The rise of religious politics and tendencies with increasingly vicious and belligerent characteristics is wreaking havoc in the South Asian Subcontinent and in many other parts of the world. Indian politician from Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav last Sunday taunted Prime Minister Narendra Modi by saying that “earlier people used to fear the lion but now they fear the cow thanks to cow vigilantism across the country.” He said that due to growing fear for being seen with cows and cattle, the Sonepur cattle fair in Bihar’s Saran district, considered Asia largest cattle fair, had turned into a fair without cattle and that people were angry with the Modi government in view of its ‘total failure’ in his more than three years rule to improve the lot of the vast majority of the population.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s upcoming film Padmavati has unleashed a hysterical frenzy amongst the Hindu fundamentalists. BJP’s Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister announced that the film would be banned in his state even if it gets Censor Board clearance.
Except for very few social activists and film industry’s voices, no political party has outrightly come forward to defend Bhansali’s right to produce a work of art. Under the clout of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has courted and pampered Hindu chauvinists to instil a frenzied support of his political base, it is becoming a social norm in India that Hindu outrage is stoked by little more than rumours. These bigots perpetrate deadly religious and communal riots and vigilante violence over false claims that Muslims were killing cows sacred to Hindu culture. But this time the film was used to whip up reactionary sentiments mainly amongst the masses on a mythological narration of a distant past, that can neither be proved nor can denied on archival scientific foundations of history.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the Babri Masjid’s demolition, one of the Hindutva outfits Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, has started a recruitment drive among youth that will go on till December 6th. They are dubbing this as the silver jubilee of the “Shaurya Diwas” (bravery day). The recruitment campaign’s slogans and asserted aims are, ‘unity of the Hindu nation’, ‘security of mutts and mandirs’, ‘protection of gaumata’, ‘protection of sisters from love jihad’, ‘to invoke Hinduism’s sentiments’ amongst the new generations and the construction of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya. Ever since Modi came to power, there have been a terrifying surge of these Hindutva diatribes and violence against the minority religious communities, oppressed castes and the downtrodden masses. Modi’s neoliberal economic crusade and adventures such as the ‘demonetarisation’ policy hit the already poverty stricken masses and the lowers sections of the society the most.
Under the clout of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has courted and pampered Hindu chauvinists to instil a frenzied support of his political base, it is becoming a social norm in India that Hindu outrage is stoked by little more than rumours
The story in Pakistan is not much different either. The sit-in of a hard-line Barelvi extremist group with its provocative language and hate speech has exposed the regime’s incompetence and indifference of the state. But this is not a one off thing. Almost daily routine of social and state persecutions of certain minorities, women, and oppressed classes has become a socio-cultural norm. But the aggression is so blatant and the leverage they get from the media, large swaths of political parties, most television channels, TV anchor persons, columnists and the officials of the crucial state institutions has also increased alarmingly. The socioeconomic ‘terrorism’ against the working classes and the poor is also grotesque. With Zia’s most draconian amendments in the constitution intact even three decades after his demise say a lot about the ideologies and character of the various ‘democratic’ and secular regimes that came to power in these years.
In Bangladesh, the national bourgeois regime of Sheikh Hasina Wajid has been relentlessly using Bengali nationalism and is inversely creating a conflict between the Islamicist fundamentalists and the so-called secular nationalists. It suits her to deflect and undermine the class contradictions that have exacerbated with the crisis of Bangladesh’s capitalism. The national liberation has not been of any respite for the oppressed workers, particularly the women workers, who are forced into drudgery by this ‘nascent’ bourgeois. It even failed to undo partition and unite East and West Bengal in 1971. The rise of the Islamicists was also the result of the Bengali bourgeois’ failures to ameliorate the oppressed Bengali masses from the misery of exploitation and deprivation.
In Sri Lanka, the religious conflict and the bloodied civil war between the Tamil Hindus and Singhalese Buddhists’ state has ravaged society. There is now the peace of a cemetery and the wounds cannot be healed in such conditions of a socioeconomic decline and the neoliberal regimes that are worsening the lives of the ordinary Srilankans. Burma is suffering from a similar religious atrociousness. The ejection and cleansing of the Rohingya Muslims is the latest of episode these prosecutions and cruelty against the religious and the ethnic minorities.
The rise of the religious fundamentalists forces has been mainly due to the failures of these new national bourgeois states to develop societies and the plight of the oppressed classes has only worsened since their caricatured independence. The future of the vast majority of the population is bleak and the youth sees no light ahead. In periods when the mass movements are not in the arena, hope diminishes.
This despair drives the youth particularly those from the middle classes, to look back into the myths of the ‘glorious’ past inoculated in the educational syllabi and mass psychology by the state and corporate media. This ends up into terrorism, bigotry, religious hatred and the reactionary mindset that we are witnessing. All these regions have had glorious traditions of revolutionary movements and class struggles. The class contradictions shall erupt again and a revolutionary movement will have to end the system and the structures that are devastating one of the richest civilisations on earth.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]
Published in Daily Times, November 27th 2017.