Indian Election Results: Part 2: Resistance to Fascism in India May 25, 2014

There is no widely accepted concept of fascism in India. That’s the trick of the RSS in convincing people that they are just there to promote Hindu culture. The political left in India, mainly the CPI(M) have become pseudo socialists like the Irish Labour party. They voice concerns against the fascist forces but do nothing beyond that. The larger trade unions are affiliated to political parties and don’t do much. The antifascist movements are by the scattered regional human rights activist groups and small non-political socialist trade unions ( http://www.truthofgujarat.com/author/mukul-sinha/,http://nsm.org.in/tag/jan-sangharsh-manch/,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teesta_Setalvad ).

Most activist movements in India are led by women who speak actively against corporate fascism, but are more involved in localized agitations to ensure survival of the disenfranchised. They are not organized as a single force against fascism. The closest thing to a national antifascist movement is the Aam Aadmi party(common man party), which has been successful in uniting India’s best women’s rights activists, land rights activists and other human rights activists across India. Some of their tactics have been questionable, but they did well in these elections for a new party. Their biggest contribution is uniting grass roots leftist and socialist activists in the fight against corporate fascism ( http://kafila.org/?s=aap ). The CPI(M) went the China way, when it came to improving the economic condition of the state: ignoring their core welfare policies and paying the price. They were murdering their opponents, including protesting people in their states of West Bengal ( http://www.countercurrents.org/kavita250407.htm ) and Kerala ( http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report…ks-row-1694163 )

The new CM of WB has been successful in creating an illusion of being an alternative – as someone said on Political World forum, she is indeed a power crazed, anti-women nut case ( http://www.patnadaily.com/index.php/…-banerjee.html ) The alternative or resistance to corporate sponsored fascist majority government in India will not come from other political parties. All the major parties even those led by women only implement token welfare schemes and infrastructure projects to create the illusion of development, while being actively anti-women ( http://genderbytes.wordpress.com/201…omen-of-india/ ) and anti-people. The resistance will come from the people. While this may sound too simplistic, over the years the Indian public has become more enlightened than ever, with stronger regard for human rights. After the Gujarat riots, while BJP won in Gujarat, they were defeated nationally even though they performed relatively well. After the Delhi gang rape people were out in the streets protesting relentlessly, while the government tried to crackdown on them, instead of addressing women’s rights issues. There have been many smaller protests and fights for justice, against rapes and atrocities against dalit women across Indian villages, not reported by the media. The most recent example is the nationwide support for LGBTQ rights, when the supreme court repealed Section 377 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section…ian_Penal_Code).

While the governments and political parties across the world are moving towards the right, the people are moving towards an egalitarian idea. The same is true in India. The BJP will try to implement it’s hidutva fascist agenda and their corporate masters will implement their destructive, unchecked capitalism. There will be victims and the organized left in India is too small and scattered to stop it, just like they were unable to stop Modi from coming to power. There is no instant solution to stop the fascists and their defeat will be painfully slow. But the resistance will come from the people. The present popular resistance to fascism in India comes from small but committed groups like those of university students unions, professors, women’s rights groups and even a few individual activists. Here are links to few of them:

Mukul Sinha, he passed away very recently, but he was actively involved and founded many movements like this http://nsm.org.in/

This is Kavita Krishnan (Secretary of the All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA) and a member of CPI(Marxist-Leninist) party), she is actively involved in various human rights, women’s rights and socialist causes.

There are many student unions, professors in Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University(JNU) like this http://dsujnu.blogspot.in/ and AISA(All India Students Association) 

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEgsdDVCJVdZ28SAyBaukGA

JNU is famous for socialist and democratic activism and dissent.

And here is Arundhati Roy who is known around the world, at least in socialist or leftist circles:

Also this happened meanwhile: “Five youngsters detained for circulating antimodi message on wassup….  http://ibnlive.in.com/news/bangalore-five-youngsters-detained-for-circulating-antimodi-message-on-whatsapp/474326-62.html

dharma 25th May 2014

Comments on this blog welcome here and also at Politicalworld.org discussion forum

Indian Election Results: Part 1: Why Modi Won May 23, 2014

A two part blog by dharma following the election of Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) The following articles from independent media give an idea of the coming threats arising from the election of Modi. Saying that fascist threat is a reality now in India would be an understatement. http://kafila.org/2014/05/18/the-tri…i-in-the-open/ http://www.countercurrents.org/poonawalla210514.htm http://kafila.org/2014/05/21/lessons…ns-ravi-sinha/ http://kafila.org/2014/05/16/so-who-…-the-election/ This documentary on the Gujarat riots, show the ways of Modi and the Sangh (organizations under RSS) and why Modi was refused visa to the US for over ten years. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMcziSEKHOI The biggest reason for Modi’s win is the outgoing UPA government, which gave the chance for the spread of the far right propaganda. This was done by the UPA’s scam ridden performance in their second term during the global financial crisis, which resulted in high inflation. The middle class and the poor were struggling to get by due to high prices of daily household rations and people were angry. Modi and the RSS cashed in on this, with a mix of Hindutva (Hindu far right nationalism) propaganda smoke screened by Modi’s bogus economic development model http://kafila.org/2013/07/10/lies-da…st-by-m-akhil/(which was nothing but giving a free hand to capitalists, at the cost of local welfare.) This propaganda was furthered by the corporate owned Indian English media ( http://kafila.org/2014/04/24/modi-fa…ganda-machine/, which caters to the middle class and upper middle class who feel they are entitled to get/stay rich (http://kafila.org/2014/04/17/why-mod…zair-belgrami/.)

Now all this only helped the already name sake elections in India. If you live in India, you’d be normalized to the distribution of money, alcohol, sarees etc., in exchange for votes ( https://in.news.yahoo.com/is-andhra-…065759764.html, http://www.tehelka.com/the-dirty-und…election-2014/, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-0…of-widows.html ). It is so normal that you would feel it unusual if elections were to be fought honestly. My own small town with a population of 40,000 saw distribution of around 15 million rupees (around 200k euro) cash by a single candidate alone.  There were four other candidates – alcohol and other goodies were extras. This was only for council elections. I can’t imagine the amount spent across India in all the small towns and villages. Due to the normalization of this money for votes, people take money from all parties and still vote for whoever they want to. So due to the self destruction of UPA and large amounts of money and publicity by BJP, they were favs to win but nobody predicted that they would get a total majority. The reasons for them achieving such high seats are their intimidation tactics ( http://kafila.org/2014/04/16/democra…ma/#mor22204,http://kafila.org/2014/05/09/bjps-ca…onobina-gupta/,http://kafila.org/2014/04/29/modi-th…ere-is-the-ec/) in their strongholds and the old RSS trick of communal polarization between majority Hindu population and the minorities by instigation of riots, in regions where they lack support. In Uttar Pradesh, the Indian state with the highest number of MP seats BJP won 71 out of 80, and this was a major reason for them getting a simple majority.

This is how they won it:  http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx288907,http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?288908. These are the same tactics used in the Gujarat riots in 2002, after which Modi swept the state elections. So while India’s economic situation is not as bad as Greece’s or Ukraine’s, the Indian fascists have been preparing and waiting for a chance like this since our independence, unlike the newly emerged Golden dawn or the Svoboda. The RSS operate in a scary way. They train people from a very young age, instilling hindu nationalism in them. They send their loyal students off to start new radical organizations, with their support and then they then use them to do their dirty work like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bd8GzYw3oyE and this:  http://www.caravanmagazine.in/press-release (actual terror bombings), while denying any link to them.

That’s why all the organizations under RSS are known as the Sangh parivar ( Organizational family). They used the same trick to murder Gandhi (He was no saint, but murder is unacceptable:  http://genderbytes.wordpress.com/201…imes-of-gurus/). Their recruitment has been steadily decreasing but Modi proved to be a godsend for them. Here is a profile of how Modi was made in RSS: http://caravanmagazine.in/reportage/emperor-uncrowned. So there, the usual mix of nationalism, fundamentalism, media propaganda, corporate sponsorship, a population normalized to corruption, deadly riots to polarize the usually peaceful regions and a self-proclaimed saviour/tough-administrator to rescue the masses from scam-ridden capitalism, with more capitalism with a hindu-fascist face.

 

dharma   23rd May 2014 (Part II to follow tomorrow)

More discussions on Modi and the elections at Political World discussion forum, or leave your comments here.