Daily Times

In the last weeks, India has witnessed student protests in many universities across India- from Srinagar in Kashmir to Hyderabad to Madras-in support of Kanhaiya Kumar, President Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union. This, in turn, has created a political furore, which led to some real issues, faced by the oppressed masses in India, be telecasted in the mainstream media.

Kumar was arrested because of his speech at a public meeting, held on the anniversary of the controversial 2013 execution of Mohammed Afzal Guru-accused of the 2001 Indian parliament attack. He was arrested because of the direct intervention of India’s home minister, Rajnath Singh. “If anyone shouts anti-India slogan and challenges nation’s sovereignty and integrity while living in India, they will not be tolerated or spared,” he tweeted hours before the Delhi police — which answers directly to the national home minister — arrested Kumar. Activists of BJP’s student wing, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), who were defeated in the students’ union elections, had pressurised the Modi regime to take such retaliatory measures against the CPI-affiliated All India Students Federation. Right wing groups, television channels and lawyers, all have cheered the tough BJP action, and even ended up putting words into his mouth- doctoring videotapes, hurling abuse and even physically assaulting Kumar, when he was brought to court.

This has been the third time in the past few months that the BJP’s Hindutva government has embarked on elite university campuses, where its student wing ABVP is increasingly becoming assertive against what it deems “anti-national” discourse. In June, the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, banned a lower-caste student “study circle” for “misusing its privileges” based on an anonymous complaint to the national government, stating that the group’s political debates were promoting “hatred” of Mr Modi and his governmental policies. In July, the BJP’s labour minister complained that the Hyderabad University was a “den of extremist and anti-national politics” after an altercation between the lower-caste students, protesting India’s latest vigilante attacks, and ABVP activists.

After his release from Tihar Jail, on March 5, Kanhaiya addressed a huge gathering of students on the campus, and said, “People do not want azadi from India. They want azadi in India. They want azadi from capitalism from casteism… we would fight it without bowing! Socialism will triumph over the poison of Sanghvaad (Communalism) and Punjivad (Capitalism).” The crackdown at JNU has galvanised the opposition to Modi’s regime. This is partly due to the class-based social issues being raised by Kumar, who is also a central leader of the CPI’s student wing.

Despite one of the fastest GDP growth in the world, at 7.4 percent, Modi is failing miserably. The Economist points out that, “gone is the confident, mocking Narendra Modi of the 2014 election campaign, when he would promise the crowds economic development for all. Enter Modi of two years later, who is defensive, failed to delivers reforms on the economy particularly on tax, liberalisation of labour laws, land acquisitions and has struggled to create jobs for the 1m young Indians who enter the workforce each month.” Discontent in society has aggravated, and there is a widespread revulsion against this government. His claims of representing the new urban middle classes have also been severely dented by the burgeoning crisis, the petit bourgeoisie faces. The protest of the rich landowners in Haryana resulted in the cancellation of hundreds of trains and bus services through the state of 17 million people, as the protesters had attacked train stations and blockaded key highways, leading in and out of the capital city. This forced India’s largest carmaker, Japanese-owned, Maruti Suzuki to suspend production at its two Haryana factories, which usually produced 5,000 cars a day.

In a recent issue of The Economist an Indian official reported, “for all that India is the world’s fastest growing big economy, to many Indians that is not how it feels.” Its dismal performance has also dismayed many of the Indian bourgeois, which were his main sponsors. They feel disappointed and let down as Modi has not been able to carry out the ‘reforms’, they were promised. Recently, Arun Shourie, the finance minister in a previous BJP government has mocked Modi’s regime as “Congress plus a cow.”

Moreover, the society continues to rot with the deteriorating social and economic conditions, in this din of high growth rate. Life is a living hell for more than 870 million people. Poverty, misery and deprivation have only worsened. The gulf between the rich and poor is now greater than ever before. Even though it boasts of having more billionaires than Japan, India also has the largest concentration of poverty worldwide. The social and infrastructural conditions are a pristine example of the uneven patterns of social development, conducted by the Indian capitalism, which has failed to complete any of the tasks of the industrial and democratic revolution. This situation has, in turn, aggravated the contradictions between the so- called modernity and primitiveness of the society. Religiosity, black magic, superstitions are still on the rise. The reactionary character of the bourgeoisie is exemplified by the anecdotes of the largest corporations in the country employing astrologers for policy making. Communal and religious conflicts have also escalated. The social infrastructure is in such a dismal state that drinking water, sanitation and social hygiene have now become an unaffordable luxury for a vast majority of the population. According to a report published by Water Aid, “If people in India waiting for household toilets stand in a line, the queue would stretch from the Earth to the moon–and beyond, as over 774 million people in India do not have access to private toilets. The health crisis due to lack of sanitation facilities causes more than 140,000 children under five to die each year from diarrhoea.”

The political opposition on the prevalent spectrum has no alternative to these capitalist policies. They have different versions but the end result is always the same. The left leaders for seven decades have postponed the solution of the burning problems of the Indian masses through a socialist transformation in the name of democracy and secularism. The rise of BJP and Modi is a glaring refutation of this policy and lays bare its historical failure. However, this situation is becoming more and more intolerable for the masses. The Indian proletariat displayed its might in September when it brought India to a standstill through a general strike, in which 150 million workers took part: perhaps the largest strike in history. Both Indian and international corporate media understood the full implications of this general strike and blacked out the news. The left leadership, once again, betrayed the proletariat by refusing to take the general strike to a higher plane. The revolt of the JNU students captured the headlines, mainly, because the country’s most prestigious university was also involved in this episode. The issues of class struggle coming from the students of this university have sent a message far beyond the frontiers of India. It is a precursor of the stormy events and the revolutionary upheavals that impend.

The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com