the "restoration of democracy" in Pakistan. The working masses of India cannot fall into the trap of supporting this demand, nor can they support the military rule on a pragmatic basis.

The experience of multi-party parliamentary democracy under the rule of a rapacious big bourgeoisie in India as well as in Pakistan has amply proved that such a system is incapable of ensuring security and prosperity of the toiling masses. It is incapable of ensuring democracy for the toiling masses, just as it is incapable of ensuring peace and security in South Asia. It is a system that sanctifies the plunder of the people and their resources by native and foreign exploiters. This is the reason that it finds such support amongst the imperialists and reactionaries of the whole world.

India’s workers and peasants know very well that the present system of multi-party parliamentary democracy has failed to ensure their well-being and has left them effectively deprived of political power. The movement for the real empowerment of the toiling masses is gaining momentum throughout our country. The Indian people want political power in their own hands in order to ensure security and prosperity for all and peace in the region. All the signs from Pakistan are pointing to the fact that the people of Pakistan too, summing up the negative experience of parliamentary democracy as well as military rule in their own country, will in due course take measures to organise themselves to take power in their own hands in order to ensure prosperity and security for themselves and and to bring about peace in South Asia. It is this struggle of the fraternal Pakistani people that the toiling Indian people fervently support. We, the Indian people are fighting for the renovation of the economic and political system of our country and we support the same struggle in Pakistan wholeheartedly.

The problems facing the people of South Asia are a legacy of Partition, and of capitalism and the colonial legacy. It is a legacy of divided nations and peoples and families. The imperialists as well as the ruling classes of both India and Pakistan have a vested interest in promoting animosities between Pakistan and India, and it is the peoples of the two countries who have had to pay a heavy price for this. India’s workers and peasants boldly proclaim that they stand for peace between the two countries, which is the decisive factor for prosperity and progress of all the peoples of the sub-continent. We reject the militarisation and war preparations of the Indian government carried out in the name of defending "national unity and territorial integrity". We fight for the establishment of mechanisms that will ensure that neither the imperialists nor the reactionary bourgeoisie of our two countries can hurl our peoples into conflict. We fight for the renovation of the economic and political system and the reforging of international relations, including the relations between countries in South Asia, as the necessary condition for peace, prosperity and progress for all the peoples of South Asia.