Avis Inde

Covid-19 vaccine in 2021: A blessing or a threat to mankind?

2021-01-05T07:54:00.000+00:00

The year of hope. Yes, they are calling 2021 the year of hope. “They”, ie, our hyper-consumerist urban middle-class and elites. It’s not an Indian phenomenon per se. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, globally the middle-class, the driving force behind the market economy, remained inside their homes during the lockdown and harped on whatever essentials they needed. Many of them lost their jobs, but most of them kept the hope that 2021 will change their lives as there will be a vaccine for Covid-19 pandemic and they can return to their lives normally. They mean, they can party again.

Vaccine and 2021 are synonymous in the present scenario. It’s for the first time the world has been waiting anxiously for a vaccine. So far deadliest diseases like cancer, tuberculosis, AIDS, etc, have ravaged the world. Heart attack kills millions globally. Hypertension and diabetes are some of the deadliest diseases that spare none at present. Yet, no discussion had ever taken place over developing a system that will prevent these diseases by immunising the human body against them. Tuberculosis affected 2.69 million in India in 2018 and 449,700 died due to it. Despite it being a highly contagious one, there have been no attempts to develop an effective treatment for tuberculosis because it strikes mostly the poor.

Covid-19, outside China, has been largely a middle-class disease. It has mostly affected the urban middle-class and elites in countries like India. Despite having 10 million cumulative cases, a country like India has only 1.45% death ratio from Covid-19. However, even this number doesn’t mean that the victims died purely of the Novel Coronavirus. Rather, most deaths took place due to comorbidities from which the victims suffered. It’s alleged that the Covid-19 virus has the power to affect the vital organs if they have any pre-conditions.

Due to their socially-divorced, sedentary lifestyle and their utmost cocooning within the fold of immense comfort, the urban middle-class and the elites, who are divorced from the soil and nature, except for the artificial “nature” they have created within their walled neighbourhoods, have become prone to all sort of lifestyle and virus-triggered diseases. It’s a reason most middle-class and elite society members are either suffering due to lifestyle diseases since a young age or are susceptible to them despite their utmost strict “physical fitness” regime.

While the poor, despite suffering hardships and hunger, in a country like India, survived the wrath of the Covid-19, the rich and the middle-class, who have been consuming “healthy food” following what’s advertised by capitalism as “good” on a global scale and marketed by their influencers, have suffered the most due to the Covid-19 infection. While the virus itself is insignificant and can’t kill a healthy body, the presence of one or many lifestyle diseases aggravates the chance of death. Thus, the poor, especially the tribal masses, the Dalits, the backward classes, the poor minority communities like Muslims, etc, have remained relatively safe, even when they suffered due to the community transmission of the virus.

The Covid-19—a version of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome but with less fatality vis-à-vis the normal 3%—has been marketed as a severe health threat by the international monopoly-finance capital for several reasons. The fear around Covid-19, which killed fewer people vis-à-vis other communicable and infectious diseases, especially tuberculosis, has been hyped with a cunning motive, ignoring which we won’t be able to diagnose the bigger problem or effectively fight against it.

Since the 2008 US Subprime Crisis, the grotesque wounds of the global monopoly-finance capitalist system under the Wall Street-controlled “globalised world” model became prominently visible. The US-controlled world economy started sulking in an abysmal crisis and despite launching wars in Libya, Syria, etc, and upping the ante against Iran, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, etc, and building a nexus to contain China’s rise as a superpower, the imminent crisis of capitalism couldn’t be prevented from aggravating. This was also the case in India. The very country that has become the haven for imperialist loot and plunder.

The World Bank’s GDP calculation of India based on the 2010 US dollar, shows that the growth was high from the financial year (FY) 2003-04 to 2006-07. If we refer to Figure A, we will see how the crisis in the US affected India’s GDP growth despite the country remaining a favourite destination for foreign direct investment (FDI) players and foreign institutional investors (FIIs).

Figure A

While the GDP grew at 8.06% in the FY 2006-07, it declined to 7.66% in the FY 2007-08 and, in the FY 2008-09 it ended up at 3.08% only. Though there was a quick recovery in the FY 2010-11, when the GDP grew at 8.50%—third highest after the FYs 1988-89 and 1999-00 when the economy grew at 9.63% and 8.85% respectively—but only 5.24% in the FY 2011-12. When Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) formed a majority government, the big capital expected speedy reforms and it acted as a spur, causing the GDP to grow.

In the FY 2014-15, while the GDP grew at 7.41%, a 1.02 percentage point growth from 6.39% of the FY 2013-14. The positivity stayed for two consecutive FYs, 2015-16 and 2016-17, especially until the second quarter (Q2) of the latter. In the FY 2015-16, the GDP grew at 8% and in the FY 2016-17, it reached 8.66% but the disastrous economic decision of demonetisation struck the economy hard, which, along with the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) by the Modi regime in the Q2 of the FY 2017-18 began aggravating an unforeseen economic crisis.

By the FY 2019-20, the GDP growth fell to 4.18% and now, thanks to the lockdown and related shocks, it’s expected that the Indian economy will contract by 9.61%. Now the steady decline in the GDP growth, which never reached the 2010 stage or exceeded it, was caused by internal and external factors but for everything, the US-based global finance and monopoly capital has been responsible.

It’s the big banks and institutions that forced the Modi regime to toe the line of the USAID and run the demonetisation drive to weaken India’s medium, small and micro enterprises (MSMEs). The GST rollout drove out small businesses that couldn’t afford the complex taxation regime, unlike the corporate houses that could. These decisions helped to destroy the MSMEs and unorganised sector of the Indian economy, fuelling unemployment, which caused a massive slump in consumption and thereby affected demand, resulting in a severe economic recession.

In sectors like automobile, a massive crisis reigned from the FY 2017-18 until the Q4 of the FY 2019-20. The fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) also saw a steady decline. According to the National Sample Survey Office’s (NSSO’s) periodic labour force survey (PLFS), unemployment reached a 45-year-high in 2017-18. This PLFS by the NSSO irked the Modi regime and by 2019, a diktat was placed to stop all government institutions from publishing data or information that can cause ignominy.

While unemployment remained high throughout 2019, but rather than addressing the demand-side problem, caused by the lack of expendable income in the hands of the people, the government kept fixing the supply side. It gave massive tax breaks to corporate houses, allowing them to stockpile more wealth than ever while turning the working class into semi-paupers. The wealth gap increased manifold. This wasn’t purely an Indian problem. Globally, the monopoly-finance capitalist system has been suffering since the 2009 US Subprime Crisis.

The lack of a “bubble” that can help finance capital to steadily multiply its profit kept most of the capital either locked up in the vaults or were invested in selected stocks. The Bitcoin bubble attracted a large number of speculative investors, as it went on towards becoming a “bubble”, but it didn’t remain one for long. At the same time, lack of demand globally, caused by the US Subprime Crisis’s global roll-over, the Greek Debt Crisis, the crisis in Spain, in Latin America, the Brexit crisis, etc, along with a severe setback to the US imperialism-led coalition in the Syrian War, caused a devastating crisis for the global monopoly-finance capital system.

When the first cases of the Covid-19 were found in Wuhan of China, it didn’t make much of a news. In January 2020, the World Health Organisation (WHO) took cognisance of the cases and in February the eerie alarm began ringing. But the US, the UK, Brazil and India remained nonchalant about the alarming “pandemic” warning of the WHO. It was only considered by them later. Without pondering much, the lockdown, which China used effectively to control the pandemic in January 2020, was considered as a solution to the virus. Globally, the lockdown was replicated and economies came to a standstill. The virus has been magnified in connivance with the WHO—which acted as an imperialist pawn—to create a fear psychosis and turn the middle-class and the elites of the world, who have been the principal victims of the virus outside China, to become extremely paranoid and accept any solution that the governments offer, uncritically.

It was on Monday, March 11th 2020, when the Covid-19 had acquired global fame and the fear was growing among the middle-class and the elites, that the pharma major Pfizer declared that its parent company has found some “anti-viral compounds” that can inhibit Coronavirus. Pfizer’s Chief Scientific Officer Mikael Dolsten met US President Donald Trump at the White House on the same day along with other pharma honchos and then, on Tuesday, March 12th 2020, the share prices of Pfizer in India soared by 13.09% due to the news. It wasn’t a promise of a cure or a vaccine, but an assurance that by the end of 2020, the company will come out with something! The reaction of the market confirmed what the big monopoly-finance capital planned.

Pfizer’s share price soaring showed the pharma world and the global monopoly-finance capital that vaccine can be a new bubble. The vaccine plan was drafted by the international monopoly-finance capital and globally, it was accepted as a solution without any serious scientific challenge to the loosely-organised theory, developed without prolonged trial and error phase to weed out threats before being used to immunise the people from the flu, which can’t kill on its own.

Despite objections raised by many scientists and medical practitioners, who are fighting against the global pharma majors’ attempt to fill-up the lack of “innovative drugs” patent with the introduction of Covid-19 vaccines, the cacophony created by the monopoly-finance capital and amplified by their servile lackeys like the Modi regime in India or the US Democrats, the illogical vaccine story gained traction. The paranoid, consumerist middle-class and elites, after losing the opportunity to go out for months, began frantically demanding a vaccine for the virus, without questioning its necessity when in a country like India, with a dilapidated public healthcare system, the death rate due to Covid-19 has only 1.45%, that too due to comorbidity mostly.

No questions have been raised by the mainstream press over why there has been a system-generated paranoia on Covid-19, when the deadliest diseases that kill more than the flu, remain undiscussed. In countries like India, where the inhumane lockdown, which was called a cure for Covid-19, is now blamed for the economic crisis resulting in an estimated 9.6% contraction in the economy for the FY 2020-21, no comparative studies are undertaken to check how many people would die daily due to the same conditions, which are blamed as “comorbidity” due to Covid-19. No analysis has been done based on the cause of death by segregating the number of death caused by the Coronavirus alone, sans comorbidity. Also, no studies are done to analyse the conditions that led to the death of patients suffering from comorbidity–whether they could’ve survived without the complications created by Coronavirus or they’d have succumbed.

Such studies wouldn’t have just provided a deeper insight into the issue of the Covid-19 “pandemic” but it would’ve helped to allay the fear of the flu, which doesn’t have a lethal power on its own. The virus, which can be killed by crushing its fatty outer layer by rubbing alcohol or using soap, can be prevented by following a set of hygiene practices like washing the hands at regular intervals, preventing touching eyes and mouth and by wearing a mask in public places to prevent one’s sneezing or coughing to spread the virus immediately to someone close. Also, it needs treatment.

Rather than developing medicines for the disease, which would cure the patient, why the emphasis is laid on the vaccine? Is it because the cost of the vaccine, which will be borne by the governments of different countries and also by individuals, will give a golden opportunity to the big corporate houses that have stakes in the pharma industry, to fill their coffers with immense profits? Is the “need” for the vaccine created through a carefully orchestrated marketing campaign to ensure the public exchequers are emptied to pay big pharma companies for some vaccines that aren’t tested over a long period for their efficacy and reactions? Can the people of the world be made guinea pigs for the sake of profiteering by big pharma giants?

There are questions related to the Covid-19 vaccine and the activities of the governments around the world, especially the Modi regime in India, evoke doubts. Recently, Drugs Controller General of India (DGCI) Dr VG Somani said the “vaccines are 110% safe” while quelling apprehensions about them during a press conference. In the scientific parlance, nothing is beyond 99.9% safe. The extra assurance by the DGCI, who should be extra sceptical about the drugs rolled out, also evokes doubts about the vaccines, which will be given to 300m Indians in the first phase of vaccination.

Spending Rs 100 billion, the Modi regime plans to vaccinate 10 million healthcare workers, 20 million “frontline workers” and 270 million Indians above 50 years of age, especially those with comorbidities like kidney, liver ailments, diabetes, etc. To do this segregation, the Modi regime can use the Aadhaar data, which threatens people's right to privacy.

The Covid-19 vaccine’s threat is a real one and bigger than the virus itself. It shows how global monopoly-finance capital can use a “health threat” to jeopardise people’s health. It shows the power of fear marketing by the successors of Edward Bernays. What the world needs is a robust and universal public healthcare system, a lot of effective generic drugs and a lot of healthcare professionals prepared through rigorous public-funded education to man the healthcare facilities and deal with exigencies, including pandemics. The governments must focus on this. It’s time we should seriously and critically think and act against this vaccine threat.

India is arising against the Modi regime but now it needs a conscious leadership for victory

2019-12-22T11:57:00.003+00:00

India rose in rebellion all over. Not once, not twice, but it’s regularly waking up to a rebellion. A plethora of political beliefs, a wide range of dissenting thoughts, a large stockpile of democratic gunpowder, and people of all walks of life are converging at the intersection of India’s peculiar political praxis. What nothing could do, the hubris and absolute hegemonic adamancy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s regime has done — it has united the common people, the oppressed people of India to a large extent. The soul of secularism is out on the streets opposing the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its agenda to turn millions of people, especially India’s 200-million-strong Muslim community, the second-largest in world, into stateless beings, living on the mercy of the state in concentration camps and working as rightless free slaves of corporate houses.

The implementation of the NRC conforms with the long-term plan of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — the BJP’s parent body — which has always wanted to turn the Muslims into second-class citizens in India and exploit their labour and appropriate their properties. The people’s resentment against the NRC and the CAA isn’t dying down, it has epidemically spread all over India, building a rock-solid unity of people from different walks of life against the Hindutva fascist Modi regime, the RSS and the BJP. There is no dearth of people’s participation in mass movements despite extreme brutality exhibited by the state machinery controlled by the BJP in different states. Rather than being cowed down, the macabre atrocities are uniting the people, especially the Muslims, against the regime.

As the situation is slipping out of Modi’s and his closest aide-cum-heir apparent Amit Shah’s grip, as a large number of Muslims are joining the movement throughout the country and their movement is receiving support from different marginalised quarters, including the Dalits, the Sikhs, the tribal masses, and even a large number of Hindus, there is a desperate bid by the RSS leadership to step in directly to shield the Modi regime from the ignominy. A large number of RSS cadres, policemen and petty criminals are infiltrating the movements by impersonating as Muslims. A large number of cadres are mobilised by the RSS in all states ruled by the BJP to incite violence. Social unrest and vilification of Muslims are two goals of the RSS-BJP.

Soon after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee divulged about an intelligence report about the RSS-BJP men buying skullcaps to impersonate as Muslims, six BJP men were caught by the West Bengal Police when they were about to pelt stones at trains in Murshidabad district by wearing lungis and skullcaps, the attire of common Bengali Muslims. In Delhi’s Seelampur, Jama Masjid agitations, in the agitations across Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka, these men are stoking tension and creating a narrative to demonise the Muslims and project the movement as a communal one so that its optics can be used to spread xenophobia and justify any future pogroms targeting the Muslims.

In such a situation, spontaneous movements like these, in which the Muslims are participating en masse, the movements that aren’t organised by professional politicians but community members, students, youth and common people, utilising their own resources, can be easily hijacked, diverted or vilified as a foe of the nation in which the RSS and the Modi regime have successfully turned the Muslims into the isolated “other”, who need to prove their loyalty in return of a right to life. There is an ardent need to increase vigil, unite with more friends, isolate the enemies and use the available communication channels to create and spread the narrative of the oppressed, voiceless and marginalised people, who will suffer the most under the NRC and the CAA, if these two are applied. The biggest need of the hour is to shield the Muslim community from communal violence, pogroms and conspiracies that aim at blaming the community. To prevent such things proactive campaigning is necessary to expose the Modi regime’s conspiracy to flare up a pogrom using Islamophobic narrative and by blaming the Muslims for any mishap or violence that take place in the country.

A BJP minister from Karnataka threatened the Muslims with dire consequences, citing the 2002 post-Godhara violence if the protests don’t stop. Army chief General Bipin Rawat, a certified Modi sycophant, has already raised the toast to a border skirmish with Pakistan citing escalating tensions at the Line of Control that divides Indian and Pakistani-occupied Kashmir valley. Shah’s toady press is publishing egregious trite of “terrorists trying to kill Modi”, concealing the fact that Modi is strongly supported by the terrorism-exporting states like the US, Wahhabi Saudi Arabia and Zionist Israel. Modi is organising a counter-rally at Ram Lila Maidan of Delhi to instigate his hardcore support base and footsoldiers to unleash violence on the Muslims protesting on the streets. There is a total silence reigning on the economic front, which has severely deteriorated in the last few days as the protests over the NRC and the CAA have taken centre stage. This silence is allowing Modi to lie about the Indian economy at different forums, including his infamous claim that he corrected the course of the economy and recovered it!

It’s impossible to shield the movements and immunise them from such attacks, as the state machinery, the ruling classes and the ruling party have united with a common resolve to suppress the people with brute force. Therefore, the only way out right now is to organise and give a conscious format to the plethora of movements, which have multiple shades and political tonality. It will be a muddle-headed attempt, an egregious error if one tries to forcefully evangelise these movements to follow a uniform political tonality, as these movements are desperate bids by the Muslim community to hold back to its identity and live with dignity in the country it calls home. A forceful political conversion can backfire and even strengthen the hands of the RSS-BJP; the democratic and anti-fascist forces shouldn’t use any adventurist method to try it.

The only path, therefore, is to politically educate the people about the immense danger posed by Hindutva fascism, which goes beyond the CAA or the NRC. There is also a need to proactively inform the people about the conspiracies hatched by the Modi regime; from another version of Pulwama attack, Balakote surgical strike to another version of 2002 Gujarat, any template can be re-implemented by the RSS and the BJP. Thus, if the same is propagated proactively as a possibility, then the attempts can be blunted and the BJP won’t be in a position to capitalise on jingoism and use the hysteria to divert attention from the people’s movement.

India is going through an unprecedented phase after the massive anti-Indira Gandhi struggle of 1974-77, which forced the tyrant to impose emergency. At present, there is a far more dangerous phase of an emergency, which is undeclared and a press that’s unapologetically servile, stooping before the regime to appease it. In such a situation, as the common people dare the regime when the opposition parties have given up the concept of resisting the utmost fascist policies of the Modi regime, fearing loss of Hindu votes, is itself a commendable act.

As mainstream political parties failed to lead the people, it’s the people’s heroic uprising that the state is facing a severe crisis, a crisis of which it can’t get out of even by locking all protesters because there are no prisons or even stadiums that can lock everyone. Not all protesters can be killed; not all protesters can be maimed, blinded or tortured brutally. If the Indian state couldn’t stop seven million Kashmiris in three decades from protesting and demanding their Azadi (freedom) from India, then how could the Modi regime could dare to think that it will be able to stop India’s 700m poor and downtrodden masses from protesting for their rights that it wants to snatch through the draconian NRC and the CAA?

There will be no end to the massive demonstrations, people’s movements and the protests on the streets, especially by the Muslims, who are at the verge of an abyss of non-existence, where the Modi regime wants to push them. In their bid to reclaim their land, their existence and their identity as equal citizens of a constitutional republic, the Muslims will stay ahead of all other communities and despite the Islamophobic rantings, propaganda and vilification, the community will unapologetically fight for its rights as itself, raising its own religious slogans, praying to its own God, following its own culture (or a plethora of them), wearing its own clothes, etc.

If the Modi regime’s conspiracies are exposed before the world before they are executed, if the fascist agenda is repeatedly exposed and the Muslim community can win friends from the working class, the peasantry and the toiling people, weaning them over and a massive people’s struggle, backed by a strong trade union movement, takes place, then it will become the invincible catalyst that will bring down the sclerotic Hindutva fascist empire. By remaining vigilant and by shielding itself from the injuries the Modi regime or the RSS-BJP can inflict upon them, the Muslim community, along with the working class, peasantry, the toiling masses, students and youth from all other communities, will be able to defeat the Hindutva fascist state. The events of the past few days have been inspiring and they must be rightly protected from all Hindutva fascist aggression and garlanded to take the movements to the next level.

Defeated logic: The Supreme Court's Ayodhya verdict signals forthcoming Hindu Rashtra

2019-11-19T05:01:00.000+00:00

As the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya verdict paved the way for a Ram Mandir (Hindu temple), which was demanded by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and other affiliates of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — the fountainhead of global Hindutva fascism — since years, the Indian state’s metamorphosis into an official Hindu Rashtra, ie, a theocratic Brahminical dictatorship, is nearly done. The Supreme Court’s 1049-page-long Ayodhya verdict, full of self-contradictory statements, placed the matter of faith at a higher pedestal by sidelining facts, data and evidence. This was an unprecedented judgement after the apex court endorsed the execution of Afzal Guru to satisfy the “collective conscience of society”.

The Supreme Court’s five-judge Constitution Bench, headed by outgoing Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, wrote these words before announcing the outcome of the Ayodhya dispute case:

795. The facts, evidence and oral arguments of the present case have traversed the realms of history, archaeology, religion and the law. The law must stand apart from political contestations over history, ideology and religion. For a case replete with references to archaeological foundations, we must remember that it is the law which provides the edifice upon which our multicultural society rests. The law forms the ground upon which, multiple strands of history, ideology and religion can compete. By determining their limits, this Court as the final arbiter must preserve the sense of balance that the beliefs of one citizen do not interfere with or dominate the freedoms and beliefs of another. On 15 August 1947, India as a nation realised the vision of self-determination. On 26 January 1950 we gave ourselves the Constitution of India, as an unwavering commitment to the values which define our society. At the heart of the Constitution is a commitment to equality upheld and enforced by the rule of law. Under our Constitution, citizens of all faiths, beliefs and creeds seeking divine provenance are both subject to the law and equal before the law. Every judge of this Court is not merely tasked with but sworn to uphold the Constitution and its values. The Constitution does not make a distinction between the faith and belief of one religion and another. All forms of belief, worship and prayer are equal. Those whose duty it is to interpret the Constitution, enforce it and engage with it can ignore this only to the peril of our society and nation. The Constitution speaks to the judges who interpret it, to those who govern who must enforce it, but above all, to the citizens who engage with it as an inseparable feature of their lives. (sic) (PART P, pp 920)

Though factually India gave itself the Constitution on 26 November 1949, the Supreme Court’s Constitution Bench affirmed that it’s going to abide by the Constitution to decide upon the case, the very Constitution that “does not make a distinction between the faith and belief of one religion and another.”About the case, the Supreme Court’s verdict said:

796. In the present case, this Court is tasked with an adjudicatory task of unique dimension. The dispute is over immovable property. The court does not decide title on the basis of faith or belief but on the basis of evidence. The law provides us with parameters as clear but as profound as ownership and possession. In deciding title to the disputed property, the court applies settled principles of evidence to adjudicate upon which party has established a claim to the immovable property. (sic) (PART P, pp 921)

Quite ironically, ignoring key values represented by points 795 and 796 of Part P of the judgement, the Constitution Bench decided to give faith an upper-hand. By calling the deity of Lord Ram, the Hindu mythological king revered by the faithful, a juristic person, the Supreme Court’s verdict held the suit filed by it maintainable because of “balance of probabilities”.

The verdict reads:

800. Suit 5 has been held to be maintainable at the behest of the first plaintiff (the deity of Lord Ram) who is a juristic person. The third plaintiff (next friend) has been held to be entitled to represent the the first plaintiff. We are of the view that on the one hand a decree must ensue in Suit 5, Suit 4 must also be partly decreed by directing the allotment of alternate land to the Muslims for the construction of a mosque and associated activities. The allotment of land to the Muslims is necessary because though on a balance of probabilities, the evidence in respect of the possessory claim of the Hindus to the composite whole of the disputed property stands on a better footing than the evidence adduced by the Muslims, the Muslims were dispossessed upon the desecration of the mosque on 22/23 December 1949 which was ultimately destroyed on 6 December 1992. There was no abandonment of the mosque by the Muslims. This Court in the exercise of its powers under Article 142 of the Constitution must ensure that a wrong committed must be remedied. Justice would not prevail if the Court were to overlook the entitlement of the Muslims who have been deprived of the structure of the mosque through means which should not have been employed in a secular nation committed to the rule of law. The Constitution postulates the equality of all faiths. Tolerance and mutual co-existnce nourish the secular commitment of our nation and its people. (sic, emphasis & underlining mine) (PART P, pp 922-923)

This means, that the balance of probabilities holds more value than the power of evidence, documents and proof. When the Supreme Court’s verdict said that “the possessory claim of the Hindus to the composite whole of the disputed property stands on a better footing”, it at the same time negated the assertion by accepting that “the Muslims were dispossessed upon the desecration of the mosque on 22/23 December 1949 which was ultimately destroyed on 6 December 1992. There was no abandonment of the mosque by the Muslims.” If there was a mosque that the Muslims were “dispossessed” of due to the “desecration” that happened on “22/23 December 1949”, that it “was ultimately destroyed on 6 December 1992,” and that “There was no abandonment of the mosque by the Muslims.” then it’s clear that there was only a mosque at the disputed place and hence, the claim of the deity, which is considered as a juridical person, stands void. However, going against its own findings, the Constitution Bench gave away the land to the deity. No clarification was provided but the balance of probabilities.

If the Supreme Court literally meant: “Justice would not prevail if the Court were to overlook the entitlement of the Muslims who have been deprived of the structure of the mosque through means which should not have been employed in a secular nation committed to the rule of law.” then it should answer why the Muslims won’t get the land of the Babri Masjid back with a mosque constructed on it at the cost of the Government of India, which now owns the land and as the mosque was demolished on 6 December 1992 due to its own negligence and connivance with the perpetrators?

The Supreme Court’s Ayodhya verdict categorically called the demolition of the Babri Masjid a crime as per the law, stating:

XVII On 6 December 1992, the structure of the mosque was brought down and the mosque was destroyed. The destruction of the mosque took place in breach of the order of status quo and an assurance given to this Court. The destruction of the mosque and the obliteration of the Islamic structure was an egregious violation of the rule of law; (sic) (PART P, pp 913-914)

If the demolition of the mosque “was an egregious violation of the rule of law”, then it becomes definitely an imperative task for the judiciary to deliver justice. Rather than providing the aggrieved party, ie, the Muslims, justice and relief by returning the land to them, and ordering the Central Government to rebuild the mosque, which former prime minister PV Narasimha Rao promised in December 1992 to rebuild within one month, by penalising the perpetrators, the apex court gave away the land to the perpetrators of the crime. That too, with secular jargons!

The land was allotted to the Hindutva fascist camp because the Bench found “the possessory claim of the Hindus to the composite whole of the disputed property stands on a better footing than the evidence adduced by the Muslims”, which, however, is not specifically stated why. The only possessory claim by the Hindus is that there is a faith in Ayodhya being the land where the mythological figure, a party in the suit through a next friend, Rama was born. The evidence was faith, mythological text, historical travelogues and hearsay that became folklore. There wasn’t any evidence, unlike the Muslim side’s documents that showed how the Babri Masjid was owned by the Muslims until the colonial period when the administration began recording ownership deeds.

Read, for example, the following paragraph in the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya verdict:

798. As regards the inner courtyard, there is evidence on a preponderance of probabilities to establish worship by the Hindus prior to the annexation of Oudh by the British in 1857. The Muslims have offered no evidence to indicate that they were in exclusive possession of the inner structure prior to 1857 since the date of the construction in the sixteenth century. After the setting up of the grill-brick wall, the structure of the mosque continued to exist and there is evidence to indicate that namaz was offered within its precincts. The report of the Waqf Inspector of December 1949 indicates that Muslims were being obstructed in free and unimpeded access to mosque for the purposes of offering namaz. However, there is evidence to show that namaz was offered in the structure of the mosque and the last Friday namaz was on 16 December 1949. The exclusion of the Muslims from worship and possession took place on the intervening night between 22/23 December 1949 when the mosque was desecrated by the installation of Hindu idols. The ouster of the Muslims on that occasion was not through any lawful authority but through an act which was calculated to deprive them of their place of worship. After the proceedings under Section 145 of CrPC 1898 were initiated and a receiver was appointed following the attachment of the inner courtyard, worship of the Hindu idols was permitted. During the pendency of the suits, the entire structure of the mosque was brought down in a calculated act of destroying a place of public worship. The Muslims have been wrongly deprived of a mosque which had been constructed well over 450 years ago. (sic, emphasis and underlining mine) (PART P, pp 922-23)

If “preponderance of probabilities” is a yardstick used to judge facts and arrive at a conclusion, then isn’t it enough to assert that the name Babri Masjid itself claims that it was a mosque and legally standing at a time when the Constitution was adopted on 26 November 1949? The Babri Masjid remained without the idols for nearly a month after the Constitution was adopted, which makes it imperative for the Supreme Court, one of the custodians and the best interpreter of the lifeline of the state, to uphold the rightful ownership of the Muslims on the land and the religious place that was built a few centuries ago. However, this basic thing was grossly overlooked, even when the justice categorically states that “The Muslims have been wrongly deprived of a mosque which had been constructed well over 450 years ago.”

When it comes to deciding the fate of a lawsuit, the matter of faith can’t be a piece of evidence in a court of law of a country that is officially a secular republic. The matter of faith is a person’s personal matter and even in the Ayodhya verdict, the Bench uttered the same point, which I have mentioned above. Yet, the conclusion, the takeaway of the verdict isn’t just contrary to what’s said earlier but also to the values of secularism that the Supreme Court itself upheld in the S. R. Bommai v. Union of India, 1994, in which the Bench said: “secularism is a basic feature of the Constitution”, meaning the state has no religion. However, when the same religious faith, practices and beliefs were used to reach the judgement, using “preponderance of probabilities”, then the Ayodhya verdict triggered great disappointment among the Muslims.

What the Muslims looked for in this verdict wasn’t merely a piece of land returned to them, but justice as promised by the law of the land and the Constitution that makes them equal citizens of the country. The Muslims wanted justice but were denied justice. The Ayodhya verdict says that justice won’t prevail if “the Court were to overlook the entitlement of the Muslims who have been deprived of the structure of the mosque”, but at the same time asked:

“...we direct that land admeasuring 5 acres be allotted to the Sunni Central Waqf Board either by the Central Government out of the acquired land or by the Government of Uttar Pradesh within the city of Ayodhya. This exercise, and the consequent handing over of the land to the Sunni Central Waqf Board, shall be conducted simultaneously with the handing over of the disputed site comprising of the inner and outer courtyards as a consequence of the decree in Suit 5.” (sic) (PART P, pp 923)

Why the Supreme Court is allocating the land where a mosque stood to the Hindutva fascist organisations when it has mentioned that its demolition was an utmost illegal act? If the mosque was built on a Hindu temple in the medieval period, then why the Supreme Court’s verdict stated that the Archeological Survey of India’s (ASI) findings didn’t confirm that a temple was demolished to build the mosque? If no temple was demolished then why the verdict didn’t order rebuilding Babri Masjid? Moreover, does the apex court has any jurisdiction over a historical event and deliver a judgement on historic rights and wrongs of a time when the court and the Republic didn’t exist? If there was a mosque when the Supreme Court became the apex court of the Union of India, then why wasn’t it rebuilt? What would’ve been the Supreme Court’s verdict if the mosque existed today and wasn’t demolished on 6 December 1992?

While the Supreme Court has specifically asked the Central Government to start the formation of a trust to build the temple within three months and asked it to handover the 2.77-acre disputed land to such a trust from the 68-acre-land that it acquired in 1993 under the Acquisition of Certain Area at Ayodhya Act 1993 (Ayodhya Acquisition Act 1993), it didn’t specify the 5-acre land that should be given to the mosque and left it on the wisdom of the Islamophobic BJP governments at the centre and the state. It’s a well-known stand of the RSS-led Hindutva fascist camp that no mosque construction would be allowed in Ayodhya. Now the Supreme Court’s verdict asking for a mosque building at a 5-acre land that the government thinks is suitable, without any clear timeframe, has actually dealt a big blow to the Muslim community. The Uttar Pradesh government had already renamed the Faizabad district — in which Ayodhya town is located — to Ayodhya, which enables the government to allocate any land in the district and thereby follow the Supreme Court’s order.

What’s shocking about the verdict isn’t that the Supreme Court ordered the construction of a temple at the site of the 15th-century Babri Masjid, which was demolished by a feral mob of Hindutva fascists led by the RSS and its progeny organisations on 6 December 1992 after years of mobilisation and Islamophobic agitation, but the sheer apathy shown towards the constitutional norms and law to help the Hindutva fascism pulverize the gateways of logic and rationale. Under the sclerotic regime of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP, the Muslims can’t expect justice; still, a section of the community pinned their hopes on the apex court’s wisdom, showing utmost faith in the institution and the Constitution, to be betrayed by both at the end.

Former Supreme Court judges and many legal experts are also raising questions over the contradictory verdict. Criticising the Ayodhya verdict, Justice (retired) Markanday Katju wrote in The Wire:

“The recent Ayodhya verdict of the Supreme Court will go down in the annals of Indian legal history in the same category as its 1975 decision in ADM Jabalpur vs Shivakant Shukla – except that unlike the latter, in this one there is not a single courageous dissent

In substance, the court has said that might is right, and has laid down a dangerous precedent sanctifying aggression.” [sic]

Another former Supreme Court judge, justice (retired) Ashok Ganguly was quoted by The Telegraph:

“Who owned the land 500 years ago, does anybody know? We cannot recreate history. The responsibility of the court is to preserve whatever there is. To preserve the rights to whatever there is. The court has no duty to recreate history. What was there five centuries ago, the court is not supposed to know.The court should say that the mosque was there — a fact. Not a historical fact, (but) a fact that everybody has seen. Its demolition has been seen by everybody. That should be restored. If they have no right to have a mosque, then how are you directing the government to give five acres of land to build a mosque? Why? You are accepting that the demolition of the mosque was not proper.” (sic)

Babri Masjid demolition was the single biggest attack on the secular values of the Indian Constitution. It wasn’t that minority places of worships weren’t attacked before 6 December 1992; it wasn’t that the minorities didn’t suffer injustice or pogroms before the Babri Masjid demolition. The Babri Masjid was demolished within eight years of the macabre Sikh genocide done by the Congress party and within few years of the gruesome Bhagalpur pogrom, Meerut massacre, Kashmiri Pandit massacre (first Hindu massacre done in connivance with Indian state), the massacre of Kashmiri Muslims throughout the valley, etc; however, it was the first time that the state officially supported the thugs who went on a rampage and demolished a 15th-century mosque in full public view. It’s now the completion of the circle as the judiciary endorsed the Babri Masjid demolition by offering the disputed land to the perpetrators of the crime, which the apex court ironically condemned as an “egregious violation of the rule of law”.

Since the Supreme Court began a marathon hearing of the Ayodhya plea, an ominous silence gripped the Muslim community. Taking into consideration the fact that most of the recent judgements of the Supreme Court helped the Modi regime, there was less hope for justice within the Muslim community. There was a sense of fear, mixed with anxiety and frustration within the Muslim community. Babri Masjid became a double-edged sword for them. If the Supreme Court’s verdict would’ve given them the land, then the Hindutva fascists would’ve started a mayhem and large-scale pogroms with the state’s help, and the Modi regime would’ve simply override the verdict by enacting a reactionary law using its brute majority in the Lok Sabha. The denial to the Muslims their rightful title is itself a denial of justice.

This very denial of justice to a community after accepting that they suffered injustice is what can be called a great mockery of justice in independent India. This is for the first time the Supreme Court rang the eerie alarm that the Indian state is marching ahead towards the RSS’s vision of Hindu Rashtra. This march is not a new phenomenon. Rather, the foundation of the Hindu Rashtra was laid by the Congress party through its selective appeasement of the Hindutva fascist forces since their inception. Never did the Congress party or the left forces lead any ideological struggle against the Hindutva fascist forces, rather they have, under different scenarios, helped these forces gain traction and grow powerful.

Even when the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya verdict came, all parliamentary parties from the self-styled Bahujan champion Bahujan Samaj Party, the self-styled Muslim representative Samajwadi Party, the so-called left under the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the pro-market middle-class’s representative Aam Aadmi Party, to the grand old Congress party, none showed the courage to criticise the verdict or call it anti-minority. Rather, they called it a balanced judgement that “closed the chapter” of India’s long-pending communal dichotomy. They supported the concept that the verdict will buy peace, the notion that the Supreme Court and the mainstream press created by propagating that a threat of a majoritarian violent backlash looms large on the minority community if the verdict won’t support the Hindutva fascism’s demand for a Ram Mandir at the disputed territory.

The question, therefore, is, whether the Muslims can safeguard their other places of worship by compromising on Ayodhya? Can having a Ram Mandir in Ayodhya stop the Hindutva fascist camp from its further transgressions on Muslim places of worship all over India? Can one forget the Hindutva fascist camp’s slogans like “Yeh toh kewal jhanki hain, Kashi-Mathura baaki hain” (this — Ayodhya — is a trailer, Kashi and Ayodhya are still left)? How can one guarantee insulation of the Shahi Idgah mosque of Mathura and Gyanvapi Masjid of Kashi (Varanasi), Uttar Pradesh, Kamal Maula mosque of Dhar, Madhya Pradesh, the Jama Masjid of Delhi, the mosque near Qutub Minar in Delhi, etc, that are under the Hindutva fascist camp’s demolition radar? How can one guarantee that the Hindutva camp won’t attack the other places of worship of the Muslims and use the Supreme Court’s verdict as a weapon in their obnoxious agenda? The threat of the majoritarian violence and demolition didn’t cease to exist for these mosques after the Ayodhya verdict, rather, the Supreme Court’s order, based on “preponderance of probabilities” will empower the Hindutva fascist camp to raze more places of worship that belong to the minority communities.

As this ordeal continues, as India marches ahead towards the realm of the Hindu Rashtra — the dreamland of the RSS-led Hindutva fascist camp — the space for the minority Muslims, and later for the Christians, will continue to shrink. Forget new, even protecting the existing places of worship will be a challenge as they will be inevitably encroached upon. With each new places for temples, the Hindutva fascist camp will earn huge amount of money through their international and domestic connections, but the Muslims will lose their space, their right, their existence under the hitherto omnipotent Constitution. No mainstream political party across the ideological bandwidth, except the Islamist fundamentalist All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen or the AIMIM of Assauddin Owaisi, is raising the issue and addressing the Muslim concern. This is a problematic trend of India’s so-called secular politics; this is the painful reality of Modi-fied India, where no one in the mainstream parliamentary politics dares to raise the concern of the Muslims fearing the loss of Hindu votes.

The Supreme Court’s Ayodhya verdict, which happened due to the muscle-flexing by the Hindutva fascist camp and the ruling Modi regime, will open the floodgate of violence against the Muslim community. The loss will not remain contained within Ayodhya but will actually engulf entire India. The Hindutva fascist camp, using the Supreme Court’s Ayodhya verdict, will demolish any mosque they will blame built on a demolished temple. This will eventually intensify violence against the minority communities and their existence in a republic that promised them secularism. As a Muslim in Modi-fied India, as a minority in the forthcoming Hindu Rashtra, I don’t care about my place of worship but my children’s right to co-exist with their Hindu counterparts as equal citizens with equal rights. What will happen to it? For 27 years, we didn’t see the Babri Masjid, but for all these years we believed that the Indian law and the Constitution will do justice to us. Today, left betrayed, shall we question the Constitution, the institutions like the Supreme Court that have a role to defend the Constitution or our own stupidity to have faith in them? Let us know, because each moment we will question your conscience as we suffer an unprecedented ordeal for our immediate identity in the so-called secular republic.

Smash patriarchy to defeat Sangh's Love Jihad propaganda

2019-03-11T20:00:00.000+00:00

Love is a universally endorsed thing and there are very few places on earth where loving someone is considered as a taboo or is a cause of sectarian belligerence, something that’s taking place in India and is actually being legitimised by the government of the day. The leitmotif of “love jihad”, which has been projected as sacrilege committed by the Muslims, who are now considered as human flotsam, is now exploited repeatedly by the Hindutva fascist apparatchiks who are running agitprop to garner a large voter base for the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. With the demand to ban a certain tv commercial advertisement made by the Hindustan Unilever for its detergent brand — Surf Excel — where a Muslim boy is seen escorted by a Hindu girl safely to a mosque for prayer during Holi, the Hindu festival of colour spraying, the Hindutva fascist camp’s hired thugs have displayed that they’re not going to give up the most-effective weapon of “love jihad” with the crucial Lok Sabha election around the corner.

It’s not merely the television commercial that features children celebrating friendship and bonding irrespective of religious differences, it’s about the bigotry and the sexual perversity displayed by the Sangh Parivar’s recalcitrant thugs by colouring the advertisement campaign in communal shades. The issue is that the pervert misogynist and necromaniac criminals, who unapologetically advocate exhuming the corpse of Muslim women to rape them, are now calling the Surf Excel advertisement immoral because it goes against their patriarchal narrative, it doesn’t follow their guideline of demonising and vilifying Muslims. It doesn’t follow their guideline of opposing romantic relationship or friendship between a Hindu woman and a Muslim man; portraying the latter as a conspirator working towards a demographic revolution. The sickness of their mind, the venom they spew and the cocooned shell in which they live a parasitic life, can’t allow them to see the bigger picture without loathing the Muslims in it.

The big question is when these Hindutva fascist thugs are incessantly spreading the flagrant innuendo over the purported “love jihad” by peddling fake news, bush telegraphs and vitriolic content on the internet, how bad is the situation at the grassroots? How is the “love jihad” propaganda faring at the bottom of the pyramid where it was supposed to strike? To gauge the effect that this incessant propaganda has on the common people from the Dalit and other backward castes (OBC) one needs to reach out to the rural and urban Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Rajasthan, Assam or West Bengal, where the Muslims will narrate how the community suffers the worst whenever a male member elopes with any Hindu woman, especially any woman from the upper-caste elite background. Even eloping with OBC or Dalit women has turned into fodder for genocides and pogroms in the communally volatile regions of west Uttar Pradesh, where the RSS is running its radicalisation camps with a large number of proselytisers working day and night to manufacture thousands of Hindutva fascist thugs ready to kill Muslim men and rape Muslim women of any age.

Throughout Uttar Pradesh, the Zionist Israel and the US imperialism-sponsored Hindu Yuva Vahini’s slogan “ten Muslim women for one Hindu woman” is used as a catchphrase by other Hindutva fascist minions who are running terror workshops in villages and cities under the patronage of the police and the administration of Yogi Adityanath. They are cajoling the unemployed Hindu youth to join the ranks of different progeny organisations of the RSS and earn a lot of money from extortion, land grabbing, cow seizing and trading. Abducting women from the Muslim community, any female member of a family from 12 to 50 years of age, then forcibly converting them into Hinduism (though one can be born into Hinduism and can’t convert into it due to the inherent caste system) and raping them, have become the new show of masculinity by these state-sponsored thugs. They have made open exhorts to violence against the Muslim men who dare to fall in love with Hindu women and have implemented an extra-Constitutional rule throughout their territory.

Gangs of rumbustious hooligans are carrying out vigilance over women of villages in these states; they are deciding whom women should befriend, whom women should marry, how women should behave and what women should wear. They’re calling shots over which love affairs will work and which won’t. Caste supremacy and purity is their principal goal and women are treated by these misogynists as “assets” of the patriarchal family that can be traded by the men but can’t have an independent existence. As most of the Muslim families are also deeply feudal and patriarchal in their approach, the example of Muslim men’s control over women is used by the Hindutva fascist thugs to justify their own patriarchal oppression and domination. In the rural areas, the elopements always result out of inter-caste or inter-religion affairs, where the men are mostly from socio-economically backward sections, which give enough elbow space to the Hindutva thugs, who appear as the saviour of Hindu women, to polarise the people on religious lines and fuel communal tension. Also due to the socioeconomic backwardness of the men who elope, it becomes easy to torment their families or persecute the couples.

Women and feminity play a crucial role in the fascist ideology. Women, contrary to the masculine and strong image of man projected by fascism, are always presented as weak, vulnerable and seeking protection from men. She is cast in different roles, however, she is finally a property, who is owned by and controlled by men. As women are vulnerable according to their doctrine, therefore, the fascists always portray the perceived “enemy” aggressing and violating the woman considered as a pious asset not to be violated.

For example, the nation or the country is often epitomised in the form of a woman, a mother, who is under attack from enemies and thereby, the fascists are able to evoke patriarchal passion and machismo among its hysteric followers and exhort them to attack the perceived enemy — in the case of India it’s the Muslim community. Thus, mother India is shown as a goddess under attack from a non-pious Muslim aggressor, while in the real life, the Muslim men are shown as predators harping for innocent Hindu women with an ulterior motive of changing the demography.

The fear of losing their women, whose virginity until marriage is considered as a sign of purity in the patriarchal setup, drives the men insecure. They fear a woman exercising sexual freedom, transcending caste, sect and class lines to chose a partner of her own choice and expressing womanhood in her own way. The woman, if she makes her own choice, becomes a liability, an object of shame and she can be then humiliated, violated and even killed to save the “family honour” earned through years of practising regressive patriarchy, bigotry and caste supremacy. Even though the Dalits and the OBCs have been victims of sexual violence perpetrated by the upper-caste feudal landlords and elites, the caste hierarchy within these communities itself promotes their own version of patriarchy and inter-religion marriages, especially with Muslims, are despised by members of these communities alike their upper-caste counterparts due to the prevalence of the feudal socio-economic system and the caste hierarchy. Even Dalits and OBCs feel no shame in practising “honour killings” to impose their patriarchal will.

The blistering propaganda, the seduction of the gullible and uncritical Hindu minds at various hierarchies of the society using bush telegraph, the use of feral mobs to attack weak and hapless Muslims, killing of women in the name of “family honour” and forcefully divorcing inter-religion couples by using coercion through state machinery, economic blockade, torture, rape, arson, etc, show that they all are pieces of the whole system, blocks of the same chain created to shackle a woman from expressing her desire and to live her life.

The virulent “love jihad” campaign costs millions of rupees, as a large army of Hindutva thugs, several online accounts, platforms, database, devices, etc, are required to build up the infrastructure of the institutionalised hate that will second as a “spontaneous response” for the BJP. There are people paying this huge sum of money with a motive, and that motive is an evil one. The investment is done to create a divided and fractured society that can be exploited by big corporate capital, feudal landlords and comprador capitalists.

Can these enemies of love win a battle against the quintessential qualities of human beings? Can their boisterous cacophony, their muscle-flexing and wielding of arms and ammunitions deter the lovers from falling in love? Can the hatred spewed by the Hindutva fascist thugs stop the flowers from blooming in spring? Can their weapons, their rioting, massacres, rapes, etc, wipe out the essential parts of quotidian human emotions and feelings? Can their venom spitting kill the buds of love, compassion, bonding and care? Can the “love jihad” diatribe stop love blooming between people of different communities?

One big NO can suffice as the answer to all the above questions. Love has a class character and a caste character imposed on it by the class and caste-ridden patriarchal society. However, the basic human instinct to love couldn’t be tamed by the whip-wielding sclerotic rulers of the country. It’s often at the end of massive socio-economic and political upheaval that tectonic changes occur in all aspects of human life. Right now, as India is reeling under the juggernaut of Hindutva fascism, which is pulverising the democratic aspirations of the people and the constitutional values like equality, secularism, democracy, social justice, etc, the time is approaching that a gigantic wave of people’s resentment will hit the throne of tyranny and shake the empire.

A massive revolutionary struggle by the working class, the peasantry, the toiled people and the youth of the exploited and oppressed sections of the society, including the women, will definitely defeat the Hindutva fascist Modi regime and establish a just, equal and socialist society, where love will be normal, mainstream and hatred a fringe disorder that will be dealt in the same way the former general VK Singh deals with mosquitoes that enter his bedroom at night. That’s definitely the end of all form of terrorists, especially the Hindutva fascist terrorists patronised by the Brahminical semi-colonial and semi-feudal Indian state for long, and of course the beginning of the smashing of patriarchy by the Indian women, who will also smash the venomous “love jihad” bandwagon, once and forever.

War and peace in the times of Pulwama attack and subsequent jingoism

2019-02-17T22:18:00.000+00:00

War is a commodity in India that’s often packaged with a tri-colour to conceal its grotesque features. It sells well in the large Indian political market as there are a lot of takers, who consider war and military force as two important pillars of “nationalism” and “patriotism”; nothing else matters. Whenever a militant strike takes place against the army or paramilitary forces in Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Nagaland or Manipur, the middle class and elite urban dwellers from upper-caste Hindu society get into a frenzy mode vehemently demanding sheer violence against the people of those regions.

In the case of Kashmir, they always want a war with Pakistan and anyone, who promises them a war, even a nuclear war, gets their vote. Everything else can wait, but the war can’t, and by selling this bait of war and by fanning jingoism since 1947, politicians of different shades and hues have ruled India with impunity. They have developed a culture which was prevalent in Europe during the First World War — the culture of chauvinism. It denies any scope to question the government’s war policy or the military establishment going against the prevalent international democratic norms, any such criticism is stamped as “treachery” and such critics are then persecuted.

No, it’s not Nazi Germany, it is India; the experiment that’s called world’s second largest democracy. Indeed, if the fascist Donald Trump-led imperialist US is world’s largest democracy, then another imbecile fascist-led Junta state like India can, of course, be the second one following the standard of regression.

This war-fetish persona of the Indian urban elite and middle class from the upper-caste Hindu strata didn’t develop in a day or two, or under Narendra Modi’s premiership, rather, it has always been there since the formation of two states — India and Pakistan — on the basis of religious identity in 1947.

It’s this war-fetish character of the upper-caste urban elites and middle class that has brought Modi to power. These class and caste groups voted Modi with an aspiration to see a total war with Pakistan that will ravage the neighbouring country and satiate the desire of those who have unquestionably believed that the woes of their own society have roots in the conspiracies purportedly hatched by Pakistan, which is itself an economically backward country quagmire in crisis, feudalism and colonial exploitation.

Soon after the Pulwama militant attack that killed 41 CRPF men on 14 February 2019, we saw the rejuvenation of the ultra-chauvinist chest-thumpers who call the military an epitome of patriotism and considers the wealth-creating working class and peasantry as the liability of “taxpayers’ money”. The BJP is unsurprisingly capitalising on this war cry of the politically-crucial urban middle class and elite upper-caste Hindus, showing their anger and jingoism as the mood of entire India, whose six states have higher poverty than 26 Sub-Saharan countries.

The Modi regime is planning another round “surgical strike” along the LoC, as per the press, to use the theatrics and optics of the purported attack to polarise voters before the forthcoming election. Even the opposition parties have succumbed to the viral chauvinist epidemic and they’re also demanding a no-holds-barred attack on Pakistan or at least the places where R&AW suggests the presence of terrorist camps in the neighbouring territory.

One such “surgical strike” helped the BJP with immense marketing opportunities and opened the gateway of earning opportunities to one of Modi’s sycophant directors, who made a film out of the purported tale of a “surgical strike” against Pakistan-based terrorists. Many more films will come out as the hyper-bhakts of Modi in the Hindi film industry will soon come up with multiple “patriotic” scripts to build up support for the megalomaniac dictator’s fascist regime.

Many urban, upper caste Hindu elites and middle class will consume such content and join the chorus demanding an all-out war with Pakistan. They will surely lambast Navjot Singh Sidhu for questioning the extreme jingoistic fervour officially sponsored by the Modi regime all over India. They are the one who will support the rumbustious mob attacking Kashmiri people and Muslim residents in Jammu, Bihar, Uttarakhand, etc, as they seek gory atrocities against the Kashmiri people in particular and Muslims in general to satisfy their Brahminical blood lust.

What makes this section of the population, which is nearly 25% of the population including a large number of vegetarian food terrorists — those who consider the myth that consuming meat makes a human being violent — to vouch for violence to resolve a political deadlock caused in Kashmir? The answer to this question can be found in the history of these classes and the socio-economic position of their caste groups in the present society.

Throughout history, the upper-caste Hindus had got the lower caste Hindus to fight wars on their behalf. Though the upper-caste kshatriya was supposed to be the custodian of a state’s weapons and protect it, the actual work was entrusted on the lower caste shudras, who were drafted in the armies of different rulers to fight the battles and protect the rule of the upper-caste rulers.

The British colonial rulers formed a united military command after taking over the reins of the colony from the East India Company and their British Indian Army became one of the most brutal and notorious armies in the history of the world.

The British colonial rulers proudly declared that they have raised a huge army consisting of Indian men, paid with Indian money to kill and oppress their fellow Indians. From Jallianwalabagh to other horrendous massacres, the colonial army’s men, irrespective of their religious or caste lineages, didn’t blink their eyes before executing any heinous crime against humanity following the order of their European officers. It was only a job for them, like any other, devoid of any ideology or nationalist values.

In the British Indian Army, the British colonial rulers didn’t allow the Indian sub-continent natives to become an officer. The officers were considered the elite members of the white European society and after the British left India partitioning the land to create two distinct and hostile entities — India and Pakistan — the army was distributed between the new rulers of these two states without any change in form, structure, ideology or principles. There was no democratisation or sanitisation of the military and it just changed the insignia to express loyalty towards the newly founded government, while carrying on the colonial legacy and attitude.

Since the colonial-era rules, regulations, practices and ranks still exist in the armed forces and paramilitary forces, therefore, it’s often found that the highest ranks of the military establishment are manned by upper-caste Hindus, Sikhs and very rarely few Christians or Muslims. It’s rare to see Dalits, tribal people or backward caste Hindus getting the opportunity to become officers of higher ranks, rather, in most cases, the division of labour at the lowest level in the armed forces is done on the basis of the caste system.

Hence, one will always find sweepers, cleaners, drivers, gardeners, orderlies, cobblers and washermen from those castes, which have been forced to do such menial labour historically. No upper-caste Hindus can be seen in these jobs at any point in time. Similarly, one will always find upper-caste Hindus in the role of cooks, priests, etc, as per the caste system. Most of the frontline soldiers come from backward castes, followed by members of Dalit and tribal communities. The lowest ranks of the armed forces swell with these Bahujan people, while the upper-castes monopolise the leadership roles following Indian Brahminical tradition.

Though there is a general, unwritten rule in the military to keep a minimal presence of the Muslim community in all branches of defence due to the sheer Islamophobic character of the establishment, at times a few Muslims are chosen for higher ranks to showcase India’s inclusivity vis-a-vis neighbouring Pakistan. Yet, most of the officers who have risen to the higher echelons of the Indian military establishment from the Muslim community unsurprisingly belong to the upper-caste ashraf, while the lower-caste Muslims, the pasmandas never go anywhere close to the establishment, forget the higher roles.

In case of a war, if one breaks out tomorrow, or in case of the civil war going on in different parts like Chhattisgarh, Manipur, Nagaland, Assam, etc, the majority of the soldiers who will have to die en masse fighting on behalf of the government to appease the blood lust of the upper-caste elites and middle class, will belong to the Bahujan community. It will be those like Tej Bahadur Yadav, a hapless soldier who either has to face an enemy bullet or lose his job if he complains about poor food quality. It will be like those many soldiers who commit suicide due to the stress their inhuman job adds to their lives.

Yet, they appear for the “run” to qualify and enrol in the army or the paramilitary, they willfully go to fight and persecute other people from the oppressed classes and communities, because this is the only job for many of them, who would never get any other opportunity at the places where they belong from. Thus they run, they climb, they fight, kill and get killed to ensure their families get enough to eat. It’s the tale of poverty, lack of opportunities and the threat of financial insecurity that will continue to drive young men to join the military and paramilitary forces, not the blood lust that drives an average bigoted, Hindutva-incensed nincompoop.

These urban elites and middle class haven’t experienced the pain of war. Living in Delhi, Mumbai or Bengaluru, they can vent out their anger through their keyboards and call for war, yet, unlike the European people or the Chinese or the Vietnamese, these people haven’t seen the tragic side, the repercussions of war.

The three official wars and two border conflicts that India fought with two of its neighbours didn’t reach the interior of the country. There was no displacement in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru or Chennai due to these wars. There were no enemy planes bombing these cities, no shells bursting outside schools or offices, there were no massive civilian casualties in these wars, except they brought hunger, black marketing, poverty due to inflation and affected the workers and the peasants the most.

Urban, upper-caste Hindu, elites and middle class didn’t suffer much due to these wars, except for the death of few officers from their strata. They haven’t seen the wars as closely as the Europeans, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Koreans, etc, the grandparents didn’t pass on the warning about wars to their grandchildren in India as the Second World War remained far away from India. Thus, it’s normal to find here war enthusiasts; it’s normal to find out these privileged lot reading Mein Kampf, which is considered as a despicable piece of literature in the whole world, or wearing Nazi insignia for fun or to show “attitude”.

Far away from the borders, far away from the death zone, cocooned in their safe havens they can easily vouch for a war with Pakistan or China because they know it won’t be they who will have to face the bullets, shells and grenades, rather some “expendable” poor Bahujan will be there to do his job, the job that asks for killing and dying for a government.

They have no choice, they have no privilege to sit back in a safe haven and lecture people on patriotism, they know if they don’t fight they won’t survive, their families will be economically ruined. Getting killed in action will at least help their families with a regular pension, though the promise to implement one rank one pension was breached by the Modi regime.

Ask any close family members of those who are killed in the line of duty throughout India if they want a war, and obviously, the answer will be in negative because it’s the poor, the socio-economically backward people who need peace the most as it guarantees them at least a chance to survive. At least in the peacetime, they will know their family members have less chance to be killed than during the period of war. They know whoever will die, the loss will be to families like them in a predatory war, as it will take away the hope and of course, an important wage earner, from such families.

These poor Bahujan people for whom being in the military is a compulsion and not a joy, will never want a war, will never want to venture out in jungles or villages to kill tribal people unless they are compelled to do so. It’s said, no one understands the pain of a war more than a soldier because a soldier knows that those who will be killed by his or her bullets are most likely the soldiers of the other side, sent to die at the frontiers by their political bosses. The political bosses who would publicly exhibit their patriotism by writing on social media, appearing in television shows or by simply clicking selfies with soldiers but never venture into the fronts to participate in the wars themselves.

It’s impossible to expect normalcy from these privileged caste and class groups in India due to their historic alignment with the oppressor classes and powers. They are the one who fascinates about Zionist Israel and wants New Delhi to pursue a similar or a far more notorious agenda to colonise the people of Kashmir, Nagaland and other parts. They are those who love to hail the US imperialism, and inherently, they despise the idea of socio-economic, ethnic, religious, gender and political equality guaranteed and enforced by a Constitution.

Thus, their obstreperous behaviour is absolutely predictable during such a post-attack phase. The political optics of this rumbustious outburst may look promising to the BJP, but for the common people, the working class, the farmers and the toiling masses struggling for their right to exist and right to the wealth they create through their labour, it’s a challenge.

It’s a challenge because the discourse around war and chauvinism fanned by the Modi regime will not only divert the mass attention from the deteriorating socio-economic condition and the failures of the government in generating employment, providing better income to the farmers, providing better health and education opportunities to the common people but will also confine it within the narrow walls of sectarianism and jingoism.

To defeat this menace, to defeat these privileged warmongers in the society, who have a fetish for violence, bloodshed and brutal oppression on the people who decline to show obeisance towards them and those in power, it’s necessary to build up a nationwide democratic and anti-fascist movement to detoxify the common people from the virus of jingoism and xenophobia through which the privileged sections captivate their thinking capacity.

It’s important to strengthen the farmers’ and workers’ movements to ensure that the country can again see the peasants’ Long March to Mumbai, the workers’ rally to New Delhi, which the Modi regime is trying to stop using its brute force. The more the political discourse will tilt towards the working class and the farmers from the present hyper jingoistic mode, the more the forces of democracy and class struggle can allow peace to have an upper-hand over the upper-caste elite and middle class’s vociferous cacophony for war with Pakistan.

NRC in Assam is a Dirty Trick of the Ruling Classes to Create Cheap Labour Pool

2018-08-05T21:40:00.000+01:00

When the final draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) was released, a situation of gloom and despair overshadowed the lives of four million people in Assam who didn’t make to the list and are now vulnerable to become stateless and homeless. These four million people are overnight turned into “no-one” or “aliens” and despite the assurance by Home Minister Rajnath Singh that no one, who didn’t make to the list, will be treated inhumanely or detained, there are very good chances, especially as hinted by Amit Shah’s speech on the problem of “Bangladeshi infiltrators” and the West Bengal BJP’s rhetoric on “kicking out Bangladeshis” from West Bengal once voted to power, that violence against the vulnerable people is inevitable and so is their persecution.

Four million people, most of them are Bengalis, Hindus and Muslims alike, along with Biharis, Nepalis and other “outsiders”, according to the common Axomiya parlance, have no idea what the future holds for them. This is one of the most egregious situations in which a large number of non-Axomiya people of Assam are going to face systematic extinction from the state so that the ruling classes and their lapdogs, the Hindutva fascist RSS and BJP, can sweep the 2019 Lok Sabha election riding on jingoism and xenophobia, not only in Assam but throughout the country.

Since a long time, many common Axomiya people, including the waning left-wing forces in the state, recognised the utmost inhuman and absolutely anti-people NRC list and the Foreigner Tribunals, the dreaded courts that could strike off anyone's name from the citizen’s list, as Constitutional bodies; however, in reality, all of these bodies have their roots in the infamous Assam Accord, 1985, signed between the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress Government at the centre and the militant Axomiya chauvinists, who have waged a bloody campaign against poor and hapless people of Bengali origin living in different parts of Assam as part of the ruling class’ conspiracy to keep the exploited people of Assam divided in narrow fragmentations.

A gory genocide like Nellie massacre of 18 February 1983, committed jointly by the RSS and the Congress goons, with the help of Axomiya and tribal lumpens on their payroll, happens to be the foundation of the Assam Accord. The militant chauvinist AASU, the terrorist ULFA and the parliamentary AGP, which is now a stooge of the BJP in the very state where Prafulla Mahanta once helped the saffron outfit entrench deep inside, all these organisations have played a crucial role in the Nellie massacre, the largest in India since 1947, in which 3,000 Bengali Muslims, men, women and children were murdered by a Hindutva-incensed and xenophobic mob. When such a genocide happens to be the foundation of an accord and both parties have the blood of the innocents on their sleeves, then such accords can’t have any legitimacy and no one sensible can advocate on behalf of those who committed such a heinous crime against humanity.

When the narrative of ousting “foreigners” from Assam is raised then the question rises that who gave the AASU or the other outfits, including the RSS and the Congress, to determine that 24 March 1971 should be the cut-off date for determining the origin of a person and their citizenship? Who gave the militant Axomiya chauvinist organisations, including the ULFA, an exclusive right to attack the minority Bengalis in Assam for just living in the state? Why did the subsequent governments at the centre and the state not do anything substantial to protect the rights of the vulnerable minorities, the Biharis, the Nepalis, the Bengali Hindus and Muslims? Why apart from vote bank politics no party have ever done anything from which all communities and people living in Assam could economically benefit? Why all governments and all political parties kept using the NRC as a wildcard to win elections? Why no governments or parties fought to stop Indian colonisation of Assam and plunder of Axomiya resources by the Indian ruling classes?

The reason that the NRC and the Assam Accord of 1985, a reactionary treaty itself, were given so much importance by the Indian Government is that Axomiya chauvinism and xenophobia over a purported Bengali aggression on Assam are its tools to keep the Axomiya people and different aboriginal tribes away from the Bengali people to ensure that at the grassroots, these communities do not intermingle, mix and unite against their common enemies, the Hindi-speaking, upper--caste vegetarian Hindu comprador capitalists from North and West India who have monopolised their absolute control over the resources and labour of Assam through millions of threads using which they manage the colonisation of Assam.

Ever since the British colonial rulers left Assam and the Indian ruling classes colonised Assam, all top administrative posts and all major businesses of the state were usurped by the Hindi, Gujarati and Marwari-speaking upper-caste elites. They replaced the white-skinned sahib or his former lieutenant, the Bengali Bhadralok (upper-caste, suave, British puppet elites and upper-middle class Hindus from Bengal) who ruled Assam with an iron fist during the colonial period and kept exploiting the labour and resources. For the new rulers, who indeed had their own Bengali and Axomiya collaborators, it was imperative to distract the Axomiya people from the exploitation of the majority of workers, peasants and toiled people of Assam by the new rulers. Also, during the late 1940s, there was also a compulsion to stop the communists from penetrating deeper inside Assam to carry out agitprop. This dual reasons drove the new rulers to endorse a policy of jingoism and communal hatred to spread in Assam targeting the Bengali people, especially the refugees from then East Pakistan who came to live in Lower Assam.

Throughout the history of the post-colonial India, Assam experienced the goriest atrocities against the Bengali community, which were executed by a section of the xenophobic and jingoistic Axomiya extremists, whom both the Congress and its opponents like the Sangh Parivar used as puppets to achieve their own political goals. Violence-ridden Assam helped to spread the anti-Bengali sentiments to neighbouring Tripura and Meghalaya, where the Bengalis were also targeted by chauvinist locals. Though there is no real data on the migration of so-called Bangladeshi infiltrators into Assam, however, there are records of more than 50,000 Bengalis fleeing to West Bengal during the infamous “Bongal Kheda” campaign against the community in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. All Bengalis are treated as foreigners and even before the NRC list appeared, the Bengali refugees, especially the Bengali Muslims, faced continuous discrimination for their identity in Assam and in human development index, these people fared worse than that of people of neighbouring Bangladesh.

Today, all political camps are celebrating the exclusion of four million people from the NRC. Though the NRC was between the militant Axomiya chauvinists and the Congress-led government at the centre, political parties of all spectrums and hues, including most of the parliamentary “left” forces have been supporting it, citing a “popular demand” for NRC in Assam, which was fanned by an incessant wave of xenophobic propaganda and the efforts of the ruling classes to establish the hegemony of Hindi language, North Indian vegetarian Hindu culture and Hindutva ideology of bigotry in Assam. This xenophobia has actually driven the politically unconscious people, affected by jingoism, to believe that the socio-economic problems of Assam, their own poverty and deprivation from the ownership of economic resources are caused by “infiltration” of “foreigners” into their land, especially the Bengali “intruders”, whom the vulnerable and politically backward Axomiyas are taught to hate.

Socio-economically Assam lags behind many states in India. According to the Socio-Economic Caste Survey, only 7.59 per cent of the population have government jobs and 0.88 per cent in the public sector, while only 3.80 per cent have private jobs in the state. Why subsequent governments failed to create employment opportunities for even the Axomiya people, forget the aboriginal people, the Bodos, the tribals of tea gardens and the Bengali community? It was found 76.89 per cent have an income below Rs 5,000 and by 2021 even if this amount reaches Rs 9,000, then too, it will be too low for families, even with three members, to survive with this paltry amount amidst skyrocketing inflation and save some for rainy days. With 31.64 per cent of landless peasants, Assam is, of course, a state where the government could throw the popular demand for land reform to the back burner and instead have the “outsider vs insider” narrative as the focal theme of governance.

An Axomiya militant chauvinist celebrates the exclusion of four million people from the NRC final draft as it means ouster of the “foreigner” from the state, the Hindutva fascist celebrates because for him the persecution and humiliation of a Muslim is more orgasmic than anything else, nothing feeds his bigotry better than the wailing of Muslims oppressed by an overtly saffronised state machine; the Bengali Hindu of West Bengal is happy because more than Bengali, he’s taught to be Indian, he’s taught to swear allegiance to the Hindi-speaking, vegetarian and Hindutva bigotry mongering ruling classes of North and West India with whom he has no socio-cultural ties and hate fellow Bengalis of another religion because they are taught to be his enemies. There’s happiness among many political forces that are keen to cash-on the agony of these four million people and increase their political weight in the state. So, basically, the NRC is feeding everyone’s political aspiration except those who are poor.

While one may belong to any of the above-described categories, celebrating the plight of the hapless four million people, they may not be aware of the arithmetics behind this NRC drama in Assam and this sudden attack against four million people. NRC has given a time frame to the four million, whose names didn’t feature in the final draft list, to reappear before its local offices and resubmit their citizenship and ancestral records to prove that they or their ancestors came to Assam before midnight of 24 March 1971. Due to this process, it’s possible that nearly 2.5 million people, mostly the Hindu Bengalis, Nepalis and Biharis make their way to the final list, while 1.5 million people, mostly Muslims and mostly poor, may not make it to the list.

So what’s going to happen to these 1.5 million people? Will they be detained forever for being “illegal” and living in India? Can people whose parents or grandparents migrated after 24 March 1971 and were born in India be counted as guilty of a crime that they didn’t have any idea about? When the BJP and its hardcore Hindutva fanatic supporters are calling for ending their citizenship and either throw them out of India or imprison them, when the Axomiya militant chauvinist organisations are keen to carry out massacres, then what steps would the governments at state and union level take regarding the scaled down number of “illegal” residents? Will they become stateless people with a permanent tag around their neck making them susceptible to attacks by jingoistic mobs? Will these people be locked up for the rest of their lives in the detention centres built with public money? Or, whether these people will be deported to Bangladesh?

There is no treaty between Bangladesh and India over the deportation of illegal immigrants and India has recently assured Bangladesh that it will not try to push the so-called “illegal immigrants” into the latter’s territory. After this assurance, there’s absolutely no chance that the majority of these people who have been living in Assam for decades can be deported back and thus there remain two possibilities open for the governments at the centre and at the state.

Firstly, some of these 1.5 million people will be sent to the detention centres, which are nothing but mini concentration camps carved out in the present day overpopulated prisons. The Indian state is not generous to feed a large number of detained people, who will be separated from their families and won’t have citizenship rights unlike those who are imprisoned in the prisons, hence, there is a good chance that their labour will be exploited and usurped by the state. Secondly, a majority of these disenfranchised people, who will be actually stateless and rightless, will be left to bear the brunt of the anger of Axomiya militant chauvinism and the Hindutva fascists, who would take on turns to attack and force them into an exodus to other parts of the country. As stateless and rightless people, their labour will be available for sale at a lower or rather, a throw-away price, which will immensely benefit the Ambanis, Adanis and big corporations, who will be able to exploit their labour and fill their coffer with more blood money.

Many people, including the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, are predicting a large-scale civil war in Assam and West Bengal, however, as such catastrophes will be non-profitable for the big corporations, foreign and domestic, hence, the RSS or its affiliates will refrain from sparking flames of large-scale genocides, rather, they will try to create a lot of small and medium-scale riots throughout West Bengal and Assam, where few hundred Muslims will be butchered by them, along with some Hindus, so that the pre-poll society can be polarised by 2021.

There will be low-intensity communal attacks and violence all over India later on, which would be fuelled by a xenophobia against “Bangladeshi infiltrators”. This electoral pitch on “Bangladeshi infiltrators” in other states will target only the Bengali-speaking Muslims, who will be seriously affected socio-economically as a large number of these people travel to states like Kerala, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan for work. The BJP’s constant propaganda and the RSS’ provocation will instigate the local Hindus to attack them out of xenophobia. Many of them may lose their jobs and can be hounded by the state to appease the Hindutva fascist thugs.

Subjugated and cornered, the Bengali Muslims, including the educated middle-class, will be forced to sell their labour for cheap or move to their home states where they may be again facing NRC-type draconian practice and with the clout that the BJP has on the administration, a lot of Muslims will face difficulty even living in their own home state, West Bengal.

When the BJP is organising rallies against the Bengalis in the heart of Kolkata by flouting the photos of their non-Bengali leaders and their non-Bengali leaders, armed with the support of a large section of politically backward Bengali Hindus who are clinging to the BJP hoping that it will rescue them from Mamata Banerjee’s tyrannical rule, are audaciously threatening Bengali Muslims with dire consequences in their own state, then the space for Bengali Muslims is already shrinking. In Assam, they have started their exercise 35 years ago with Nellie massacre and from there the campaign to create a huge reserve army of stateless labour open to extreme exploitation started and now the ruling classes are visibly happy to ultimately locate the source of cheap labour in the country, who wouldn’t even have basic citizenship rights and thus can’t even ask for anything that those with citizenship rights can at least demand.

To save these vulnerable poor people from facing violence and exploitation it’s important that the base of the problem, i.e. the inhuman and anti-people NRC listing and its foundation, the Assam Accord, are discarded by the majority of the people, i.e. the poor people of Assam. This can only happen when these poor people can be politically weaned away from the Axomiya militant chauvinists who work as the bootlickers of the Indian ruling classes and their Hindutva empire. To defeat these lackeys of New Delhi who are actually pitting one section of the population against another to gain political scores, it’s necessary to expose their deep economic and political ties with the Indian colonisers, whom these forces are not calling foreigners unlike the poor Bengali Muslims, who will bear the brunt of the forthcoming xenophobic attacks. Thus, only the revolutionary communists, who understand the intricacies of the Assam and its politics, can take up the arduous task of uniting the majority of the people against a common enemy.

It’s imperative for those in the revolutionary communist ranks to understand that the principal contradiction in Assam is not between indigenous people and foreigners, as it’s portrayed. This contradiction is actually an artificial one that the Hindi-speaking, upper-caste, vegetarian, North and West Indian comprador capitalists, bureaucrats and their lackeys have erected in Assam by vilifying the vulnerable Bengali community as the enemy of the indigenous people. It will be politically wrong to side with the exploiters or to justify the NRC because they are tools of the ruling class to drive a wedge between the people by fanning chauvinism. The communists must oppose the NRC and the Assam Accord by stating clearly that the poor Axomiya and the poor Bengali people share common enemies, who are also enemies of other aboriginal people. The enemies are the comprador capitalists, the feudal landlords, the rural usurers, the foreign corporations and their lackey bureaucracy manned by those who have no connection with Assam or its people but are working towards consolidating Indian colonisation of Assam.

The communists must not hesitate to clearly declare that the Assam Accord was a treaty between two criminal gangs, who shared an interest in plundering the resources and human labour of Assam. If there was an iota of sincerity among any of these two parties over the fate of the people of Assam, then they would not have allowed the incessant plundering of the state’s mineral resources, oil reserve, tea plantation, etc. by the foreign and domestic corporations; they would not have allowed unemployment to persist in the state and would have at least provided employment opportunity to all Axomiya and aboriginal people. Rather the same government and the same politicians of the chauvinist camp are now busy brokering power-sharing deals, bargaining ministerial berths and amending Indian Constitution to allow citizenship on the basis of religion to selected groups.

No communist can be a supporter of NRC just because the people have spontaneously supported it. Tailing spontaneous movements and popular demands without analysing the fact that which class is benefitting from them is negating the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism. It’s very crucial for communists to judge that whether their words and actions are in tandem with the interests of the working class, whether their deeds will help the peasantry and whether their standpoint will be beneficial in forging the unity of the working people from all religions, regions, nations, creed and races. If not, even by an iota, then they should immediately do retrospection and course correction. The parliamentary left and their intellectual lobby have always supported the standpoint of the ruling classes and the Axomiya chauvinism and hence it’s important for the revolutionary communists to expose them and their ties with the rulers to ensure that the people can recognise their treachery and condemn them.

In the coming days, Assam and West Bengal will experience intense communal polarisation campaigns by the RSS and the BJP, with the support of the Axomiya and Bengali chauvinists, which would add to their project of creating a barrier to keep the working class and the poor divided. The common people of Germany were not aware of Hitler’s crimes against humanity or the concentration camps, however, in India, by instigating the decision-maker upper-caste elite and urban middle-class Hindus through xenophobia over a purported threat posed by millions of “illegal Bangladeshi infiltrators” the Hindutva fascist RSS and the Modi regime are trying to legitimise their future pogroms against the Bengali Muslims. The Modi regime and its corporate masters are building support throughout India so that they can officially oppress and exploit the Bengali Muslims and the people don’t oppose that inhuman act.

It’s only the revolutionary communists who can prevent such a dangerous situation by building class unity among the poor, especially the working class and the poor-landless peasantry. If a strong class unity can be built by clearly exposing the conspiracies of the Indian ruling classes, then the people’s struggle will identify its true enemy and target it with the goal of establishing a free, democratic, secular and socialist society that the Indian ruling classes never wanted. The working class’ struggle is to break the shackles of exploitation and oppression for which the ruling classes have divided them into narrow sections and have fuelled fratricide to kill each other while helping the owners of the means of production to prosper. Therefore, the working class should not be allowed to become a victim of the ruling class’ nefarious propaganda.

During the NRC fiasco, Reliance Industries Ltd posted its highest profit in the first quarter of 2018-19, Adani too managed to gain a huge profit and Antigua revealed that the Modi regime had cleared the citizenship request by PNB fraud accused Mehul Choksi, the uncle of the main culprit Nirav Modi. Using the cacophony over the NRC final draft, the BJP is trying to put the Rafale Jet scam to the backburner. The Modi regime is using the opportunity to help the Raghubar Das-led Jharkhand Government to suppress the Pathalgadi movement of the tribal people against the BJP and its regime by building a narrative around “Bangladeshi infiltrators” in Jharkhand. These all incidents need to be shared with the people so that the conspiracy can be exposed.

It’s time that the communists expose it to the Axomiya and Bengali people that their common enemies, the feudal landlords, the comprador capitalists and big foreign corporations who are trying to annex the people’s land and livelihood, must be defeated through a collective action and only then can the people live in a truly harmonious society with employment, food, shelter, clothing, universal healthcare and education.

Unless the communists uphold this goal and negate the jingoistic fervour of the ruling classes, it will be impossible to stop the cavalcade of the Hindutva fascists and their local appendages in West Bengal and Assam. Let the demand of burning down the Assam Accord and the NRC rise throughout Assam, let the politically aroused Axomiya people and other aboriginal people assert that the land and resources of Assam belong to them and to all other oppressed and exploited people but not to those who fund Narendra Modi and loot Assam and let the Axomiya poor be united with the Bengali poor in fighting against the common enemies, because only then the beginning of the end of the Hindutva fascist Modi regime-led Indian colonisers and their patrons can be seen.

Electoral Loss of the CPI(M) Isn't the Defeat of Communist Movement in India

2018-03-05T18:05:00.001+00:00

The deafening cacophony of klaxons blown by the rambunctious supporters and cadres of the Hindutva fascist camp, marching victoriously on the roads of Agartala and applying saffron vermillion on each other is a rare optic in the political arena of Tripura, which remained a strong bastion of the CPI(M) since last 25 years. The fortress crumbled and collapsed due to the blitzkrieg attack of the Hindutva fascism, represented by the BJP and supported by the strong network of armed militants from the RSS, Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and their new-found ally, the IPFT. The BJP, under Narendra Modi, inflicted the most humiliating defeat to the CPI(M) in the first-ever direct electoral battle between the two parties in the history of India.

By winning 35 seats out of the total 59 contested (polling was cancelled in one constituency of Tripura due to the death of the CPI(M) candidate) and its ally, the IPFT, winning eight out of nine seats contested, the saffron camp’s total tally now stands at 43 out of 59, while the CPI(M)-led Left Front is now decimated and reduced to mere 16, a big fall from the 50 seats out of 60 that the bloc won in 2013. The BJP, which had less than 2 per cent vote share in the 2013 Tripura assembly election, managed to secure 43 per cent of the votes, while the CPI(M) -led Left Front could manage only 42.6 per cent votes. The IPFT managed to get 8 per cent votes. The Congress, which won 10 seats in the 2013 assembly election, and later lost six of them to the Trinamool Congress (later those MLAs got a higher price from the BJP and switched to the saffron camp to make the party the largest opposition force in the previous assembly), was wiped away from the political arithmetics of Tripura. This time the Congress only got less than 2 per cent votes and not a single seat in the legislative assembly. This shows that the traditional Congress vote-bank, the utmost reactionary and the anti-people vote bank, this time switched allegiance to the RSS-led Hindutva camp as the payouts offered by Amit Shah were extremely high and the chances of the CPI(M) were bleak.

When the CPI(M) was preparing to fight its maiden direct battle with the BJP led by Narendra Modi in a non-important, small state like Tripura, the entire corporate-controlled and Hindutva-inclined mainstream media focused their lens on the electoral battle and showcased it as a struggle of ideologies, the Marxist ideology vs the Hindutva ideology. The “political experts” on Tripura, who wouldn’t be able to distinguish Tripura from the neighbouring Mizoram, Meghalaya or Assam on an unmarked map of India, run a campaign on the futility of the “left ideology” in Indian politics and the requirement of “development” in Tripura, though the definition of that development remains quite elusive after four years of Modi government’s unbridled rule that resulted into rising inflation, rising unemployment, increase in big-ticket scams, including defence scam over Rafale Jet purchase worth Rs. 58,000 crore and the running away of big crony and comprador capitalists like Lalit Modi, Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi, who stole thousands of crore rupees from the Indian public sector banks.

These highly-paid political experts on the payroll of the Hindutva fascists and their corporate masters started to write-off the communists from the Indian political arena due to the decimation of the CPI(M) and its parliamentary opportunist allies in the Tripura assembly election. It seemed like a remake of the write-off of Indian communist movement that the RSS and the Congress declared when the CPI(M)-led Left Front had an utter rout in the West Bengal assembly election in 2011 and 2016. Whatever may be the occasion, the electoral defeat of the CPI(M), which is called a social-fascist organisation in the revolutionary left verbiage, is always equated with the defeat of the communist ideology and the working class movement in India. The mere dream of an India, free of the “communist menace” that threatens to disrupt the status quo and the centralisation of wealth in the hands of few, gives a sheer orgasmic pleasure to the right-wing journalists and fascist bootlickers. They love to live in their Goebellian fictitious world and curse the crimson for all the woes their masters have created.

Anyways, the BJP won Tripura because it successfully invested money to buy votes, party cadre and coalition partners; a hell lot of money was spent by the BJP, the very money that it received through generous corporate donations. Tripura was grabbed by the BJP through a very carefully drafted strategy that the RSS planned for the organisation’s North-East expansion. First of all, the Narendra Modi-led government appointed a certified Hindutva rabble-rouser and hatred monger Tathagata Roy as the Governor of Tripura to create a base in the state that can work as the rallying point for all Hindutva terror units. The RSS shakhas that remained in a die-down state since decades, received immense funding for revival and they hired a lot of former militants, local hooligans, Bengali and Tripuri intellectuals and government officials. Secondly, the Modi regime and the BJP bought the entire Congress-turned-Trinamool Congress unit of Tripura to entrench deep into the state’s legislature and both Congress and Trinamool Congress leadership endorsed this encroachment through their silent nod, as they wanted the BJP to work as the chief opposition force that can rally all anti-left voters and wean a majority of the Hindu and tribal voters from the CPI(M)-led Left Front fold by using religious fundamentalism and bigotry as a bait, something that the Congress and the Trinamool Congress can’t do openly because they are tied to their pseudo secular commitments, which talk about secularism in open while promotes bigotry beneath the sublayers.

The BJP managed to secure a huge margin in the state due to its successful political alliance with the IPFT, which played a crucial role in promoting sectarian violence in the state, especially between the Bengalis and tribals, since a long time. The Baptist Church, which played an anti-BJP tune in Meghalaya, supported the Hindutva camp’s endeavour secretly in Tripura, helping the Hindutva fanatics with the votes from the Baptist tribals, while knowing that the BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS, will attack the tribal Christians - the first thing after they are done with the minuscule Muslim population in Agartala, Udaipur and Dharmanagar. The weapon of all seasons - “Bangladeshi Muslim influx” was used by the team of Ram Madhav and Himanta Biswa Sarma in Tripura to evoke Islamophobia in a society that had been more or less cohesive in the last two decades after suffering a violence-clad AFSPA rule for years. Though Tripura has a very negligible Muslim population, the saffron camp went on a berserk vilifying the community by magnifying the threat of Bangladeshi Muslims and accusing the parliamentary left of "appeasing Muslims" at the cost of Hindu agony.

The RSS organised a seminar on border security in Kolkata, which was attended by the infamous Tripura Governor and RSS hate monger Tathagata Roy and his RSS collaborator Keshri Nath Tripathi, the Governor of West Bengal, deputed to overlook the strengthening and usurping of power in the state by the BJP, along with the serving DG of the BSF, K.K. Sharma, who attended the event in his official capacity to show his and the BSF's allegiance to the Hindutva fascist bloc and its ideology of hatred. The event was used to build up a strategy to spread communal discord in the border villages of Assam, Tripura and West Bengal by inciting Islamophobia and by falsely implicating the Muslim voters under various laws. The RSS also ensured through a series of measures and by carrying out indoctrination camps for the BSF personnel that a lot of Hindu infiltrators are allowed to pass into Indian territory from Bangladesh, and can be provided with voter cards and Indian identity so that they can increase the vote counts of the BJP, while the original Muslim voters can be bullied and kept away from voting in all these states.

The Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, in association with the local Hindutva terror outfit Hindu Samhati (financed by the CIA, Mossad and the SIS), used Tripura as a gateway to reach Bangladesh and set-up militant camps there to incite local Hindus and spread communal discord. The Bengali Hindus of Tripura, who are ardent Shakta Hindus, were slowly evangelised since 2014 by vegetarian Vaishnava Hindu proselytisers to adopt the latter way of life and give up Shakta practices. A lot of bigotry had entrenched into the state, brought by these North Indian and Gujarati proselytisers cum apparatchiks of the Hindutva camp and right under the nose of the CPI(M), the majority of its Hindu supporters, especially Hindu Bengalis, became ardent Hindutva fanatics and supporters of Narendra Modi brand of fascism.

Now the question is - when the BJP and the RSS were doing so many things right under its nose, what the CPI(M) was doing to stop the Hindutva cavalcade and protect its 25-year-long rule in Tripura?

Actually, the CPI(M) was not preparing itself to fight and wipe away the traces of the divisive North Indian Hindi-speaking Hindutva fascists from the small state that had been its citadel for a long time, rather it consciously allowed the RSS and its Hindutva affiliates to spread throughout the state out of the fear that the Modi government can dismiss the CPI(M)-led government in Tripura, if the latter resisted the growth and aspirations of the Hindutva camp. This fear of the so-called Marxist party evolved from its desperation to retain the ruling position under the present state-machinery, the very fear which is now forcing it to prostrate before the BJP in Kerala. The CPI(M) itself paved the ways for the BJP to win victory and establish the Hindutva hegemony in its former base - Tripura and it's paving the way for the BJP to seize victory in Kerala in 2021.

There are editorials and op-eds written by so many left-bashers who claimed that the left is waning in the country by epitomising the CPI(M) and the Left Front led by it as the sole representative of the Indian communist movement. The rhetoric around the left’s decay in the corporate media, which caught the imagination of the privileged urban, upwardly mobile and aspiring middle-class since the major poll debacle of the CPI(M)-led Left Front in the 2009 general election, got a new lease of life after the BJP’s victory in Tripura. There has been an incessant flow of articles asking the CPI(M) to revise its strategy and shed the “outdated” ideology and many so-called militants within the parliamentary left camp demanded a complete separation from the Congress, few expected, in their wildest fantasies, the CPI(M) and the parliamentary left bloc will learn a lesson from these losses and take the path of revolutionary struggle by purging revisionist filth from within. Amidst such hullabaloo, it becomes imperative to discuss the communist movement in India and the role played by the CPI(M)-led Left Front in its context.

The CPI(M) was founded in 1964 after a section of the CPI leadership failed to win the inner-party power struggle. Using the pretext of the Indian aggression on China and the Sino-Soviet contradiction on political ideology, especially the polemic on Marxism-Leninism called The Great Debate, the clique of P. Sundarayya-E.M.S. Namboodiripad-B.T. Ranadive-Jyoti Basu-Pramod Dasgupta split from the CPI and formed the CPI(M) by hoodwinking the revolutionary communists to believe that the new party will follow the path of revolutionary struggle and lead the working class and peasantry to seize power and establish a people’s democratic state.

The revolutionary façade couldn’t be retained by the CPI(M) leadership for long, as the party joined hands with the reactionary feudal parties to form the United Front government in West Bengal after the coalition defeated the Congress in the 1967 assembly election. Same year, in the month of May, Jyoti Basu, the self-styled communist maverick and one of the key leaders of the CPI(M) who became the home minister in the United Front government, ordered police firing on tribal poor and landless peasants of Naxalbari, a small hamlet in West Bengal’s Darjeeling district, who were fighting against the feudal landlords to seize state power by following the political line of Mao Zedong-led revolution of China. The police firing killed 11 peasants, including one man, eight women and two toddlers.

The Naxalbari peasants’ uprising and its subsequent clampdown by the revisionist Jyoti Basu-Harekrishna Konar clique, created a massive uproar within the communist movement of India and the world. Even the Mao Zedong-led Chinese Communist Party, which called the Naxalbari rebellion as “Spring Thunder Over India”, criticised the CPI(M) for its revisionist politics, which aimed at preserving the rule of the reactionary Indian ruling classes. The CPC called the CPI(M) leadership - the running dogs of imperialism, which humiliated the crimson credentials of the Jyoti Basu-Pramod Dasgupta-B.T. Ranadive clique so much that they looked up to the Cuban leader Fidel Castro to use him as the revolutionary icon, along with Che Guevara, instead of Mao Zedong.

Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the CPI(M) worked hand-in-glove with the reactionary Congress and the Indian state machinery to butcher the Naxalbari-influenced revolutionary communists who rallied under the new communist party, the CPI(M-L). The CPI(M) was complicit in crimes like the massacre of revolutionary communists in Baranagar and Cossipore of Calcutta, where hundreds of CPI(M-L) and even some CPI(M) activists were brutally lynched by the hoodlums of the Congress and supported by the men of CPI(M) who cordoned-off the area.

Another partner of the Left Front, the CPI, collaborated nakedly with the Congress regime following the diktats from Moscow and became a partner of the Indira Gandhi regime during the dark period of National Emergency. It remained a partner-in-crime of the Congress throughout the 1970s and played a key role in establishing Soviet social-imperialism’s military hegemony in India during the same period. The fall of the Congress and the waning of the Soviet influence on India following the American assertion on the country since the 1980s caused an immense erosion in the base of the CPI and rendered it a toothless force that had to cling to the CPI(M) to remain politically relevant in the state and the country.

When the CPI(M) founded the Left Front government in West Bengal in 1977, riding the anti-incumbency wave after the end of the Emergency, a lot of Dalit refugees from East Bengal, who were thrown to Dandakaranya to keep them away from the Bengali upper-caste refugees living in West Bengal, returned with a hope to live in the state under the “poor people’s government” - a term with which the Left Front government identified itself. However, the Jyoti Basu government had other plans; it initiated a massacre of Dalit refugees in Marichjhapi, in the Sundarbans of West Bengal.

More than 1,000 refugees were killed, their bodies were dumped in different rivers of the Sundarbans by the police, many were fed alive to the tigers and crocodiles. The massacre of Marichjhapi remains immersed in conspicuous silence due to the identity of the dead. It wasn’t the end, rather, the CPI(M)-led Left Front government organised incessant attacks to halt the growth of the revolutionary communist movement of the working class and the peasantry in states like Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal, where it ruled. Many revolutionary communists were killed, Dalits, Tribals and Muslims were repressed by the state machinery marshalled by these pseudo-Marxists.

The CPI(M) and the Left Front members embraced the neo-liberal economic model as soon as the Soviet social-imperialism (which the CPI(M) considered socialist even after Nikita Khrushchev established state-capitalism in the USSR after the death of Stalin) collapsed in 1991. The governments of the CPI(M) in Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal nakedly appeased big corporations, foreign capital and banks in their states, following the path shown by other states ruled by the right-wing reactionaries. By using the pretext of bringing "development" to the people, the CPI(M) helped the big corporations to plunder the states it ruled for years. Rather than focusing on building up people's movement against the order of the day, the CPI(M) and its partners worked untiredly to build a positive image of the state-machinery ruled by the reactionary ruling classes and to instil sham hope of justice among the people from the very system that stands on the foundation of gross injustice.

The desperate attempts by the CPI(M) to annex the multi-crop land of the farmers in Singur, Hooghly district of West Bengal, for setting up the Tata Nano Car factory resulted into a massive movement throughout the state, which drew nationwide attention. The CPI(M) resorted to murders, bullying of local villagers and even raping of little girls to dominate the people of Singur and thereby, it lost its strongholds in the state, especially among the villagers, to the Trinamool Congress.

The Nandigram incident of March 2007, where the CPI(M)-led Left Front government sprayed bullets on the agitating peasants who protested against the forcible land acquisition by the government in favour of the giant anti-communist massacre funder, Salem group of Indonesia, dug the grave of the CPI(M) in West Bengal. In Nandigram, the CPI(M) carried out armed raids to cow the villagers, massacred numerous peasants, dumped the dead bodies into the sea, raped women and established a reign of terror through its hired goons to instil fear in the hearts of the villagers and to command their unconditional obeisance.

A small spark of agitation by the tribal people in the Lalgarh block of the West Midnapore district of West Bengal, which started in November 2008, developed into a mass rebellion by June 2009 and targeted the CPI(M) strongholds in the district. The palaces built by the party leaders, who ruled the poorest of the poor tribals, were burned down by the people; even local militias were formed by the tribal people to fight the henchmen of the CPI(M), called “Harmad” in local verbiage. The CPI(M)-led Left Front government joined hands with the Congress-led UPA II government to launch a massive war against the tribal people of the country, codenamed - Operation Green Hunt. The CPI(M) oversaw the deployment of the rabid Hindutva fanatic paramilitary forces in the villages of Lalgarh and along with these henchmen of the state, it sent its own mercenaries to cull villagers en masse and establish a reign of terror in the region.

Though the CPI(M) was booted out of power for its misrule, oppression and unapologetic corporate bootlicking in 2011, the party kept following the same policies throughout its opposition period and didn’t apologise for those inhuman crimes. In connivance with Mamata Banerjee, the CPI(M) helped the religious fundamentalist forces to breed and multiply in the state under the leadership of the RSS and Hindu Samhati since 2011. One after another CPI(M) mercenary either switched to the Trinamool Congress or the BJP and the CPI(M) was rendered into a signboard throughout the state. Powered by the henchmen who joined their bandwagon, the Hindutva camp and the Trinamool Congress are fighting a bloody war for power in West Bengal by instigating communal riots and by inciting mob violence.

The CPI(M) is a revisionist, opportunist and social-fascist party that discarded the ideology of Marxism-Leninism soon after its formation and since 1967, it has been supporting and serving the interests of the feudal landlords, the comprador and bureaucratic capitalists, the foreign imperialist powers with extreme diligence and devotion. The CPI(M) and the Left Front constituents are a bulwark of reaction in crimson attire; their main job is to befool the Indian people, keep them away from the path of revolution and to push them into the mire of parliamentary politics that will bring no real and substantial changes for the majority of the people. The CPI(M) is another parliamentary party of the ruling class, which is equally anti-communist like the rest but with one difference, the signboard that calls it communist. Rather than following the ideology of Marxism-Leninism and implementing it to the concrete condition of the Indian revolution, the CPI(M) and its Left Front allies have diluted Marxism and have acted in connivance with the ruling classes to build up a negative perception about the communist movement in the minds of the poor people, who have felt cheated as the CPI(M) and other Left Front partners never fulfilled their aspirations for a better future, an economic freedom and social justice, rather intensified the oppression by adding the fading crimson hue to it.

Joseph Stalin died in 1953 on this very day; if he had seen the CPI(M) in power, then its fall from power and then its campaign to regain power through elections, he would have reiterated: “After the experience of Social-Democrats being in power, when they broke strikes, organised lockouts and shot down workers, the false promises of "industrial democracy, peace in industry," and "peaceful methods" of struggle sound like cruel mockery to the workers. Will many workers be found today capable of believing the false doctrines of the social-fascists?” (SW Vol-12 pp 259-260)

No wonder, these social-fascists (socialism in name and fascism in deeds) like the CPI(M) and its allies are what Lenin called the “labour lieutenants of imperialism” or the exemplary example of the “labour aristocracy” which evolved into utmost revisionist and a reactionary battalion of the ruling classes. The CPI(M) has served the ruling classes of India quite earnestly to receive its share of trickled down benefits of the so-called “development” that is driving its brand of “alternative” politics since a long time. As a representative of the Brahminical, patriarchal and feudal ruling classes, the CPI(M) is the reactionary beast against which the working class of the country must fight, ideologically and organisationally, to ensure its liquidation, which will pave the way for the revolutionary ranks of the working class to fight its real class enemies and seize the state power to establish a people’s democratic rule.

It’s not that the social-fascist CPI(M) isn’t aware of the plans and programmes of the RSS and the BJP in the states that it rules, like Kerala and formerly Tripura and West Bengal, however, the party skipped the responsibility of building strong resistance struggle against the onslaught of Hindutva fascism because it followed the diktat of the ruling clique, which ordered the party and its stakeholders to endorse the menace. Unless the CPI(M) wanted, the RSS or the BJP wouldn’t have survived in Tripura for 24 hours, forget months and years. It’s the CPI(M) and the BJP’s tactical understanding and their obeisance to the diktats of the common master that one willfully stepped down from power while the other ascended to the throne.

This is a sheer reason that when the poor supporters of the CPI(M), who somehow still believe that the party will serve their class interests, come under attack from the fascist goons of the BJP or the Trinamool during the post-poll violence in Kerala, Tripura or West Bengal, the CPI(M) desists them from resisting those attacks through strong and militant class struggle. Rather the CPI(M) leaders betray their poor loyalists at their hour of crisis and then exploit their beleaguered situation to build up “legal” movements, demanding respite from the very system that is commanded by those who are complicit in the killing of the poor. This gross sacrilege of Marxist-Leninist values by the CPI(M) and its Left Front partners make them the subject of opprobrium in the international and domestic Marxist-Leninist camp.

If the CPI(M) had a genuine desire to fight the RSS-led Hindutva camp anywhere in India, including their citadel of Kerala, Tripura and West Bengal, they would have done it and defeated the Hindutva fascists with their manpower by now. The CPI(M) cadres and leaders oversaw the formation and growth of the RSS Shakhas and they actively supported the Hindutva camp in many places of Tripura, especially in the Bengali Hindu neighbourhoods of Agartala and Dharmanagar, as the RSS and other Hindutva organisations appealed to the bigotry-filled minds of the party's leadership.

Recently, the dreaded former mercenary of the CPI(M), Lakshman Sheth of Tamluk, infamous for mastering massacres in Nandigram, joined the BJP and is now helping it make inroads in territories that were hitherto uncharted. The people of West Bengal and the Marxist-Leninists of the country are not flabbergasted at the political optics of this development. A lot of CPI(M) workers and supporters in post-poll Tripura have switched to the BJP by the time of writing this article and a lot of leaders, workers and supporters are waiting to join the Hindutva fascist caravan and slay Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Tribal people.

Ram Madhav and Himanta Biswa Sarma, the two rising stars of the Hindutva fascist camp, are enjoying their aggrandisement, following the strengthening of the saffron base in Tripura, the state where they had no presence four years ago. They were able to unfurl the saffron banner of hatred and violence in Agartala because of the active and concealed support they received from the CPI(M) leadership. The CPI(M) leaders, who helped Ram Madhav, Himanta Biswa Sarma and Tathagata Roy in their first major electoral victory against the parliamentary left in the country, are getting rewarded by the ruling classes for their exemplary service in spreading pessimism about the future of the communist movement in the country. It's expected that Himanta Biswa Sarma will include some old-timers of the CPI(M) in the newly floated Tripura BJP to ensure that there are less scope of opposition in the state, which the saffron camp plans to rule forever now.

Lenin said, “...to belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology.” (CW, Vol-5, pp 384) The revisionist and opportunist politics of the CPI(M) as well as the CPI and other partners of the Left Front, kept strengthening the rule of the reactionary powers. Revisionism gripped the Indian communist movement until 1967, when Charu Mazumdar, the charismatic leader of the Naxalbari peasant uprising, broke the shackles of opportunism that tied the Indian working class and peasantry with the revisionist practice. The revolutionary spirit infused by him into the communist movement of the country brought a new approach in dealing with the problem of revolution.

The path of Charu Mazumdar is loathed and despised by the CPI(M) and revisionists of all hues because it takes Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong’s Thought as the theoretical guide to action and integrates the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong’s Thought with the concrete practice of Indian revolution. The politics of Charu Mazumdar emphasises on the annihilation of feudalism and an uncompromising struggle against the US imperialism-led imperialist bloc, the comprador and bureaucratic capitalism. The politics of Charu Mazumdar aims at establishing the leadership of the working class and the poor-landless peasantry over the communist movement, by educating and arousing the masses with the invincible weapon of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong's Thought. The existence of the line of Charu Mazumdar and the prevalence of the anti-revisionist communist ideology in the country, an antithesis to the venomous theory spewed by the CPI(M)-led revisionists of all hues, is a sign that the revolutionary flames of Naxalbari couldn’t be extinguished by the CPI(M) despite its incessant attempts, rather the party itself is on the verge of its extinction at present after being booed by people from all corners of the country where it existed.

More than a century ago Lenin said: “The working class cannot play its world-revolutionary role unless it wages a ruthless struggle against this backsliding, spinelessness, subservience to opportunism, and unparalleled vulgarisation of the theories of Marxism.” (CW, Vol-21, pp 312)

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of China raised the slogan - “Fight Self! Combat Revisionism!” - to fight revisionism mercilessly, as revisionism is considered as the principal danger for the revolutionary working class movement in the present era, i.e. the era of Mao Zedong’s Thought, i.e. the era in which imperialism is heading towards total collapse and socialism is marching towards worldwide victory. Despite setbacks and treacherous backstabbing by the revisionist forces, who are trying to pull up imperialism, quagmire in deep economic crisis all over the world at the verge of its collapse, through gimmicks and by counterfeiting the politics of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong’s Thought, the victory march of the working class cannot be halted by the reactionary forces for long.

The CPI(M) and the likes of it, who inherit the legacy of traitors like Bernstein, Kautsky, Trotsky, Tito, Khrushchev, Gorbachev, Deng Xiaoping or Xi Jinping, cannot remain at the helms of affair forever. They have been repeatedly exposed before the peasants and workers and their efforts to misguide and deviate the revolutionary struggles of the working class and the peasantry have been quashed by the people’s democratic revolutionary struggle in different parts of the country. By siding with the reactionary powers, the CPI(M) and other revisionist parliamentary parties have openly betrayed the people and they will be punished and condemned by the people for this betrayal.

The loss of the CPI(M) in West Bengal or Tripura will not end the revolutionary communist movement of the country, rather it will give a fillip to it, as the people will now see the bankruptcy of the sham communists like the Left Front partners more prominently than ever. The people will also observe and experience the utmost failure of the parliamentary left in halting the cavalcade of Hindutva fascism in India. The more the opportunist social-fascist CPI(M) and its lackeys and followers will be exposed before the people, the more the people can be educated and aroused with the revolutionary politics of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong’s Thought, the more intensified will be the revolutionary struggle of the working class and peasantry for state power against the Hindutva fascist camp.

It’s true that the Hindutva fascist BJP and its ideological fountainhead, the RSS, will now up the ante against the working class and peasantry everywhere in India to divide the revolutionary classes on the basis of religion and use the fissures to instigate communal antagonism between the people. The inner-conflict between the peasants and workers of all communities will be used by the Modi government to appease foreign investors and indigenous comprador capitalists. The land, mineral resources, water and labour of the country will be offered to the plunderers for free and India will be turned into a sanctuary of imperialist loot and plunder.

At present, when the global finance and monopoly capital is shrinking in the quagmire of a sheer crisis of capitalism, an unhindered access to plunder the resources of India and use its market to sell goods paying the lowest or zero taxes will help the big corporations to recuperate. The CPI(M) and other revisionist parties of the left are accomplices of the Hindutva fascist camp in their evil endeavour and though the lower-level cadres and supporters will be slain by the BJP and the RSS goons, the leaders of the CPI(M) and other revisionist outfits will profiteer from the bloodbath. This is the tragedy of the revisionist politics.

For the revolutionary communists, the bandwagon of the working class, the peasantry and the toiled people, led by the vanguard organisation of the proletariats, there will be stern challenges ahead on the road. The Hindutva fascists are emboldened with their unbridled victories and immense funding. To fight and defeat them, it is imperative for the revolutionary communists to penetrate deep inside the basic masses, the workers and peasants and arouse them by politically educating them.

By being perseverant and by assisting the poor and landless peasantry, the factory workers, the unorganised workers, the toiling people to understand the key theory of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong’s Thought, using real-life examples and analysing them using dialectical and historical materialism, the revolutionary communists can convert these people into the spiritual atom bombs, who can fight against the class enemies by holding high the crimson banner of revolution. Countering the liberal-bourgeois cliché of “save democracy”, now reiterated by the parliamentary Left equally, the revolutionary communists, who represent the working class and the peasantry, must propagate among the revolutionary classes the immemorial teachings of Lenin on the parliamentary democracy that the ruling classes hold out as a bait to distract the people from the revolutionary path:

“Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich—that is the democracy of capitalist society. If we look more closely into the machinery of capitalist democracy, we see everywhere, in the “petty”—supposedly petty—details of the suffrage (residential qualifications, exclusion of women, etc.), in the technique of the representative institutions, in the actual obstacles to the right of assembly (public buildings are not for “paupers”!), in the purely capitalist organisation of the daily press, etc., etc.,—we see restriction after restriction upon democracy. These restrictions, exceptions, exclusions, obstacles for the poor seem slight, especially in the eyes of one who has never known want himself and has never been in close contact with the oppressed classes in their mass life (and nine out of 10 ten, if not 99 ninety-nine out of 100 a hundred, bourgeois publicists and politicians come under this category); but in their sum total these restrictions exclude and squeeze out the poor from politics, from active participation in democracy.

Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analysing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament!” (CW, Vol-25, pp 365-366)

As a reactionary and feudal ideology, the Hindutva fascist doctrine and jargons of their apparatchiks can’t befool the poor for long, as the class interest of the poor will arouse them in rebellion against the very forces that loot them. The task of the revolutionary communists is to organise them with a clear vision. The recent militant movement of the tribal people and peasantry under the CPI(M) leadership in Rajasthan shows that the Hindutva camp cannot subjugate the people for long under its fascist jackboots. Though the CPI(M) betrayed the movement in Rajasthan, despite the militant mood of the peasants, who wanted to carry out a large-scale struggle against the Hindutva fascist Vasundhara Raje government, the peasants didn’t surrender their will and their goals along with the CPI(M) leaders when the latter capitulated to the ruling clique.

Despite Narendra Modi’s intensified Hindutva campaign, the poor of India are rising and they, slowly, however, steadily understand that the Modi government will not fulfil any promises regarding better days; rather it will push them into the abyss of extreme poverty and subject them to extreme exploitation over the period of time. However, as the electoral results are pre-determined in a sham democracy like India, where the ruling classes choose their representative to rule and get it endorsed through an election process, the poor can’t change anything for themselves through the electoral/parliamentary path. Rather, to effectively defeat Hindutva fascists, the poor must be organised under the banner of revolution by the genuine Marxist-Leninists, who must also unite all other anti-fascist and progressive forces, including those sections of the society that are truly determined to fight against the Hindutva fascism. By threading all struggles against the Hindutva fascist empire of Narendra Modi, by uniting all secular, democratic, anti-corporate, anti-feudal and anti-imperialist movements of the people under a common anti-fascist democratic banner, the revolutionary communists must lead the greater struggle against the Hindutva fascism and defeat it to bring an end to the anti-people Modi government.

No obstreperous bourgeois TV anchor or loquacious "political experts" can halt the forward march of the oppressed people of the country: the broad masses of peasants, the workers and the toiled people towards their goal of liberation, towards the establishment of a people’s democratic state and socialism. A society free from the exploitation of man by man is something that the working class, and the people led by it, will achieve, not because it’s in their whim, rather, because it’s inevitable in the course of human progress, according to the law of history. The likes of the CPI(M) and other so-called “communist” parties that serve the interests of the ruling classes and work as their lapdogs, will be trashed to the same gutter of history where the likes of Khrushchev-Gorbachev or Deng Xiaoping are dumped. This is their invincible fate.

Analysing Mainstream Media Lies Over East Ghouta

2018-03-02T22:43:00.002+00:00

The TV, the newspapers, the social-media walls, the internet is flourishing with the news of alleged Syrian atrocities against the civilians of East Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus, nearly 4 km away from the capital city and is under the siege of the terrorists sponsored by the US, the NATO, the reactionary Gulf monarchies of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and the Zionist Israel. Is the Syrian government really culpable for the alleged massacre of children and innocent civilians? Are the Americans and Western imperialist war mongers talking truth this time? Is Syria a real threat? I analyse in the first episode of my video blogging programme - Geo-Political Review.

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Shalom Bollywood Helps Killing Children in Palestine and Fans in India

2018-02-09T21:28:00.001+00:00

The confusing 1990s, when we were growing up, it was a taboo for Bengali middle-class children of my age to have any fascination toward Bollywood films and Hindi songs, two pure evils that were blamed for spoiling the “morality” of children and teenagers alike. Bollywood films were loathed by aristocratic and middle-class Bengalis alike. It was considered “inferior” vis-a-vis the golden era Bengali films of Tollywood. It was expected of the middle-class children, teenager and youth, in that era, to have a knack for Rabindra Sangeet and recite flawlessly, using the best of their voice modulation skills, the poems from Tagore’s chef-d'oeuvre - Sanchayita.

Still, Bollywood allured us, especially the teenagers of 1990s who grew up sans internet, mobile phones and social media; the curly hair of Mithun Chakraborty or Amitabh Bachchan touching their shoulders, the authority with which they spoke, yelled and presented themselves on-screen were a sheer inspiration for us. We loved the bell-bottom pants and dog collars of the 1970s, the parallel pants, straight jeans and grunge shirts of 1990s. There were the Khans, who still rule the Bollywood somehow, though, to some lesser extent, there were Akshay Kumar and Suniel Shetty, there were Rajinikanth and Govinda as well. We loved them and to some extent, idolised them. Actresses like Madhuri Dixit, Karishma Kapoor, Kajol, etc. mesmerised us with their vivacious and enticing beauty. We boys of 1990s, before tempering ourselves in the fire of feminism, fancied dating someone equally “beautiful” as these actresses. But Bollywood didn't love us, the fans, or rather all sections of the fans equally.

It wasn’t easy for the teenagers in a politically volatile West Bengal to grasp the very essence of Bollywood’s class character and its inherent Brahminical nature. For us, like everyone else, Bollywood meant sheer entertainment. We idolised the actors with the larger-than-life image because for us they were the most happening entertainers on earth. Remember Madhuri Dixit in films like Dil or Beta, Amitabh Bachchan in Sholay, Deewar (though from the 1970s they were quite a hit in 1990s too) or Agneepath and Shahrukh Khan in Baazigar or Darr? Remember the mesmerising beauty of Aishwarya Rai and Sushmita Sen when they started acting in Bollywood? They were the veil, the very dazzling mask covering a grotesque and horrifying face of the Bollywood - the Islamophobic, hardcore feudal, pro-imperialist film cum propaganda industry that would dance to the tune of any killer for the sake of money.

Nearly two decades later, it didn’t shock me when I found Amitabh Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan, Vivek Oberoi, Soha Ali Khan and a host of other Bollywood stars eagerly jumped into the frame of a selfie with the butcher of Palestinian men, women and children - Benjamin Netanyahu. The very man whose regime has killed thousands of Palestinian men, raped hundreds of Palestinian women, maimed, raped, tortured, imprisoned and killed hundreds of children with utmost impunity - is now considered as a “hero” in Modi-fied India, where his best buddy, Narendra Modi, who played a pivotal role in managing the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat during the 2002 pogrom, is ruling with the strongest support of their common master - the US imperialism.

During Netanyahu’s visit to India, Bollywood organised a special event to honour this Zionist terrorist, condemned and despised throughout the world for his notorious rule and violation of human rights. The “Shalom Bollywood” programme organised by the Bollywood stalwarts, sans few, was an attempt by the “official Hindi film industry”, the vessel of Hindutva and Hindi chauvinism in India, to forge a close tie-up with the Zionist Israeli regime that promotes bigotry and manufactures zealots through its communal propaganda-based cultural outlets. The alliance is commercially and politically very viable at present, as it will help Bollywood to mint a lot of money by appeasing the new fascist world order rising under Donald Trump.

By playing according to the tunes of the Zionist Israeli and Hindutva fascists, Bollywood made it clear that in the coming days it will officially and utmost unapologetically propagate and preach the communal, xenophobic and Islamophobic ideology of the Zionist and Hindutva fascist camps. The writing was clear on the wall, Bollywood isn’t for Muslims, and it never was. Add to this, it never was for the Dalits, the tribal people and the minority communities. It’s not for the majority of Hindus, who belong to backward castes, it’s only for the handful of elite and upper-middle-class Hindus from the higher echelons of the Hindu caste system. The rest may just die; Bollywood and its super-rich, upper-caste actors don't care.

The hatred shown by the Bollywood, step-by-step, against the Muslim community incessantly since early 1990s and its projection of the long-bearded, trimmed moustache, kohl-eyed, skull cap-clad, Pathani suit-wearing and bead-running Muslim as a terrorist did help the Hindutva camp to intensify its patent Bush Telegraph campaign against the minority community with extreme vigour and seduce the vulnerable sections of the Hindu society, from both upper and lower castes as well as ostracised Dalits into its murderous regiments.

The swelling of the ranks of the Hindutva camp was helped by the Bollywood, which joined the anti-Muslim frenzy of the Hollywood by producing films that promoted Islamophobia. The overtly hyped threat of "terrorism", used by the Indian reactionary state machinery to drive the majority community with an anti-Muslim hysteria, was repeatedly linked with Islam and Pakistan and this way the narrative of a terrorist Muslim was built. The Muslim isn’t officially the “terrorist” in India, however, in the films, the Muslim is certainly the aggressor, the “other”, the violence-incensed orthodox outsider and Pakistan-loyalist. The pious Hindu lead character, or the Hindutva-loving and overtly patriotic “Indianised” Muslim lead character will do anything to thrash and defeat the “terrorist Muslim” trying to break India into pieces.

Should they remake Sholay today, I’m sure, Gabbar Singh will be the pious Bajrang Dal leader who will try to save the unsusceptible villagers of Ramgarh from the notorious “Jihadi” Imam Sahab, who would plan to send his grandson to Pakistan to get terrorist training and then lure Basanti to marry him and convert her religion, a sheer “love Jihad” case. The aggrieved Thakur, who lost his family and hands to the “Jihadi” Imam would bring the RSS apparatchiks like Jai and Viru to assist Gabbar in lynching the Muslim terror monger and save the cow. A definite blockbuster in Modi-fied India, a real magnum opus of the Zionified Hindi film industry. If Adani and Ambani fund him, Vivek Agnihotri will certainly oblige them with a saffron remake of this epic film.

Back to “Shalom Bollywood”. For a while I felt that they were taking that happy Bollywood selfie with the visiting terrorist and his wife in the backdrop of a heap dead bodies of Palestinian children, killed by the Zionist Israeli forces, lying in a pool of blood and their grief-stuck parents wailing in profound pain over their untimely death at the hands of a brutal regime. I felt a tinge of crimson, like a droplet of blood, was rolling out of the smiling lips of Netanyahu, and probably I saw the Bollywood celebrities, elbowing each other to be clicked with the monster, drooling for their share of that blood and flesh of the dead children too, which can pave the steps for their ascension to higher echelons of financial gains, more than what they are already sitting on. Zionist Israel means more money; truly I felt Amitabh Bachchan and his coterie drooling and craving for their share. A lot of money is waiting.

When these Bollywood celebrities, celebrating “Shalom Bollywood”, were hobnobbing with the Zionist terrorist Netanyahu, a lot of children became victims of sexual violence meted out by the most horrendous and brutal armed force in the world. Many may have died that very evening, their bodies may have been fed to the pet dogs of the Zionists, their lamenting due to the pain caused by the brute force of the occupation regime may have been lost forever, what all they left behind were their brief memory on earth, which their parents, their siblings and friends will cherish until they meet the same fate at the hands of the Zionist occupiers. The Bollywood is a conniving comrade-in-crime of the Zionist Netanyahu regime and very soon, it wants to be the biggest cultural propaganda division of the occupation regime outside the occupied Palestinian land.

For me, the Bollywood’s action and acceptance of the crime committed against humanity in Palestine were very predictable, nothing surprising at all. In my mid-30s, I know very well that the Hindi film industry, like all official and mainstream political-economic and cultural outlets operating in India, will only amplify the propaganda trumpet of the Indian ruling classes and their reactionary partners around the world. Truly, the participation of these celebs in "Shalom Bollywood" didn’t matter much to anyone politically conscious, rather my mature, mid-30 soul knows well that this act of Bollywood would help in politically exposing its reactionary character before the very people who still consume its content with much fanfare. However, there was something that kept haunting me and until now, even after weeks, I cannot forget that feeling - the feeling of being cheated and duped.

The teenager me, who didn’t care about the “political correctness” of the mature me, trusted the Bollywood, loved its action flicks and some of the romantic ones too. Aishwarya Rai’s green eyes, her beautiful smile, the macho angry young man image of Amitabh Bachchan, his incredible role in a socialistic film “Main Azaad Hu”, the numerous hit songs that kept our tape recorders on for nights, now feels like an episode of the bygone era where my unsusceptible mind was exploited and I was cheated upon. These were all a part of a bigger lie, the lie that has been peddled since time immemorial to twist and tweak the young brains and make them believe in something that didn't even exist.

These celebrities, who call themselves artists and may often sign petitions demanding an end to cruelty against animals, actually love blood of children spilt on the streets; they want the hapless people, whose country is aggressed by the foreign aggressors, to be enslaved and butchered. These filmstars betrayed a teenager fan very badly that night; the betrayal wounded his soul for loving and trusting the magnificent communication medium called films, especially those made by the really "inferior" Hindi and intrinsically Hindutva-incensed film industry.

Bollywood showed the teenager fan within me, who loved those utterly romantic and thrilling films and their flawed actors - that the "Hindi film industry", which is actually filled with homogeneous narcissist people, with very little or negligible deviation, stands behind the very force that reduces the teenager to his immediate identity and then maligns that identity in a libellous fashion to instigate others to kill him. In a direct contrast to the behaviour exemplified the "politically correct" mature man in his mid-30s, the teenager howled that night due to the pain caused by the betrayal. His tears of redemption, came out when he repented loving the very Bollywood that now wants to kill him for his identity. He silently cried when the film stars danced to please a monster, welcoming him to the “Shalom Bollywood”, the event of Modi-fied India that glorified gory atrocities and genocides. "Shalom Bollywood" actually became - I am ashamed Bollywood. Tomorrow, the entire country will be ashamed of you and your power and money-hungry celebrities.

Why Using Kim Jong-un's Photo in a Banner Isn't Good?

2017-12-17T22:22:00.005+00:00

When the regime of fascist war monger Donald Trump can launch 59 missile strikes on a sovereign country's air base and other targets with an aim to bully it, no one calls the regime and its mad-dog president lunatic. The country happens to be America, from where the dollars those fund corporations come from and the corporations own the media and the corporations buy ad space from the media houses. So which of the editors of the 'free media' can oppose the US and draw the wrath of the board of directors?

So America happens to be the land of the free and those who are great (probably great killers?), the country that does no wrong. The US is called pious, despite killing nearly 100 million people in last seven decades, well which means, nearly 1.38 million people every year were killed by the US, directly and indirectly, through wars, terrorism, or by causing extreme poverty or by triggering catastrophes through an extreme weather change.

Scribble it in your memory - the US has the highest stockpile of nuclear and chemical weapons; the US fought more than one war, directly or indirectly, in each continent of the world and it holds the highest record of human right violations globally. Remember it's the only country, which has stationed its troops, throughout the globe, even without the packaging of the NATO, commanded by it, and the world is virtually occupied and monitored by it, through its numerous military, intelligence and technological outposts.

Remember, whatever you think of your government or political parties, there are none in the mainstream throughout the world that can oppose the US and its hegemonic policies or can look eye ball-to-eye ball with the US and assert sovereignty. Through a host of monster systems like the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, the US exerts its absolute control over 90 per cent of the world economies, including Russia and China, two of its big contenders. Any opposition to its hegemony or policies can result in an economic blockade, military coup, terrorist uprisings by fundamentalists or a total military aggression launched against that government.

So, when the US is all about such nice Hollywood flicks where its lead actors save the world from bad guys, then you need villains and the villains are those who refuse to obey the diktats of the pious hero, the US. Earlier, the Soviet Union and the Maoist China played the role, they were often portrayed as the bad guy in the Hollywood flicks. Since the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the change of China's hue, the US-ruled empire is constantly erecting foes and advisories, one after another. You're enjoying the show and echoing the Master's Voice.

Apart from branding the entire Muslim community its enemy since late 1990s, the US ruling classes, who are facing a severe economic crisis caused by the capitalist system's internal contradictions, branded one after another sovereigns as the enemy of the US and waged wars, by transferring the money collected by taxing the common American citizens and earned by plundering the semi and neo-colonies of Asia-Africa-South America to the coffers of the American military-industrial complex. Sometimes, the enemy is Saddam Hussain, Muammar Gaddafi, or Bashar al-Assad, while sometimes it's Kim Jong-un or anyone else who calls a spade – a spade.

Doesn't matter which part of the world under the US jackboots you live in, your mainstream media will portray those who dare the US as villains and will vilify them whom the US calls its foe. So you will believe that Saddam Hussain was a womaniser, a mass killer, a brutal dictator, while you will be told that Bill Clinton happens to be a pious man, committed only to his wife and never sexually abused his secretaries. You will believe all these, because, after all, the media entity that has a century-old existence tells you so. You can't question the authenticity because it doesn't question your favourite prime minister and his catastrophic policies.

Though you may dislike the cacophony of their TV anchors, especially when they all utter same words at high decibel and keep pressing points like “hail the army” that you are told to reiterate since childhood, without the sticky note about the necessity of hailing the military in a democratic society, but still, you love your media, because they come with some spicy details that you never knew. Like how to prolong sexual pleasure without ejaculating!

So, probably, you live in India and you believe that Kim Jong-un is a dictator, a mass murderer, a fanatic and a madman. You believe he kills people who dare to copy his haircut. You believe, as your media tells you, through gigabytes of content on the internet, TV and print - how keen the Kim is to fire a nuclear missile and start a world war. However, you never know why the people of this mad man's “kingdom”, as the US will call it, don't rise up in rebellion against this man and his sycophants when he and his father have starved them to death.

When talking about despotic governments and inhuman dictators, the Americans never utter the names like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Zionist Israel or other such terrorist-despotic states that kill and torture people to legitimise their illegal rule. Ever wonder why? Or why Narendra Modi gets the highest civilian award – Order of Saudi Arabia from the kingdom's monarch? Maybe, your brain doesn't want to venture into those not-so-interesting details.

You probably don't want to know why Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-Il and Kim Il-sung (you never heard of the last two Kims, did you?) are so revered by the Korean people, even at the risk of losing their lives to American missiles (oh! You believe no one wins against the US!)? You never heard how the Koreans defeated the US and liberated the Northern part of the peninsula from the US occupation in 1950? How could you when you subscribe to corporate media?

You think that because they are dictators so people just hail them out of fear, but hate them quite a lot in their private chambers. Like they hated Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose government won popular support to defeat the ISIS and the terror forces whom the US and the West funded and armed. Or probably like the people hated Saddam Hussain, who is revered, even at present, by the Iraqi people for leading a country and developing it without letting in any form of religious or sectarian terrorism.

Probably, because your beloved media says so, you think Kim Jong-un is hated more than the people of the world, especially those in Asia-Africa and South America, hates Donald Trump and his 'great American dream'. Therefore, it's right for you to hate Kim Jong-un as you want world peace and believe only under the leadership of a 'strong' country like the US such world peace can be achieved.

You don't care when majority of the American poor, the Afro-Americans, the American Muslims (why would you care about Muslims? They are terrorists anyway), the Mexicans (you just know their Chicken dishes! But guess you don't know where on earth is Mexico), the people of colour and the democratic and progressive voices within and outside the US despise, loath and oppose a fascist, narcissist, serial sexual abuser, paedophile and a lunatic moron like Donald Trump, who rose to power by using vitriol and bigotry and happens to be absolutely unapologetic about it.

For you, he is the president of your dream country, a country about which you're very proud of (few American Desis are proud of India too, without even seeing the country for decades!) and you desperately seek the visa to go there or maybe a citizenship will bring jubilation in your otherwise mundane elite or upper-middle-class life! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

So when your co-citizens organise a religious ritual praying for the victory of Donald Trump in the US election, when some desi crony bootlicker of the US administration and corporations organise a fundraiser for maniacs like Donald Trump and Bollywood stars dance to item numbers for raising money under a banner “Hindus for Trump” - you silently support it, because since childhood you're trained to love people who value military valour above democratic principles. You're taught to love fascists, including Hitler, for that matter, because fascism is considered good by your ilk. So you love Donald Trump and also, Narendra Modi.

Probably this is a reason that you vociferously advocate encounter killings to resolve the problem resulting from a total breakdown of law and order situation and a slow judicial system, but you never demand a total and radical change of the system to ensure that justice is delivered optimally and swiftly. For you, mobocracy is good and Shambhulal Raigir is a hero.

You love the system, it gives your by-birth-privileges and thus you demand the establishment of a police state, to secure those rights. Or maybe it's the sheer hatred for the Muslims that makes you a Modi-bhakt and a Trump cheerleader at the same time. I don't know, but I guess it's nearly the mix of everything and few drops of the intoxicating fascist doctrine you were radicalised with; yes, in the absence of your conscience and consensus.

When a political party of India, whose colour you hate and you, of course, despise a part of the name too much, uses an image of Kim Jong-un in one of its banner and the leader of the ruling clique criticises it by calling that party and its ideology an enemy of India, you train your gun accordingly and start hurling abuses at those who have dared to paint the image of a man, who, despite ruling a small and impoverished nation, does what is right in the present world context – dare the US and its maniac president.

Because you unconditionally believe what the leaders of the ruling clique say, especially that leader of the ruling party, who accused the opposition parliamentary party of conspiring when the latter used an image of Kim Jong-un in its propaganda poster in Kerala. You love the ruling party's leader as he draws nearly ₹25 lacs as salary from a state-owned corporation after being offered the position due to his political allegiance to the ruling clique and not his merit. You strongly believe merit is the criteria for any position when the Dalits get a chance to apply for them.

It doesn't matter to you that the man who questioned a political party's independent usage of the image of Kim Jong-un is the same pathetic man whose hired goons mercilessly butchered Muslim men and children, raped Muslim women, no! Wait, gang-raped Muslim women and even fantasise raping their corpse, like necromaniacs; goons who tore open the womb of pregnant women to fork out the unborn foetus to burn them in fire (courtesy 2002 Gujarat pogrom – overlooked by the present prime minister of India, who milked it to win elections regularly and the genocide is religiously hailed by the entire Hindutva camp, including a sitting governor, who claims that it was a proud moment for 'Hindus').

The ranting of the rabble-rouser of the ruling clique looks authentic to you, as the corporate-controlled media seconds him too. You think that Kim Jong-un looks strange, even when your own ideal Twitterati prime minister dresses in the weirdest ways to woo voters and even use traditional tribal costumes to hoodwink people with a cheap intention of winning votes by milking sentiments.

You condemn Kim Jong-un and you condemn the party or the people who stand behind the man who can take on the US all alone in the Asia-Pacific region, despite being bullied by the world's largest militarised fascist power. For you, he is a lunatic, because sane people should talk about nuking Pakistan, which itself is an impoverished and sectarian civil war-torn country.

For you, the nukes should target China, because your media and the military-industrial complex that sells armament to your government tells you that your country must participate in a war against China and you must pay hefty taxes to help the government's war machinery.

All you want is a recognition of your nation in the world because you think your government has made the country strong on global platforms and your Modiji is such a visionary leader whom the world leaders respect and value a lot. You, thus, overlook how much servility your prime minister shows when the president of the US or the prime minister of the UK meets him. For you, bowing to the white-skinned Europeans and Americans is a good gesture, as it means pure business, sheer profit. You may do much more for a green card, isn't it?

You're a muddle-headed, jerkified, sheer ignoramus and dimwit joker, who and whose ilk of hate mongers are breeding the kinds of Shambhulal Raigir and other Hindutva terrorists, who are inciting communal hatred, supporting American colonialism and the plunder of Indian resources-natural, mineral and human, by the giant corporations.

You happen to be the faithful lover of the Brahminical caste system and the feudal economy on which it exists. Your presence and dominance over the Indian political and social structure, due to your socio-economic and caste privileges, is actually a bane for the nation, or whatever is left of it. The faster it goes, the better for humanity.

In a world that wants to progress, freedom from hunger, wars, violence, economic disparity and sectarian-religious bigotry, we need more people like Kim Jong-un, despite their trend of cult building, because they are antidotes to the imperialist hegemonic agenda of the US and its notorious allies and servile bootlickers, including the regime of Hindutva that is all set to change India into a saffron-Talibanised state.

Without Kim Jong-un, Bashar al-Assad and resistance leaders like them, it will be impossible to build up a global coalition to defeat the US imperialism and its neo-fascist world order that serves the interest of the big corporations, banks and companies that employ pathetic people like those who call themselves as “Bhakts” and whom we love to call – pathetic losers. So train your eyes to respect those who deserve respect and get that brain out of the shit hole it's immersed in.

Afrazul Shaikh's Murder in Rajsamand Shows the Dire Need of Resistance

2017-12-15T03:43:00.002+00:00

What bolsters the courage of the Hindutva terror mongers like Shambhulal Raigir of Rajsamand, Rajasthan, who hacked and then burned to death a Bengali migrant labourer Afrazul Shaikh because of the latter's religious identity? What made Shambhulal Raigir believe that he can get away with the murder of a human being by accusing the victim as a “love jihadist”? Who gave Shambhulal Raigir and millions of his ilk in Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Telangana and West Bengal the right to kill and maim Muslim men, rape Muslim women and burn their unborn embryo? What helps them to kill with impunity the people from the marginalised Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Tribal people?The answer is - it's the inherent communal bigotry of the state machinery and the ruling classes, which aims at dividing the people along communal lines. It's this bigotry promoted by the entire system that bolsters the courage of murderous thugs like Shambhulal Raigir and others, like the notorious cow vigilante, to kill Muslims, Christians, Dalits and Tribals with impunity.

When the Babri Masjid was demolished, or long before that, when thousands of Muslims of Nellie in Assam, were massacred in one night, when the policemen rounded up numerous Muslim men in Hashimpora and massacred them, when the communal pogrom incited by the RSS killed hundreds of Muslims in Bhagalpur, the state machinery, then under the command of the so-called “secular” parties, didn't prosecute and punish the culprits. The state embraced the culprits, provided them immunity and gave them the thrust to rise high on the ladder of political success by hailing those killers and their masterminds as the true “nationalist” and “Hindu saviours” of the country.

The politics of hatred always existed in India, the murderous thugs like Shambhulal Raigir grew up amidst them and they are continuously nurtured to spread the volley of hatred and bigotry all over the country. These murderous thugs have been ruling the country ever since the British colonial rulers passed on the baton to them, to manage the erstwhile direct colony as a neo-colony of multiple imperialist powers. They have worn several jackets of different shades while ruling, exploiting and duping the people of India and their motive has remained the same - divide the people to plunder the country and its resources.

Narendra Modi is just another, very rudimentary and unpolished mask worn by the predator system that calls itself free, just and democratic to dupe people, or shall we say, dupe the urban middle-class and elites, who are continuously getting divorced from the socio-economic reality and are living in a self-built paradise, webbed with lies and preconceived notions. The ruling classes and their state and government didn't become communal and bigot overnight, this has been the phenomenon since time immemorial.

The Congress and the host of other secular parties never prosecuted Lal Krishna Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi or Uma Bharti for the crimes committed by them; Congress, the party of Rahul Gandhi, which now positions itself as a champion of secularism and liberal values, arranged a full-fledged state funeral for Bal Thackeray, the mastermind of Muslim massacre during the 1992 Mumbai pogrom. It was the Congress that never acted against Narendra Modi, Amit Shah or Yogi Adityanath when the party was in power in New Delhi for a decade. The Congress didn't oppose the beef ban, it never supported the agonised minority community members or the ostracised Dalits and Tribals against the atrocities and oppression of the upper-caste ruling classes and their Hindutva bootlickers.

It will not be wise to single-out the Congress, but if we see in the Indian parliamentary political space, we will find that most of the political parties, of all hues and shades, have played as the pawns of the Hindutva hatred-monger ruling classes, the comprador and crony capitalists, the big feudal landlords and the giant foreign corporations and banks that form an unholy alliance to oppress, exploit and plunder India, its resources and labour.

While the Samajwadi Party allowed a ghastly communal pogrom to happen right under its nose in Muzaffarnagar, within a year of winning a clear majority in the state assembly election. After rearing and nurturing the communal riot-mongers during its reign in Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati, the self-styled Dalit icon, repeatedly befooled the Dalit community of the largest state of India by joining hands with the Hindutva fascists in order to form her government and to expand her political power-base in Uttar Pradesh and beyond.

Laloo Prasad Yadav once won the secular fame by arresting L.K. Advani and stopping his Ram Mandir cavalcade in Bihar. He and his party, the RJD, milked that secular credential for years to seize and consolidate power in the state and strengthen the fiefdom of the criminal-feudal rule, which saw the goriest atrocities committed on the Dalits by the upper-caste feudal armies like the Ranveer Sena and Sunlight Sena in the massacres of Jehanabad, Laxmanpur Bathe, etc. The communal polarisation never neutralised under the rule of the RJD and Laloo Prasad kept the division between the Hindus and the Muslims widened in Bihar to gain political mileage in elections.

The Dravidian parties, especially the once-upon-a-time anti-North Indian DMK, the MDMK, etc., make tall claims about their secular ethos, however, all forces of Dravidian parliamentary politics either join their hands with the Congress or the BJP, under covert or overt arrangements, to usurp power in New Delhi. The communal bigotry in the Dravidian society intensified ever since the Ramaswamy Periyar-led anti-communist Dravidian movement started in the Southern parts of India as a strong antidote to North Indian Brahminical Hindutva. The movement of Periyar neither rid Dravidian society of the caste system, nor it ended the communal division caused by bigotry inherent in the system. The Muslims, Dalits and Tribals happen to be the most oppressed and exploited communities in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, where the state governments collectively spend millions of rupees from the state exchequer to celebrate Hindu rites or rituals.

If we look at the Trinamool Congress led by Mamata Banerjee ruling West Bengal now, which projects itself as a dedicated secular party, we will find a dark history of the party and its supremo, who was in an alliance with the BJP, even when Modi was overseeing the infamous anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002, and she helped the RSS and its cadres to entrench deep into the rural heartland of West Bengal and unpack vitriol against the Muslims to rake up severe communal hatred and tension since the late 1990s. The saffron camp succeeded in making an unprecedented headway in West Bengal under Mamata Banerjee's rule, utilising the scopes of communal polarisation provided by Mamata Banerjee. The free reign of the TMC and its patronage allowed the communal riot mongers like Tapan Ghosh of the Hindu Samhati to thrive and prosper at the cost of the agony of Bengali people.

The “self-righteous” parliamentary left bloc leaves no opportunity to criticise the Modi government, but it sweeps beneath the carpet its own connivance with the BJP during the V.P. Singh rule, which led to the beginning of the Rath Yatra of L.K. Advani, which passed with state patronage in the Left Front-ruled West Bengal. The CPI(M) used to rule West Bengal at that very period when the comprador capitalist Todis got Rizwanur Rahman, a computer teacher, murdered with the help of the state machinery and the ruling party because the victim dared to marry their girl, Priyanka Todi. One of the classic cases of “love jihad” and then, in 2007, the CPI(M) shamelessly defended the Todis, who generously donated to the party's “revolutionary” fund. Nearly 10 years later, ironically, the CPI(M)-ruled Kerala is entangled in a strange case of “love jihad” where one Hindu girl, Akhila Ashokan, who converted to Islam to become Hadiya, is now tormented by the state machinery, the judiciary and the Hindutva forces in tandem with each other.

So which party, out of a rainbow on offer here, can dare to free India and its people from the evil of communalism, bigotry and caste system? Which political outfit can annihilate the system that breeds killers and terrorists like Shambhulal Raigir? Which political party can promise the people about swift justice by prosecuting and punishing all culprits of communal and caste violence of the past and leave no stone unturned to protect people from any such untoward incident in the future? Moreover, which party can dare to declare that it will ban the terror-monger organisations like the RSS, VHP, Bajrang Dal and other such outfits that spread hatred and terror throughout the country? Which political party can promise that they will, on coming to power, lift the ban on beef throughout the nation? Which party can promise that they will allow the people of Kashmir their right to live their lives with full dignity and independence, sans the fear of military atrocities? Which party can promise - justice, equality and freedom - to the people of Manipur? Which party can promise and then really stop the state's large-scale war, waged on behalf of big mining corporations, against the Tribal people in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha?

Most of the readers, who are well acquainted with the basics of Indian politics and the nitty-gritty of the secular credentials of all political parties know that these political forces, somehow and some way, supports the Hindutva fascist endeavour of the Sangh Parivar and the BJP. They fulfil the very conditions that help the big foreign monopoly and finance capital-owned corporations, the big comprador capitalists and the feudal landlords of the country to consolidate their rule and to subjugate the people by dividing them along communal identity. The unconditional servility towards the corporate-feudal nexus, shown by all parliamentary political parties in India, is an evidence that these parties, even if all of them are provided with the opportunity to rule, will not be able to resolve the principal issues of economic disparity, poverty, unemployment, communalism and socio-economic discrimination that are collectively eating up the nation as a moth.

Then what can be done to transform India into a democratic, egalitarian and secular nation where the people will be treated with equality, respect and their cause will be prioritised by the government of the day?

Honestly, the present system doesn't allow any such possibility within its ambit even in the near future. The present system and its weapons and tools are programmed to act against the interest of the people on behalf of the big comprador and crony capitalists, feudal landlords and their big foreign corporate masters. If the hope and aspiration of the people are rested upon the government's and the system's goodwill, then the people will be forced to suffer under the jackboots of those who intend to plunder and loot India and its resources.

The system will keep deceiving the people into believing its fabricated tales, while people like Shambhulal Raigir will keep hacking hapless Muslims like Afrazul Shaikh, Narendra Modi and Mohan Bhagwat will keep telling the world how peace-loving the fascist RSS and its progeny are, however, the poor Muslims like Pehlu Khan or Junaid will be lynched in public by the Hindutva fascists who claim they represent the interest of the overwhelming majority of Hindus in India.

Rather than crying like the liberal democrats, who would like to blame the Modi regime and spread pessimism without showing an alternative and sustainable plan for the people to defeat the Hindutva fascist empire, the forces that support democracy and progress must build up active resistance struggle against the fascist forces. The numerous struggles of the working class, the peasantry and different sections of the society against the fascist rule of Narendra Modi and his Hindutva camp must be threaded together to form a massive garland of dissent and the initiation must come from everyone who represents the cause of democracy, secularism and socialism.

The parliamentary parties will betray such an important and fundamental struggle for democracy to show loyalty towards their masters and gain brownie points, hence, the onus of building this massive resistance struggle falls on the political forces that are outside the parliamentary arena and aims to bring a total transformation in the country. It's upon those political forces that wants to build up a mass movement without succumbing to parliamentary opportunism and those who will not paint a rosy picture about the system that serves the ruling classes among the people.

To delay in building up the anti-fascist struggle will mean more Afrazul Shaikhs getting killed for no reason but their religious identity by Hindutva terror mongers like Shambhulal Raigir. The delay in building up a massive, nationwide workers and peasants' struggle against the Hindutva campaign by uniting the broad masses of workers and peasants who are rendered penniless and thrown to the abyss of absolute pauperisation by the Modi regime will mean that the forces that are hailing Shambhulal Raigir and his ilk as “valiant Hindus”, get more oxygen to breed bigotry and violence in the country.

The need to build up the anti-fascist struggle on the basis of a nationwide united front against the fascist forces represented by the RSS-BJP and other Hindutva outfits is a dire one and the patriotic forces must stop rallying behind the parliamentary opposition and unite under a common banner together, with the sole agenda of defeating the Modi-led Hindutva camp and establishing a democratic, progressive and patriotic rule in India, which will build an egalitarian, secular and socialist society to allow people of all communities, castes and ethnic nationalities to live and prosper together, without the fear of lynchings or without breathing the toxic air of hatred and bigotry.

Aadhar Card Compulsion is Modi Government's Attempt to end Welfare Schemes

2017-11-14T20:33:00.005+00:00

The Modi government’s attempt to make Aadhaar mandatory for all social welfare schemes and even for the existing mobile phone users will be scrutinised by the Constitution Bench formed by the Supreme Court. The five-judge bench will see the constitutional validity of making Aadhaar mandatory for social-welfare schemes and scrutinise the legislation under the lens of the landmark judgement of 24 August, where the apex court upheld privacy as one of the fundamental rights of an Indian citizen. The reluctance of the Modi government to back-off from its position on Aadhaar has created severe chaos in the rural India, where numerous people, including a 10-year-old child, starved to death as their ration cards were not linked with Aadhaar and it prevented them from getting their ration supply from village fair-price shops, the centre of dependence for the poor.

Millions are awaiting the death due to starvation due to the same reason and a lot of people stand the chance of losing their mobile number due to a whimsical diktat from the nodal body of mobile operators, TRAI, which calls for mandatory linking of mobile numbers with Aadhaar of the consumer, by misinterpreting a Supreme Court order that said only new mobile connections must be verified against Aadhaar. The disconnection of millions of mobile connections will help Reliance Jio, owned by Modi’s principal funder, Mukesh Ambani, to reap huge benefits at it will have the highest amount of compliant customers and can provide a jolt to the other operators in the market by offering new price cuts and bigger offers to poach the customers of other networks.

It must be remembered that the BJP in general and Narendra Modi, in particular, were staunchly against the concept of Aadhaar when the Congress-led UPA II regime mulled and later rolled out the programme. The BJP even promised to reverse the Aadhaar upon coming to power. However, as on everything else, Narendra Modi did a volte-face on the question of Aadhar too and ensured that the unique identification system, involving the biometric identification, is imposed as a draconian burden on the people of the country and they are forced to jeopardise their privacy by switching to Aadhaar, which will eventually help the regime to garner a huge cache of data on the personal life and preferences of its citizens. This data can also be shared or sold to the big corporations, to help them develop better market intelligence, by analysing the personal data of prospective customers.

The Digital India campaign by Narendra Modi in Silicon Valley, CA, USA, in connivance with Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and owner of Facebook, was intended to build up a huge data sharing and selling arrangement between the Indian government and some of the world’s largest private data collectors and sellers. The warmth with which Modi government’s Digital India programme was welcomed in the US, showed that the big corporations there were reasonably happy with the amount of profit they are allowed to extract under this huge data-selling scheme launched by the government. The linking of Aadhaar for everything, including mobile connections, when smartphone is the device used by the majority of Indians to browse internet, clearly indicates that the government can intends to map the internet browsing pattern, search queries and other private details of the citizens with their biometric identity and can share them easily with third party marketers or organisations like Google and Facebook, enabling them to sell the data further to unscrupulous marketers who would know not only the online identity of the user but will also know a lot more about the personal preferences, views, health condition, income, socio-economic status, sexual orientation, marital status, food habits and medical condition of these netizens.

Moreover, the Aadhaar linking will not only earn the government dirty wealth from foreign corporations, it will also help it to save on funds required for social-welfare schemes, including the NREGA, mid-day meals, women and child welfare schemes, rural electrification, LPG connection and food supply programme to the poor through the crippling Public Distribution System. The Modi government is not interested in removing bottlenecks that prohibit the projects and schemes of the government from reaching the poorest of the poor; it’s least bothered about the poor at all. Rather, the Modi government is trying to ensure that the least number of people can actually claim benefits under the government’s different schemes so that it can save a huge amount of money allocated for the social-welfare programmes in the budget and then divert that money to bail out corporate houses in crisis or to provide the comprador and crony capitalists huge amount of tax sops and incentives.

The Modi government can show a downfall in budget deficit by doing this exercise and also can magically reduce the total number of people living below the poverty line, thereby pat its own back in public, to laud itself for alleviating poverty that its Modi-fied statistical system will sweep below the carpet. Aadhaar will be much helpful for the BJP in for this type of forgery and it’s therefore willing to take the project to its conclusion, even when the party itself levelled serious allegations against the implementation of the project when it was in opposition.

If Narendra Modi government loses the case in the Supreme Court (chances are less that it will), even then too the government can pass a legislation in both houses of the parliament, where the BJP and its allies have a brute majority, to nullify the judgement and make Aadhar superior to privacy rights. As Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of West Bengal, filed two separate pleas before the Supreme Court, questioning the logic behind the mandatory linking of Aadhaar with all social-welfare projects and for making Aadhar linking with mobiles mandatory, the issue got a new dimension and the toady press of the Modi government has plunged to save the government on the issue by carrying out slanderous and libellous propaganda against Mamata Banerjee and her government.

We remember how the Republic TV claimed that 57 crores illegal Bangladeshis live in India when the total population of Bangladesh is mere 16 crores and that of West Bengal, the state which Arnab Goswami accused of sheltering the 57 crores, has a population of only 9 crores. The lie was peddled by Arnab Goswami and his ilk to incite Hindutva jingoism and thereby attack and humiliate Mamata Banerjee and her government in the state with a propaganda with extreme communal tonality, to realise one nefarious goal - accuse the West Bengal government of appeasing Muslims, which is an old allegation levelled by the RSS-led Hindutva camp to portray West Bengal as a state that immediately needs a Hindutva resurgence.

Mamata Banerjee went to the apex court against the Modi government’s decision of imposing Aadhaar as a mandatory identity proof to avail the welfare schemes meant for the people, because the Modi government’s decision has rendered a large section of people in West Bengal out of the ambit of government’s welfare schemes and by using the Aadhaar linking excuse, the Modi government is duping the state government of its due amount, the money that was supposed to go to the poor people in the state. The non-availability of the funds is not only hurting the poor but also troubling the Trinamool Congress’ government, which will face a huge existential crisis should it fail in arranging the fund required to run the welfare schemes for the poor of rural West Bengal, whose discontent can topple the government of Mamata Banerjee.

The public spat between Mamata Banerjee and Narendra Modi isn’t new, but the magnitude it has reached through the slanderous campaigns against the West Bengal chief minister by the BJP and its sycophant Hindutva hate-mongering media, signals that the Modi government is brutally vilifying even the slightest and the constitutional opposition raised by any power against its misrule and tyranny. Even a long-time BJP ally and RSS fan like Mamata Banerjee is now publicly bashed by the Hindutva camp, even when the BJP has secret understandings with her government.

Modi government favours a police state in India, especially when it comes to the opposition. The recent intelligence raids on a Congress leader’s hotel room in Gujarat, the constant trolling of opposition leaders, journalists and activists by the BJP’s IT Cell members, the abuses and threats hurled at the critical voices by the Modi government’s ministers and their sycophants, the impunity with which the ministers of Modi government are spreading communal vitriol over internet and in the real world, can together testify that fascist rule is overtly established in India and the institutions validated by the Constitution that stands today are all but turned into puppet organs of the Modi government, with only one goal - to endorse the decisions of the governments.

The mandatory Aadhaar linking and the huge cache of biometric database mapped with individual preferences and other personal data that will accessible to the government will allow the latter to snoop on the citizens anonymously and then track their political beliefs and intentions so that the people can be gagged from speaking against the regime. Modi and Amit Shah were accused of stalking a woman in the past by using high tech snooping tools and the help of the IB and other state organise. The Modi-Shah duo can do it better and on a larger scale, if they can lay their hands on the huge cache of data of the Indian people, hosted by private parties and are even taken to offshore locations.

The Aadhaar linking issue is more than a legal battle the Indian government and the people of the country are fighting with each other. It shows the desire of the government to snoop on people and then sells off their data to whoever pays the highest amount. This is closely connected with the lives and livelihood of the common people, their right to privacy and their demand for a life free from complications and the government’s over-possessiveness. The only way the Modi government can be forced to desist from implementing any anti-people ordinance on the Supreme Court’s observation is by organising intense and broad mass struggles waged by the poor farmers, rural workers, working-class and the poor who lives in your surroundings. It’s imperative to see a large-scale anti-fascist movement takes shape without wasting a single moment, because the more time the Modi government will get, the more it will push the common people, the poor, into the gorge of utmost disturbance and hell.

Press Freedom in India Under Greatest Threat, Time to Fight Back!

2017-10-28T13:46:00.000+01:00

Press freedom in India has always remained an illusion used by the ruling clique of big comprador and crony capitalists, foreign monopoly and finance capital-owned big corporations and feudal landlords to deceive the people, especially the middle-class of the country, in believing that they are living in a free, open and democratic society. The mask of democracy and press freedom worn by the Indian ruling class had fallen off several times, showing the grotesque bedrock of the quasi-fascist state to the people, but with the support and help of its toady journalist battalion, the ruling classes somehow managed to keep the sham “press freedom” mask on and wiped off, quite successfully, the instances of the past violation of press freedom from the public memory. The freedom of the press never existed in the country and the recent updates reinforce this now popularly-held view more strongly than ever.

BJP President Amit Shah’s son Jay Amit Shah recently got a shot-in-the-arm when the Modi government stood in support of him in his bid to gag the independent media outlet, The Wire, for publishing a story that showed how one company owned by Shah Jr., Temple Enterprises, experienced a sudden meteoric rise in its turnover after Narendra Modi became the prime minister in 2014. According to the report in The Wire, Jay Amit Shah’s company’s turnover increased from ₹50,000 in 2014-15 to ₹80.5 crore in 2015-16, a massive 16,000 times increase in turnover, only for the company to pull down its shutter in October 2016, a month before the demonetisation exercise unfolded. The questions raised by the article were also shared with Jay Shah, but it suddenly brought the government into action, which even allowed the ASG Tushar Mehta, who happens to be a family friend of Modi and Shah and a trusted man of the duo who helped them dilute cases against the accused of the Gujarat pogrom of 2002 during his tenure in Gujarat, to appear personally for Jay Shah in the court. The threatening issued by Union Minister Piyush Goyal, the brute challenge of Amit Shah to the opponents and the total media silence on the issue showed how the corporate-controlled mainstream media acts as mere puppets of the regime and desists from raising uncomfortable questions or challenge the narratives of the regime. The issue of Jay Shah and the impunity with which he dared to attack a media outlet simply asking some valid questions by quoting from the publicly available documents with the ROC, showed that the BJP government led by Narendra Modi only asks for subservience from the media in the country and it will use the SLAPP, i.e. Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, itself or through its crony corporate funders like the Adani group, to gag the investigative journalist endeavours in the country by demanding hefty ransom through lawsuits and defamation cases.

The opposition ruckus over the Jay Shah case didn’t fully subside that the notorious BJP government of Chhattisgarh arrested Vinod Verma, a former editor of BBC’s Hindi news service and Amar Ujala, on the charge of blackmailing a minister of the state. Mr Verma was arrested from his Ghaziabad residence at 3:30 am on 27 October and was accused of blackmailing a Chhattisgarh minister using a “sex CD” of his. However, according to the journalist fraternity, the real reason why Vinod Verma, a member of the Editor Guild, was arrested by the police was because of the crucial role he played in highlighting the poor state of press freedom in Chhattisgarh, where the police and the state allows only PR communication instead of objective journalism, while investigative journalism into the goriest crimes committed against the tribal people by the paramilitary and police force is strictly prohibited. Apart from Kashmir, it’s in Chhattisgarh that the Modi government and the Raman Singh government has jointly locked the largest number of journalists in jail by accusing them of “anti-national” activities and blaming them of being Maoist supporters in the tribal people's resistance struggle against the government’s effort to evict them from their villages and forests so that the big mining corporations, with which the government has signed MoUs for mining mineral resources, can come and plunder the resources of the state. Vinod Verma raised questions, troublesome questions on the poor state of press freedom in Chhattisgarh and became a thorn in the eyes of the BJP.

Reporting about the crimes committed by the state machinery in Kashmir or Bastar of Chhattisgarh is equally condemned by the ruling clique and its sycophants. The journalists are only asked to act as the PR agency of the government and broadcast the story that the government wants them to say. While the Congress government led by Indira Gandhi forced the press to crawl before it during the emergency period, much of the prostration by the big media houses and their acting as PR agency of the government is voluntary and self-inflicted at present and has some ulterior motives. Big media houses are owned directly and indirectly by those corporations whose shares are directly or indirectly owned by big foreign monopoly and finance capital-owned corporations and therefore, these media houses act in accordance with the business objectives of their investors and advertisers. As the big corporate media entities earn nearly 90 percent of their profit from advertising revenue and by creating paid content/featured news to promote brands and corporations, news and its quality remains at the lowest echelon of priorities. Editorial policies and guidelines are created in the modern corporate media houses to muffle the critical journalistic habits, blind allegiance is demanded from the journalists to such policies in order to protect the interests of the investors, advertisers, banks and the government. Everyone oils everyone in the media industry to keep the profit rolling up and occasional pep-talks on “free press” and “journalistic ethos” are organised by these media outlets to show that they are still a part of the church despite denouncing its canonical laws in public.

Media houses that swear allegiance to "ethical journalism" shed their inhibitions at the drop of hat and start hitting back at those journalists on their payroll who raise tough questions for the Modi government and its corporate masters. It was due to his investigations into the Adani group’s nefarious business practice and the patronage it received in terms of tax relaxations by the Modi government in tune of hundreds of crores that Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, the former editor of the once-famous Economic and Political Weekly, got fired from his job. In a similar fashion, self-styled anti-establishment media outlet, NDTV gagged its employees from criticising the Modi government over the latter’s dubious claim about a “surgical strike” along the LOC in 2016 and it even dropped investigative reporting by Sreenivasan Jain from its website. The Times of India removed news about Amit Shah’s 300 percent increase in wealth in the last five years, while the Hindustan Times forced its former editor Bobby Ghosh to resign in order to appease Narendra Modi, whom the proprietor of the newspaper invited for its signature leadership summit. Bobby Ghosh started a campaign Hate Tracker that kept a tab on the Hindutva fascist hate mongering on the internet. It caused serious discomfort for the BJP. There are even instances where senior journalists are found to be brokering deals between corporate houses and the government, working as liaison officers to bridge the gap between their organisation and various bureaucrats, helping ministers and leaders of the ruling clique with PR consultancy. No wonder, for the whole country and its people, the mainstream media is - simply a “sold out” entity- with no credibility.

This belief prevailing among the people that the media is sold out and that it publishes or shows only such content that is convenient to them that the fast-growing fake news industry is able to make a kill, especially on digital platforms. The fake news industry is expanding and curating misleading propaganda and vitriol to meet a particular purpose, i.e. to bolster the political dominance of the Hindutva fascist forces represented by the RSS and the BJP and to veil the immense amount of corporate sponsorship these outfits receive from India and abroad. These outlets, mushrooming throughout the internet, are expert in spreading lies and vicious propaganda, especially those curated by the RSS and the BJP on the basis of their bedrock ideology of Hindutva fascism. They are making a kill by promoting bush telegraphs to lure people in believing the narratives set by the fascist forces. The industry is growing, feeding on the discontent of the people against the mainstream media and by judging the potential of the business, even big corporations are now plunging into what they call - alternative news industry - and are promoting another venomous modus operandi which is allowing them to spread misinformation and slanders in the name of alternative news. In India, the BJP MP and crony capitalist Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s TV channel Republic TV, which has the BJP gadfly and champion of yellow journalism, Arnab Goswami as its chief protagonist, is playing a key role in deceiving the people with misinformation, manufactured news and slanders wrapped in the package of alternative news. There are several websites and social media channels, including WhatsApp groups that are disseminating vitriol against Muslims and also against the opposition using slanderous and libellous propaganda dressed as authentic and alternative news.

Amidst this fierce competition among the mainstream corporate media houses to become the most valued and loyal government PR agency and yet wear the press tag, it’s only the crowdfunded small media outlets that are trying to become key players in honest, critical and answerable media movement by sticking to the ethics of journalism, especially its critical and analytical aspect and thereby, it’s only these small organisations who are raising questions, bitter and uncomfortable questions, which are causing discomfort to the regime. Small and crowdfunded people’s alternative journalism is not only criticising the government and exposing its crimes to the people, one by one, using the power of internet and social media, but it’s also empowering a new generation of journalists to acquire the true ethics of journalism and then bust the fake news module that is trying to become mainstream at the moment. The proactive alternative journalism model that is gaining strength by actually being anti-establishment and anti-corporate, is causing a severe disturbance in the status quo achieved by the Indian ruling classes, their government and their established mainstream press in the sphere of information management. The disturbance caused by these new alternative media organisations is now dealt with an iron fist by the regime and its corporate backers. They are hell bent to punish each and every alternative media organisation that dares to defy the restrictions set by the government and refuse to self-censor themselves.

The BJP government of Chhattisgarh, with full support from the previous Congress-led UPA II government and now from the Narendra Modi government, has implemented some of the most draconian policies that not only curtails the freedom of the press in the conflict zone of Bastar, where the government is waging a violent barbaric war since a decade to oust the tribal people from their land and forests in order to help the big mining corporations plunder the mineral resources hidden beneath the soil. Journalists are forced to only accept stories from the paramilitary and police officials and publish them in good faith, without doubting their integrity, validity or intention. Any attempt to go beyond the government’s restricted zone and seek information from the tribal people, write or publish stories on their plight and agony will make a media organisation or a journalist vulnerable of getting the “Maoist sympathiser” stamp and they can be then jailed or killed with impunity by the state machinery, as Chhattisgarh is the only state where “thinking” against the government is also considered

Throughout the world, the rise of the corrupt and neo-fascist power has unleashed a severe attack on the free press. Donald Trump managed to usurp power in the US only by using the mass hatred against the pro-corporate mainstream media that prevailed in America to his own advantage and thereby promoting the most notorious fake news industry to manipulate the people's thought process. Vladimir Putin in Russia uses the same “anti-mainstream news” rhetoric to run racist and fascist propaganda through the state-sponsored Sputnik and RT, two hardcore right-wing white supremacist and Islamophobic media outlets, calling them pioneers in alternative and investigative journalism. Narendra Modi has nurtured his own media lackeys; from the Zee News led by BJP MP Subhash Chandra to the Republic TV owned by BJP leader Rajeev Chandrasekhar, from the Times group to the India Today group, the Hindutva camp has monopolised its control over all form of mainstream media outlets and yet it also attacks the remnant of critical journalists as “sold out” journalists, “presstitutes” and “Pakistani agents” with an intention to rob them of their credentials. All these when their own media outlets spread rumours and use slanderous campaigns to malign opposition leaders and parties and the people’s struggle for justice. Following the cue from Chhattisgarh, the Rajasthan government of BJP’s Vasundhara Raje is trying to bring forth an anti-democratic and anti-free press bill, which has become infamous as “gag bill” and even few of the BJP’s lawmakers have raised strong objections against the fascist characteristics of the bill, which threatens the existence of any right to question the government and its policies. The strong growth of the fascist powers has unleashed a reign of terror against those journalists who dare to stand with the truth. Gauri Lankesh, a firebrand anti-establishment journalist was shot dead in front of her house in Bengaluru by assailants; the investigative journalist who blew the lid off the Panama Papers in Malta, Daphne Caruana Galizia was killed in a car bomb blast in Malta. Many journalists are being killed, maimed and gagged using state terror throughout the world and in India, every day, incessantly, to farther the cause of corporate tyranny over the world.

These atrocities against journalists and the total subordination of the mainstream corporate press make it imperative to build up a strong resistance against the fascist-corporate-government assault on the idea of the free press, which is an essential pillar of a healthy democracy. As both the corporate controlled mainstream press and the fake news industry that feeds racism and bigotry have openly declared a war against the idea of free press, with support of the fascists in power, therefore, time is now ticking for the journalists, who swear allegiance to truth and objectivity, to strongly unite against this onslaught and by leaving the sham cover of “neutrality” and “impartiality” they need to join the larger struggle waged by the working class, the peasantry, the common people of the country against the Hindutva terror-supporter and corporate sponsored regime of Narendra Modi. It’s very important for the sake of democracy and freedom of the country that the fascist regime is brought down through large-scale democratic struggle under the leadership of the progressive and patriotic forces and in this struggle, the small crowdfunded people’s media outlets need to play a very crucial role, stronger than what the Indian patriotic newspapers played during the colonial rule of the British imperialism. It’s on the degree of their ideological struggle against the fascist government and in their effort to expose the misdeeds of the regime and its hypocrisy that these media outlets, who are challenging the monopolised narrative of the corporate media outlets, will be able to tear the veil that covers the grotesque face of the Modi regime and will arouse the people, their readers, viewers and millions of people, to fight for the cause of democracy and change. It’s the need of the hour and everyone, who identifies themselves as journalists and swears allegiance to the cause of the profession, which is quite different than PR and communications, must take upon themselves the task to propagate truth by using the available mediums and reach out to the people with fact-based objective reporting. Only truth derived from facts through investigation has the absolute power to usher the nation towards a greater change by breaking the shackles of fascism.

The Problem of Resisting Hindutva Fascism With Faulty Icons

2017-10-06T23:00:00.000+01:00

Ever since Narendra Modi seized power through a largely manipulated election exercise in 2014, there has been an intense struggle unfolding between the right-wing, the centrists and the “liberal left” (including the parliamentary left) to usurp the legacy of people like MK Gandhi, BR Ambedkar and JL Nehru. As the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) attempt to establish their leaders and ideologues as pioneers of the nationalist movement in India and as they attempt to change the history of India to favour their Hindutva narrative, the opponents of the saffron brigade in the parliamentary sphere cry foul and strive to erect Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar as antidotes to the venom that is now reinforced upon the country. But their attempts are failing due to two broad reasons, firstly, they fail in marketing their icons vis-a-vis Modi’s and by the time the opponents decide to fire their salvo, Modi even usurps their icons as his, for eg the case of Gandhi and Sardar Patel. Secondly, Modi’s government has rightly dug the concealed part of the past of these so-called “nationalist” freedom-fighters of the Congress, who were not lesser British agents than the khaki knicker clad RSS chaps like Golwalkar and Deen Dayal Upadhyay, and by blackmailing the so-called “left-liberal” camp with the threat of exposing more about the political bankruptcy of these icons, Modi and his coterie manage to place their own Hindutva hate mongers as strong contenders for the “nationalist” legacy.

Take, for example, the case of MK Gandhi, whom the Prime Minister hails as a national icon on one hand, while his lieutenant Amit Shah calls him a “chatur Baniya” or a clever merchant from the upper-caste Baniya sect of the Hindus, on the other hand. Many people in the RSS and the BJP openly express their happiness over the fact that Nathuram Godse, an RSS man and a hardcore Hindu Mahasabha fanatic, killed Gandhi. Even the head of BJP’s infamous IT Cell, the propaganda fountainhead of the Indian Hindutva fascists, hailed Nathuram Godse recently and justified the killing of Gandhi on his Twitter timeline. While the murder of MK Gandhi was a despicable act, as would be the murder of any individual by religious fanatics or fascists, the character of MK Gandhi was neither as secular as the RSS and the Congress-led “liberal” camp would force us to believe, nor did Gandhi ever show a desire to fight the British colonial rule, as his marketers would claim today. Rather, it was Gandhi’s openly declared standpoint that he would never resort to any such political process or revolutionary struggle that will threaten the existence of the British imperialism in India, which made him a favourite of the British imperialism and its media outlets, who made an icon out of him.

Gandhi was the ardent supporter of the British empire until the beginning of the Second World War, when the Axis Power, consisting of the German-Italian-Japanese fascists, showed immense prowess as an aggressive military bloc and the Nazi German Army even reached a few kilometres of Moscow’s city limit, threatening to overturn the Soviet Union’s government, the only working class-led government in the world then and also threatened to colonise the vast Soviet land. It was a sign, a deceptive one though, that showed the Germans were going to win the war and the Indian turncoat-fascist, Subhash Chandra Bose, then threatened to reach India by crossing the Soviet Union and Afghanistan, with the support of the Nazi Germany and the Axis power, which made the British colonial agent Gandhi switch his allegiance to the Axis camp and show his eagerness to hug the prospective ruler of India, including his once bete noire, Subhas Chandra Bose.

It was under the hallucination of this false victory that Gandhi dared to challenge the very British imperialism, on whose behalf he spoke right up to the beginning of the war. Gandhi said that it will trouble his heart if a single bomb is dropped by the Germans or the Axis power on London, he even promised the British of raising an army of indigenous Indians who would fight on behalf of the British empire, like he did during the First World War. However, the initial victories of Nazi Germany and the Axis Power in Europe, Africa and the Far East, convinced Gandhi and his loyal Congress supporters that the Axis Power will be invincible and it will be unwise to support the British in the war and become a thorn in the eyes of the prospective victors. It was then in 1942 that Gandhi announced the most “militant” of all campaigns he had led till then, the Quit India Movement. It was the movement in which though people like Nehru participated, but the camp of Nehru, which earlier formed the Congress Socialist Party to hoodwink a major part of Indian workers and peasants who were plunging into the arena of class struggle and anti-imperialist struggle, remained sceptic of the fascist victory as they saw the joining of Soviet Union in the war theatre and the opening of a second front against the Axis Power the beginning of the end of the fascist warmongers. It’s for this very reason, Nehru and his coterie started an anti-fascist movement from 1939 in London and gave support to the anti-fascist forces in their war against the Nazi Germany and its Axis partners. The Indian National Congress’ Nehru clique sent to China a medical assistance team to help the Chinese people in their war against Japanese imperialists. This anti-German and anti-Japanese role played by the Nehru camp, despite them paying lip service to Gandhi’s call, made Nehru a strong contender for the post of premier after the British were to give India dominion status.

Gandhi, who was sidelined since the victory of the allied powers, became a burden for the Congress as he tried to stay relevant by playing communal politics during the heydays of fratricidal riots, which was fuelled by the Congress-Muslim League-Hindu Mahasabha and RSS endorsed partition plan of India. The partition was done to secure the long-term interests of the imperialist camp in the world that was divided into two major camps after 1945. On one hand was the imperialist camp headed by the US and on the other, was the socialist camp led by the Soviet Union, which literally liberated 1/6th of the world from imperialist domination. It was in their bid to ensure that the people of India cannot take India out from the domination of the imperialist camp in the future, the British imperialists, with the help of its agents like the Congress, Muslim League, the RSS and the renegade leadership of the Communist Party of India, divided the country in communal lines and successfully sowed the seeds of permanent hatred, mistrust and communalism among the predominant Hindus and the minority Muslims in the entire subcontinent.

Gandhi was a cunning politician who used communalism wherever it suited his political interests and he remained a vehement supporter of the Brahminical fascist tyranny, due to which he often had to face the criticism of Ambedkar. Despite talking about communal harmony in his last few years, Gandhi actually worked overtime to appease the hardcore religious fundamentalists of the Hindu and Muslim community and opposed any type of religious reforms. His often contradictory views and political opportunism are well-documented by renowned author Arundhati Roy in her piece, “The Doctor and the Saint” - an introduction to B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste. Roy wrote-: “History has been kind to Gandhi. He was deified by millions of people in his own lifetime. His godliness has become a universal and, it seems, eternal phenomenon. It’s not just that the metaphor has outstripped the man. It has entirely reinvented him (which is why a critique of Gandhi need not automatically be taken to be a critique of all Gandhians). Gandhi has become all things to all people: Obama loves him and so does the Occupy movement. Anarchists love him and so does the establishment. Narendra Modi loves him and so does Rahul Gandhi. The poor love him and so do the rich.

He is the Saint of the Status Quo.

Gandhi’s life and his writing—48,000 pages bound into 98 volumes of collected works—have been disaggregated and carried off, event by event, sentence by sentence, until no coherent narrative remains, if indeed there ever was one. The trouble is that Gandhi actually said everything and its opposite. To cherry pickers, he offers such a bewildering variety of cherries that you have to wonder if there was something the matter with the tree.”

This saint of status quo was not actually the messiah of the Muslim community who happened to be an oppressed community in a Hindu-majority India, where the dominant upper-caste Hindus, who enjoyed the monopoly on the means of production and knowledge for centuries, despised the Muslims for opening up an evangelical drive to engulf the lower-castes, ie the labouring sections of the Indian society, who tilled the land for the upper-castes and Brahmins out of socio-religious compulsions and could never demand equality, social and religious, with those standing higher on the caste pyramid. Gandhi despised the Muslims and he loathed any politics that advocated the destruction of the caste system. His later-year romance for the Muslim cause and his most-cherished trips to riot-affected areas with the call for peace and harmony, while not opposing the partition of India actively by using his personal charisma, which could've stirred up a nationwide agitation, signalled that these were actually his last attempts to recapture the position he lost due to his over-enthusiastic support for the Axis Power in the Second World War, done out of sheer miscalculation of military and political alignments of the war. It was Gandhi’s frustrated attempts to stay relevant in Indian politics and get his due share in the power equation in the Congress-dominated new ruling set-up, which upset the Congress and threatened the RSS’ sphere of influence as well.

Gandhi was shot by the RSS footsoldier and Hindu Mahasabha member Nathuram Godse due to the intensification of the internal contradiction between the ruling classes, which became antagonistic as the Congress under Nehru was reluctant to allow further room to his opponents in his cabinet and centralised power in his grip. The Congress faction of Nehru tactically pitted RSS and Hindu Mahasabha, whose leader and representative Shyama Prasad Mookherjee was a minister in its transition government, against Gandhi to curb the latter and also, on the other hand, vilify the Hindutva camp and strengthen its own secular credentials, by showing that the Hindutva camp killed Gandhi out of its desperation to fuel communal fratricides. With the assassination of Gandhi, Congress led by Nehru secured a great victory in consolidating its position and made the pro-Gandhi camp members non-important members of the new government and didn’t prosecute or dig the charges against VD Savarkar, the father of the modern Hindutva camp and his RSS accomplice, MS Golwalkar, in the murder conspiracy. Though Patel banned the RSS for some time to hoodwink the people, the Hindutva camp was reinstated with its glory by the same Nehru whom the Hindutva camp members loath now. It was Nehru’s extreme anti-communist, xenophobic and chauvinistic drive during the Indo-China war of 1962 that the RSS was allowed to re-enter the Indian political space as a “nationalist cultural organisation” and the members of the fascist organisation even participated in state rallies during the last days of Nehru, expressing its allegiance to the Nehru government’s anti-communist drive.

Neither Gandhi nor Nehru played any secular or progressive role, except for their ostensible role to hoodwink the people and the international community, in the overall anti-imperialist struggle against the British colonial rule or after the power was transferred to the Indian ruling classes by the British. Gandhi and Nehru had been hardcore opponents of the working class and the peasantry who took the revolutionary path to overthrow the British imperialist rule, especially the valorous struggle waged by Bhagat Singh and the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association or the communist-inspired struggles like the Telangana peasants’ war, the Tebhaga peasants’ struggle, the Royal Indian Navy mutiny, the major strikes in the Bombay mills, the Bihar Police revolt, the struggle against the trial of INA prisoners in Red Fort, the Buxar revolt, etc. which shook the pillars of the imperialist rule and forced the British colonial rulers in London and New Delhi to transfer power to its trusted lackeys, the Congress and the Muslim League, who represented the interests of the big comprador capitalists, the feudal landlords and the imperialist powers, in a bid to ensure that the Indian subcontinent is protected from falling into the red-zone. Gandhi and Nehru played the role of British pawns, alike the RSS or the Muslim League leaders during the colonial period and their occasional strife with the colonial rulers was nothing more than mere contradictions rising out of unhappiness over the share of booty by the colonial masters.

The neo-left Ambedkarites operating out of the elite campuses of the country are confiding their hopes on the political line of Ambedkar, the architect of Indian Constitution, as the only path that can help the broad masses of the oppressed Indians, oppressed due to their immediate identity, salvation from the shackles of Brahminical fascism, of which the RSS and the BJP are loyal representatives. In the name of fighting Savarna fascism and Brahminical hegemony, these so-called lefts, who tail behind the spontaneous identity politics, propagated by a section of the ruling classes to divide the poor broadly on caste lines, especially pitting the lower castes against the Dalits, the Dalits against the Muslims, the Tribals against the Dalits, etc., now use each pretext to launch vilification campaign against the time-tested Marxist-Leninist politics of class struggle, to actually derail any constructive move to unite the people and fight against the root cause of Brahminical fascism - the predominance of semi-feudal production relations and ownership of means of production in the vast countryside of India.

We have earlier discussed about the bankrupt politics of the Ambedkarite pseudo-left forces, who shun any real revolutionary practice among the oppressed communities, remain divorced from the class struggle in the countryside or in the factories and preach their vague ideology, devoid of any revolutionary substance, that calls for annihilation of caste and annihilation of class, together, one complementing the other, without creating the practical base for such annihilation. While they grossly overlook that India never had a total bourgeois-democratic revolution like the Western countries like France or the US did, and that the Indian capitalism is comprador in nature, begotten by the British colonial rulers, who gave birth to the Indian capitalists, who mostly come from comprador merchant background, from its womb to serve its interests, especially for supplying raw materials and for acting as commissioned contractors for the empire, the pseudo-left, the Ambedkarites, preach a very constitutional, reformist and non-revolutionary approach to the problems faced by the oppressed communities, the majority of whom are poor. They talk about patriarchy growing out of capitalist exploitation, without telling the people that the Indian capitalists are entirely dependent on the foreign inflow of capital and technology; that the Indian bourgeoisie is comprador in character and are acting as the frontal organisations of big foreign corporations in India, corporations that own a large stake in these companies through numerous shell companies. The predominance of the Brahminical hegemony in the Indian society is due to the fact that the Indian socio-economic structure still largely depends on the semi-feudal production system and the capitalist production relations didn’t have a record of independent growth in India. This predominance of the semi-feudal production relations in the vast countryside, where the majority of the population lives, makes it easier for the reactionary outdated Hindu caste system to thrive and dominate the poor. It’s a hard thing to find the Dalit landlords ruling over Thakur or Brahmin landless peasantry anywhere in rural India. It’s because the very feudal system that nurtured Brahminical hegemony survived on the exploitation of the labour of the lower caste Hindus and the ostracised Dalit community, divided the classes into communal lines to compartmentalise the society and to consolidate the rule of the rich and elites. People living in cities or villages share common feudal lineages and their privileges are based on their feudal background.

Ambedkar preached a million things against the caste system but never gave a clarion call to overthrow the feudal production system in the countryside; avoiding Marx he chose Buddha’s path as the path of salvation with the vision to hoodwink the poor Dalits and keep them aloof from the path of Bolshevik-inspired revolutionary movement in the colonial and semi-colonial days. Rather than resorting to revolutionary struggle to arouse the broad masses of peasants, the poor and landless peasants, the majority of whom belong to the Shudra or the Dalit community, to unite against the common enemies like the British imperialism and feudal landlords, Ambedkar took the course of compromising with the British imperialists and derailed and diverted militant working class movements and peasant struggles to sectarian abyss. He took steps to ensure that the Dalits remain aloof from any nationwide anti-colonial uprisings inspired by the Bolshevik movement. Ambedkar strongly opposed the peasants' movements in Telangana, the Tebhaga movement, the RIN mutiny, etc. and opposed the British handing power to the Indian ruling classes on the ground that it will take a long time for the Indians to run the show like the Western people. Ambedkar unapologetically favoured a long-term direct colonial rule of the British imperialism in India.

As a staunch follower of the Western model of “liberal democracy” in a country whose society he called “undemocratic” with a democratic top-dressing, the proponent of Dalit empowerment (he didn’t fight for Dalit liberation, but empowerment through Constitutional reforms) cleverly avoided comparing India with its immediate neighbours like China, which eventually got rid of feudalism by following a tedious revolutionary struggle. Ambedkar had the same Brahminical views that were predominant in the Hindutva camp and in the imperialist camp; he was strongly critical of the Muslim community and his views on the community can be easily stamped as Islamophobia in the modern days, Ambedkar also called the tribal people - “savages” - an imperialist terminology, a manifestation of his elitism and anti-people views. It was Ambedkar, who held high the Constitution morality so high that he provided a well-founded theoretical foundation to Nehru and his successors to deny the Kashmiri people their right to self-determination by making Kashmir an inalienable part of the newly founded Indian state in the late-1940s, as with the coming into force of the Constitution all treaties made between the caretaker government of Nehru with other parties stood cancelled and all land under the occupation of the Indian government was made inalienable parts of India, providing the Indian big comprador capitalists with an easy opportunity to exploit the manpower of those regions and their resources also. His thoughts were self-contradictory on various occasions, strongly anti-communist and pro-imperialist in nature and it can be said, judging his actions and his reluctance to play a crucial role in arousing and leading the Dalits and oppressed communities against the colonial rule, Ambedkar largely served the interests of British imperialism and later the US-led international imperialist camp.

Today, these icons, Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar are used as anti-imperialist, secular and anti-Brahmanical icons by the forces that enjoy the covert or overt support and patronage of the Indian ruling classes and their state machinery. At a time when the Hindutva fascist forces, strong proponents of Brahmanical hegemony, are ruling the country with impunity and launching attacks against the people of the country to divide them into antagonistic communal blocs, resorting to Gandhi, Nehru or Ambedkar and seeking inspiration from their dubious credentials to fight fascism will actually bolster the spirits of the Brahmanical fascists and their Hindutva juggernaut. It’s only by seeking the revolutionary inspiration from the great revolutionary fighters of the 1857 national uprising against British colonial rule, which was the uprising of the majority of the oppressed and exploited peasants, tempered in the fire of anti-colonial and anti-feudal hatred, only by seeking inspiration from the great rebels like Sidhu, Kanhu, Chand Bhairav, Birsa Munda, the protagonists of the Fakir and Wahhabi movement, the revolutionaries of the Bhagat Singh-Chandrashekhar Azad-led Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, the revolutionary peasants of Tebhaga, Telangana, Naxalbari, Srikakulam, Magurjaan, etc., by seeking inspiration from the millions of working-class revolutionaries who have been fighting against comprador capitalists and neo-colonial exploitation since ages that the people can be tempted to fight for a democratic revolution that will usher India into the dawn of a new-found freedom, the freedom from economic exploitation of the feudal landlords, which is the base of Brahmanical hegemony in India, from the exploitation and oppression laden on the people by the big foreign corporations and their Indian comprador and crony pawns like Ambani-Adani-Tata, freedom from the loot and plunder of the mineral resources by the big corporations on whose behalf the Indian state-machinery is since waging large-scale wars against the poor tribal people to evict them from their land and seize it with their forests, rivers and villages to hand them over to the mining giants in return for a share of the booty. To reach that realm of freedom it’s imperative that the people, the large section of the poor and the exploited people, the oppressed nationalities and communities are brought under the umbrella of the democratic revolution and doing liberal blabbering or senseless confusion-mongering instead of this revolutionary struggle against fascism will now mean strengthening the hands of the fascist forces.

Modi and the Hindutva camp that he is leading will continue to rule the country with impunity and serve the cause of the big foreign corporations and their Indian crony-comprador allies until a strong and durable anti-fascist revolutionary struggle is successfully built by the democratic forces. Even if Narendra Modi or the BJP loses an election or two, the Hindutva empire will continue to dominate the Indian politics, bureaucracy and economy, communal hatred and disunity will reign and the people will continue to las backward, in a "savage state", and in need of civilising.ive under the reign of the sclerotic regime, which will continue to serve the same classes and corporations despite change of guard or the hue of the ruling party. It’s only a new democratic revolutionary struggle, literally led by the working class in alliance with its genuine ally, the poor and landless peasantry of the country that the root cause of the Brahmanical hegemony and Hindutva fascism -- semi-feudal production relation and comprador-crony capitalism -- can be overthrown and a progressive society can be established on the principles of socio-economic justice, equality between all people, equal rights for all genders and communities and the fair share of resources with all members of the society. Except for this path, there remains no other path to end the hegemony of Hindutva fascism and Brahmanical tyranny on the people, there can never be.

Riots in West Bengal Should be Stopped Through People's Resistance

2017-07-25T19:19:00.001+01:00

West Bengal again went through a communally charged carnage in Baduria-Basirhat region within a span of few months since the flames of the Dhulagarh riot was ignited by the RSS. In the case of the communal riots in Baduria-Basirhat of North 24 Paraganas, it was not just a sheer lack of administrative control over the law and order situation since the beginning, which led a simple Facebook post sharing by a 17-year-old to snowball into a week-long conflict between radicalised Hindutva terrorists and Salafist goons, rather it was a planned communal violence engineered by the Modi government and its ideological mentor, the RSS.

Mamata Banerjee cannot beat off the dust of responsibility from her sleeves by blaming the BJP for the communal tension in the state. It's true that the BJP, with the support of its paternal organisation, the RSS, and other Hindutva terror appendages, and with the help of the Modi government in the centre, is trying to fan communal conflicts in all parts of West Bengal, but it could not have mustered the spirit to destroy the social and communal fabric of the largely peaceful and hitherto immune state to communal politics without considerable tacit support and patronage from the ruling party and its support base.

Panicked by the history of glorious militant class struggles waged by the heroic workers and peasants of West Bengal, united across communal and caste lines, the comprador capitalists, the foreign monopoly and finance capital, and the feudal landlords of West Bengal entered into a pact to drive a wedge between the two prominent communities of the state - the majority Hindus and the minority Muslims. As the majority of the comprador capitalists of West Bengal are non-Bengali, upper-caste Hindus, especially Marwaris and Gujaratis, they naturally inclined towards the North-Indian Hindutva fascist BJP as the party of their choice since a long time.

Mamata Banerjee and her party Trinamool Congress did a volte-face on the promises of providing a democratic and liberal atmosphere in the state, soon after usurping power in 2011 following a huge anti-incumbency tide against the then ruling Left Front government. Rather her government stretched the tyrannical rule that the Congress and the CPI(M) carried on during their period in office. The reluctance of the Trinamool Congress-led state government to let democratic atmosphere prevail in the state brought it close to its erstwhile partner-in-crime, the BJP, which wanted to be a chief opposition party in the Eastern state that it wanted to transgress into.

The Trinamool Congress government on one hand focused extensively to carry forward the atrocities of the erstwhile Left Front government in the Tribal heartland of West Midnapore district's Lalgarh, where the state machinery violently suppressed a genuine mass movement of the people, while on the other hand, it also focused on diminishing the opposition space in politics and turn the state’s political arithmetic into a bi-partisan system like that in most states of North India. Mamata preferred the BJP over her old bete noire - the parliamentary left-to ensure that the working class movement is curtailed in the state.

In the BJP, her former aide and close partner, Mamata Banerjee found the ideal components of the opposition that she was seeking, as the party is highly communal, eternally fascist and exists on the doctrine of hatred only, which it uses to drive a wedge between the poor people of the country to ensure a smooth exploitation of manpower, land, water and natural resources of the country. The unapologetic corporate appeasement of the BJP makes it a better choice than the parliamentary Left Front due to the lack of any ideological baggage to be the principal opposition party in the reign of Mamata Banerjee.

Since coming to power, or to be precise - since the anti-Left Front movement by a large section of the Muslims of Kolkata, following the brutal murder of Rizwanur Rahman, a software engineer killed in an honour killing incident by a CPI (M) supported upper-caste comprador capitalist, Mamata Banerjee and her party forged close alliance with the utmost reactionary sections of the fundamentalists of Salafist, Deobandi and Barelvi sects and used their influence among the Urdu and Bengali speaking Sunnis of West Bengal to bring them under the banner of the Trinamool Congress.

Devoid of any substantial content that could change the extremely backward condition of the Muslim community in West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress-led government's policy remained exclusively a replica of the age-old policy of the Congress Party, i.e. appeasing the most reactionary fundamentalists of the Muslim community and through them entangle the community in medieval religious practices and deny them a scope of economic, political and social aggrandisement.

The communal riots in Baduria- Basirhat area of North 24 Paraganas again exposed the complicity of the Trinamool Congress government in the RSS’ scheme of promoting communal violence in the state. If Mamata Banerjee's government was concerned about the communal harmony in the state, it would not have allowed thousands of Hindutva Akharas formed by the Bajrang Dal, Hindu Samhati and other fascist outfits to operate in the state, where children from middle-class Hindu families are lured with the bait of sword playing and other forms of physical activities and then radicalised gradually with the venom of Hindutva doctrine. Mamata Banerjee's government would not have allowed the fascist outfits like the Hindu Samhati, notorious for spreading bigotry and Islamophobia in the state, from operating with such impunity that the police officials will voluntarily prostrate themselves before the might of its thugs.

The utmost reluctance of the West Bengal government in enforcing law and order during incidents of communal violence and its lacklustre attitude in booking the Hindutva terrorists during their rampage provided the much-required impetus to the RSS-led groups to carry out violence in Baduria-Basirhat areas during the last few days. If the police, which would otherwise curb the democratic spaces available to the people of the state - suppress genuine mass movements of the workers and peasantry against injustice, kill and injure students protesting against the tyrannical Mamata Banerjee-led government, arrest and incarcerate professors for sharing a cartoon on Ms Banerjee and her team, could at least show an iota of such proactive approach in curtailing the communal violence, if the government of Mamata Banerjee would have ordered a violent crackdown on the communal bootleggers in Baduria-Basirhat, like she did to suppress the genuine mass movement of the tribal people of Junglemahal, the violence and the communal tensions in the region would have been addressed within few hours, if not minutes.

Rather than firing bullets on the farmers agitating against the land-grabbing attempt by the government of West Bengal in the Bhangar area, rather than slapping the draconian UAPA on farmers’ movement activists, rather than sending her mercenaries and killer-police to suppress the mass movement of the people against destroying the water body of Bhava Dighi, Mamata Banerjee, if she was as concerned for the safety and security of the minority communities and for preserving the communal harmony in West Bengal, would have sent her contingents of counter-terror forces to crack down the Hindutva cells that are threatening the peace and tranquility of the society in West Bengal and is trying to build up large-scale communal carnage to sweep power in the state by 2021.

Neither Mamata Banerjee nor her government would do anything such to prevent the recurrence of the violence and riots, fuelled by the RSS in Baduria-Basirhat region of West Bengal. As more the riots, more are her chances to polarise the Muslim voters by frightening them with the Hindutva threat and also to polarise the progressive Hindu voters, who are staunchly secular and against all forms of communalism under the banner of the Trinamool Congress, as the Left Front and the Congress are now thrown in the oblivion and cannot demand a moral upper-hand in the secular polity of the state due to their past complicities.

Unless this government, which has unleashed military terror on the people of the Darjeeling hills demanding separate statehood but remained indifferent to the communal rioters who created ruckus in Baduria-Basirhat, is not changed through massive popular democratic revolutionary struggle, unless the overwhelming majority of West Bengal - i.e. the workers and peasants are not united with a revolutionary democratic agenda to bring forth a total change in the way politics is done in the state, there can be no resolution to the ongoing communal riot instigating agenda of the RSS that is now receiving huge funding from the US-Israel lobby and the Indian big comprador capitalists.

To leave West Bengal at its own mercy and to avoid playing an active role to smash the conspiracies hatched by the corporate-feudal sponsored Hindutva camp in connivance with the Trinamool Congress will amount to promoting several Baduria-Basirhat type communal carnage in West Bengal and paving the way for the rise of the BJP as the ruling party by 2021. History will never forgive us and will condemn us if we overlook our conscience and let the fascists have their way without facing the strong resistance. It's time we either act or we won't be in a position to act ever.

The Curious Case of Rahmat Nagar and Jhingri Mohalla of Asansol

2017-06-27T21:04:00.000+01:00

The strange tale of two localities of the same city, partitioned by hatred, looked upon with doubt.

If you’re familiar with Asansol, the second largest city of West Bengal--rich in coal deposit and a well-known industrial belt, there is a probability that you may have heard about Rahmat Nagar and Jhingri Mohalla (a locality in North Asansol’s Railpar), two prominent Muslim localities of the region, which are often called “mini-Pakistan” by the upper-caste non-Bengali Hindu elites and the upper-caste Bengali Bhadralok community.

The general perception that strongly reigns in the lanes and bylanes of this colonial-era industrial town is that these two places are the hub of Muslim anti-social elements like thugs, pickpockets, wagon-breakers, murderers and extortionists. Most of the non-Muslims of Asansol believe that the people of these two localities are hardcore supporters of Pakistan; while some go to the extent saying that the people of these localities host terrorists from Pakistan and Bangladesh and even accuse them of exporting terrorists to other parts of the world! I'm sure you can identify at least one Muslim neighbourhood in your own city that has similar narratives built around it.

While before I write more about the Muslims of Rahmat Nagar of Burnpur or Jhingri Mohalla, Kasai Mohalla, etc. of Railpar, it’s imperative to have a look at the national political picture post the farmers’ movement in Mandsaur, especially after the Indian cricket team’s defeat in the ICC Champion’s Trophy final to arch-rival Pakistan, to understand the dynamics of communal politics of India.

Recently, 15 Muslim men were arrested for cheering Pakistan’s victory in the ICC Champion’s Cup Trophy in Madhya Pradesh, where senior BJP leaders and members of the saffron outfit’s IT Cell were recently arrested for their alleged role in spying on behalf of the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, and six farmers were killed brutally by the police when they agitated against the notorious Shivraj Singh Chouhan-led BJP government in Mandsaur.

For your kind information, Shivraj Singh Chouhan is tainted in the Vyapam scam - in which most of the eyewitnesses and investigators died in mysterious situations (or we can say got killed). His government has unleashed a reign of Hindutva terror in the central Indian state and it's persecuting the Muslims and Christians using draconian laws, by imposing restrictions on religious practices and by incessantly hurling abuses at the Abrahamic religions with which the Brahminical ruling classes are not in peace with.

In BJP-ruled Rajasthan, where the farmers are slowly organising themselves into a mighty force to reckon with, police arrested few Muslim men accused by the notorious fascist terror-monger VHP of celebrating Pakistan’s victory. The BJP’s lackey police are saying that they were arrested for “disturbing peace” by celebrating the victory of the neighbouring country in the cricket match. In Karnataka, three Muslim youths were arrested on similar allegations of supporting Pakistan during the cricket match, after a local BJP leader, Ramesh Chengappa, complained so.

Muslim men, Pakistan, victory celebration are few terms that, if we juxtapose together, will validate the propaganda of the RSS that the Muslims celebrate the victory of Pakistan more than that of India because they are loyal to Pakistan and hence, they are the enemies of the nation who can be lynched anywhere for anything by a Hindutva-incensed mob; it may be their appearance, the meat they eat or their reluctance to chant “Jai Shree Ram” - the war cry of the RSS. Probably this license to kill under Modi’s government encouraged the Bajrang Dal supporters of Haryana to lynch a 16-year-old boy, Junaid, on board of a train simply because he looked like a Muslim.

A nation-wide campaign is on since the last one hundred years, which aims to portray the Muslims as a community that has no “patriotism”, no loyalty towards the “nation” with a Hindu majority and are subservient to the interests of the greater Muslim Ummah based out of the Arab world. Though the Hindu Mahasabha started this vicious campaign during the heydays of the Khilafat movement, when a large number of Indian Muslims were agitating against the British imperialism over the ouster of the Islamic Caliphate in Istanbul, it was the RSS that later took up the issue to higher planes and made this allegation the foundation of its existence and growth in India.

Since the partition of India, the RSS and other Hindutva groups affiliated with it started bidding for a Brahminical theocratic Hindutva fascist rule and to wean mass support in this regard, the organisation and its numerous affiliates started milling rumours over the Indian Muslim’s purported affection and loyalty towards Pakistan. In provinces like Punjab and Bengal, the people even started calling the local Muslims as Pakistanis, despite the latter’s decision to remain in India and not move to Pakistan during partition. By accusing the Muslims of showing loyalty towards Pakistan repeatedly, the RSS and its political mass organisations like the BJP managed to stir up communal hatred throughout the country.

Cricket became a commercial success after India embraced the neo-liberal economic system since 1992 to be an integral part of the globalised US-ruled world order and subsequently opened the floodgates for foreign corporations to set-up their shops in the country. Match sponsorships started pouring in from big global corporations like the Coca-Cola company, Pepsi, Nike, Addidas, etc. Cricket became the fastest source of making huge money and thus the cricket control body, the BCCI, became a money minting machine for many politicians, big traders, comprador crony capitalists and big mafia cartels. People who never played a single professional cricket match in their lives became the head of cricket affairs in the country. Politicians like Lalu Prasad Yadav, Arun Jaitley, Amit Shah, Sharad Pawar, etc. have kept their hold on their respective state's cricket associations for the immense financial potential of the sport and not out of any love for the game.

The neo-liberal economic regime not only wanted a nation living and dying for a sport but it also wanted to use the sport to keep the market hyperactive and the hegemonic rule of big monopoly and finance capital secure. It was for the same reason of consolidating the hegemony of the big monopoly and finance capital that severe communal riots were since instigated on a full scale to drive a wedge between the overwhelming Hindu community and the minority communities like the Muslims and the Christians. It was 1992 when the Babri Masjid was demolished by a rowdy mob led by the BJP leader L.K. Advani. Seven years later, when India became a prominent cricket team, Dara Singh, a Hindutva terrorist of Odisha, killed an Australian missionary and his children by burning them alive in the station wagon they were sleeping in one night in Mayurbhanj district. All to keep the communal tension brewing.

During those days of the 1990s, to consolidate its base and to polarise the upper-caste Hindu voters of different regions, the Hindutva fascist RSS and BJP started a bush telegraph campaign throughout the country over how the Muslim community, which actually lives a very miserable life in the ghettos of big cities and in the most inhuman condition in villages, supports Pakistan’s terrorist organisations against India. A mass uprising against Indian occupation in Kashmir was at its peak then and films like Roja were fuelling the hyper-chauvinist and xenophobic temper of the urban Hindu elites and middle-class. Opposition to the Mandal commission helped to tie a strong bond of kinship that united a large section of the upper-caste Hindus of North and West India. The campaign against Muslims, set on the stereotyping done using a particular backdrop, became quite a hit, thanks to the incessant propaganda by the Hindutva thugs and the Brahminical ruling classes using all type of platforms, especially films and TV.

Returning back to Asansol, it was in those turbulent days of the 1990s, when both Sikhs and Muslims were suspected of being terrorists that a message was amplified in the corridors of a semi-posh public school in Burnpur - “the Muslims are Pakistan supporters”. Little children, as young as six, were taught not to befriend their Muslim classmates and there was a vertical division on caste and communal lines in the schools, mostly among teenagers. The vulnerable children were injected with bigotry by their classmates, seniors, teachers, etc. in the school; at their homes they overheard their parents talking on the same lines about the Muslim community and in the TV they watched the Muslims portrayed as villains in Bollywood blockbusters. Their minds were shaped, sharpened and reserved to be used in the service of the Hindutva thugs at a later time.

In the early and mid 1990s, such vilification of the Muslim community were installed in the minds of the teenagers and children by the RSS affiliate “fringe elements” to ensure that when these children grow up, they can carry forward the vitriol to their next generations to toxify more minds against the Muslims of the country eventually. The young Hindu minds were deprived of facts and data; they were not told that the Muslims are a community that is facing a systematic repression under the Hindutva state since the partition of the country. There was no counter-propaganda in Asansol to thwart the venomous vitriol of the RSS, despite Jyoti Basu’s government thumping chest on its secular credentials at that time. The minds of these susceptible youngsters were slowly infested, which made them become the vessels of communal hatred in the future.

The word "Katwa" is used extensively to refer to the Muslim community in Asansol, alike the whole country, since a long time. The deregotary word is believed to refer the circumcised penis of Muslim men. However, the origin of the word was from the Brahminical excommunication ritual, under which ostracised people or communities, who were considered filthy by the caste-Hindu society, were called "Katwa" and were exiled from the mainstream society. No communication was allowed to take place between the caste-Hindus and the ostracised Dalits and Tribal people. But in the 20th and 21st century, the term Katwa was permanently used to call out Muslims and became a commonly used verbiage in the daily discourse of upper-caste Hindus. The extreme communal hatred expressed by such words carved deep impact in the minds of the children then, who were encouraged by their seniors to call their Muslim classmates- Katwa.

One common thing that binds this Muslim-bashing Bengali Bhadralok of West Bengal with the Thakurs and upper-caste feudal landlords of Madhya Pradesh’s border village with Maharashtra from where 15 youth were picked up by the BJP government’s police for cheering for Pakistan during the ICC Champion’s Cup Trophy is - that no one ever witnessed the Muslim's cheering for Pakistan, no one has evidence to prove that the hapless poor Muslim people of these places are Pakistan cheerleaders; rather, they have all heard such allegations from someone they know and believed the allegation to be true at its face value. This is how fascism consolidates its rule- through legitimising hearsay and usage of seductive bush telegraphs that villainize other communities and races with all sort of concocted tales.

Almost every time I overheard two or three educated and suave non-Muslim Bengali Bhadralok or non-Bengali elites of Asansol discussing the issue of cricket, Kashmir or politics, they would certainly refer to the Muslims as Katwas and then blame the community, especially the poor people living in inhuman conditions in Jhingri Mohalla and Rahmat Nagar (many even without basic hygienic sanitation, drinking water or a square meal a day) as terrorists and Pakistan sympathisers. These Bhadralok and upper-caste non-Bengali Hindus would blame the Muslims for enjoying subsidies and reservation (!!!), without being able to provide any evidence of such utopian claim. These people who abuse Muslims are not actually RSS or VHP members. Ironically, they despised the RSS and the BJP for its communal politics at one point of time. Many of these people were seen flocking the Left Front-led rallies, raising slogans of unity, fraternity, solidarity, etc. Still, hatred brewed in their bellies against the Muslims, as against the Dalits and tribal people.

It was mid-2002, as far as I recall, a CPI(M) Branch Committee member in Court More area of Asansol told me, without knowing my 'religious' identity, that Narendra Modi (then Chief Minister of Gujarat and the kingpin of the anti-Muslim pogrom) did a recommendable job by “answering the Muslims in a language they better understood" and that Modi made the Hindus feel proud. Following this statement, he replayed the stereotype calling the Muslims of Rahmat Nagar and Jhingri Mohalla, who have settled in Asansol since the 19th century to work in coal mines, factories and railways, as Pakistani agents. The CPI(M) leader also claimed that Osama Bin Laden’s cassettes were played during Khutba in the mosques, i.e. during the time of sermons. Again, when I asked for evidence, he clearly said that he has no first-hand witness or evidence, but hearsay built his conviction. It was the time when the so-called Left led by the CPI(M) were advocating nationwide resistance against the saffron terror and communal politics. Certainly, they love overlooking the pests that infest their own core.

This cross-pollination of belief and ideology was actually an ideological victory of the BJP in West Bengal, nine years before Mamata Banerjee rose to power. At that time, Mamata Banerjee was a minister of Atal Bihari Vajpayee-led NDA government and welcomed Narendra Modi with a bouquet following the latter’s victory in the Gujarat assembly election of 2002. The saffron terrorists spread their wings within the state with the active help of Trinamool Congress since 1998. The vitriol against the Muslims became high in Asansol and the people from the minority community, who were forced due to Brahminical discrimination to live in ghettos like Rahmat Nagar or Jhingri Mohalla, were abused behind their backs and even under the nose of a so-called “Marxist” party’s rule, stereotyping of Muslims as terrorists and anti-national intensified in the industrial town. But none of the then-omnipotent mass organisations of the CPI(M) did any detoxification campaign to undo the injustice meted out to the Muslim community.

Now, after 15 years, the stereotypes and the rumours have evolved to become the mainstream Hindu narrative that even a large section of the poor Hindus subscribe to. The working class is continuously seduced with anti-Muslim diatribe by the RSS and BJP organisers of the region; the saffron bloc has managed to win a large support base among upper-caste workers of PSUs like ISP, ECL and Railways. The victory of the BJP in the Asansol Lok Sabha seat in 2014, the very seat which the CPI(M) managed to retain even during the adverse tide of 2009, showed this gradual victory of the saffron camp in wooing a large section of the working class to assemble under the Hindutva umbrella. This infesting of a labour belt by Hindutva fascism shows us that how deeply the problem of communal hatred has entrenched into the Indian society, especially in West Bengal.

As the BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS, enjoys the loyalty of a large number of upper-caste Bengali and non-Bengali Hindus and a big portion of the Dalits and Tribals in the Asansol constituency, and as Babul Supriyo, a minister in Modi's cabinet and the MP of the town, is repeatedly attempting to instigate communal trouble and to lure the unemployed youth with money, alcohol, and power. This once-upon-a-time trade union capital of the undivided Burdwan district is now experiencing a monochromatic division and the the rift that existed between the Hindus and the Muslims of the town is widening deeply.

More Hindus of Asansol now believe that the poor and hapless Muslims who live in Asansol’s Railpar, Burnpur’s Rahmat Nagar or Dharampur are plotting terrorist plans and celebrates the victory of Pakistan in cricket matches. This was reiterated to me when I was visiting a men’s parlour for a haircut recently. The downmarket stall in a prominent place in the town was filled with non-Bengali youth with whom the owner of the stall was communicating in Hindi about how treacherous the Muslim community is and why it’s important to teach them a lesson like they did in Gujarat or Muzaffarnagar. Upon asking where he belongs to, the man replied Gorakhpur. Though I refrained from stereotyping the barber hailing from Gorakhpur by referring to a bigot from the same town who became infamous due to his notorious speeches and riot-monger role, I tried to persuade him that no one in Rahmat Nagar or Jhingri Mohalla loves Pakistan as he believes. Though it momentarily stopped him, there’s no guarantee that the thought process changed.

The fact is that there is no compulsion to support a non-government or a government team(as BCCI is a heavily corporate-sponsored autonomous, non-government entity and the Indian cricket team is owned by it and the corporate sponsors) during sports events, so no one can compel another person, who lives in the same country, to support a team that originates from that country. If that would’ve been compulsory, the Indians should have stopped watching Fifa’s World Cup or Euro Cup as India never qualified for it. It would have been an offence then, to cheer for France or England, as in my case, or for Argentina or Brazil, for the rest of Bengali football lovers, because they aren’t our country.

I personally liked the Australian cricket team in the past.
Oh! That was really long time ago when David Boon and Alan Border played!
My God! I’m growing old, too old indeed, isn’t it?
But does that makes me a culprit in the eyes of the law? Not cheering for India led by Mohammad Azharuddin but Australia led by Alan Border?
Probably it does.

As in a country where the Assembly of Karnataka can spell jail terms for journalists who wrote critically about two MLAs of the BJP and the Congress respectively, where 15 men were picked up for cheering for Pakistan in Madhya Pradesh, where the farmers of Maharashtra are sprayed with pellets by the police, where the military kills the youth of Kashmir striving for freedom from a ruthless junta rule, a fascist despotic rule smokescreened using a quasi-democratic veil, it would be too much to expect the majoritarian mob of the minority Brahminical upper-caste elites to buy logic and rational thinking. Patriotism, as defined by the Hindutva fascists, is a hot selling concept today and most brands strive to catch the market by aligning with it. Did you see the meteoric growth of the FMCG brand Patanjali under Modi's reign?

If the same upper-caste elites go to Pakistan and cheers for India, we would not be surprised to see them being lynched by a Salafist mob or arrested by a bigot police force. This is what makes us worry more, as we never wanted India to become another Pakistan or Saudi Arabia-styled theocratic fascist state. But it’s becoming one fast. One nation, one language, one religion and one leader formula of fascist Mussolini is implemented with such craftsmanship by the Modi-led BJP government that the publicly executed fascist ideologue would’ve felt jealous to see the pace with which Indian fascism is consolidating its rule over the country with unwavering support from the US-led coalition of imperialist powers that want to keep India dominated as a neo-colony.

Back to the post-18 June world, the arrest of Muslim men by the police in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan and Congress-ruled Karnataka for allegedly celebrating the victory of Pakistan in the ICC Champion’s Trophy, happened only after the BJP or other Hindutva organisations reported against them to the police and the latter obliged. Back to Asansol, a similar campaign over a purported celebration of Pakistan’s victory and firing of crackers in the Muslim ghettos of Rahmat Nagar and Jhingri Mohalla was started over WhatsApp groups managed by the BJP IT cell in the city. They used these fake videos with deceitful content to provoke the Hindus against the Muslims by using the age-old propaganda style of the Sangh Parivar.

Unsusceptible minds, the politically backward section, which forms the bulwark of reaction in the middle-class and working-class section in Asansol, often falls for these propaganda and then, like a Chinese Whisper, the rumours are milled and re-milled continuously, until they blow the story out of proportion and start making ridiculous claims like Osama Bin Laden once took refuge in Jhingri Mohalla, which a Vaishya trader from Varanasi, settled in Asansol, once told me.

The big problem that all progressive forces face in dealing with the problem in Asansol is the lack of avenues to clarify their points boldly and with enough evidence as these Muslim ghettos are so isolated that the middle-class or poor Hindus never dare to venture into these areas or try to befriend people who live in these areas. Most Hindus consider these areas “untouchable” and would never visit them to see how people live in these places and whether the residents of these ghettos truly support any “Jihad” or Pakistan?

If a non-Bengali or Bengali Hindu would visit these Muslim ghettos of Asansol or any other city and spend some time with their residents, especially the poor workers, unemployed youth and other toiled people, they will learn that the Muslims of these ghettos are normal people like them who are trying hard to meet the resources required to feed two square meals a day to their families. But the Muslims of these localities, or for that matter, of all Muslim localities, are deprived of the minimum basic rights of a citizen of this country and are only treated as a vote bank. Once you cross the bridge from Bengali upper-caste dominated Subhaspally of Burnpur to reach Rahmat Nagar, where Guddu’s pan (betel leave) stall will be the first thing to welcome you, a new world will be uncovered before your eyes.

The lack of civic facilities, the utmost poverty and lack of education leaves the youth of these localities at the mercy of their fate. The only government representatives that the people of these areas are acquainted with are the police and other repressive agencies that pick up Muslim boys randomly and shoot them or jail them forever on fabricated charges. The mainstream press and the toady journalists of the Hindutva camp concoct tales around these ghettos and help the saffron brigade in shaping the perception of the larger Hindu community of Asansol and neighbouring areas about the Muslims living in Rahmat Nagar or Jhingri Mohalla.

A communally divided society cannot stand up together to seek its rights and this is exactly what the RSS and the BJP have in their mind. The Hindutva groups have repeatedly struck at the thought process of the vulnerable Hindus with their deceitful propaganda to make them believe that the Muslims living in these locations are terror-fundraisers or hardcore criminals. As more people subscribed to this theory, which has no base than Chinese whispers, the BJP made good gains eventually and helped the RSS to increase its militia’s base in the region. Now, thanks to the BJP, the hitherto communally peaceful Asansol has turned into a hotspot for sparking communal riots among the Hindu and the Muslim community using their bush telegraph campaigns on the occasion of Bakri-Eid or an India-Pakistan cricket match.

It’s true that there are many people who live in these ghettos are criminals by profession. But was that their fault or the fault of the Muslim community or can this be called a fault of a system that deliberately pushes a large section of a particular community towards crime or menial jobs by closing the doors to other opportunities before them or by thrusting a regime of apartheid on the people? When the Hindutva camp can scream out its lungs against Muslim appeasement - can it show a single Muslim ghetto in the entire country where the governments did anything remarkable to uplift the condition of the people in comparison to their affluent Hindu neighbourhoods?

Forget Rahmat Nagar or Jhingri Mohalla, which doesn’t exist for the people of the world, but if we look into the condition of life in Calcutta’s Park Circus, Bombay’s Shivaji Nagar, Delhi’s Seelampur, everywhere the Muslims are ghettoised by the upper-caste Hindu elites and upper-middle class members, who form the core of BJP’s vote bank. The Muslims are left with no civic amenities, no employment opportunities, no formal education opportunity, and not even clean drinking water or proper electric connection due to the systematic discrimination policy adopted by the Brahminical Indian ruling classes.

There were few employment opportunities for the Muslims in places like Rahmat Nagar, Jhingri Mohalla and the rest of Railpar. They laboured in the IISCO factory, in the mines of ECL, in Railways as fourth-grade labour. But with the neo-liberal economy forcing these employment opportunities to shrink and become exclusive domains of the majority community, the Muslim population of the town was thrown from the only jobs they were hired in. Most Muslims in Asansol are forced to migrate to Middle East Asia to sell their labour there or are rendered as hawkers and casual labours. A small percentage of them takes to crime due to the lucrative baits of easy money and in the Asansol sub-division, the number of Hindu criminals still surpasses the number of Muslims.

The enmity sown between the two communities by the Hindutva brigade and few Salafist organisations working in the industrial belt of Asansol will not wither away on its own but spread the venom of hatred, mistrust and antagonisms for a long time. But those who are firmly on the path of democracy and progress must smash this conspiracy hatched by the outsiders and the enemies of the people by exposing the conspiracies and by building a bridge of confidence and trust between the communities by increasing inter-community exchanges and dialogue.

To improve inter-community dialogue the best thing will be if more Hindu youths can befriend the Muslim youths, as often the youth are used as a vessel to spread communal vitriol by the Hindutva camp. The RSS plans will seriously suffer great setbacks if more interactions can happen among the youth of the two communities and they can understand each other's aspirations and thoughts, which will eventually diminish the myths and stereotypes created by the Hindutva groups since the last three decades.

I know many people of Rahmat Nagar of Burnpur or Railpar in Asansol won’t be able to read this piece on this blog because they don't know how to read. However, I also know that they want to assert that the Muslims of these places, alike Muslims of any other place, doesn’t need any type of “patriotism” certificate from the harbingers of fascist terror and the mob lynching in India. Their hard labour, invested in building the society and keeping things on run, is in itself a living example of their contribution in the construction of India, alike their Hindu compatriots. Rahmat Nagar, Jhingri Mohalla, Railpar, Islampur, Dharampur and other Muslim dominated areas of Asansol are the inalienable arteries of the town, without which its existence will be impossible.

Rahmat Nagar and Jhingri Mohalla are also the essence of Asansol’s cosmopolitan nature, which is also represented by Chelidanga and Mohishila. We cannot let few WhatsApp campaigns, slurs and vitriol take away the sheen of the communal harmony that Asansol exemplified in the past and it will be an arduous task now to rebuild Asansol from the debris of communal hatred that the RSS sparked decades ago. However, Asansol stood together and strong on many occasions and the city will survive these onslaughts as well to defeat its enemies and bury them beneath to look towards a brighter future.

Can India Vs Pakistan at ICC Champion's Trophy Final Save the Modi Regime?

2017-06-19T11:46:00.000+01:00

Whenever there is a crisis in the country that has the potential to kindle a mass upsurge against the ruling classes, the latter either escapes the ignominy by using communal riots, terrorist attacks, etc. or by invoking the “national pride” of middle-class Indians, cricket. Similarly, at the height of the farmers' movement demanding higher prices for crops, loan waivers and the working class' nationwide movement for better wages and restriction on corporate loot under the patronage of the neo-liberal economic reign, cricket is the weapon of the ruling clique to distract mass attention from the burning problems in the country.

As India and Pakistan meets to play their second match, i.e. the finals of the Champion's Trophy at Kennington Oval, London on 8 June 2017, there will be an utmost craze and corporate-controlled Hindutva media's attempt to intensify its vitriol against Muslims by hyping the cricket match as a war between a chaste India and a vulgar Pakistan and help the corporate-controlled Modi government to take away the public attention from itself, since it got quagmire in deep crisis following the outbreak of farmers' agitation in Madhya Pradesh.

The Champion's Trophy in England is destined for India, as it's a large marketplace that gives the corporates that sponsor the game and owns the players, a great opportunity to exploit immense super profit from. The markets of Pakistan or Bangladesh aren't ripe and the investment situation in these two countries are quite less promising than what is in India.

Hence, the big corporate houses love to keep the cricket craze alive in India by providing the team, which isn't an excellent team in terms of cricket playing, easy victories against competitors during all type of trophy matches. The pre-planned mechanism of the corporate houses can be seen in Bangladesh losing to India in the semi-finals of the Champion's Trophy and India set to play against Pakistan in the finals, which will be a huge TRP booster for the broadcasters as well as the companies that will sponsor its live cast.

When suddenly the popular demand for an India-Pakistan final cricket match, which is considered as a crusade of Hindus against Muslims in India and vice versa in Pakistan, increased following India's win against Pakistan and the hype of jingoistic fervour in the country by the sycophants of Narendra Modi, the corporate houses decided in favour of it and then only could the Indian team and the Pakistani team got a clear pass to the final match.

Who will win the final match of Champion's Trophy on 18 June 2017? The baits are high and the gambling cartels in India are making huge money, as most baits are for India as the voltage of chauvinism increases slowly. The pseudo-war, or as cricket is perceived in the nation ruled by the Hindutva bigot Narendra Modi, between India and Pakistan will surely keep millions of eyeballs stick to their TV sets, which will ensure a lot of advertisement and branding consumption by those very people who never knew that they are, but pawns in the big game plan that runs the world.

India will certainly win against Pakistan in the finals of the Champion's Trophy, not because it's my patriotic duty to say so, but unless India wins against Pakistan the big corporations cannot keep a pro-cricket positive environment awakened in the country and probably, in the scenario of India losing to Pakistan in its 22 yards' crusade, people will start taking interest once again in the farmers' movement that is rocking the strongholds of the BJP and the entire Hindutva camp.

Cricket may be a temporary breather for the corporate houses in their bid to save themselves from utmost disgrace due to the continuous brewing of class hatred among the poor and downtrodden people of India, who are eager to hit the streets to show their strength to the Narendra Modi-led government, which is a puppet regime of the corporate-feudal nexus that strives to ensure a resistance-free reign of plunder for its foreign and domestic masters. But in the long run the “gentleman's game” will not be able to provide any sort of relief to the crisis-ridden foreign monopoly capital and its domestic comprador and feudal collaborators. The people are the destiny makers and for sure they will not get bogged-down by the hoodwinks of the big corporations and its puppet government, but carry forward their movement against the loot and plunder they are subjected to by the government led by Narendra Modi and his followers.

By helping India manipulate and win the Champion's Trophy tomorrow evening, the big corporations won't be able to generate the positive vibes that they expect, because at the end of the road, the hungry and poverty-stricken farmers, semi-pauperised and starving workers are not going to feel contended after silly cricket victories powered by backdoor deals and negotiations. The farmers want a better price for their crops, loan waiver and the workers want better wages and an independent life, which the present regime and the system cannot provide them. Thus, the movements will continue irrespective of India's marvellous win in the match.

Reviewing Farmers' Movement of Madhya Pradesh

2017-06-15T18:28:00.000+01:00

Though the Narendra Modi-led BJP government and its bootlicking mouthpieces love to stamp all type of anti-government protests as “anti-national”, the massive anti-BJP farmers’ movement that gained extreme momentum since five protesters were killed in police firing and one in police custody in Mandsaur district of Madhya Pradesh, has become such a movement that the BJP or its parent organisation RSS couldn't stamp “anti-national” due to the immense political weight that the farmer vote bank, which is 54.6% of all Indian households, carries with itself.

Despite few BJP leaders and lawmakers trying to magnify the “conspiracy” angle behind the farmers’ movement, behind which they saw a “filthy Congress hand”, the entire saffron camp suffered a strong setback as a strong movement in a BJP-ruled state with 90% Dalit and backward caste Hindu participants rocked the very foundations of its rule — divisiveness and mass-distraction from socio-economic problems.

While the farmers’ agitation, which started initially from Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, where the semi-pauperised and semi-starving farmers stripped, ate mice, drank their own urine and did all sort of unprecedented protests to draw the attention of the Modi government towards their utmost miserable condition, failed to win any major victory for the participants immediately, it created the base on which the next struggles of the farmers, especially the poor and the landless peasantry would be built up in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, two BJP ruled states.

A vigorous and bigger struggle unfurled in Maharashtra, where the farmers rallied against the BJP government demanding a better price for their crops and a loan waiver to save many farmers who are reeling under the juggernaut of heavy debts due to repeated crop failure and heavy losses incurred due to plummeting prices of crops in the market.

The flames of the farmer struggle in Maharashtra reached Madhya Pradesh on 1 June, when the farmers of the state started rallying against the apathy of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government towards farmers and demanded higher Minimum Support Price (MSP) for their crops.

The government of Chouhan was not in a mood to pay more MSP for crops to the poverty-stricken farmers, who are left with no other choices but to commit suicide to escape the vicious cycle of debts, so the BJP government took the easy way out, i.e. unleashing brutal police repression on the agitating farmers, which killed six so far and injured numerous farmers in the state.

However, the state-sponsored violence by the Hindutva camp and its lackey police force and bureaucracy didn’t deter the farmers. Despite losing their compatriots to bullets and police torture during the height of their just struggle for higher MSP for crops and loan waiver, the farmers kept fighting relentlessly and organised themselves with vitality to force the Modi government and its running dogs to a humiliating retreat.

The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh and other states failed miserably to halt the farmers’ movements and through different deception-filled moves, they tried unsuccessfully to derail the strong and militant farmers’ movement in the heartland of India.

Even the time-tested communal riot-inciting techniques of the Hindutva camp led by the RSS failed drastically to polarise the farmers on religious line by kindling flames of cow-violence in BJP ruled Rajasthan and by introducing a new venom-spitting Hindutva icon, Sadhvi Saraswati to rake up the cow slaughter issue, dear to the BJP, to split the farmers’ movement.

The miserable condition of farmers in Madhya Pradesh

The BJP government in Madhya Pradesh, which won several awards from the central government for remarkable performance in agriculture at a time when 42% of the state's agricultural land is not irrigated, 54.6 % farmers are landless farmers and more than 83% of the state’s rural population earns less than ₹5000 per month, did absolutely nothing to help the farmers get a minimum amount of profit after selling their crops.

While the contribution of agriculture to the national GDP dropped from 70% in 1947 to 14% in 2016, but in Madhya Pradesh, the contribution of agriculture to the GDP of the state rose from 25% in 2004-05 to 30% in 2014-15. In Madhya Pradesh, the agriculture sector has grown during the same period at 9.7% while on the national scale, the rate was only 3.7%. Though the BJP marketed this growth as a spectacular success of its pro-farmer policies, in reality, it was the farmers of the state who suffered the most on this growth trajectory.

According to a report in Times of India’s 10 June 2016 edition, the cost of cultivating wheat in Madhya Pradesh increased to ₹2695.27 per hectare in 2014-15 from ₹1241.34 in 2004-05. Similarly, thanks to the submission of the subsequent governments to the neo-liberal economic policies, the cost of seeds used in one hectare increased from ₹998 in 2004-05 to ₹2653 in 2014-15. The cost of irrigation in Madhya Pradesh, where 72% of the agriculture is rain-fed, increased from ₹1961.50 per hectare in 2004-05 to ₹2599.55 in 2014-15.

While the cost of farming is increasing manifold, the farmers are constantly forced to sell-off their crops at a throwaway price, even less than the amount they invest in farming. The crop prices fell drastically in the last two years and the Madhya Pradesh government remained indifferent towards the farmers and didn't care to increase the MSP of crops, which again forced the farmers to sell their crops to the market where the usurers and traders paid higher price than the government's MSP, however, much lesser than the cost incurred in farming the crops. The bottom line is, the farmers remained quagmire in deep crisis.

U-Turn on promises by the Modi government

Narendra Modi promised to implement the Swaminathan Commission report during the 2014 general election campaign and the Hindutva camp, represented by the BJP, also promised MSP of 1.5 times the production cost of the crops to win votes of the farmers.

However, in these three years, despite taking countless measures to protect the lives of corporate houses and cows, the Hindutva camp and its government under the leadership of Narendra Modi did exactly nothing to increase the MSP of the crops to support the lifeline of the country- the farmers. Madhya Pradesh government only followed the footsteps of Narendra Modi’s government and allowed everything from ISI agent breeding in BJP IT Cell to Cow Vigilante (Gau Rakshak) attacks on Muslim men and women, but any reform to help the farmers.

The Finance Minister, Arun Jaitley, is shamelessly fooling the farmers since the last two years by promising to double the income of the farmers in five years. But studies have shown that the farmers, on an average earn between ₹1600 to ₹2200 a month and the government’s promise of doubling their income in five years, i.e. by 2021 (when inflation will also increase the prices of essential commodities by at least 20-25%) to a meagre sum of ₹3200 to ₹4400 every month per household, will not bring any massive change in the lives of the farmers.

The semi-pauperised farmers of Madhya Pradesh, especially the small and marginal farmers, who are more than 80% of the rural households and the landless peasants, who account for 54.6% of the state's rural population, are forced to face the brunt of the worsening situation. They were further pushed towards the verge of economic bankruptcy when the demonetisation exercise started in November, during the sowing season.

Demonetisation: Another fatal blow that knocked farmers down

The demonetisation exercise by Narendra Modi's government to appease the US government's Catalyst organisation, also drove the farmers towards utmost destitution, as the traders were devoid of cash and paid the farmers in cheques, which they couldn't encash either due to unavailability of bank accounts or cheque bounce caused by lack of fund or spelling errors.

As per the farmers of Madhya Pradesh, the average waiting time for a cheque to get encashed is 20 days, during which the cash-starved farmers are forced to seek loans from feudal landlords and unscrupulous moneylenders to meet their immediate expenditures and even to pay the debts that they took to sow seeds and during farming.

Many farmers had to take immense loans to meet huge cash requirements during the wedding season that started in November-December and many farmers were forced to sell their livestock to arrange cash for their daily sustenance. Sowing failed in many areas as the farmers lacked money or digital currency to pay for the seeds and fertilisers, which threw the poor and the landless peasants to further destitution.

The deadly debt trap killing farmers

The loans that the farmers take from private moneylenders and feudal landlords at interest rates that hover between 20-24% per year, often becomes the noose around their necks that strangulate them and drive their families towards utmost destitution. The farmers, who take loans to meet immediate expenses like investment in farming, purchase of equipment for farming, wedding or other social rituals, are forced by the moneylenders to hand over their land, cattle, house, etc. in return for such deadly loans and it becomes an impossible thing for the farmers to survive amid such situation.

An NSSO survey shows that 46% of Madhya Pradesh farmers are reeling under heavy bank debts, which can result in them being booted out of their lands and houses by the banks or the local feudal landlord cum moneylenders, who are drooling like hungry sharks to occupy the little assets of the poor farmers.

The low prices of crops, the higher input costs, high amount of piling unpaid debts and no source of alternative revenue has forced thousands of farmers, 1982 between February 2016 to February 2017, to commit suicide. However, under the Modi government's notorious policy, the suicide of farmers aren't attributed to huge debts and their exploitation at the hands of the feudal moneylenders and banks, but the agriculture minister would blame the personal issues of the farmers like failed love affairs and impotence for their suicide.

Modi government’s corporate appeasement and farmer killing agenda

During the last three years of the Modi government, foreign capital owned corporate houses, big comprador capitalists like Ambanis, Adanis, Tatas to Vijay Mallya enjoyed a lot of fringe benefits including huge tax sops, income tax breaks on corporate income and moreover, the immunity from any compulsion to repay debts owed to public sector banks.

The big defaulters like Vijay Mallya, who has taken huge amount of loans from public sector banks, using guarantee given by the government, escaped the claws of the law very easily and is now “living life king-size” in London, while the government is only uttering jargon over the issue of recovering corporate bad debts.

While the Modi government has done everything it could to protect the interests of the big comprador capitalists and corporate houses owned by foreign monopoly and finance capital, it remained utmost indifferent towards the plight of the farmers, who are forced deeper into the quagmire of poverty and destitution every hour.

The neo-liberal economic model, which the right-wing parties like the BJP and the Congress cherish very deeply, doesn’t only make the lives of the working class miserable but also brings havoc economic wrath on the livelihood of the peasantry.

The indebted farmers are chased to death by the public and the private banks and feudal moneylenders. The governments at state level orders some sort of loan waivers to hoodwink the poor farmers, like what Yogi Adityanath did recently to woo the farmers; however, the lack of a comprehensive support system and the exclusion of loans taken from private moneylenders from such loan-waiving schemes often turns such measures into a farce for the farmers, who are not helped by these schemes but are, rather, harassed more by an anti-people and pro-feudal bureaucracy that implements these decisions at the ground level.

The farmers’ movement and the future course of politics

This farmer rebellion, which started from Maharashtra and became a viral and a strong movement in Madhya Pradesh will not die down easily, though a large section of the rich farmers is in the leadership of the agitation. The movement is spreading slowly to the BJP-ruled states like Gujarat, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, etc. and more farmers are now demanding unconditional loan waiver from the governments of their respective states, along with better prices for their crops.

The corporate mainstream media will try to downplay the militant movement waged across all these states by independent farmers’ groups with full vigour and vitality and will try to distract the mass attention using cricket matches between India and Pakistan. But despite such censoring of their movement, the farmers will not relent unless they get justice and prepare a system through which they can safeguard their economic interests and save themselves from exploitation by the feudal landlords, local usurers, traders and unscrupulous moneylenders.

Due to its class and caste composition the BJP and its parent body RSS will throw their weight behind the feudal landlords, local usurers, traders and moneylenders and ensure that the feudal mode of exchange prevails in the country and land reforms are not done to prevent the collapse of the socio-economic and political supremacy of the Brahminical feudal system over which the Hindutva politics is standing.

Therefore, it’s a task of the progressive and democratic forces to unite and lead the farmers against the Hindutva fascist regime and win the support of the poor and landless peasants by raising the demand for a total and revolutionary land reform agenda that can be successfully implemented only by overthrowing the socio-economic and political dominance of the feudal landlords in the countryside of India, where Hindutva fascism is bred every moment by these parasite classes.

Only a broad anti-feudal struggle by the farmers with their spearheads directed at the Hindutva fascist system, can spell doom for the present regime and its corporate appeasement drive, which has caused severe socio-economic problems for the common people of the country, especially the poor workers and peasants, the downtrodden masses, the minority communities, the Dalits and the Tribals.

The need of the hour is to unite the fragmented and spontaneous movements of the farmers under the anti-fascist banner and to forge a close unity between the agitating farmers and the working class’ struggle against the government’s policies. The iron strong unity of the working class and the peasantry will surely become a lethal weapon against the communal-toxic Hindutva brigade led by the Modi regime and its ideological mentor, the RSS and end their fascist rule over India.

Review of the UK General Election 2017

2017-06-09T20:48:00.001+01:00

The British parliament is hung and several negotiations are underway to forge unity to form a Tory government after the Theresa May led Conservatives failed to reach the magic figure of 326 in the parliament to form a majority. The unionist DUP of North Ireland has promised to support the Tories to keep the Corbyn led Labour Party out of 10 Downing Street. This endeavour will now help Ms May to stir across the hurdles towards forming her government once again.

This election result, which the Conservatives won with a slightly higher margin than the Corbyn led resurgent Labour Party, shows that a large section of the British population has become extremely concerned and are agonised by the austerity measures that the Conservative Party has imposed upon them since 2010. Despite holding their strong base in the northern parts, the Labour Party forayed into new areas and wrested 31 more seats than its 2015 tally. The Labour Party won seats like Canterbury, Plymouth and Ipswich, where their victory was unexpected and unbelievable to many political pundits.

The British and international monopoly and finance capital is sinking deep in the quagmire of an economic crisis that has never ceased to haunt them since 2008’s American sub-prime crisis, and now, the banks and the big corporations want to have greater share of wealth for their sustenance and they are intensifying their pressure on friendly governments throughout the world. Theresa May’s government was not an exclusion.

In Britain alone, £93 bn was given to corporate houses by the government in form of rebates, tax breaks and grants from the public exchequer, which means every year, £3500 per household goes towards the corporate world’s welfare, at a time when the common people, especially the working class and the lower-income groups, are facing immense challenges as the government keeps on cutting down welfare spending, emergency services including the NHS and social security.

Such unapologetic corporate bootlicking by the government of Britain and the growing income disparity in the British society has transformed many hardcore Conservative supporters into Labour supporters, though they are miles away from any revolutionary endeavour to change the social and political system of Britain. Lack of employment and underpaid jobs, which are basically unsecured, coupled with a heavily debt-oriented economy has crippled the opportunities for the British youth and unemployed people.

According to this report, though the number of unemployed people in the UK has reduced to 1.56 mn in March 2017, 45,000 less than September to November 2016, the experts and the Bank of England itself has claimed that the unemployment will rise 5.5 % once the real effects of the Brexit referendum will be felt(Ms May is in haste to negotiate the Brexit with Brussels now that she will form a government).

Even those who are getting employment, are getting them on wages that are far below the real wages, as the analysis from economist Geoff Tily shows that the real wages in the UK have fallen 1% every year between 2008-2015. Using the global data released by the ILO, the analysis showed that the UK ranks 103rd among 112 countries in the world in terms of real wage growth. According to The Economist, real wages rose only 1.9% in February, while the inflation hit 2.3%. It doesn’t need any special pointer to tell that the working class is forced to carry the cross of this crisis caused by the greedy capitalist system on its own shoulders.

The angry and disgruntled working class of Britain, including the immigrant workers, who are considered cheaper substitutes for slightly expensive British or Scottish workers, have provided a much required impetus to the Labour Party, which is harping for a chance to wrest control of Britain under the leadership of the pink socialist, Jeremy Corbyn -the parliamentarian who is packaged as a demi-revolutionary by the British and the international corporate media as he happens to be their best bait in case of a total collapse of the Conservative regime.

Jeremy Corbyn’s left-leaning, yet quite diplomatic rhetoric won’t lead the British working class and the traditional Labour Party supporters to a haven of egalitarianism. He and the Labour Party (despite being called the socialist and left-leaning Labour Party) will function as a shock-absorber for the British ruling class and monopoly-finance capital. The agenda of nationalising of the railways or key industries won’t usher in the dawn of socialism, rather, they will help the British capitalists with more money from the public exchequer and help them run their crisis-ridden business enterprises with the help of a trained bureaucracy that is paid from the tax payer’s money.

But despite utmost opportunism exhibited by the Labour Party, the British working class and the low-income groups showed, by voting the party, that they have decided to go against the Tory regime led by Theresa May. The outcome of this general election shows that despite managing to win 41% votes, the Conservative Party is not in a position to rejoice because the Labour Party managed 39% votes and is breathing on the shoulders of the Tory’s.

Britain desperately needs a change, for the better, and it needs it very soon. However, no such changes will be coming through such highly publicised and picnicked parliamentary polls, rather through hardcore militant struggle by the working class for democracy, socialism and liberation from the yoke of capitalist exploitation that leads the class towards destitution. The banner of this movement for a revolutionary change cannot remain pink, but crimson, the universal colour of the working class’ fraternity.

Therefore, to lead them towards socialism, which can be called the only antidote to the toxic condition in which the working class and the low-income group people lives in the UK, there is a dire need to establish a revolutionary centre and a political party of the working class that can on one hand be the vanguard of the working class on one hand, while on the other, combat all forms of opportunistic politics that will aim to curtail the revolutionary potential of the working class. Only under such a vanguard force the working class of Britain and its poor can defeat the ruling classes, thwart the neo-colonisation plans hatched by the British ruling classes and liberate themselves from the filth of capitalism and its exploitation.

British Government's Double Standard on Countering Wahhabi Terror

2017-06-07T05:06:00.000+01:00

When the lone-wolf terrorists attacked unarmed civilians near the London Bridge on the evening of 3 June 2017, I wasn’t sure whether it would be appropriate to write an article on the London attack with the prima facie evidence before us and expose a larger conspiracy by the British and the European ultra-right fascists, which aims at curtailing the rights of people and intensify snooping over their private lives more than ever.

After watching the developments for the next 48 hours, I came to the conclusion that it’s imperative to document my points that I came up with after analysing the event and its repercussions few days before the parliamentary polls in the UK. Especially, after the British prime minister exposed a sinister conspiracy on 4 June during her press conference.

The attack on the common people of London bore the hallmark of the terrorist strikes that are carried out by the CIA-funded terror organisations. Oh, wait! What did I say? CIA-funded? I mean what on earth is that CIA-funded terrorism? Well, if you are not well-acquainted with the term then you have to do a simple history check on the most notorious terror groups operating in this planet, like the ISIS and the Al Qaeda, and you’ll find their founders were somehow linked with the CIA and the US military-industrial complex during their lifetime or before setting up these terror shops.

Back to London. The terror attack was done following the script of a similar attack on pedestrians and unarmed people in France a few months back. The attackers rode a van with which they hit people on the street and after their vehicle rammed another, the men took out knives and started stabbing indiscriminately. The London MET police brought the situation under control, by gunning down these terrorists on the spree, within eight minutes of getting the first emergency help call.

The London MET police claimed that there was no other way apart from shooting these men, as they were stabbing people indiscriminately and they also wore vests that resembled like that of suicide bombers. The vest worn by these men frightened the police officers and they were left with no other chance but to shoot the perpetrators. Later it was found that the vests were fake and there were no bombs there.

While the attackers were still alive and the MET Police had to fire 50 bullets to kill them, the British and international corporate media started beating the drums of Islamic terror, even much before the identities of the slain terrorists were revealed by the police (which happened only on Monday). The usual cacophony of the media was then substituted by the vitriol against the Muslim community by the fascist groups like the UKIP and others. Prime Minister Theresa May came on the air, during a press conference and gave four utmost vogue points that her government will pursue, according to her, to counter terrorism in the UK.

Ms May called for greater snooping on internet, tight control over the online space under the garb of combating terrorism and didn’t utter the word “Wahhabi” or “Salafi” while accusing radical Islamic terror, which is fuelled ideologically and materially by the utmost reactionary puppet monarchy of the US and the UK, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Prime Minister May’s call for snooping had “extremists” and “terrorists” as targets without clearly defining that what her government meant by these two terms and whether her government will also target those forces that are fighting militant struggle against imperialist aggression, colonial plunder or right to self-determination as well under the pretext of combatting terrorism. As someone’s freedom fighter is always a terrorist for someone else.

Long before it was found that one of the terrorists, who was killed during the Saturday night attack, was a suspect under watch for terrorist and Salafist links, Theresa May was confident to accuse the internet as a breeding space of “radicalism” and “extremism” without making clear the definitions of the terms from the perspective of her party and the government.

Though the claim made by Theresa May and her coterie about the “rich corporations owning the internet” not sharing the user information with the government may sound a bit revolutionary, however, it’s not so in reality. The speech and the declaration of Theresa May about a forthcoming notorious plan to contain the information flow over the internet is a deeply carved conspiracy by the international monopoly and finance capital, of which the big social media companies are an inalienable part.

The internet is controlled by the governments of all countries and anti-establishment views and thoughts, considered radical by governments of different countries, gets banned or blocked quickly than the likes of Theresa May & Co. would like us to believe.

The social media companies like Facebook, Twitter, etc. are close collaborators of notorious regimes like that of the US, the UK, Saudi Arabia, India, Pakistan, etc. These companies earn huge money by sharing user information with third party marketing agencies and they also help the fascist political forces to have a larger say and reach over their platforms vis-a-vis the progressive and democratic forces.

While many extremely racist, white supremacist, Zionist and pro-fascist contents are kicking success on various social media platforms under the garb of enjoying the individual’s liberty to hold different political views, more than often, the voices of resistance, the views of the progressive and democratic forces, especially the radical left is subjected to gagging and banning over social-media.

When the British prime minister talks about curbing the free cyberspace where “radicalism” grows, she is not hinting towards an exercise to de-radicalise or curb the growing menace of Wahhabism or Salafism, simply because the British ruling class, whose boots she and her cabinet and, of course, her opponents in the parliamentary fora, licks, are friends of the Saudi and other Gulf monarchies that promote and export Salafist terror throughout the world through a widespread network of reactionary Madrassas and Saudi-US funded mosques and seminaries.

The British ruling class was complicit in the greatest crimes against human civilisation since the 18th century and they have been helping unscrupulous characters and murderous thugs to set up the most reactionary governments throughout the world since the last three centuries.

Wahhabi Saud dynastic rule was established on the Arab people by the British imperialism with an intent to keep their domination intact over the entire Arabian peninsula and thereby exert their proxy control over the Islamic religion as the Saudi dynasty usurped the custody of the most revered Islamic structures like the Keba and the important cities like Mecca and Madina.

Being one of the most arch-reactionary monarchy in the world, the Saudi Arabian ruling class, who are puppets of the US imperialism and its allies like the UK and the Zionist Israel, indoctrinated millions of Muslims throughout the world with the fabricated version of “puritan” Islam that the monarchy invented with the help of its loyal clerics.

This “puritan” Salafi Islam helped the US imperialism and its allies since the 1950s to curb the growth and expansion of left-wing ideologies in the Muslim majority countries in Middle East Asia and allowed the US-led power bloc to keep the Muslims aloof from the struggle for freedom, democracy and socialism. For the US, a subservient Middle East Asia and a lackey regime in Saudi Arabia was crucial for extracting immense profit from the oil and energy trade.

By producing highly paid clerics to help the US in its geopolitical goals, the monarchy of Saudi Arabia played a crucial role in bringing the entire Gulf region under the US jackboots and turned Pakistan and Afghanistan into the haven of fratricidal Islamic terrorism since the days of the Soviet aggression in Afghanistan.

It doesn’t matter how much Islamophobia Theresa May, Donald Trump, Narendra Modi or other leaders spread through their xenophobic campaigns in their homeland, these enemies of the people and killers of innocent Muslim people in their home or abroad are great friends of the Saudi kingdom and even gets felicitated by the monarchy, which is very notorious for its non-existent human rights, for its misogynist approach and persecution of the democratic forces that seek independence from the monarchy and aspires for a republic.

It’s their sheer hypocrisy over the issue of terrorism that the British ruling class or their US based big brothers are keen to bomb a sovereign republic like Syria, which is one of the last bastion of secularism in Middle East Asia, apart from Lebanon, and which is staunchly fighting against a Western-sponsored Salafist terrorist aggression on its territory, but at the same time they increase weapon deals and aid to the most notorious monarchy on earth, Saudi Arabia, which is also one of the largest terror exporter in the world.

While arming the Saudi Arabian government and helping it to further carry out its nefarious conspiracies throughout the world, wherever the US and its allies needed the support of the monarchy and to carry out aggression on Yemen and Syria, the same Western powers call the international community to fight against the radical terrorism shooting out of the perverse version of Islam propagated by their very loyal lackey, the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

There are instances that the Western powers and their lackeys unleash immense atrocities on their native Muslims on one hand under the garb of countering an invisible Islamic terror threat, while their rulers mingle and strengthen the arms of the very monarchy and its allies in Middle-East Asia, which are a great threat to world peace and security. While playing with the rhetoric of combatting terrorism and radical Islamic fanaticism, the Western powers are continuously sponsoring all evil acts of the monarchy.

Saudi Arabia and its Salafist army will keep on haunting the entire mankind until the kingdom and its ruling classes are supported by the US-led Western imperialist powers and the Zionist Israel regime. The threat of Islamic terror cannot be exterminated by the so-called counter-terrorism measures, which actually helps in breeding terrorism through state terrorism on marginalised and minority sections of their societies. It can only be done by uprooting it from the soil, by overthrowing the reactionary monarchy and its clergy rule in Saudi Arabia and by the establishment of a free, secular, democratic republic in its place.

Though the counter-terrorism measures will be hyped in the UK and other countries using the pretext of preventing Islamic terror that their allies like the Saudi Arabia and the Zionist Israel promotes through their client organisations like the ISIS or Al Qaeda (whose leaders were manufactured in CIA factories), eventually such futile and hollow counter-terrorism exercises would be to culminate in curbing the civil rights and hard won labour rights throughout the world and establish, what is called a police state that will impose a fascist rule, more nakedly than ever, with total impunity over the very people who have voted the governments of such parties that act as the lackeys of international monopoly and finance capital.

It’s imperative for the progressive and democratic forces of the world to launch a large-scale struggle against these ultra-right governments that are hell bent to impose the unapologetic dictatorship of corporate fascist rule over their citizens and snatch away their hard-won rights, including the labour rights and rights to freedom of speech, expression, association and opposition to the misdeeds of their governments.

Theresa May and people in her league are not going to fight the menace of Salafist terrorism at all, but use jargons to brutally oppress people on behalf of corporates, while the evil powers like the Saudi monarchy will keep exporting terror throughout the world under the patronage of the US and in partnership with Zionist Israel. Their rule and their order must be overthrown by the democratic forces to establish a just, egalitarian and a truly secular world order, which will not only dismantle the base of religious terrorism and fundamentalism, but will also provide an environment of equality, peace and freedom to the people of the world and let them live a life without fear and follow their faith and beliefs without any intimidation.

Three Years of Gau-Vernance by Modi

2017-05-31T19:29:00.000+01:00

The Modi government completed three years in office this May and a jubilant mood is prevailing all over the RSS led Hindutva camp throughout the country on this occasion. This is visibly the last year to celebrate being in office safely, as the country will enter a poll-mode in the next summer. Thus, the BJP leaders are boasting about a long list of “developments” done by the Modi government in the last three years and they are parroting the list wherever they are visiting to do propaganda on behalf of the regime.

During the listing of the Modi government’s achievements, the senior BJP leaders, including the party supremo Amit Shah, are claiming that the socio-economic problems of India are in decline and there is a new India on the rise, where the poor are happy and becoming prosperous gradually, thanks to the innovative measures taken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Though it sounds like the “India Shining” campaign by Atal Bihari Vajpayee during his last year in office, the BJP and the RSS are denying to link this new campaign with the catastrophic campaign of 2004.

If one goes by the verbiage used by the BJP and the RSS leadership in hailing Narendra Modi and his government during the last three years, then it will seem like India was in a quagmire since the British left the country and the people were waiting for a promised “Messiah”, an avatar of the Hindu god, to deliver them from the rotten mire to the realm of happiness and prosperity. Narendra Modi is presented as that historic personality who liberated the Hindu majority from the shackles of secularism and casted the villains, i.e. the Congress and other opposition parties, into the oblivion of history.

As usual, the BJP leaders didn’t care about sharing data or facts to support their claims of building a qualitatively different and better India; but who needs data and figures in Modi-fied India where only rhetoric and blind faith counts and being a lackey of the Hindutva camp helps one to earn brownies. The journalists of the yellow press caught the baits thrown by Amit Shah & Co. and propagated the same over all platforms to brainwash people, especially the middle-class into believing that “all is well”.

Amid the drumbeats of the third-anniversary celebration of the Modi regime, there are several questions that the majority of the people of India, who are poor, downtrodden, oppressed and exploited, gagged and banished, wants to put forth to the BJP government and its helmsman, Narendra Modi. Those people who are willing to ask these questions are many and the very democracy that paved Narendra Modi-led Hindutva brigade's path to power, won't be able to allocate any space to those numerous people to question the regime.

Let’s try to see a dozen of bizarre questions that the reckless poor are asking:

Why did Narendra Modi’s government fail to bring the black money from foreign shores back home, which he promised to do within the first 100 days of his government? The BJP fought the general election of 2014 on the promise of bringing black money back and punishing the culprits who have stashed immense unaccounted wealth abroad.

Now the people of the country are eager to know the sum of the money that the Modi government was able to bring home from abroad and the number of people it prosecuted for stashing ill-gotten wealth abroad.

How successful was Narendra Modi’s demonetisation exercise in curbing black money in cash, when the reports say that only 5 per cent of the total black money remains in cash?

Didn’t the economy suffer due to the demonetisation exercise? Did the government trace any huge amount of black money after the demonetisation exercise? What happened to the promise of stopping terrorism, Maoist attacks or Kashmir protests by demonetisation?

What exactly happened to the government’s data collection machinery - why there is no data released by the RBI on the amount of demonetised currency notes it got back from the people?

Why is the government reluctant to let people know, with facts and figures, the amount of black money that died a painful death due to the demonetisation exercise? Why don’t the government show the people few examples of rich people who have become poor, or at least descended to the level of middle-class due to the demonetisation exercise?

Why don’t Narendra Modi and his coterie informs the world about the connection between India’s demonetisation drive and the USAID’s Catalyst?

The Modi government asked the poor to open bank accounts under the Jan Dhan Yojana but didn’t tell them that they will certainly need to apply for Aadhar Card to link their bank accounts.

Why did Narendra Modi and the BJP opposed the Aadhar-UAID project earlier, when they were in opposition, and made it mandatory for seeking the benefit of several services and government schemes when they came to power?

Why the Modi government allowed the State Bank of India to charge a hefty penalty for non-maintenance of the account balance in the saving accounts, while it asks people to not use cash but their bank account / electronic payments to do transactions?

Why there is a pressure on the poor to repay their farm loans and other loans, while the corporate houses led by the Tatas, Ambanis, Adanis, etc. are sitting on piles of bad loans taken from PSU banks and are also enjoying corporate tax relaxations?

Narendra Modi claimed that his government will work extensively to uplift the condition of the farmers, while under his reign why did the country saw extreme apathy of the government towards the drought-hit farmers?

Why did the BJP minister claimed that the farmers are committing suicide after failing in their love affairs or after being diagnosed as impotent by doctors?

Why is the Modi government pushing the G.M. crops, especially mustard, to the Indian farms with an intention to harm the existing farming practices? Why is the Modi government not against the FDI in the retail sector anymore and is seeking FDI in organic farming and contract farming?

Why the Modi government is talking about doubling the income of the farmers by 2021, which will make a farmer household earn ₹5000 per month vis-a-vis ₹2500 per month during 2015-16?

Why can’t it work on an innovative programme to end poverty in the rural areas by providing extreme support to the farmers and by subsidising farm equipments, fertilisers, etc.?

While, the overall condition of the tribal people of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, etc. worsened under the Congress regime during 2004-2014, the anti-tribal Operation Green Hunt got immense booster under the Modi regime and the tribals were evicted with more brutality than ever from their homeland, their forests and villages, so that the giant mining corporations owned by the US monopoly and finance capital can extract the valuable mineral resources underneath their land and through big dams, kill their rivers and the flora and fauna.

Why did the Modi government shamelessly overturned all types of environmental guidelines and tribal regulations to hand over the forests and villages to the big mining corporations in an unprecedented haste?

Why the Modi government and its helmsman Narendra Modi, tries to “hard sell India” and its mineral resources to foreign monopoly and finance capital during foreign tours?

Why does a government that calls itself “patriotic” and “nationalist”, is desperate to sell its country and its mineral resources, natural resources and human labour to the foreign capital?

Why the same “nationalist” government is waging a large scale war on the majority of the tribal people of the country on behalf of big mining corporations? Why the Modi government or the Raghubar Das or Raman Singh-led BJP governments in Jharkhand or Chhattisgarh are not supporting the tribal people against the corporate plunderers but vice versa?

What is it that so closely links Narendra Modi and his coterie with the big mining corporations? Why anyone who calls the Modi government’s nexus with mining corporations is jailed under UAPA or threatened with dire consequences by the Hindutva camp?

Why the Chhattisgarh government is given unlimited power in thrashing those who oppose its corporate appeasement agenda and unleash private armies, militias or vigilante terror on the journalists or human rights activists when they hold the BJP government responsible for the goriest crimes committed against the tribal people or when they probe the complicity of the Hindutva leaders in the quest of the big corporations for mineral resources and land?

Narendra Modi’s government has sold the crucial sectors like defence, railway and telecom to the foreign monopoly and finance capital and tied up with the US military-industrial complex, built a strong relationship with the Zionist Israeli government and turned the country, through agreements like LEMOA, into a satellite neo-colony cum military base of the US.

All these were done by the Modi government while drumming the beats of RSS endorsed “nationalism” and “patriotism”, which gave irony a severe cardiac arrest.

Can Narendra Modi or his sycophants, who act as lackeys of foreign capital, justify that why the Indian defence sector was sold out to the foreign big capital by jeopardising the national security of the country?

Why the US military will now be able to use India as a military base in its overseas pursuits and get logistical support from the Indian Army? Why big foreign corporations and the Indian crony comprador capitalists like Reliance were allowed to forge strategic alliance to manufacture and sell military hardware to the Indian government?

Why the big comprador and crony capitalist enterprises like Reliance are getting more leverages in defence deals than the PSUs?

The cow became more precious than human beings in the neo-Brahminical rule of Narendra Modi and people, especially the Muslims, are killed with utmost impunity by the self-styled Cow Vigilante or Gau Rakshaks.

The police provides aid to the killers of Muslims, while the Dalits are thrashed, raped, murdered under legal immunity cover provided by the BJP governments of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh and our prime minister can afford to only shed some drops of crocodile tears during election seasons for the Dalits. Muslims are considered expendable, so no tears for them.

Muslims won’t just die for the sake of the cow, even small incidents like wearing a skull cap or praying in a mosque can make them vulnerable as a target of the mob that rules the country. They can be killed simply for any reason and then their killers can go scot free by throwing the cow card.

Can Narendra Modi tell the people of the country, the majority of whom are non-Hindutva believers, that why does he and his sycophants serve the interests of the bovine breed more than the interest of the people who votes in the polls?

Can Narendra Modi explain to the country that why a blanket ban on beef is required in a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural India? Can Narendra Modi’s government compensate those poor farmers and dairy owners who are now crippled by government laws and will not be able to sell-off their old cattle to slaughterhouses or in cattle markets, even during droughts?

In the so-called democracy, dissent has become forbidden, questioning the government has become an unforgettable sin and raising finger at the emperor or his sycophants is considered as blasphemy and can be punished with death.

People who question the policies of the Modi government are called “anti-national” by the same people who provide shelter to ISI spies in their IT Cells, where the latter call online dissenters - “anti-national” and women - “sluts” for criticising the Modi government.

Rape threats to women dissenters, character assassination of men and women who oppose the government and few violent attacks here and there by “fringe” elements have become so normal that when these elements remain quiet, then questions arise regarding the economic health of the Sangh Parivar.

The condition of Indian democracy is in a new perilous state at the moment as the Modi government is trying hard to surpass the records of atrocities committed by the Indira Gandhi regime, in quantity as well as quality, to establish itself as the most heinous and most grotesque regime India has ever seen.

The people are keen to ask Narendra Modi that when would they get their due right to question the government and hold it accountable or criticise its policies without being bullied by a boisterous “fringe” mob that gloats on the Modi government’s achievements?

Education is, on one hand, turned into a commodity that only the rich can afford, as the universal free school education is becoming a utopian thought slowly and there are efforts to sell-off institutions of higher educations to big corporations, so that the latter could mint money from them and use the campuses to produce mechanically programmed, half-witted, wannabe type corporate robots, who will be human in appearance but uncritical in essence; the perfect citizen of the fascist kingdom.

Students who think or raise uncomfortable question are either jailed or gagged or beaten on the streets, while those rich brats from feudal families with few SUVs full of well-paid musclemen reign in the campuses with the blessing of Amit Shah & Co.

ICSSR is now headed by RSS knicker clad Braj Bihari Kumar, who despise people who can think. Kumar is strongly advocating that the students are not taught about Hindu-Muslim riots, lest they learn social science and turn into anti-government critics.

The likes of Kumar are advocating why there should be tanks parked inside the campuses to inculcate “patriotism” among students. Probably General Pinochet or Franco would be turning restlessly inside their graves.

While the mother of Rohith Vemula demands justice for her son and the mother of Najib still wanders in the hope of tracing her son who was abducted by the notorious ABVP, the campus militia of the RSS, the students are taught by institutions about the numerous qualities of the mother cow.

What makes the Modi government to sell-off higher education to big monopoly and finance capital and jeopardise the future of the youth and children? And finally, where is Najib?

We know the Congress was not better, but the people voted the BJP with the hope of experiencing the “better days”.

Nearly 160 million votes in a country of 1250 million people were cast for the BJP, but it didn’t really bring any “better days” for anyone except big corporations, stock brokers, middle-men, real estate kingpins and brokers, usurers and unscrupulous money lenders, black marketers and smugglers.

Better days only ushered in the lives of godmen, Hindutva-fanatic film actors, directors, pseudo-intellectuals and everyone else who would labour to whitewash the crimes of the Hindutva brigade. Better days came to the lives of the likes of Yogi Adityanath, Sakshi Maharaj, Sadhvi Pragya, Aseemanand and other Hindutva terror mongers, who are now eyeing better positions in the administration and a chance to eulogise themselves as true “patriots” of the nation.

Narendra Modi must answer that why the poor and the landless peasants, factory workers (both contractual and permanent workers) are not happy under his reign?

Why did the government took away numerous jobs from the labour industry, which worth nearly $8.8 billion? Why the government couldn’t do anything to protect the jobs of those thousands of employees of the IT sector who were sacked recently?

Why did the government didn’t provide some great funds in developing and nurturing musical talents than giving a high amount of money to yesteryear singers to either play music for them or to abuse women online, if they criticise the government?

Three years of Modi regime saw the utmost stooping of the corporate controlled mainstream media before it and journalism suddenly transformed itself into PR machinery of the government.

The questions were raised against the opposition and those who dared to oppose the Modi government either faced the vitriol of the likes of Sudhir Chaudhary or Arnab Goswami or they were lampooned at by the highly paid columnists and editors of the major media outlets.

Asking questions to the government became a crime for which the toady media outlets of the Modi government has reserved special punishments, including but not limited to propagating vile slanders and hardcore character assassination.

Anyone who questions a single decision of the Modi government has to first face the ire of the regime’s loyal puppet media and its highly paid scribes. The corporate-controlled mainstream media has partnered with the government and despite being called “presstitute” by the military general turned politician cum minister, the media outlets are wholeheartedly working towards achieving the goal of an “opposition-less India” by 2022, when the BJP is all set to have a Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha majority and use the same to change the constitution of the country.

The media certainly is the major pillar of the regime now as democracy has taken a long leave. Why Narendra Modi needs such a puppet media that never questions him or his coterie for their role in forcing India down the gutter of the Brahminical medieval rule, alike the Taliban rule in Afghanistan?

Apart from these questions, the tale of Modi gau-vernance and achievements cannot be complete if we forget to give the gau-vernment its biggest credit, the credit for managing reputation and winning elections by using a multi-channel strong propaganda machinery based on lies and slanders.

This machinery, manned and captained by the RSS full timers and hired staffs from different industries, including the above mentioned corporate media industry, serves two great purposes: firstly, it glorifies Narendra Modi’s rule and secondly, it spreads vitriol against those who dare to oppose it, from Muslims to intellectuals or upright journalists.

The Sangh propaganda machinery works extensively well in seducing the upper-caste Hindu youth with bush telegraph campaigns and by inciting the Dalits and lower-caste Hindus with fake news, morphed videos and pictures, they use them as the pawns of the Hindutva camp in the pogroms against the Muslim community.

The propaganda factory is running unhindered and Narendra Modi is certainly benefiting from such campaigns as the recently concluded Uttar Pradesh assembly election showed.

Now, as the BJP and the RSS are targeting West Bengal as their new laboratory, more such propaganda in the state will be run, which will allow the RSS to reap benefits from troubles like Malda, Hazi Nagar or Dhulagarh.

The people of the nation, or a majority of them, would like to ask Narendra Modi why he needs such vitriol and venom spitting to win elections when he and his party claims that they are pursuing a line of “sabka sath; sabka vikas”, i.e. everyone’s association and everyone’s development?

Why does Narendra Modi’s entire campaign strategy is based on taking the route of success through fake news or toady journalism based campaigns? Can Narendra Modi win a single election without playing the propaganda card? Can Narendra Modi dare to be himself before the people, the servile agent of big foreign and domestic corporations?

We know that Narendra Modi or Amit Shah will never answer these questions, so it is now up to the people to seek the right answers to the problem and to innovate new ideas to build up a strong resistance against the saffron Hindutva kingdom.

The desire to do something will not suffice and every progressive and democratic individual or organisation must plunge into a great anti-fascist front of democratic struggle against the Modi government. Unless a strong unity is built and connections with the people at the grassroots get established, mere words and social media posts will not help us in defeating Narendra Modi and his coterie. It’s time we take some decisive action to save the future of the country and the people.

Riots in West Bengal Signals Desperation of Modi Regime

2017-04-02T16:38:00.000+01:00

As soon as the Calcutta High Court ruled in favour of a CBI enquiry into the allegations of bribery against the ruling Trinamool Congress leaders, who were caught during a sting operation conducted by the Narada news, Mamata Banerjee suddenly retreated from her confrontationist position vis-a-vis the Modi government at the centre. The TMC supremo and the chief minister suddenly declared that she will support the presidential bid of Lal Krishna Advani, the mastermind and chief architect of Babri Masjid demolition of 1992 and the subsequent communal carnage, should the BJP propose his candidacy for the titular head of the state.

It was understood that the chief minister is trying to open a channel of communication with the very Modi government, against which she had plunged to build up a nationwide alliance of all opportunist, so-called secular parties with the ambition of wresting power in the 2019 general election. Mamata Banerjee saw the results of the Uttar Pradesh assembly election and she also saw how the BJP could successfully carry out horse trading in Goa and Manipur (in Manipur, the BJP even bought the lone TMC MLA) to form governments without winning the magic figures itself.

Though the corporate mainstream media in Calcutta and New Delhi may project Mamata Banerjee as a crusader against the Modi government and a harbinger of strength to the anti-communal movement in India, the facts show that the TMC has been an ally of the RSS and the BJP since its inception in 1998. The TMC was a partner of the NDA government led by the BJP in the centre from 1998 until 2004, despite some hiccups over the allotment of ministries and share in power. Mamata Banerjee remained a close fan of the ardent RSS kingpin, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and she worked extensively to build up the popular myth that Vajpayee was a liberal leader in the hardcore fascist RSS and its parliamentary outfit, BJP. It was then just six years since the Lal Krishna Advani led Babri Masjid demolition that Mamata Banerjee forged an alliance with the BJP and helped it to penetrate deep inside the terrain of West Bengal by riding on the back of the TMC organisation.

It was Mamata Banerjee and her TMC that supported Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government at the crucial hours of the Gujarat anti-Muslim pogrom of 2002 and she also took it upon herself to greet Narendra Modi, the then Gujarat Chief Minister with flowers, upon the latter’s victory in the state assembly election of 2002, which was fought by carrying out extreme communal polarisation. Mamata Banerjee ensured a swift victory of three BJP candidates in the late 1990s from West Bengal by using her own vote bank and organisational strength and also provided breeding ground to the Hindutva outfits, which harped on opposing the “Muslim appeasement” policy of the erstwhile Left Front government. Her undying and unconditional support to the RSS in West Bengal was fuelled by her political compulsion to carve a niche for herself and the newly founded TMC after she quit the Congress. The RSS is still winning favours from the Brahminical Didi, though not so overtly.

In many parts of West Bengal, RSS is thriving and prospering due to the patronage the Hindutva outfit is receiving from the TMC led state government. The TMC wants the RSS to create an atmosphere of extreme jingoism at the rural and semi-urban areas of West Bengal, so that the communal polarisation of Hindus and Muslims can help both the TMC and the BJP in the state, where the TMC is keen to have the BJP as its challenging partner and not the decadent parliamentary left bloc that has now lost it sheen due to years of divorce from power. Politically a non-existent parliamentary left, whom the mainstream media portrays as the sole representative of the Indian communist movement, will be beneficial for both the TMC and the BJP to project themselves ideologically stronger than the “foreign-influenced communists” and also will help them to dismantle the working class movements in the state with utmost brute force.

Since years, by forging a nefarious nexus with each other, the BJP and the TMC are inciting communal riots in West Bengal, which remained an oasis of harmony despite the extreme communal passion and Brahminical bigotry running down the feudal veins of the state. From the devastating riots kindled by the RSS and the Bajrang Dal in Haji Nagar, Chandan Nagar, Kharagpur, Nandigram and Dhulagarh to the communal tensions irked by the notorious Hindu Samhati, promoted jointly by the RSS and the TMC, West Bengal is witnessing something that the previous laboratories of Hindutva like Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, and Assam witnessed in the past.

The Bengali Bhadralok, i.e. the upper-caste Hindu men, who were known for being communally nonchalant and progressive across the nation, are now tearing up that mask they were wearing to hide the extreme level of Brahminical despotism beneath it. The Bengali Bhadralok community within West Bengal and those who are now based outside the state, are joining hands using the ferocious riot-monger platform of Hindu Samhati to replicate Yogi Adityanath-run Hindu Yuva Vahini model in West Bengal. By weaning away the politically backward and anti-ruling party vote bloc, the RSS trojan horses like the Hindu Samhati, VHP and other outfits are carrying out violent activities in the state using a huge amount of money they are getting from the US, the UK, and Zionist Israel to toxify the atmosphere of West Bengal.

The VHP, its youth fascist front Bajrang Dal, and the Hindu Samhati are using the context of minority repression done by the Bangladeshi Islamist fanatics to flare up communal carnage in West Bengal. They are using the persecution of Bengali Hindus in Bangladesh as a veil to cover their own anti-minority atrocities throughout India and are instigating the poor Hindus from backward castes and Dalit community (Namasudra) of West Bengal to indulge in violence against the Bengali and non-Bengali Muslim community of the state. The TMC organisation and its leaders are wholeheartedly supporting these endeavours of the Hindutva brigade to ensure that the communal polarisation in West Bengal there is a paradigm shift in the politics of the state and the hitherto despised fanatic and fascist ideologies gain the space that was vacated by an ailing parliamentary left bloc, now turned into a relic.

As a loosely-held and non-regimented organisation, the TMC allows its members to join other mass organisations, social organisations, or religious institutions that are not politically attached to any party. Hence, many of the TMC members are either members of the extremist Salafist organisations like Tablighi Jamaat, Jamaat-e-Islami or are members of the Hindutva militant organisations like Hindu Samhati, Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad. The reluctance of the TMC leadership to issue a whip to bar its members and activists from becoming a part of such extremist organisations has provided a golden opportunity to the BJP to infiltrate their own men within the ruling party and through their active support, ignite the flames of communal tension in different volatile parts of the state.

At present, the BJP has managed to win three seats in the 280 strong West Bengal assembly and the party has managed to wrest two crucial Lok Sabha seats during the 2014 general elections. Darjeeling district is now a stronghold of the BJP, thanks to the extreme popularity it enjoys due to its hobnobbing with the Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha and other Gurkha organisations, who command fear and following in the hills due to their muscle-flexing tactics and militant way of functioning. The BJP is now the natural choice for the Marwari trader community of West Bengal, who owns the lion’s share of the state’s business’ and are key decision makers in most of the industries still existing in the state. Among the feudal landlords, the BJP is fast becoming the natural choice and its Hindutva ideology is promising these landlord classes with the restoration of the Brahminical practices in the state and keep their caste and class position in the sanctum sanctorum.

The minority non-Bengali upper-caste Hindus and a section of backward caste and Dalits are also wooed by the BJP. The RSS is actively carrying out evangelist activities in the tribal belt of North Bengal, where the TMC is providing extreme patronage to the saffron unit so that the latter can keep the threat of Naxalite influence at bay from the tribal people. Throughout the tribal belts of North Bengal, several RSS run extremist schools mushroomed and conversion of tribal people into Hindutva is ongoing without much fanfare in places like Madarihat, Kalchini, and other parts of Jalpaiguri, Alipurduar, Cooch Behar, and Darjeeling district. The RSS shakhas in these areas are filled with tribal youth, who are lured with the promise of government jobs, money, and other baits. In the areas around Natabari of Cooch Behar, the BJP is using the influence of the Kamtapuri militants and other Hindutva outfits to wean popular support by intensifying the hatred against Muslim settlers in the banks of rivers, commonly called “Bhatia” in those areas. The BJP has increased its strength relying on the RSS machinery in these parts of the state and are creating enmity among the poor people using religion and tribal, non-tribal identity.

In South Bengal, where the RSS and the Hindutva units had good presence since the 1940s, the campaigns against Muslims have intensified. Taking refuge in social media vitriol, the RSS and the BJP are enticing the susceptible Bengali Bhadralok community to swing to their side in South Bengal districts, where the penetration of the RSS controlled schools and institutions are still very less. The BJP’s recruitment drive in Birbhum is based on former CPM supporters who are keen to fight against the TMC rule and are switching to the BJP. A major part of the BJP supporters and activists in Birbhum are tribals and Muslims, who have defected from the camps of the CPM and the Congress to the saffron party. It’s the only district in West Bengal where the BJP is thriving on Muslim support base.

Since the first assembly election of 1952, when the erstwhile BJS (the predecessor of the BJP) and the Hindu Mahasabha won 13 seats together, the best performance of the saffron brigade in the state is happening under the nose of Mamata Banerjee. It’s imperative for Mamata Banerjee to ensure that the right-wing Hindutva threat continues to thrive so that she can package the threat and consolidate the Muslim vote-bank and prevent the encroachment of the left and the Congress on that vote-bank. It’s the reason why her police force, her bureaucracy and her party men are reluctant to act against the menace of Hindutva jihad, which is now gripping the whole state slowly and carrying out bush telegraph to seduce the politically semi-conscious or backward masses.

Though Mamata Banerjee and the TMC will occasionally amplify their so-called opposition to the Modi government and its policies, the TMC will maintain the best cordial relationship with the BJP in West Bengal and New Delhi to ensure that the party can continue to have a larger share of power in the state and in the national politics. By concealing the utmost corrupt, bullish and irredeemable opportunist characteristic of the TMC, Mamata Banerjee will continue to seek a chance to hijack the national anti-BJP leadership to ensure that the party of Hindutva zealots like Vajpayee and Advani, can reap benefits of communal polarisation by projecting her as an “anti-Hindu” and “pro-Muslim” figure on a national scale.

The RSS, BJP and other such Hindutva outfits have built up a huge army of cyber trolls, who are spreading the venom of communal hatred throughout the country using West Bengal as a context. Most of these trolls are situated outside West Bengal and are non-Bengalis. The major part of Bengalis joining the bandwagon of the RSS are situated outside West Bengal, especially in cities like Bangalore, Bombay, and New Delhi. There are very few Bengalis from West Bengal who are actively working for the RSS led cyber brigade in the state and most of the cyber and on-ground army of the Hindutva camp in the state is manned by upper-caste North Indian Hindus who are either living in the urban areas of the state since generations, or those who are specially deputed to the state to execute the RSS master plan of 2021.

These Hindutva outfits and the cyber troll army, working under the direction of the RSS, are carrying out a vitriol against the 27 per cent Muslim population of the state by calling them active Jihadis who are attempting to establish Sharia in West Bengal and merge it with the Muslim-majority Bangladesh. The RSS propaganda is also claiming that Mamata Banerjee has converted to Islam and rechristened herself as Mumtaz Begum and she is now an integral part of the so-called “Jihadi conspiracy” and to support their claim and save public ignominy, the RSS is using the testimonies of the Hindutva supporters and cyber bullies like Tarek Fatah and the exiled Bangladeshi author cum Islam basher, Taslima Nasreen.

Morphed images of “gory atrocities against Hindus by Muslims” are spurring to create enmity between communities. Consumption of beef by Muslims and their legal cow slaughter are now been made issues to infuriate the common Bengali Hindus, who remained aloof from the cow-worshipping and vegan practices of the North Indian Hindus that the RSS is now trying to impose on the whole country. The RSS propaganda mills stories about the majority Hindu community of West Bengal reeling under a purported Islamic threat and living without their religious rights when actually the Hindus are freer to observe their religious festivals and ceremonies than the various sects of Muslims, who need special permissions and police authorisation to organise any religious festival or ceremony.

RSS controlled websites like The Frustrated India, Swarajya Magazine, etc. and social media users, who are using Hindu Bengali pseudonyms, are constantly peddling lies and slanders through all possible social media channels, including WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter, to ensure that the majority Hindu community is incited with a purported threat of Islamic invasion. In this article the author, who seems like a rabid Hindutva fan, used the popular stereotypes to narrate an imaginary tale of a Salafi Islamic invasion in rural West Bengal to ensure that the Hindu community of the state can be put back to the track of communal fratricide, which West Bengal did not experience in decades despite severe bigotry of its majority Hindu community and their prejudices against Muslims. The constant propaganda and the huge cyber army deployed by the Hindutva camp certainly point to the gigantic enterprise under construction and the huge amount of money that is piped from offshore locations like the US, the UK, and the Zionist Israel.

There are several Salafi organisations in West Bengal that are hand-in-glove with the RSS led Hindutva brigade and are spreading bigotry and communal hatred among the Muslim people of the state. Acting as the decoy tools of the Hindutva brigade, the Salafis of the Tablighi Jamaat are also trying to incite a feral mob of Islamic fanatics, especially in the South Bengal districts like Burdwan, Hooghly, Howrah, Nadia, North and South 24 Paraganas. These Islamic fanatics are trying to sneak into popular anti-government movements and turn them into a “Muslim movement” to ensure that the unity of the people gets wrecked and the Hindutva units can gain ground at places that were earlier known as the citadel of land movement by using Islamophobia as their weapon.

Nandigram, the village that brought the erstwhile CPM-led Left Front government to its knees through a militant anti-land acquisition struggle, is now becoming a hub of Tapan Ghosh led Hindu Samhati and the Islamic fanatics led by people close to the ruling TMC. In other parts of the state too, the Hindutva outfits are multiplying their organisational presence and by hiding their agenda of promoting North Indian Hindu principles, including vegetarianism among the Bengali Hindus along with the imposition of the Hindi language and culture, these groups are wooing the Bengali Hindus and a section of Dalits with a promise to end the so-called “Muslim appeasement” in the state, where the Muslims, according to the Sachar Committee report, lives in utmost poverty and in a semi-pauperised state.

The Hindutva campaign has intensified so much in areas like North and South 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly and East Midnapore that many North Indian Hindutva practices crept into the mainstream Bengali Hindu culture in these regions. The RSS, along with the VHP is going to organise Ram Navami, a North Indian festival in West Bengal to uniformise the Hindu religion according to the North Indian standards and to colonise the minds and souls of Bengali Hindus by projecting North Indians as superior beings in comparison to the Bengalis. Vegetarianism is promoted with too much zeal in these regions by the RSS workers and the common Bengali cuisines like fish, mutton and chicken are also under the lens of the Hindutva outfits like Bajrang Dal and Hindu Samhati. Using the sermons of non-Bengali Hindutva evangelists as their propelling power, the saffron stormtroopers have attacked Muslim meat and fish sellers at different parts of South Bengal and they are carrying out extensive campaign against cow slaughter by uniting the non-Bengali upper-caste Hindus and Jains under the saffron banner. The TMC is reluctant to act up and the prejudices of the upper-caste Brahminical Bengali led ruling party is helping the saffron units to run their show without any hindrance.

The TMC led West Bengal government keeps mum and continues with a total media silence when such Goebellian propaganda of the RSS continues to rage the susceptible minds of the politically unconscious Bengali people, who will not be able to verify the information that they are receiving through multiple channels, especially social media. Every day the Zionist Israel and US funded Hindu Samhati and other less known Hindutva organisations are opening the gateways to communal violence in new places and even in those areas that had a history of extreme communal harmony and fraternity. The invoking of the Hindu identity of the common Bengali people by these saffron organisations is actually reviving the barbaric bigotry of the upper-caste Hindus of West Bengal, which went for a slumber, at least in public, for few decades in the state.

The animosity towards the Muslims that existed within the upper-caste Hindu Bhadralok community for decades though remained sub-layered, but never ceased despite the tall talks of communal harmony by the rulers of the state. The atmosphere of suspicion and hatred against the Muslim community, whose socio-economic condition has been the most pathetic in the state according to the Sachar Committee report, continued unabated even during the progressive “left rule” and the situation worsened under Mamata Banerjee.

As the subsequent Uttar Pradesh governments led by Mayawati, Mulayam Singh Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav, unapologetically nurtured the hate-monger fascists like Yogi Adityanath for years, provided the Hindutva extremists immunity from law and helped them to earn popularity among the frenzied Hindutva mob that rampaged the state since years, so is Mamata Banerjee-led TMC government caressing the US and Zionist Israel sponsored Hindutva mobsters like Tapan Ghosh and others, who can be serious contenders for the position of the state Chief Minister should the BJP win majority in 2021.

The West Bengal Police and the Calcutta Police are working overtime to shadow, arrest and lock-up the progressive and democratic activists throughout the state, who are working among the poor and downtrodden masses and helping them to fight for their legitimate rights over the land, water and mineral resources. But at the same time, aloof from the law, the Hindutva mobs are organising riots and arson throughout the state with utmost impunity, which raises the doubt about the patronage they are receiving from the state machinery. No police action is taken against the communal hatred mongers of the RSS led Hindutva camp in West Bengal, which seriously indicates towards an evil nexus between Mamata Banerjee and Narendra Modi-Amit Shah clique.

A few months ago, a prototype of the incident of Ramjas College violence against Umar Khalid and others took place in Calcutta when the JNU student activist came to Bharat Sabha Hall to participate in an event organised by some progressive organisations against the state repression on the Tribals in Bastar. The hooligans of Hindu Samhati and the RSS, stormed the venue and started beating up protesters, molested women, threatened activists with rape and murder, and rampaged the area under the full protection of Mamata Banerjee’s police force. They also repeated the same exercise last year in Jadavpur University, where these paid agents of the RSS launched attacks on the students who protested against the Hindutva mob and their xenophobic propaganda. The TMC ruled government and its police remained indifferent during these heinous crimes. Mamata Banerjee probably thought that an enemy of the enemy (left-wing students) is the best buddy!

Whenever the police had detained few of the ruffians hired by Hindu Samhati and ABVP, they were released after few minutes from the police stations and no charges were ever applied to them, despite these hooligans resorting to violence and rioting in full public view throughout the state. The hypocrisy of Mamata Banerjee’s government was visible in January 2017, when the peasants in Bhangar rose in rebellion against her regime and its strongman, Arabul Islam. Mamata Banerjee unleashed state terror on the poor peasants of Bhangar and the neighbouring areas to subjugate the rebellious people. The police arrested the activists of the Bhangar land movement under UAPA and locked them up. She never thought about cracking the whip when the Hindutva agents were instigating trouble at Kharagpur, Dhulagarh, Haji Nagar, etc. It is only her hatred against the progressive and democratic forces that makes her use state terror against legitimate political movements in West Bengal.

The lessons of Uttar Pradesh and Assam warns us that the Modi government will certainly use its brute force to encroach upon the political terrain of West Bengal and through the systematic vitriol against the Muslim and Christian community in the state, the saffron bloc will be successful in driving a wedge between the poor workers and peasants, who are now loosely held by a fragile bond formed during the heydays of their struggle against feudal and capitalist exploitation. The lack of any political entity that can resist the Hindutva bandwagon in West Bengal by arousing the people with the politics of democracy and secularism, is strengthening the arms of the Hindutva menace. TMC and Mamata Banerjee are of course not going to be with the people during the hour of crisis, hence, it becomes imperative for the democratic and progressive forces of the state to keep aside their contradictions and ego, to forge an iron-strong united front against the ongoing Hindutva fascist onslaught.

The Shiv Sena and Hindutva Fascist Powers in India to Remain Immune

2017-03-28T10:00:00.000+01:00

The ruckus created due to the physical abuse of an Air India staff by a ruffian Shiv Sena MP is uncalled for, because we cannot expect anything better from a mobocratic party, which is surviving for two reasons, firstly, due to the continuous pouring-in of corporate donations to help the outfit contain the “communist menace” in the factories and mills of Bombay and the suburbs, secondly, for its ability to carry out genocides, massacres, and unbridled violence with the overt support of a Brahminical Maharashtra administration, which provided this fascist outfit and its leaders complete exemption from legal hurdles, even during the rule of the so-called “secular” Congress Party.

The accused Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad has 19 cases registered against him according to MyNeta, which actually makes him an ideal MP of the Shiv Sena. A party, which survives extremely on the feudal Brahminical ideology and values, doesn't feel disturbed by the charges of murder, rioting, arson, or physical intimidation levelled against it. Rather it considers such charges as medals of gallantry that will help it in further inciting the communal passion among the politically backward and unconscious masses to execute nefarious plans.

The government of India always took punitive measures against any outfit that resorted to violence as its stated mean to achieve their political goals, and many of such organisations are banned and their members and sympathisers are regularly thrown behind the bars. However, the Brahminical Indian state, which is ruled by the bureaucrats from the orthodox upper-caste Hindus, always had a soft corner for the anti-people and corporate friendly Hindutva terror units like the RSS, Bajrang Dal, VHP, Shiv Sena, Ram Sene, Hindu Yuva Vahini, Hindu Sanhati, etc. because they served the purpose of curbing the left-wing working class and peasant movements on one hand, and they also help in consolidating the domination of the Brahminical upper-caste Hindus over the Dalits, Tribals, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians throughout the country.

In order to restore the lost glory of the Brahminical system, which functioned in a covert way under the new republic and its constitution, the BJP and its allies affiliated to the RSS, kept spewing venom against the minority communities since ages. The bureaucracy of India and its political bosses were anything but opponents of the Brahminical fascist system. Hence, they kept patronising these zealot goons of the Hindutva camp and helped them to become larger-than-life icons on several occasions to ensure that the divide and rule policy introduced by the British colonial rulers sustain and undergo constant development.

The BJP, Shiv Sena and all other organisations that subscribe to the ideology of Hindutva, truly represents the vision and adheres to the outlook of the Indian ruling classes. They are, therefore, immune from prosecution; their terror plots are hence not called Hindu terror plots, but are concealed from public view and police officers who stood up with valour against the odd ideology and its conspiracy to create enmity among the people of India, were either thrown out of job, or were killed at different points of time. The administration is exclusively for those who can share the outlook of the ruling classes and call what the ruling classes call a spade.

After a few rounds of malted scotch, a liberal living in the posh locality of South Delhi or Bombay can scourge the RSS and the Modi government patronised by it for empowering people like Ravindra Gaikwad, Yogi Adityanath, Sakshi Maharaj, or trolls like Tajinder Bagga to carry out their nefarious violent agenda with absolute impunity. However, those liberals and self-certified secular people won't question the trail of blood that preceded the installation of the Modi government; the history of unapologetic and relentless appeasement of Hindutva elements by the soft-core Hindutva forces represented by the non-RSS affiliated mainstream parliamentary parties like the Congress, SP, RJD, BSP, JD(U), NCP, or TMC. Even the parliamentary left parties like the CPI or the CPM played a crucial role in bludgeoning the reminiscence of secularism and democracy in the country by siding with the killers of people and the Brahminical state machinery.

How many people today remembers the police atrocities unleashed on two young girls of Bombay who questioned the logic behind providing state funeral to the dead Shiv Sena founder cum Hindutva demagogue Bal Thackeray in 2012. It was the time when Bombay, Maharashtra, as well as the whole country was ruled by the dynastic Congress Party with a cunning World Bank planted, pro-US Prime Minister at the helm. It wasn't made clear why Bal Thackeray was praised for his strong leadership by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? Was it a return favour from the Congress Party to the Shiv Sena that supported Indira Gandhi's draconian emergency? What the Congress government did to prevent an assault on free speech and individual freedom that came under attack in Mumbai?

That “secular” Congress rule didn't stop the state machinery to take punitive action against two college students and torture them and their parents for validly questioning the reason why a man who mastered a riot and incited mob to massacre thousands of Muslims in Bombay and elsewhere, a man who on one hand spoke about the importance of “being Indian” and on the other hand, unleashed violence against the same Indian men from other parts of the country residing in Bombay, a man who supported Hindutva terror openly and called for raising battalions of Hindu suicide bombers, should be treated like a national hero after his demise when all his name did was commanded terror among the people of Bombay and elsewhere?

Shiv Sena was accused of masterminding the ghastly Bhiwandi riots of 1984, the Bombay riots of 1992-93, which resulted in the death of thousands of innocent Muslims and led to the dreadful bomb blasts of March 1993 in Bombay resulting into the death of 257 people. The Shiv Sena created ruckus at several cultural programmes in Bombay and outside, it played a crucial role in anti-Tamil and anti-North Indian fratricide riots of Bombay in the 1960s and 1980s. It played a crucial anti-Dalit role during the anti-feudal Dalit uprising in the 1970s and it openly threatened the law, inquiry commissions, and elected governments with dire consequences if they tried to contain the fascist menace through legal means.

Since its inception, the Shiv Sena never adhered to any laws of the land; it never participated in any peaceful and democratic political process but resorted to violence whenever it suited its organisational and political goals. Throughout the history of its existence, the Shiv Sena worked religiously as a trusted lieutenant of big corporations owned by foreign monopoly and finance capital, the Indian comprador capitalists operating in Maharashtra, and moreover, the feudal landlords of Maharashtra. They unleashed violence on the poor workers and peasants, especially those from the Dalit, Muslim and Christian community, to ensure the unrestrained loot and plunder of Maharashtra is not challenged by any forces of the society.

The Shiv Sena set the first example in Indian politics that an organisation can turn into a ruling party or become a de facto ruler of a province using threat, intimidation, physical violence, and above all, riots, as means to achieve the ends. The journey from being a far-right regional Brahminical riot-monger outfit to a strong partner of the RSS, made the Shiv Sena one of the foremost Hindutva outfits in Maharashtra and other states, with which the ruling classes and their state machinery happily connives to implement the nefarious agendas of the corporations and their puppet Indian capitalists.

Violence is an inalienable characteristic of fascism to which all outfits of the Hindutva camp swears their allegiance. The RSS was founded by the British agents to carry out violent acts through an army of incensed bigots, in order to save the British colonial rule from facing an imminent revolt led by any Bolshevik leaning forces.

The Shiv Sena too was founded by the Indian ruling classes at a time when the so-called “secular” and “liberal” Congress was their chief representative and the RSS was an apprentice of the Congress-led government in the cow belt. The Shiv Sena was created to drive a wedge between the working class and peasantry of Maharashtra, leaning leftwards during the volatile 1960s and 1970s; it was supported by the Indira Gandhi led Congress government because it could openly practice the Hindutva bigotry that the Congress couldn't officially endorse due to its compulsion of identifying itself as a secular and liberal outfit, which it never was.

Throughout the history of its existence, the Shiv Sena received immense patronisation from the very Congress with which the liberals and arm-chair left-wing seeks unity in the battle against the menace of Hindutva fascism. The Shiv Sena leaders and activists were always provided with complete immunity from legal prosecutions and state crackdown due to their close tie-ups with the ruling classes of India, whom the Congress Party represents. The Congress never cracked the whip on the hooliganism and fascist vandalism of the Shiv Sena during its tenure in Maharashtra or in the centre, rather the Congress connived with the Hindutva forces represented by the RSS and outfits like the Shiv Sena to intensify its own anti-Muslim, anti-Dalit, and anti-minority agenda at different periods of time since the 1960s.

When you see a party that threats to physically harm people of opposite political views, or people belonging to particular communities, and carry out vandalism at different places, when you see their MPs with 19 criminal cases are provided state's immunity even when they publicly assaulted a worker of a government promoted carrier, and after all these there was no prosecution, no punitive actions, no crack down, then it becomes obvious that this outfit is actually a state-sponsored fascist thug brigade, which is nurtured and nourished by the state machinery to farther its own goals and no party in power will be able to curb its menace until these fascists are fought back at the ground level by the lethal combo of workers, peasants, toiling people, marginalised and oppressed communities at every nook and corner. This united backlash from the working class and peasantry is the very spectre that haunts this Hindutva brigade and they are working overtime to ensure that the unity can never be forged between the broad masses of working people.

Thus, the biggest challenge today is to organise the poor and downtrodden masses under a single united banner to take on the fascist thugs. Until there is a conscious and intensified effort to build up a united front against the fascist menace, by including the progressive, democratic, patriotic and anti-fascist forces of India, it will be a regular affair for the Hindutva fascist thugs from all saffron organisations to walk away after committing ghastly crimes and after intimidating or physically abusing people from their opponent's camps. There is a dire urgency to build up such a broad patriotic and democratic bloc against Hindutva fascism throughout the country and if there is a delay in building such a front then it will bring more miseries and agony in the lives of the oppressed people of the country.

Brahminical Fascism Unleashed by Biased State Machinery

2017-02-28T11:58:00.000+00:00

Two Kashmiri men, accused by the Delhi Police of abetting and executing the Sarojini Nagar bomb blasts in 2005, were recently acquitted by a sessions court in Delhi after these men spent 11 years behind the bars for no reason and the real culprits remained aloof from the claws of law. The reason why the Delhi Police, which is notorious for its allegiance to the doctrine of Hindutva and for its communal prejudice, arrested and tortured these two men can be ascribed to its desperation in demonising the Muslim community with support from the corporate media and to hide its own failure (or hand-in-glove relationship with the perpetrators) in nabbing the real culprits.

Despite the court acquitting several men, mostly from the Muslim community, in the past years due to lack of evidence, the Delhi Police has not scrapped its utmost anti-minority and anti-Dalit bias, which it adopted in the early 1980s following the swing of the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government towards the soft-Hindutva camp. The Delhi police Special Cell is notorious for its implementation of the Hindutva campaign’s anti-Muslim slur by planting evidences against innocent youth from the community and torturing them in the most barbaric way to extract a confession and later slapping many of the unresolved terror cases against these men and women and leave them to rot behind prison bars for years, before they are either sent to gallows to appease the “collective conscience” of the majority community, or are acquitted after decades for lack of evidence.

In every few weeks people come across news published by the corporate media that showcase the police or security forces busting one or another module of Islamic terrorists in different parts of the country and nabbing few men, mostly from Muslim community, and against whom, the government agencies claim, there are serious charges of abetting or planning or executing terrorist operations. Without verifying facts or waiting for any legal verdicts, these people are stamped by the society as “terrorists” and the security establishments of the ruling classes successfully secures favourable public opinion of the elite and middle class urban Indians, whose views are considered India’s view by the corporate controlled mainstream media.

When we read the sad tale of these two Kashmiri men, who had been languishing in one of the most grotesque prisons on earth, Tihar, for over a decade, we are left with no choices but to question the functioning of the very institution of internal security, which was founded and developed by the colonial British rulers to serve their purpose of keeping the Indian people’s rebellion against the former at bay and to arrest and torture revolutionaries. The very institution is now carrying forward the anti-Muslim agenda of global monopoly and finance capital, which is now guiding the course of governance in India through their trusted lieutenants in all major parliamentary party and principally through the BJP and the Congress.

The Delhi Police was, not surprisingly, found as one of the most corrupted organisations in the town. There were several reports in the mainstream media regarding the corrupt practices of the Delhi Police and as per the protocol, no action was ever taken against the most powerful and organised state-terror enterprise.

The Hindutva agenda found a ground in India and grew so rapidly by spreading the venom of communal bigotry throughout the nation since the 1980s due to the extensive financial aid it received from the global monopoly capital owned corporations and foundations that work as the think tanks for the big corporations. The foreign intelligence agencies of the West under the leadership of the CIA was too keen to erect a new danger following the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. The Saudi Arabian and Pakistani puppets of the US helped them in identifying a “new threat”, the Muslim world.

Exasperating campaigns were launched in India to isolate the Kashmiri people’s justified struggle against Indian expansionism and with the help of the Pakistani government and its intelligence unit, the Indian government was able to label the entire militant movement in the Kashmir valley as pro-Pakistani and pro-Islamist movement to incite jingoism, which is now called “patriotism”, among upper-caste Indian Hindus. The Delhi Police and its most notorious units, manned by upper-caste Hindus exclusively, were deployed by the ruling bloc in the national capital to carry out a PR campaign on behalf of the Hindutva forces along with the corporate media, which took to itself the task of propagating the lies and slurs against the Muslim victims of state repression with full vigour and force feed Islamophobia among the common people since the 1990s.

Earlier the Delhi Police and its various arms also carried out a similar nefarious design to alienate the Sikh community during the heydays of the Khalistan separatist movement in Punjab. The anti-Sikh slurs were extensively propagated by the mainstream corporate media until the mid-1990s and the propaganda painted the Sikhs in the darkest shades at that period. The same exercise is extended to the Muslims and it’s more vigour and intense due to the support of the international monopoly and finance capital owned corporations that are drooling to plunder the natural and mineral resources of India and retain the neo-colonial status of the modern Indian state machinery and society.

This February, the Special Cell of the Delhi Police arrested two Muslim youth named Zia-ul-Haq and Zuber from Okhla of South East Delhi, which is one of the most densely crowded Muslim ghettos in the city, and tortured them for few days alleging them to have connections with the derailment of the Patna-Indore express at Kanpur last year. After carrying out their sadistic activities and torturing the duo for days, the Delhi Police released them saying that no proofs were found about their connection with the main accused in the case. One of those who was tortured has reportedly lost his mental balance due to the barbaric tortures he faced during his captivity.

Though the entire operation that blames the “terror angle” for a huge train accident, which experts claim happened due to the fault of the Railway ministry led by BJP’s Suresh Prabhu, is itself quite shoddy, the inhuman torture meted out to two youth from the Muslim community by a force manned by upper-caste Hindus, Jats, and Gujjars raise serious questions on the state apparatus fed by the money collected from the common people in the form of indirect and direct taxes. With no scope of questioning the Delhi Police and its actions (including beating up protesters alongside the RSS goons in the city) that conform to the ruling clique’s ideology of bigotry, the state machinery is pushing the Muslims and the marginal communities to a state of existence where they will be forced to accept the superiority of the upper-caste Hindus and Hindutva on their lives and live as second-class citizens in India; a demand raised since decades by Savarkar’s followers and present day rulers.

Arresting people and planting evidence against them by the Delhi Police to ensure they don’t get justice and rot in jail or hang in the gallows for their religious identity, for their birth, and for their nonconformity with a certain ideology, is itself a fascist act and it needs all out condemnation. However, there are few major problems in the present socio-economic condition, which is preventing large-scale mass participation against the state-terror unleashed on common people.

Firstly, the entire corporate media, including the hardcore pro-Hindutva media, is standing beside the state apparatus to meet the expectations of their investors and advertisement providers, who happen to be foreign monopoly and finance capital owned MNCs or Indian comprador enterprises. A strong Brahminical bias against Muslims, Dalits and Tribal people reigns in the corporate news industry where more than 361 media conglomerates or top media houses are owned by upper-caste Hindus from North India, Maharashtra, and Gujarat. These media houses follow the practice laid down by the state, which discourages raising questions on the claims of the security establishments. These corporate controlled mainstream media houses work extensively as the PR agencies of the police and security establishment and publish the state’s viewpoint as gospel truth.

There is no opportunity to dissent or disagree and even if within the organisational structure of these mainstream media houses any journalist dare to raise question on the work ethics, which is nothing but stooping to the ruling bloc, written down as “management policies” and only journalists and columnists who meet the tonality of the management’s right-wing viewpoint can make it in the media world. The rest are either mowed down or forced to scrap their standpoints and convert into toady scribes.

These media houses have carried out vitriol against the Muslim community since the 1990s through mostly covert and sometimes overt campaigns against the community in India. By inciting a feral mob of Hindutva thugs using the reports of these media houses, the Brahminical RSS was able to consolidate its position in the Indian polity and become a formidable foe for the Indian people to deal with. The anti-Muslim stories are so vivid, so thrilling, and so much fear-mongering that they give rise to the TRP and circulation and the advertisement revenue increases manifold. The corporate media knows that stories on Muslim terror“sells” in the market and thus, despite paying lip service to the ethics of secularism, they are constantly milling lies about the Muslim community following the leads from the police force like Delhi Police.

Secondly, Bollywood has become the cultural propaganda tool of the Indian ruling classes and the bloc of foreign monopoly and finance capital owned corporations that are eyeing absolute hegemony on Indian natural and mineral resources. The rise of the Shiv Sena in Mumbai during the 1980s and the Babri Masjid demolition in 1992 gave Bollywood its flood of Hindutva-inspired films and lately, TV serials. The portraying of bearded Muslim men with heavily kohled eyes, shouting Allahu-Akbar and swearing to destroy India by force, was all that was required to brainwash two to three generations of Indian men and women. The Bollywood model was replicated unaltered throughout the regional cinema industries and Islamophobia was incited through hatred spewing films since last two decades.

The Bollywood not only portrays the Muslims as villains and stereotypes the terrorism allegation labelled by the ruling clique, but it also justifies police torture, extra-judicial killings, and demeans the struggle for human rights by reiterating the Hindutva fascist rhetoric regarding the rights of state-sponsored terror perpetrators. For years the films have justified terror, extra-judicial killings, and torture as the only “macho” way to deal with the menace of crime and terrorism.

Rather than helping in developing the consciousness of the common people on social issues, Bollywood and its regional lackeys have repeatedly justified the fascist methods and the system of fascism and by playing with the inherent Brahminical supremacist belief system of upper-caste Hindus, the film industry has commoditised the propaganda of the ruling clique of foreign monopoly and finance capital, their lackey Indian comprador capitalists, and the feudal landlord-gangster nexus.

It’s due to the propaganda by the film industry through a host of films made since the late 1980s that a majority of urban elite Indians, mostly the upper-caste Hindus, now support the police torture, the fascist onslaught on the progressive and democratic forces, and mob violence. Standing on the foundation laid by the remnants of feudalism and comprador capitalism, the Indian state machinery happily helps this very film industry to carry forward its own vile propaganda campaigns against specific socio-political groups and religious and ethnic minorities to build up mass opinion before launching more attacks against them.

Thirdly, the deeply rooted Brahminical prejudices, the prevalence of caste and communal apartheid and the many other signature evils of the feudalistic production relations that exist in the Indian countryside and is buttressed by the global monopoly and finance capital for its own interest, is one of the principal source from where the state apparatus gets their guts to act with complete impunity and remain scot free. Since the entire Indian state machinery is revealing the most grotesque Brahminical fascist face by tearing off its pseudo-secular mask, hence the loose cannons like the Delhi Police, Chhattisgarh Police, and other paramilitary and armed forces are able to force people to live under their diktat. The modern Indian state is a pseudo-democratic state, which is actually a military dictatorship imposed on the people by the corporate sharks, the feudal landlords, and their lackey politicians.

The tie-up between the above three is proving to be a lethal danger for democratic and progressive values to survive in a nation-state, which is officially endorsing majoritarian fascism through all its institutions and wings. The vociferous and burly mob of self-styled “patriots” funded by foreign corporates are out on the streets to help the biased police and security establishment in terrorising the Muslims, the people of marginalised communities, and the democratic and progressive forces that are raising fists in protest against fascism. The mob violence is the order of the day that the government is endorsing and encouraging and even the courts are delivering verdicts to satisfy the “collective conscience” of the majority community’s upper-caste elites. These developments and the intensification of fascist oppression is a sign of the dangerous future yet to come.

The problem of the Muslim community, alike any other community, is its over-dependence on the elite and upper-stratum people of the community and remaining confined within the boundaries led by those who are leading the community. The utmost fundamentalist Muslim leaders are themselves serving the interest of the fascist Hindutva brigade and create a big wall of separation between the toiled Muslims and the toiled people of other communities and marginalised section of the society, lest it challenges their authority.

Within the confinement of the religious and political stalwarts of the community, the Muslims are barred from being a part of a larger democratic movement going on against the Hindutva fascism, which is largely a Hindu and Dalit-Tribal movement until now. The integration of the Muslim forces in the anti-fascist camp and their unity with the other people and communities seeking the end of the Brahminical apartheid will not only strengthen the democratic forces, but it will also help the Muslim community, especially the downtrodden, exploited, and oppressed Muslims to purge the filth of religious and political opportunism that is now acting as the contractor of the community. There is no way the Muslim community’s most oppressed and downtrodden people can gain their legitimate rights within the present framework unless they shun the present leadership ruling them and join the bandwagon of the democratic struggle seeking a transformation of India into a truly egalitarian, democratic, and secular country.

Bhangar Land Movement and the Reluctant Bhadralok

2017-01-21T16:38:00.000+00:00

Trinamool Congress government led by Mamata Banerjee ruled West Bengal unchallenged for over six years and no major mass movements, except the mass movements against the rapists her government protected and the Jadavpur University student’s movement, developed into the state that could seriously project the tyrannical rule of Ms Banerjee. It was Bhangar land movement that brought a fresh lease of life after a period of lull in the state since the fall of the Left Front government.

Mamata Banerjee never required a proper corporate perception management campaign to build up favourable mass opinion. A strong network of syndicate lords, local gangsters, real estate sharks, and women traffickers forms the backbone of her regime. She was quite confident about maintaining the status quo at the grassroots and then Bhangar land movement changed the equation. It even shook the empire of the gangster cum Mamata’s close aide, Arabul Islam, as the mass waves caused a huge erosion to the Trinamool Congress vote-bank.

Now Mamata has a serious contender, no political party, no strong and well-known leader, no regimented cadre force - but the people, fearless and militant people who will go the extra miles to ensure that the tyranny of Arabul Islam and through him that of Mamata Banerjee ends in the Bhangar area, 40 km south of capital Kolkata. It’s a subtle death knell for the ruling TMC and its reign of terror that has crippled the state since the last six years.

Karl Marx said-: “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great, world-historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice. He has forgotten to add: the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” (18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, 1852) - this quote seems more lively in the present situation where Mamata and her coterie are facing the same problem her bete noire CPM-led Left Front faced exactly 10 years ago. They are in a lock-horn position in a battle waged by the state against the peasantry, against the people, on behalf of corporations.

Mamata Banerjee and her sycophants within and outside the Trinamool and even the opposition BJP, with which Mamata’s party has a secret bonhomie, are parroting those cliches about “development” and how the poor must sacrifice for the greater good of the “nation” that only belongs to the rich and the affluent upper-middle class.

No wonder if such a project would’ve been planned in the centre of Salt Lake or Ballygunge Circular Road in Kolkata, the rich would’ve voluntarily sacrificed their source of livelihood and their accommodations for the greater good of the “nation” and its “development”. No wonder we don’t see Maoists slinging assault rifles in the apartments of Shakespeare Sarani!

Yet, it wasn’t enough that Mamata Banerjee’s compassionate police, which the government claimed didn’t have any permission to shoot the agitators in the Bhangar area on Tuesday, 17th January, shot dead two protesters from point-blank range; the Chief Minister started sending contingents of police and intelligence sleuths to bully the peasantry and to flush out the students and youth by labelling them as “Maoists” from the area.

Mamata Banerjee started playing the same cards that Buddhadev Bhattacharya played during the Singur-Nandigram agitation, the colonial era “divide and rule” card, which happens to be a powerful card even this date. Her “outsiders” vs habitant people theory was propagated religiously by the pro-market corporate media to ensure that a rift is created among the protesters so that the government can find a leak to force its rule upon the rebellious people.

The elite and Brahminical upper-caste Bhadralok community of West Bengal, as usual, loathed the struggle waged by the poor villagers of Bhangar and called them buffoons who aren’t willing to be a part of the “development” bandwagon and despite considering Mamata Banerjee a scorn of their eyes, these Bhadraloks did stand behind her agenda of land acquisition in Bhangar this time, which clearly manifested that the class divisions and class antagonisms between the haves and have-nots have reached an unprecedented level in West Bengal.

No one questioned the wit of the upper-caste well-fed Bhadraloks of South Kolkata’s posh localities when they spew venom against the poor who struggle to save their land from the Tatas, Salems, and Power Grid corporations; it seems the normal order of the day to oppose those who oppose to give in before the mighty enterprise of “investment-development” sponsored by foreign monopoly capital owned enterprises and their Indian political representatives. The corporate media loves to dance according to the investor’s and advertiser’s music. So Jallikattu ban becomes a news, not the drought hit villages of Tamil Nadu, killing of two peasants during the Bhangar protests became a news, not the entire course of a fierce struggle against the atrocities of Mamata’s special stooge Arabul Islam and his coterie.

No one would ever force the South Kolkatans to vacate their homes and leave their source of livelihood at gun points, no one will break down their offices to build up a dam, or run bulldozers over their houses to mine the minerals beneath the soil. They are safe. Even the high tension wires that passes throughout the countryside while creating huge electromagnetic fields that adversely impact the health of the people and the livestock as well as the natural surroundings are far away from them. Their kids aren’t victims of electromagnetic effects. They are lucky.

As they are lucky so they have the privilege, unlike the people of Bhangar, Nandigram, and Singur, to justify the gross injustice meted out to the people and advise them to be submissive to the mighty corporations. Arabul Islam’s land acquisition at gun point isn’t something that these Bhadraloks should condemn and oppose. The violence used by Arabul Islam or Laxman Sheth are “pro-development” violence and hence the government remains mum, the media overlooks gross injustice, and the Bhadraloks don’t give a damn.

The godfather of Bengal’s corporate media, Ananda Bazar Group is continuously carrying out a propaganda campaign against the Bhangar land movement with a specific goal to vilify those who participated in the movement; it kept presenting concocted tales using fabricated details of arms haul and criminal - left nexus, to match the government’s version of the story, that blames the Maoists and other left-wing organisations for the violence.

The Bhadralok community remained aloof from any anti-establishment movements since the beginning of the neo-liberalisation era, because it got its share in the pie of “development” that followed the foreign capital’s infusion into the country’s economy. The share, of course, came at the cost of the poor people’s plight. It didn’t bother the Bhadralok community, whose aspiration to ascend higher on the ladder of success by appeasing the masters, i.e. the foreign monopoly and finance capital, to consider the havoc that was wrecked on the broad masses by the neo-developmental drive of the ruling bloc.

It’s a fantasy to expect the Bhadralok, the mobile and isolated Bengali middle and upper-middle class to integrate with the mass movements against corporate aggression on the land, water, resources, livelihood, environment, and the labour of the country. The movement rests on those for whom it’s a question of life and death, for whom it’s a burning question that will shape the future of their future generations. The Bhadralok isn’t one of them.