വർഗ്ഗീയ ഭ്രാന്ത് ഉണ്ടാക്കുക എന്നത് 2025ലെ ബിജെപിയുടെ ആസൂത്രിത നീക്കമാണ് : ദീപങ്കർ ഭട്ടാചാര്യ
Thursday, 27 March 2025
' വിഭജിച്ചു ഭരിക്കൽ '
എന്ന കൊളോണിയൽ തന്ത്രം ഇന്ത്യയിൽ ഇനിയും വിലപ്പോവരുത് !
എഡിറ്റോറിയൽ, എം എൽ അപ്ഡേറ്റ് വീക് ലി ( 19-25 മാർച്ച് 2025 ലക്കം )
Sunday, 2 March 2025
28 ഫെബ്രുവരി 2025
Recognising Fascism
in India: If Not Now, Then When?
Dipankar Bhattacharya
Ahead of the
forthcoming 24th Congress of the CPI(M), an internal note issued by the party
polit bureau, and widely reported in the media, has attracted more public
attention than the draft resolution released earlier. The draft, in a couple of
places, had used the expression 'neo-fascist characteristics' to describe the
current political situation and the Modi government. The note now clarifies
that the expression 'neo-fascist characteristics' means only features or trends
and by no means describes the Modi government as a fascist or neo-fascist
regime. This is where, the note points out, the CPI(M) differs from the CPI or
CPI(ML) in the analysis of the current state of affairs in India.
Perhaps the
expression 'neo-fascism' had confused the CPI(M) ranks that the main difference
between the CPI(M) and CPI(ML) in the current context revolved only around the
epithet 'neo', so the note had to take the trouble of ‘clarifying’ that as of
now fascism in India is only a tendency, the characteristics on display are
only emerging and not entrenched or decisive enough to define the nature of the
regime. The note wants to make sure that the party cadres do not read much into
the word neo-fascist which appears for the first time in a CPI(M) document. In
other words, while the situation is such that the 'f' word cannot be avoided
anymore, the note seeks to warn the party against 'overestimating' the fascist
danger.
The note describes
fascism in Italy and Germany as 'classical fascism' and points out how the
emerging trend of neo-fascism differs from the classical variety. Part of these
differences are contextual - fascism arose in Italy and Germany in the wake of
the first world war in a situation of heightened inter-imperialist rivalry
leading to world wars and an acute crisis of capitalism known as the Great
Depression. The note however does not stop there and identifies one more
difference which is more intrinsic - while classical fascism negated bourgeois
democracy, the 'neo' variety is apparently compatible and even comfortable with
bourgeois democracy, especially the electoral system. In other words, while classical
fascism had no internal checks and unleashed a furious storm of destruction
that ravaged every bit of democracy, there is something self-limiting or
self-regulating in the neo-fascist variety.
This distinction that
is being sought to be made between classical fascism and its 'neo' avatar
certainly merits closer attention, as does the CPI(M) claim that what India is
witnessing and experiencing now are just some 'neo-fascistic tendencies' at
work which, if unchecked, may in future grow into neo-fascism. Talking about
the historical context of the rise of fascism in the 1920s, there was something
more than fierce inter-imperialist conflict and acute economic crisis - the
fear of revolution. In 1848 itself the Communist Manifesto had begun with the
iconic sentence: "A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of
communism." The spectre became far more real in the wake of the victorious
socialist revolution in Russisa in November 1917. While revolutionary
possibilities elsewhere in Europe did not fructify, by the time of the fifth
anniversary of the Russian revolution, fascism had acquired power in Italy.
At the very inception
of fascism in Europe, it however became clear that while fascism was an
international phenomenon, it was bound to display national peculiarities shaped
by respective historical realities and social conditions of respective
countries. By the time fascism manifested itself in Germany it had already
acquired a new brand name - Nazism or national socialism. Certainly nobody in
India is today talking of an exact replica of the models of the European
fascism we saw in the first half of the twentieth century. A Marxist analysis
of India today has to take into account the Indian particularities as well as
the unmistakable fundamental features that have been common to all instances of
fascism in history. It will surely make sense to consider the CPI(M)'s note of
clarification from this perspective.
The CPI(M) is in
agreement with the wider progressive opinion in India and internationally which
considers the RSS fascist. It is significant that right since its inception the
RSS had drawn quite heavily on what the note calls the classical models of
fascism in Italy and Germany, borrowing considerable inputs from them in terms
of ideological foundation, organisational structure as well as operational
pattern, with Muslims in India being identified as the ultimate internal enemy
as Jews were in Germany. It is another thing that colonial India was not
post-war Italy or Germany. While fascists came to power within a few years of
their rise in Italy and Germany, in India they remained a marginal force during
the period of the freedom movement or in the initial decades of India's journey
as a constitutional republic.
There is perhaps no
other example of a fascist trend in the world sustaining itself for so long,
adapting itself to the changing socio-political dynamics to accumulate strength
and insidiously penetrating the institutional network of the republic to attain
the kind of control and domination that the RSS enjoys today. What use will a
fascist force make of its growing grip on political power - will it proceed
towards unleashing and enforcing the whole gamut of its fascist agenda or
comply eternally with bourgeois democracy and play by its so-called rules of
the game? The track record of the RSS through all its ups and downs, tactical
retreats and strategic advances, over the one hundred years of its existence
and especially over the last four decades of its dramatic rise and
consolidation must leave no one in the slightest of doubt.
The escalation of the
Ram Janambhoomi campaign through Advani's rath yatra and the eventual
demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992 gave us the first
unmistakable glimpse of the Sangh brigade's brazen fascist design. It was not
just aggressive communalism or fundamentalist frenzy at work, but a clear
attempt to redefine the identity of India on the basis of Hindu supremacy and
ignite the imagination of a Hindu Rashtra. CPI(ML) identified this moment as a
communal fascist threat to India's composite culture and constitutional
republic. Comrades Vinod Mishra and Sitaram Yechury both wrote extensively
about the RSS design and alerted the Left and progressive ranks about the
ideological-political implications of this turning point. Progressive academics
Tapan Basu, Sumit Sarkar, Pradip Datta, Tanika Sarkar and Sambuddha Sen
produced their brilliant booklet exposing the fascist design of the RSS called
'Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags'.
The BJP's isolation
in the wake of the Babri Masjid demolition was however quite short-lived and
within five years the party managed to gather an all-India coalition. By the
turn of the century India was already under NDA rule, the first non-Congress
dispensation to survive a full term. The lynching of Graham Stuart Staines and
his sons Philip and Timothy by Bajrang Dal leader Dara Singh and his group in
January 1999 and the anti-Muslim pogrom perpetrated in Gujarat three years
later sent out loud signals of the Sangh brigade's unfolding agenda. While the
Gujarat carnage overseen by the Narendra Modi government was widely denounced
in India and abroad and played a major role in ensuring the defeat of the NDA
in 2004, the refusal of the Sangh-BJP establishment to take any action against
Narendra Modi made it clear that the Sangh brigade was ready to take the next
leap towards its Hindu Rashtra goal.
Even though the UPA
government ran two full terms, the BJP consolidated itself in Gujarat and
corporate India too began to rally increasingly around the Modi brand in the
biennial investment summits called Vibrant Gujarat. The clamour to bring Modi
to Delhi grew louder with the decisive backing of corporate India, the Tata
group too joining the Adani-Ambani chorus, and by 2014 we had the advent of the
Modi era. It is important not to forget this trajectory of corporate-communal
convergence. The systematic and rapidly escalating execution of the long
cherished Sanghi agenda of subjecting secular democratic India to a Hindu
supremacist fascist order will tell us that there is a lot more to this
blueprint of fascist disaster than just a crisis of neoliberalism howsoever
acute.
Some eighty years
ago, Ambedkar had warned us 'if Hindu Raj becomes a fact, it will, no doubt, be
the greatest calamity for this country' and he could not have been more
prophetic. From amending laws and changing the very framework of law and
justice to legislating new measures in complete violation of the basic spirit
of the Constitution and subverting the entire institutional framework and
environment that governs our republic, this government is doing everything to
destroy democracy and erode the rights and liberties of citizens. Add to this
the impunity granted to state-sponsored hate and violence targeting the Muslim
community, various weaker sections of society and voices of dissent, and we get
an idea of the unprecedented daily onslaught on the constitutional foundation
of our democratic republic. Explicit calls for a new constitution are also
being voiced from different quarters and the Union Home Minister himself made
derogatory remarks about Babasaheb Ambedkar in the course of the parliamentary
discussion on the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of
India.
Elections are of
course still happening in India, but can that be a substantive safeguard for
India's beleaguered democracy when the Election Commission is under the
complete control of the government and when the entire election process right
from the preparation of electoral rolls to the counting of votes is becoming
increasingly opaque and arbitrary? Let us remember that Hitler too came to
power through the electoral route and gradually delegitimised the entire
opposition to secure 99% vote and enforce a permanent dictatorship. In India,
Amit Shah keeps talking about ruling uninterruptedly for fifty years. And we
have already seen any number of instances of the BJP's desperate and sinister
bid to win every election and cling to power. Elections in India are being
rendered increasingly farcical, meant to serve as a spectacle for global optics
and claiming internal legitimacy.
It is true that the
BJP has found several allies and enablers in its political journey thus far.
Apart from the support of its formal allies, often it also receives wider
support around the neoliberal agenda as also on the basis of the soft Hindutva
continuum. On issues like persecution of dissenting voices, demonisation of
Islam, virulent campaign of hate and violence against Muslims and other
minorities and marginalised groups, and erosion of civil liberties, democratic
rights and democratic spaces, there is still little sensitivity and vocal
opposition in India's public discourse. No wonder Ambedkar had termed the
Constitution just a top dressing of democracy on an undemocratic soil. This
makes it all the more imperative for communists to take the lead in building
resistance to fascism and act as the most consistent and committed champions of
democracy in the face of the growing fascist offensive.
The CPI(M) resolution
recognises certain neo-fascist characteristics and the note says that if
unchecked the characteristics may grow into full-scale 'neo-fascism'. The note
even introduces further qualifications by using the expression 'ingredients of
proto neo-fascism' - implying perhaps that we still have time till these 'proto
ingredients' - three times removed from 'classical fascism' - mature into a
complete case study of fascism in the twenty first century. If the direction is
set and the question is only one of assessing the degree or intensity of the
fascist danger, can communists have the luxury of ignoring what has already
happened and is happening every day right in front of our eyes and taking
comfort from the degree of democracy that still survives in India in comparison
with Mussolini's Italy and Hitler's Germany? If fascism in India has had a slow
and protracted rise, it is largely because of India's vast scale and innate
diversity and the Modi regime is not losing a moment to bulldoze this diversity
with its 'one nation' formula of uniformity.
The note says the
Indian state is not a fascist state. Well, nobody has said that the state in
India has turned into a full-blown fascist institution, but can we ever
overlook the fact that institutional resistance from within the larger state
apparatus is very weak and a real attempt is underway to decimate the residual
components or potential of democracy in India? This is why Ambedkar and the
Constitution, and now increasingly the legacy of the freedom movement which
informed the constitutional vision and found its eloquent articulation in the
inspiring Preamble to the Constitution, have become such a great source of
irritation to the Sangh-BJP establishment. The people on the ground who find
themselves at the receiving end of this fascist aggression are rallying around
the Constitution to defend themselves. From the Shaheen Bagh protests against
the divisive and discriminatory new citizenship law to the
Dalit-Adivasi-Bahujan concern about social dignity and the intensifying
peasant-worker struggles against corporate loot, we can see how the people are
rediscovering the Constitution as a weapon of democracy.
After eleven years of
unchecked consolidation of fascist forces at the helm of power, should Indian
communists still wait longer to call the growing disaster by its historically
known name? Paraphrasing the famous Bob Dylan song we may say 'how much more
damage must we all suffer before we call them fascists'. Any downplaying of the
fascist danger at this juncture, any ambiguity in distinguishing the fascist
danger from the general categories of neoliberalism and authoritarianism, can
only erode the electoral strength and moral authority of the communists. On the
other hand, if communists can take up the challenge of resisting fascism by
championing the radical legacy of the freedom movement and the radical
contribution of Ambedkar in advancing the battle for social equality and laying
the constitutional foundation of democracy, and take bold initiatives to unite
the working people and the intelligentsia on all their core concerns and uphold
the banner of anti-imperialist nationalism when the Modi government is visibly
capitulating to the Trump Administration, the communist movement can turn the
tables and push the fascists back.
One can understand
the political and electoral complexities of Kerala and West Bengal,
historically the strongest bastions of the CPI(M), and can only hope that the
CPI(M)'s dilemma in identifying and naming the advent of fascism is not
informed by the immediate electoral circumstances faced by the party in these
two states. The repeated failure of the CPI(M) in the Lok Sabha elections in
Kerala in spite of being in power in the state is surely as much a matter of
concern as is its continuing decline in West Bengal. What is more disturbing is
the continuing migration of sections of CPI(M) voters and perhaps also of some
erstwhile organisers and leaders to the BJP fold.
The party should of
course prioritise its independent growth and role, but must that be pitted
against the equally important task of forging a broad anti-fascist unity? Of
the four seats currently held by the party in Lok Sabha, three have come from
Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, as part of the INDIA coalition. And can any communist
party really increase its strength and role by obfuscating the central
political question of the day? We still hope that no section of the communist
movement will falter at this crucial juncture of modern India and together we
will be able to strengthen the communist stream of anti-fascist resistance to
save India from the growing calamity of fascism before the latter unleashes its
fullest fury.