Daily Times

Hinduvta’s fundamentalist bigotry poses a serious neo-fascist threat. But it seems that the Modi Sarkar will fail to impose a fascist regime along the lines and intensity of the Hitler regime in Germany and Mussolini’s regime in Italy. The main vanguard in resisting such savagery is the existence of Indian proletariat, which has not been decisively defeated in a class war. Its potential strength was the power that defied Modi in carrying out his planned “reforms” to undo the labour laws and concessions the working class movement had gained through its past struggles. It also failed to revise the constitution to take away the special privileges granted to India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu & Kashmir. Modi Sarkar’s promise to build a temple to the Hindu god Rama in the city of Ayodhya on the site of the Babri mosque demolished by Hindu zealots in 1992 failed to materialise during its first rule. It’s easier said than done. Once in power, the obligations of governance don’t always match the extremist rhetoric spouted in public meetings. Modi’s statements after the BJP’s victory on domestic (All-India) and foreign policy (primacy to peace and development in our region) have somewhat already mellowed his belligerent rhetoric.

Modi’s use of anti-Pakistan rhetoric, the Indian Hindu chauvinism whipped up into a warlike situation through the Pulwama episode and the surgical strikes, etc. In the 2014 elections, Modi’s Hindutva bigoted rhetoric was no less forcefully applied. The slogan of Vikaas (development) was used more fervently, since then Modi didn’t bear the burden of the incumbency factor. But this time he relied more on vile religious anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan demagogy. The difference this time was his strategy to instil more fear and insecurity amongst the masses. The reaction against Pakistan orchestrated by the military strikes was staged to build up Modi’s macho image and boost Hindu supremacy. Hence Modi’s victory is not one of hope and optimism but one of fear and despair, provoking masses instinct for survival. These tactics were effective amongst the more primitive sections of society, particularly the frenzied petit bourgeoisie (about 350 million), as these classes were already facing financial and social insecurity and decay.

The disarray of the opposition and the failure of the left leadership to put up a militant programme of class struggle and revolutionary change of the system made things rather easy for Modi. The Congress and other secular parties’ leaders also helped the BJP romp home by their appeasement of its confrontational nationalist rhetoric. Opposition’s campaign on issues like poverty, unemployment and socioeconomic deprivation, without a clear alternative to the BJP didn’t evoke much response or optimism amongst the masses. Paradoxically its campaign of a softer version of Hindutva in response to Modi’s religious gimmickry proved to be deleterious for their electoral chances.

For a long time, the failure of growth rates to improve the living conditions of the masses, with no alternative to this coercive capitalism on the political horizon, a malaise has set up in India. This lack of an alternative created a vacuum leading to a profound malaise. If not cut across by workers and youth movements, such periods of inertia create a space for reaction. The rise of Hindutva reaction in India is the outcome of this objective condition.

Modi’s victory is not one of hope and optimism but one of fear and despair, provoking masses instinct for survival

Leon Trotsky explained the character of such historical epochs in the evolution of society. He wrote in 1909:”When the curve of historical development rises, public thinking becomes more penetrating, braver and more ingenious. It grasps facts on the wing, and on the wing links them with the thread of generalization … But when the political curve indicates a drop, public thinking succumbs to stupidity. The price less gift of political generalization vanishes somewhere without leaving even a trace. Stupidity grows in insolence, and, baring its teeth, heaps insulting mockery on every attempt at a serious generalization. Feeling that it is in command of the field, it begins to resort to its own means.”

However the history of even post-partition India has seen gallant struggles, revolutionary uprisings and strike waves of the Indian working classes. India has – or at least used to have till recently – some of the largest communist parties in the world. However the policy of the leadership to compromise with “stages” of bourgeois democracy, Indian Nationalism and its state blunted the working class’ struggles. The CPI and CPI (M) have no real ideological or theoretical differences. Both subscribe to this theory of two stages. In the last seventy-two years, several generations of the Indian masses have suffered atrocious capitalist duress. In pursuing this policy, the CPs drowned themselves in electoral politics. Lenin likened this policy to a disease: “Parliamentary cretinism”. But even in the parliamentary field, their highest tally of seats as the Left Front was 59 in the 2002 elections. In 2019 they suffered their worst results ever, with only five seats in a parliament of 545.

At a press conference after the result, the CPI (M)’s general secretary Sitaram Yechury said: “The people of the country have given a decisive verdict in BJP’s favour in this highly-polarised election and it is now time for us to introspect and analyse what went wrong…There are very big challenges ahead regarding the defence of our secular, democratic republic, the institutions of constitutional authority, people’s rights and livelihood issues.”

Karl Marx often quoted Hegel: “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Comrade Sitaram’s statement yet again emphasises support for the brutal Indian state that has occupied Kashmir and brutalised its population. State terrorism ravages the oppressed across India’s more than 19 states. The secular democratic republic is being putrefied from within by the system it was created to protect, preserve and impose upon the oppressed classes-capitalism. Its socio-economic crusades against the working people of India are excruciating society. The Indian ruling classes have turned to Hinduvta’s neo-fascist tactics to crush dissent and pulverise the working classes. The system and the state are deeply infiltrated by religious chauvinist acrimony and virulence. The time to reinvigorate the class struggles is now! The brilliant general strikes by the workers, with crores participating against the Modi sarkar for three consecutive years every September, have proved beyond doubt that the class struggle is very much alive and kicking in India. The peasant marches display an advanced rural working class rising up to fight the system.

If the traditional CP’s leaderships’ fail to grasp this moment, change course and commit to a policy of class struggle, a renewed all-India revolt of the workers, youth, women and other oppressed strata of society will erupt in any case. The unprecedentedly aggressive and vicious neo-liberal policies of this new Modi Sarkar with its enhanced mandate will inevitably provoke a fight back from the Indian proletariat. A spontaneous movement on this vast participation and momentum by the Indian working classes will bypass the traditional leaders, parties and unions. The movement will carve out new leaders and parties in the heat of the class struggle. It will challenge not just the Hindutva regime, but the state and system that are deploying this menace. Such a movement can only succeed by carrying-out a socialist revolution through irreconcilable class struggle-a victory that shall transform the lives and destinies of the ordinary people in India and throughout the subcontinent.

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign