Elections intensify India's instability
Kunal Chattopadhyay and Rohit Prajapati chart the resistible rise of Hindu communalism, and argue for a change of priorities on the Indian left INDIA IS ALMOST UNIQUE AMONG THE LESS developed capitalist countries. Its ruling bourgeoisie has created an autonomous pole of capital accumulation and enabled the emergence of local, monopolist finance capital. All this while preserving a bourgeois democratic framework.
The pre-independence Congress was a bourgeois party that had established its hegemony over the anti-imperialist struggle. Its major failure was the rise of communalism, particularly aggressive Muslim communalism sponsored by the relatively weaker Muslim capitalists. The result, in 1947, was freedom with partition.
A lesser failure had been the inability to thwart a considerable degree of independent working class activity. But, thanks to Stalinist Comintern influence, the Communist Party of India did not challenge bourgeois hegemony. Instead, the CPI called for united CongressMuslim League leadership of the freedom struggle. There was only a limited left challenge from the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India (Fourth International), the Revolutionary Communist Party and the Revolutionary Socialist Party.
In the immediate post-independence period, Congress enjoyed a strengthened hegemony. The party could claim to have brought freedom, and proposed a vision of a state-sector led third path, or mixed economy, between capitalism and socialism. This was backed up by real changes like land reforms, and economic growth due to the long postwar wave of expansion. Congress continued to play its pre-independence role of arbiter between the various classes, castes, and sectional groups.
In the long run, however, India's capitalist development created new political forces and generated an instability in bourgeois politics. On the one hand there were social conflicts between the most oppressed classes and castes and the exploiting elites. On the other hand, more disturbingly for the rulers, there were fractures within the elite itself. The rise of new bourgeois parties did not symbolise attempts to create a stable two-party system. Rather, parties were formed by regional and sectoral capitalists (for example the agrarian parties) and by caste movements, like the antiBrahmin movement in Tamil Nadu, which gave rise to the Dravid Munnetra Kazhagham, which became a regional bourgeois party with a specific social base.
Another source of social conflict was the struggle for caste equality. This included both mobilizations of the "untouchables", now calling themselves dalits (the oppressed), and the struggle of formerly relatively low castes that wanted increased social status and political power to match their economic advance in the transforming economy.
The apparent revival of the Congress in the 1970s and, after the debacle of 1977, into the 1980s, was based on a new kind of political strategy. While the industrial drive of the 1950s had faltered, the rhetoric of socialism was stepped up, and so was the cult of a charismatic leader. Along with steady big bourgeois support there were attempts to build a stable vote bank including the so-called core minorities, Muslims, dalits and "tribals". From 1971, elections increasingly took on a plebiscitary character.
By 1989, however, these efforts boomeranged. An alternative lower caste bloc was emerging, under the rubric of social justice. Muslim voters were alienated more and more, as Congress "secularism" was perceived to be a balancing of opposite communalisms. And in trying to play the Hindu communal card. Congress actually strengthened the historic force of Hindu communalism, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
Two bourgeois options were tried out as alternatives to the Congress. The first was the Janata Party, which formed the government in 1997. But almost immediately, supporters of the RSS within the Janata Party began to unveil their own radical agenda, leading to the fall of the government.
India Re-establishing itself as Janata Dal, the mainstream movement was able to exclude the Hindu communalists (Bharatiya Janata Party, JP) from government, but only by the unnatural method of seeking support from the BJP on the right and the CPI and the CPI(M) on the left.
This fragile regime tried to create a stable basis for itself by the acceptance of the Mandal Commission Report, which advocated affirmative action for a large number of non-scheduled backward castes. The BJP
WE HAVE ONLY 15 DAYS SIR. LETS SNATCH *PAKISTAN HELD KASHMIR FROM PAKISTAN, EXPLODE A-BOMB AND BUILD THE MANDIR PM HOUS ©The 1 tried to halt this possibility by pushing on with its own rabid communal mobilizations. The government fell, and in the election of 1991, the Hindu communalist BJP moved into second position, behind Congress. The Janata Dal and its allies in the National Front occupied third position. The left
In 1957, the CPI won a majority of seats in the Kerala provincial Legislative Assembly. But the central government used an undemocratic clause in the constitution to bring down the E.M.S.Namboodiripad government. The CPI concluded from this bitter experience that it could only govern in coalition with bourgeois partners. Sharp differences developed between those militants who claimed that leftwingers in the Congress" were potential allies, and others who saw greater virtue in non-Congress bourgeois parties. This tactical question, more than the The authors are members of the Inquilabi Communist Sangathan (ICS), Indian Section of the Fourth International
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* India Sino-Soviet tussle, lay at the root of the split in the CPI.
The next landmark for the left came in 1967. Both wings of the CPI participated in coalition governments with bourgeois forces, notably in West Bengal and Kerala. The fall of these governments, combined with the attempts by the real Maoists in the CPI(M) to launch a peasant revolution and their eventual departure to form the CPI(ML), convinced the "mainstream" left of the need for greater moderation. West Bengal is the best example of the strategy followed. A purely left front has been in power for nineteen years and has now been given its fifth turn, with a reduced majority. The state government knows that it must stay firmly within bourgeois limits, and, with a few exceptions not use the legislative powers at its command. It knows it must follow even the austerity policy and the policy of industrialisation in 1991-92 to an estimated $97 billion in 1995-96. Foreign reserves contained a high proportion of borrowings and short-term, high-interest deposits by Indians resident
But Singh's real, though unstated goal of pumping wealth from the poor to the rich had greater success. Between 1987 and 1991 the average inflation rate had been 8.5%. It shot up to 13.5% in 1991-92, and 9.6% the following year. Foodgrain prices doubled. Prices of coal, electricity and cooking oil rose swiftly. Subsidies to education and public health were cut, with devastating effects, including the reappearance of malaria in epidemic form. The Rise of the Fascist Option
Founded in the 1920s, the Hindutva ideology of the RSS rejected a territorial national identity for India. Non-Hindus were projected as non-Indians, with ideological roots outside India. The RSS's second leader, M.S. Golwalkar, extended this concept to the Communists, whose extra-territorial allegiance to Moscow made them as "un-Indian"
as Muslims or Sikhs.
At the heart of Hindutva was the myth of the thousand year struggle against Islamic domination. Muslims were the ultimate other, in contrast to which a chauvinist, militant Hindu identity was projected. Golwalkar approvingly cited Germany as "proof" that racial purity was necessary and even essential.
At the same time, the "true Indian" (read RSS) view of society was hailed for rejecting class struggle in favour of social harmony under the dictatorship of a moral elite emphasising "a faith to live by and die for". The reality of this harmony was the forcible suppression of subordinate, especially proletarian class identity as incompatible with Hindutva. This fascist ideology was buttressed by a fascist organization. The militant right-wing cadre force of the RSS made the cadre base of the CPI and the CPI(M) look positively thin.
The RSS grew only slowly in the early post-independence years. While it kept itself separate and built its petty bourgeois social base, the prospect of prosperity meant that its appeal was limited both with respect to this through "liberalisation"
"and eschew all but tokenist mass mobilizations. Where necessary, it is ready to rely on the
Transformation and regroupment bureaucracy and the forces of for base a counterrevolution from below and to the Indian big bourgeoisie.
repression.
The collapse of Stalinism and the
The economy continuing capitalist crisis has contradictory effects. Myths and
Far from being a base of illusions connected to the ressocialism, India's state sector was toration of capitalism in the postcreated fully in accordance with the
Stalinist societies have dispre-independence plans of major sipated, faced with the actually
Indian capitalist groups. They existing market economy. But expected it to function until private reactions to the socio-econcapital was able to supplant it. Once omic crisis all too often take the form of reactionary tenthe state sector was seen to have dencies of an ethnic, nationdone its job, liberalisation policies alist, racial or religious charwere adopted, with the aim of acter. Hence the urgent privatization and the insertion of need to rebuild a world-wide capitalism in the world
Indian movement of anti-capitalist market on favourable terms.
struggle, taking account of
But the long wave of capitalist the recomposition of the workers' movement which is underway as a result of the double failure depression brought in its wake the of social democracy and Stalinism.
huge pressure of imperialist capital.
Regroupments of forces determined to learn the lessons of the
Indian capitalism
Keeping historical abomination that was Stalinism and to continue, against competitive called for a sharp rightthe winds and the tides, to fight against capitalism are being wing turn. This combination of realised in a number of countries.
imperialist pressure and the needs of
In all the countries where such possibilities exist, the organisations
India's autonomous monopoly of the Fourth International are ready to be part of the re-groupment capital had a crucial influence in the process. We consider this as an important step towards the development of the new economic recomposition of the anti-capitalist left on a world scale. At the policy of Manmohan Singh, finance international level, the Fourth International is an active participant minister in the Narasimha Rao in re-groupment, bringing with it the advantages of a long tradition of combat against capitalism and Stalinism.
government.
This policy failed in its stated objective of reducing the foreign debt, which rose from $85.3 billion
*
Through the 1980s, however, a mounting social and economic crisis and sense of frustration was channelled and given a false direction, targeting Muslims, Islam and "Marxism." In the generous interpretation of the RSS, included all public expenditure in the interests of the toilers). The communalists proposed a vague economic alism, which was revealed to little more than protecting Indian capitalism. Based on Golwalkar's dictum, the RSS held that this protection could not be ensured within bourgeois democracy, as this made competition with communists and concessions in the face of resistance inevitable. As working class opposition to the new economic policy forced a slowdown in the reforms, this anti-democratic argument appeared plausible to
increasing sections of the big bourgeoisie.
Meanwhile the Ram Janmabhoomi agitation crystallised a much wider Hindutva identity. Riots were systematically used to consolidate right-wing militancy and to terrorise the Muslims. By forcing the Muslims into ghettos, the right created even more "evidence" that "Hindus likewise need to organize as Hindus". By 1982, that is, shortly before the launching of the new line, the RSS had 20,000 branches, the activities of which integrated over a million regular participants.
Donations from members and sympathisers now exceeded Rs. 10 million annually.
The RSS now sought to win the support of the big bourgeoisie on its own terms, by showing its potential for mass ultra-right struggles and at the same time by projecting its faith in capitalist economic consolidation and dispelling all notions that communalism meant obscurantism and backward ideas in all spheres. The Elections and After
The 1996 elections were fought by four type of forces. The Congress, the BJP and its allies, the National Front-Left Front combine, and a number of regional parties. The BJP alliance received less than 30% of the total votes, but with concentration in certain areas and the split in anti-BJP votes elsewhere, they received 195 seats (BJP 160, Shiv Sena 16, the rest to smaller allies like the Samta Party led by renegade socialists, the Haryana Vikas Party and the Sikh communal Akalli Dal). The Congress got 28% votes and 136 seats.
The six party NF-LF combine was badly trounced, coming third. It was by post poll alliances with diverse parties like the DMK, the Telugu Desam of Andhra, the AGP of Assam, the Tamil Maanila Congress, a Congress clone that split away only on the issue of with which party to ally in Tamil Nadu that it claimed the support of 185 members of Parliament.
The Indian president first invited the BJP, the largest single party and the leader of the largest single pre-poll coalition to form the government. BJP leader Atal Behari Vajpayee accepted, knowing full well that his government would fall as soon as it sought a vote of confidence in Parliament.
His calculations were the following. In the first place, the very act of forming a short-lived BJP government would placate the mass base, which was unwilling to see the party opt out from the beginning and sit as the opposition for one more term. The President's address would spell out the BJP agenda as official policy, and project a moderate, nationalistic and modernist face.
To give only one example, the BJP asserts that Muslims are separate because they live under their own family laws, forgetting conveniently that so do Hindus. It calls for a Uniform Civil Code. But by projecting this as a task of national integration, it was able to keep the others, who also swear by national integration, on the defensive. Only our party, despite its small size, has in alliance with feminists, launched the offensive, pointing out that we need a Uniform Civil Code based on gender justice for all women, not just to "integrate" Muslims.
A national workshop in late May early June took up the task of drafting alternative personal laws that are gender just, while combating the communal-fascist agenda. By opposing the Uniform Civil Code perse, protecting minorities.
Similarly, the BJP's stand on final incorporation of Kashmir in India cannot be well opposed by parties that reject the right of nations to self-determination, even though, in Kashmir the past six years have seen the murder of over 40,000 people in the name of combating terrorism (Kashmir has a population smaller than Greater Bombay).
The coming of the BJP government was greeted by a buoyant stock exchange Leading industrialists and organizations of big capital like CII, ASSOCHAM, the Merchant Chamber of Commerce hailed the new government. The newly hatched United Front, sponsored by the Left which however Will keep out of government at least that is the CPI(M) stand for the moment) was on the other hand greeted sceptically.
After the BJP government fell, the task of forming a government passed to the United Front, a post-election coalition. Parliamentary arithmetic compels the UF to seek Congress support. The Congress will not enter the goverment, and has made it clear that it will oppose any departure from its economic policy. Keeping out the BJP will therefore require an economic regime that all the UF partners except the Tamil Maanila Congress had condemned before the elections as a succumbing to imperialism and as an antipeople policy. The very act of taking support from the Congress, described so lyrically as the major party of the ruling class in all the left election manifestos of 1996, will discredit the anti-Congress and "progressive" image built up by the NF-LF bloc in the past years.
The election results showed that the strategy of building a lower caste vote bank has failed. The Janata Dal did very badly in
India *
Uttar Pradesh state, and lost many seats in
Bihar (these two key provinces, where low caste mobilisation has been strongest, elect
139 seats in India's 544 seat Parliament). And
19 years of non-reformism has cost the left its base in the industrial areas of Bengal, where the Congress won 8 parliamentary seats out of 42, and 82 of the 294 State Assembly seats (up from 41 seats in the previous state
The votes also showed low polling in places where the BJP is in power, disclosing popular antipathy where the real face of the BJP is known (only a little over 30% voted in Gujarat, where there was virtually a straight Congress-BJP contest).
A superficial survey of this data has led a number of analysts to say that the BJP is the real winner. This is an extremely short-sighted analysis. India does not have a system of proportional representation, so the fact that less than 30% voted for the BJP is of less consequence than the fact that it has been able, to consolidate itself in Maharashtra (in alliance with the Shiv Sena), in Gujarat, in Rajasthan, in Uttar Pradesh, in Bihar (in alliance with the Samata Party, which has been responsible for the fragmentation of the Janata Dal's caste based vote bank). By projecting a moderate face during its short period of power, it has sent a message to the voters that it might be better in power than out of it, when the more extremist elements will dominate. Indeed, we can now expect a number of riots just to prove this point.
The Indian left and working class movement is entering into a critical period. The crisis that the left faces is of our own making, and there is no short cut route out. The socialists (who have long dissolved their party into the Janata Dal) and other parties have repeatedly made compromises with the RSS. Despite the 1977 experience, in 1989 they formed the Janata Dal government with BJP support, which legitimised the communalists. Socialist leaders like Madhu Dandavate and Pramila Dandavate have in the past made deals with Shiv Sena to stand weak candidates in the other party's priority constituencies.
The case of the Stalinist left is different. Formally they have always opposed communalism. In recent times, they have also begun to call the RSS fascist. But they have not made any serious analysis of what fascism means. Guided by the old theory of antifascist united front, they have differentiated the anti-fascist struggle from the struggle against the bourgeois economic offensive. Thus, the powerful mobilizations of 1991-2 against the new economic policy were halted
#279 July 1996 27
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* Country after the destruction of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 on the plea that now the antifascist struggle must take precedence. The inevitable result has been the disorientation of the working class.
The attitude of the left parties to rots are also meaningless. They never try to bring out counter mobilizations. Instead, they call on the state apparatus to be true to the secular constitution of India.
While calling in the army might save a few lives, it does not solve mobilizations, and have been successful in defending the interests of workers, tribals, and slum dwellers. Anti-communalism has been made an integral part of the defence of the rights of working people, and courts have been used as a terrain of class struggle, rather than being viewed as impartial, standing above the class war.
Most far left groups have virtually given up the battle by declaring that the major parliamentary left parties have ceased to be working class parties in any sense. If true, this would mean that while the fascist threat looms large, the working class is to start from scratch. Fascism will not wait for that. But the bigger parties too have done little. Since the election results came out, their sole concern has been how to keep the BJP out of government through parliamentary manipulations. It is recognised by these parties that if the present parliament were to be dissolved right now, the BJP would gain more seats and might be in a position to form a government on its own. But the years and decades of class collaborationism has now the political problem.
Rather, it makes the
Red Box Mail Order apparatus
State confident that the
1
Hindutva forces are the coming power. This has been shown by the number of retired
3.
bureaucrats joining the BJP, by the communalisation of the police forces in a 4.
number of provinces, and the degree of
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Daniel Bensaid borne fruit. They are compelled to go in for support to a government that will disarm the £2.00 working class further. That the CPI(M) Central £2.00
Committee withstood tremendous pressure to reject the offer £2.50 to make West Bengal Chief £2.00 Minister Jyoti Basu the prime minister of this combine or to
5. Class Struggle and Technological Change in
Hinduization of the judiciary. For example, in the Sarla Mudgal case, Justices Sahai and Singh opined that the majority of the
Out of Print] Populism in Latin America (A. Gilly)
6.
country be brought under a single codified
Market, Plan and Democracy: The Experience of
7/8.
personal law, to which no minority should claim exception. This is tantamount to
9.
claiming that Hindu personal law is the basis for a uniform civil code, and that
Muslims must prove their patriotism
10.
continuously by accepting the domination of Hindu law.
Even more damaging was the case against Manohar Joshi. The Bombay High
Court had ruled that his election should be annulled, as he had used communal propa-
14.
ganda, which is against the electoral law.
The Supreme Court ruled that campaigning
15.
in the name of Hindutva is not necessarily communal.
Though the CPI, CPI(M) etc, talk about the class nature of the state, the empty way in which they use these words is shown by their failure to realise that in the last instance, the Supreme Court cannot be considered a defence against the fascists.
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£2.50 certainly half a step in the right direction. But this must be followed up by concrete struggles. That perspective is yet to
£3.00 enter into their vocabulary. The
RSP, a left-reformist party with
£2.50 semi-Trotskyist jargon, and the
CPI(ML) Liberation, which
£2.00 considers itself to be a revolutionary alternative,
£4.00 though in fact it too has inserted itself into the caste-based electoral politics, have a formally
£2.50 more radical position. While
£3.50 they are too small to have a major impact, if they do mean
£2.50 to pose even a reformist left alternative, they likewise have to
£2.50 show in practice their alternative. The institutions painstakingly built up by the
£4.00 working class are still in existence. The only road ahead is to
£5.00 use these institutions, the trade
21.
Factory Committees and Workers' control in favourable
Even to get partially judgements, there must be extra- parliamentary mobilizations.
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22.
The Vadodara Kamdar Union (Baroda
Workers Union, politically led by members
23.
of the Inquilabi Communist Sangathan), and the Ankleswar Bachao Samity, (Save
Ankleswar Committee, also politically led by the ICS) have shown how this can be done. Fighting the BJP, contractors, Mafia, and bosses in a BJP ruled province, these organizations have used Public Interest
Litigation as an adjunct to large scale
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unions, the parties, to build a
£3.50 workers united front, forge alliances with the different social movements, and launch
£3.50 an immediate fight back. If the
£3.50
Deve Gowda government lasts for two years (few expect it to last a full term) the breathing
£5.00 space will not become a last gasp only on condition that these battles are launched. *