India: Support Workers Socialist Appeal against the CAA-NRC-NPR

End the Citizenship Laws and National Borders!

Advance the struggle to build a world socialist organisation! 

Reverse the communal divide of 1947, re-unite the Indian subcontinent, and spearhead the struggle for a United Socialist Union in South Asia!

The Modi government, the agent of India's major capitalists, is busy attacking the working people's anger over the failing power of capital in the economic-political crisis. Therefore, it is making every effort to maintain the corruption and robbery of those in power with the poisonous nostalgia of ethnocentrism and Hindu supremacy, dividing the masses of the working people. To keep the politically backward sections of the Hindu majority under the rule of the capitalists, the Modi government is creating a tool for Muslim oppression. The Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) defines the terms of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and National Population Register (NPR), under which an entire network of detention camps is being spread on the lines of Nazi Germany.

The Modi government is not alone in this desperate attempt. In the wake of the economic crisis of world capitalism in 2008, there has been a catastrophe in capitalist countries. Until yesterday, boasting of globalization on a capitalist basis, the elite rulers of these countries have joined forces to close their borders for migration and to exclude parts of the working people. Imprisoned in the tight cages of the national states, capital with its falling rate of profit, in this period of ever-increasing crisis, has become unable to provide food and employment for the people. There is only one way forward for the bourgeois governments - closing their borders and deporting large sections of the people. 

Along with the general crisis of capitalism, wars and oppression are spreading, and unemployment as well as the crisis of emigration is worsening. In this crisis of crises, capitalist rulers are closing the borders of their countries and are eager to push out large parts of the people as surplus. The United States is sealing its borders with Mexico, and Britain is pressing India to repatriate Indian migrants. These attacks, rather than solving the crisis of capitalism, are making it deeper. The capitalist rulers, targeting the crisis-stricken migrants and refugees, are using then as a pretext to dispel the anger of people suffering from capitalism's crisis and to contain it on ethnic, regional and communal grounds. And by succeeding in reducing it to a matter of religion, they are trying to protect their power from being the target of this anger.

The Modi government wants to maintain its grip on power by allowing Hindu settlements in Muslim-majority parts of the country and tightly controlling Muslim immigration into the rest of the country. Opposition parties cannot resist this poisonous communalism of Modi. All these parties, right and left in the opposition, agree with the Modi government on keeping India safe for 'Indians' only and closing it for 'foreigners'. None of the opposition parties, including the Left parties, were in favor of the Rohingya and Bangladeshi immigrants. We should not forget that the NRC was first implemented by the Nehru-led Congress government in the name of stopping 'foreign invaders', and before Modi, the Manmohan government had drafted it.

We strongly oppose this anti-globalist campaign, which the Modi government has tried to give a deep and clear communal color to, and warn the proletariat about this conspiracy. Perpetuating the unfortunate communal divide of 1947, igniting religious-regional enmity, the anti-people rulers of India want to maintain their power. The horrific tragedy of the communal divide of '47, in which more than two million victims were killed, victims of plunder and oppression, and more than two million were destroyed, was the largest humanitarian tragedy in the history of the world. By dividing the people on communal grounds, they put them under the grip of the bourgeoisie and destroyed the anti-imperialist revolution. From 1947 onwards, the capitalist rulers fought, constantly wiping out opposition to the communal poison, dividing the working people in the name of Indo-Pakistan and Hindu-Muslim. The whole of South Asia has maintained its sovereignty. The suffering people, like sheep, are encircled in their controlled national enclaves, by the national gangs of capitalists, putting them in hellish living conditions.

Today, all the capitalist countries of the world are engaged in a hotly contested war against one another, which is becoming increasingly violent, and the world is passing through unlimited wars, terrorism and bloodshed. Capitalism cannot unify the world, it can only divide it. The only way out of these hellish situations created by capitalism is to fight for the socialist revolution.

We reject all divisions of the world on a national, racial or communal basis. On behalf of the international proletariat we invite the dissolution of all barricades that divide the world, impose borders, restrict travel, and freedom of residence or employment. We are struggling to abolish the passport-visa state and to eliminate national boundaries, to build a World Socialist Union. In this task we have a clear goal: to re-unite the Indian subcontinent by reversing the communal divide of 1947, and to establish the United Socialist States of South Asia.

The bourgeois rule in South Asia, which is dominated by India's right-wing and Hindu-backed Modi government, is a major obstacle to achieving this goal. By overthrowing them through the revolution, by establishing Workers' Governments, South Asia can be consolidated into a socialist union and the narrow national borders and national states eliminated.

- We oppose citizenship laws, religious, communal, racial or ethnic discrimination, and all citizenship laws and national boundaries.

- We appeal to the youth, the proletariat, that 'action committees' are formed in all cities, campuses, factories, to unite in the fight, further accelerating this opposition!

- Oppose all citizenship laws!

- Oppose religious, racial, ethnic, and national oppression!

- Unite the national across borders and unite the world into a socialist union!

- Forwards to the struggle for 'South Asian Socialist Union', uniting the Indian subcontinent by overthrowing the communal divide of 1947!

Translated from https://workersocialist.blogspot.com/2019/12/caa-nrc-npr_27.html
Errors in translation are the responsibility of CWG/ANZ 

New Delhi’s Surgical Strike upon Kashmir is a Reckless Push to its Roadmap to a Hindu Rashtra and Big Power Ambitions in Asia!

Re-blogged from Worker Socialist Blog.  By Rajesh Tyagi/ 13.8.2019 

Amidst domestic and international outrage and in a complete military lockdown of the far northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, the hindu supremacist government at New Delhi under Narendra Modi, has stripped the only muslim majority state inside the Union of India, not only of its special privileges but also of its status as an ordinary state.

In what can be termed nothing less than a palace coup, the far right-wing Modi government, has demoted and bifurcated the state of J&K into two Union Territories- the UT of Jammu and Kashmir and the UT of Laddakh- restricting their executive and legislative powers, while placing them under direct control of the Centre. While UT of J&K is given an Assembly with 110 seats, a High Court and the right over the land, the UT of Laddakh, geo-strategically more important being located on border with China, is given neither an Assembly nor the rights over its lands.

The move is part of fortification of India’s own territorial claims against its geo-political rivals. Purpose behind this palace coup, in the first instance, is to reinforce the military establishment of India as against Pakistan and China, the bordering states having rival territorial claims in the region.

Recent tensions in the region, due to escalation of war prospects between US and China in which India is being more and more integrated into the US led war alliance as a frontline state against China, constitute the main stimulus for this move.

Rival states of China and Pakistan have not taken it lightly. Pakistan was quick in responding to the move through snapping all diplomatic and trade relations with India. It has also approached the International Court complaining that the realignment is violative of Simla agreement. After China claimed that it is viewing the situation with concern, the Indian authorities assured China that the realignment of the border state would not affect the Macmohan line.

The clandestine move, carried out in complete stealth on the back of the people of J&K, is a covert attempt by the elite rulers of New Delhi to redraw the map of Indian Republic oriented towards and evolving into a ‘Hindu Rashtra’.

The move, an extension of the politico-military war to which the state of J&K has been subjected for long by the Centre, is completely fraudulent in nature, besides being subversive of the very foundations of the Constitution itself.

The apparently illegal surgical strike upon federalism has been conducted by the ultra right-wing government under Modi, through the Constitution. Article 370 of the Constitution has been used to demolish Article 370 itself.

Twin Articles of the Constitution of India- i.e. Article 370 that recognised special status of the state inside Union of India, with special powers to have a separate Constitution, flag, legislature, an executive and judiciary and Article 35-A that had hitherto protected its lands against the intrusion of outsiders- have been rendered nugatory by the Central government at one stroke by enacting the Parliamentary law- The J&K State Reorganisation Act, 2019. The parliament in turn, has supposedly assumed this authority through a Presidential Order dated August 5, issued under Art. 370. Another Presidential Order issued in February this year, disbanding the Assembly has substituted the Governor instead of the elected Government and the Assembly, for purposes of Article 370.

The new law would come into force on October 31 this year, on birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, first Home Minister of India, a core right-winger inside the then ruling Congress Party, whose name is associated with crushing of peasant uprising of Telangana and merger of 565 princely states in Union of India. Patel commands immense support among the ranks of saffron hindu chauvinists.

Ironically, while Muslims comprised the broad mass of poors and toilers in Kashmir, Article 35-A was inducted in the Indian Constitution, under pressure from Kashmiri pundits who owned the major parts of the lands in the valley. It were the Pundits, the propertied lot, who wished to prevent the outsiders including the British, from acquiring landed possessions in Kashmir. Hari Singh, the then ruler of Kashmir himself was keenly interested in preventing the outsiders from purchasing lands inside Kashmir.

The law passed by Parliament and promulgated by the Central Government through a Presidential Order the next day, is patently illegal, chiefly on two counts: Firstly, that it threatens to demolish at one stroke, the federal structure of Union of India. If after imposing President rule in a state and substituting not only the local government but the state legislature too by the Governor, a state can be declared a UT by the President with consent of governor; or a law can be passed by the central legislature- the Parliament- to that effect, then all states at one go can be declared Union Territory overnight, throwing federal structure of the Union, to the winds.

Federalism being inalienable part of the basic structure of the Constitution, but cannot be altered through exercise of any executive or legislative power. Secondly, the Constituent Assembly in the State of Jammu and Kashmir at the time of adoption of the Constitution of J&K, with reference to Art 370, has specifically and unambiguously resolved, to keep the relationship between the state and the centre in suspended animation, forever. This means that no successive Assembly in the State could have varied this relationship in any manner whatsoever.

Neither the government acting through its executive head-the President, nor the parliament is able to rise above the Constitution, to subvert the federal character of the Republic and the Constitution. It cannot use the Presidential Rule in the state for oblique purpose of bypassing the elected Assembly to the detriment of the state.

Secondly, and even more importantly proviso to clause (3) of Article 370 makes the recommendation of the Constituent Assembly obligatory if the Article was to be later repealed. Initially inducted as temporary provision in the Constitution, subject to repeal on the recommendation of the Constituent Assembly, Article 370 has become permanent and ossified, upon demise of the Constituent Assembly in 1957. 

The Presidential Order has only empowered the Parliament to act in lieu of the Assembly, but as the Assembly itself could not have re-animated the relationship between the centre and the state, the Parliament putting its feet in the shoes of the Assembly, could have never done it. The disability of the State Assembly, could not have been overcome by the Parliament while importing its powers. On the contrary, the Parliament, while enabling itself with the powers of the J&K Assembly, would essentially import alongwith it, the disabilities under the disabling provisions and clauses. It cannot do anything that the Assembly could not have done and cannot scale over the legislative competence and powers of the J&K Assembly. Its powers would be circumscribed by the disability imposed by the Constituent Assembly of the state upon itself. Thus, as the Assembly itself cannot alter the relations between the centre and the state, the parliament cannot do so.

Lastly, the President or Governor rule, as the government of interregnum has a limited purpose to hold the power to meet exigency, between two Assemblies. It cannot take such strategic decisions to abrogate or completely alter the status of the state.

The impugned law, passed by the Central Legislature, not only alters the relationship between the centre and the state, but virtually overturns it, to the detriment of the state. This flies in the face of a recent judgement of 2018 of the Supreme Court. The decision, in no ambiguous terms had declared that the relationship between the state of J&K and the centre is unalterable and fixed as the Constituent Assembly had disbanded itself in 1957 without abolishing or altering Article 370. A 2015 decision by the J&K High Court lays down the same proposition.

The patently illegal move of New Delhi met with conflicting responses among the sections of bourgeoisie as well as the Stalinist left. While many in ranks of bourgeois opposition and Stalinist Parties opposed the move, many others have supported it with open arms.

Opposition parties like SP, BSP and BJD stood support to it, while JDU from inside the ruling National Democratic Alliance, opposed it. Ranks of the largest opposition party-Congress- got split on the issue. Its front rank leaders like Janardhan Dwivedi and Jyotiraditya Scindhia supported the government while Ghulam Nabi Azad, an MP from Kashmir, opposed the same.

Stalinists put up a hypocritical and phoney opposition to the move. While continuing to support the claim and resultant coercion by New Delhi upon Kashmir on the ground of ‘unity and integrity of India’, Stalinists opposed the move on flimsy grounds. Stalinist parties had supported the Congress-led governments at the centre who had implemented the very same repressive policies in Kashmir.

Days before the law was introduced in Parliament, in an unprecedented move by the centre, the state was completely cut off from rest of the world, in anticipation of widespread public resistance to its action. All communications- including phone lines and social media- were shut off and curfew was imposed after cancelling even the pilgrimage of Amarnath shrine.

Kashmir, has a chequered history. For long, the region had reeled under medieval oppression of successive warlords. Amidst the disintegrating Mughal Empire, a century after death of Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb, Sikh ruler Ranjit Singh, a warlord and spoiled drunkard with 46 wives, after a failed attempt in 1913, conquered Kashmir in 1818, acquiring whopping annual revenue collection of 70 lacs, defeating Afghan ruler Jabbar Khan.

After Ranjit Singh’s death in 1839, British East India Company quickly took over his Sikh Kingdom, defeating his weakling successors.

In 1846, Gulab Singh, a local Dogra head, purchased the entire territory of Kashmir for Rs.75 lacs from the Company. Kashmir was sold at this specially higher price as Kashmiri masses, mostly muslims, were presumed to be docile and law abiding and hence amenable to exploitation and easy revenue collections.

Compounding the woes of Kashmiri people, the region with a populace overwhelmingly Muslim (around 94% of total) was placed under the sword of hindu warlords, who turned the region into a living hell for the poor and toiling masses of Kashmir. Hindu religious customs and culture was forced upon the masses. Beef was completely banned and death penalty was prescribed under law for cow slaughter, which was so customary among locals.

In line with their reactionary role in the colonial periphery of the East, British rulers had perpetuated and reinforced the rule of medieval lords.

Finally in August 1947, the British colonial rulers, divided their dominion on the sub-continent, through the India Independence Act, on communal lines in two parts- a declared muslim Pakistan and an undeclared hindu India, while leaving the princely states, including Kashmir, to decide their own destiny.

This resulted in three simultaneous and violent partitions of Bengal, Punjab and Kashmir. The right to self-determination, as granted by the British to around 565 princely states, however, remained illusive for two reasons: First that it were not the masses but the rulers of these princely states who were to take the decision about their fate and secondly in face of the two rival dominions of Sub-Continental bourgeoisie, supported by the British, majority of these states did have no real freedom of choice. In fact, no state despite its will and effort could have survived outside the two rival domains of India and Pakistan and none remained so. Even the border states like Kashmir, who had a limited but realistic option open to them, were burdened with the yoke of military power of the two dominions. They were intrigued, deceived, and lastly forced into one or the other dominion.

Hari Singh, the then ruler of Kashmir and a descendant of Gulab Singh, in his attempt to keep Kashmir independently in his hands, entered into a standstill pact with Pakistan. India refused to enter into a similar pact with him and Pakistan soon violated the pact.

Pakistani forces, suspecting Hari Singh’s sympathies to New Delhi being a hindu ruler, forced themselves into Kashmir in October 47, through a Pashtun tribal invasion, reinforced quickly through regular troops. After Pakistani invading forces, having captured good part of the territory, remained few kilometres away from Srinagar, alarmed New Delhi prepared for an armed intervention in Kashmir. Though Hari Singh was left with no option but to seek help from India through accession of Kashmir to it, yet by the time he took a decision to do so, Indian forces had already started to land in Kashmir. Finding himself in a situation of checkmate, Hari Singh was forced to sign the instrument of accession on 26 October 1947, handing over defence, foreign affairs and communications to New Delhi, while retaining residual powers with him.

Pakistani armed intrusion, however, divided Kashmir into two parts- an Indian occupied and a Pakistan occupied territory. Later, the Chinese aggression of 1962, carved out a third one, with China seizing upon and occupying Aksaichin region of around 50 thousand square kilometres. Kashmir thus stood trifurcated among big Asian powers- New Delhi, Islamabad and Beijing. 

The instrument of accession signed by Hari Singh under duress and compulsion and without consent of Kashmiri people, found its reflection in Articles 35-A and 370 of the Constitution of India in 1950, that granted the state of J&K special status inside Union of India.

Later, under pressure from New Delhi and the local movement led by National Conference, Hari Singh was forced to go for polls for a Constituent Assembly in the state. The Constituent Assembly while adopting the Constitution of J&K and ratifying Art 370 and 35-A of the Indian Constitution, resolved that the relationship between the State and the Centre, for all times to come, would remain un-animated and fixed. Thus, no successive Assembly or even the Parliament acting in lieu of it, or even the President can vary this relationship. Ossified, Article 370 has thus become one of the basic features of the Indian Constitution, despite the provision stipulating its temporary character. Both Supreme Court in 2018 and the J&K High Court in 2015 have confirmed it.

The Constitutional provision- Art 370 had existed for decades for namesake only. For long, the heavy deployment of central forces in Kashmir for alleged ‘defence’ of the border state from Pakistan and China, alongside frequent imposition of black laws like AFSPA, that give the central forces unbridled authority over locals, has made all autonomy nugatory. Sections of Kashmiri bourgeoisie, represented through the regional parties like National Conference and People’s Democratic Party, had been complacent in centre’s drive to subjugate the state and keep it in military stranglehold. Despite their demagogy, both NC and PDP have rivalled each other in clinging to the successive ruling parties at the centre. The new law merely recognises and gives a formal shape and legal character to this crude reality, existing for decades.

Apart from its natural resources and scenic beauty, valley of Kashmir is even more important for its geo-strategic location as a buffer zone surrounded on three sides by the rival states of India, Pakistan and China.

Medieval Warlords, Colonialists and then indigenous bourgeoisie had ruled Kashmir through methods of brute force. Kashmir, the victim of most savage exploitation and repression, continues to be subject of rival claims of the big Asian powers. It stands torn in three parts today through violence, intrigue, deception and bloodshed.

Sandwiched between the rival powers of Asia, Kashmiri people have suffered unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the armed forces of the state as well as terrorists supported by rival states. Mass rapes, custodial tortures and deaths, and mysterious disappearances are the routine practices in Kashmir. Pellet guns, used by the Indian armed forces frequently on unarmed protests of Kashmiris, had lately acquired special fame after horrendous pictures and videos of their victims, mostly women and children, started to appear in international media and social sites.

A goldmine of natural resources- wood, fruits, dry fruits, a hub of handicrafts and handloom- pashmina shawls, raw wool, carpets- and one of the prime hotspots for international tourism and the scenic centre of natural beauty, Kashmir, has been in more and more focus of national and international big-business and investors. These profiteers looking at Kashmir as a potential hub of international tourism, prostitution and a virgin territory for speculations in real estate and exports, had been curious for long for crashing open its gates for unbridled exploitation of its human and natural resources.

As soon as the Bill was placed in Parliament by Modi government, thousands of the BJP supporters, applauding the Bill and rejoicing to the chagrin of Kashmiris, among whom are mostly Muslims, started to circulate the mock advertisements for purchase of lands in Kashmir and taking on the Kashmiri girls. Chief Minister of the BJP government in Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar, is quoted to have said in address to a public gathering that now they would be able to take on Kashmiri girls as wives.

This strike upon the territory of Kashmir, largely inhabited by Muslims, serves the political purpose of Modi Government by appealing to and promoting the backward communal mass sentiments based upon hindu chauvinistic hype.

The bourgeois political states on Indian sub-continent still continue to be in a fluid, unsettled status with rival claims to territories and with big power ambitions of their ruling elites to annex more territories to their domains. Kashmir remains the chief battleground for such contentions and claims.

Special status of a state inside the Union, however, is not a peculiarity of Kashmir. In many countries with belated historical development, from China to Canada, where bourgeoisie has failed to establish its national states and instead multinational political unions have come into existence, such special status can be found.

Nonetheless, the special status of Kashmir within India, or even its independence from India or its inclusion in Pakistan, offers no real promises or prospects to Kashmiri workers and toilers. National question in Kashmir is offshoot of the suppressed and suspended democratic revolution. It emerges from the abortion of the anti-colonial movement in August 1947 going hand in hand with reactionary communal partition of the Indian Sub-Continent that took toll over two million lives with even more victims of rapes, loot, maiming and arsons and the resultant transfer of power to the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie, on both sides of the border.

South Asian bourgeoisie has failed to resolve the tasks of democratic revolution, above all the question of nationalities. All bourgeois States in this region- India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Burma, Sri Lanka, have turned into prisons for dozens and dozens of nationalities, pulverising the national aspirations of people under military boots. Historically deformed Asian bourgeoisie suffers from systemic disability that prevents it from accomplishing the political mission of fulfilling the tasks of democratic revolution, including forming the national states or uniting the nationalities into voluntary political unions. It knows nothing and relies upon only the methods of crude force and violence, deception and intrigues.

Thus, to the question- If the national aspirations of the poor and toiling masses, how much intense and pressing they may be, can be realized outside the ambit and framework of the united political struggle of the proletariat and its fruition in a socialist revolution, our answer would be a big No.

With merging of the tasks of two revolutions- democratic and socialist- into one in the backward periphery of the world, that includes South Asia, the national question has become part of the socialist struggle of the proletariat. The national struggle of Kashmiri people has thus become inalienable part of the struggle of the proletariat on the Indian Sub-Continent and in South Asia.

The task before the Kashmiri workers and toilers is thus not to fight to secede from or join this or that Union or even to create an independent statelet, but to fight for socialist revolution in South Asia that would overthrow all bourgeois regimes in quick succession to each other.

To do this, the Kashmiri Proletariat must decisively reject the sectarian agendas that support the rival territorial claims of sections of bourgeoisie over Kashmir or advocate balkanization of territories. At the same time, it must also reject the reactionary communal partition of 1947 and in tandem with other sections of South Asian proletariat must launch a fight for reunification of the Indian Sub-Continent into a Socialist Union as part of the broader struggle for establishment of the United Socialist States of South Asia, through a working class led revolution from below. This revolution in South Asia, is integral to the World Socialist Revolution.

As a transitional political program to achieve the aforesaid strategic aims, the proletariat and the youth in Kashmir and outside, must present their demands:

1. All armed interventions and hostilities in Kashmir must stop forthwith.

2. All armed forces be withdrawn from Kashmir.

3. All black laws in the region must be annulled forthwith.

4. Kashmir be declared a peace zone and kept under international observation.

5. Plebiscite/ Referendum be conducted under international observation in entire Kashmir.

Also Check: https://workersocialist.blogspot.com/2016/03/running-sore-of-kashmir-and-fight-for.html

https://workersocialist.blogspot.com/2019/08/new-delhis-surgical-strike-upon-kashmir.html

How the Right Wing BJP Could Secure Unprecedented Victory?

Modi mobbed

Extreme right wing, hindu supremacist Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP), is voted to power, ousting the Congress-led UPA-II Government under Manmohan Singh, that ruled for a decade. While BJP alone secured 282 seats in run up to Lok Sabha, Congress got squeezed to 44 seats.

 

The spectacular victory of BJP, has come on the wave of widespread dissatisfaction and unrest against the misrule of Congress led government, that was marred by massive corruption, soaring prices, raging inflation, and vast unemployment.
 

Congress, hitherto the chief party of Indian big business, was trapped between the pressing need to put in place the most rudimentary welfare schemes in rural employment and food guarantees, on the one hand, while on the other, the dictates of the capitalist market that demanded dismantling of all such schemes, wiping out all social spending. Result was a double discrediting of the Government. As meagre spending, clubbed with corruption and pilferages, failed to bring the promised results, masses of workers and toilers turned against the Congress regime.  Alongside, the corporate gradually dissociated itself from Congress Government, leaning more and more on the right wing BJP, as in its estimation, the Congress regime failed to put the economic reforms in place, at desired pace. Large sections of big business, thus, mobilized their support behind the BJP.

Conscious of the explosive consequences of rule in the hands of fascists, the ruling big bourgeois, in its quest to arrest the fall of its economy that has set in after the 2010 currency crisis in India, is dragged behind the BJP. As the economy has since continued to shrink, dispelling the foreign investment, international credit rating agencies have recently issued ultimatum to the government, commanding it to ‘do or die’. 

The claims of corporate media, as to a 'sunami' in favour of Modi, are however, a blatant lie, as despite of an apparent parliamentary majority, BJP could get only a 31% share of popular vote, while its NDA allies added 7% more to it. This is the lowest share of vote, that any winning party has got, till date. Equally false are the claims that vote in favour of BJP is the vote for agenda of "economic reforms". On the contrary, the vote is against all 'reforms' that had been pushed by the ousted Congress regime. BJP could capture even this much vote, only as it succeeded in masquerading as an opposition to the rule and policies of Congress, while hiding its real agenda of pushing through the 'economic reforms' at far higher pace than ever.

Victory of BJP has come by 'default' against the anti-people policies, crushing failures and misrule of the Congress Government and the shameful complicity of Stalinist left with it.

Needless to say that Congress led UPA governments, have done their best to serve the interests of big business, including a massive drive for dismantling the public sector, withdrawing subsidies, and ending price controls over most essential commodities like diesel. However, the constraints of bourgeois-democracy to dupe the masses through keeping in some semblance of a welfare state amidst rabid reforms, ‘reforms with a human face’ as they put it, has prevented the UPA from daring to take to the harshest anti-people decisions.

In estimation of Indian big business and foreign investors, only a right-wing authoritarian government under the BJP can accomplish the tasks that Congress could not perform. These include, complete wiping out of social spending and taxing the working and toiling people even more, to shift the burden of all economic crisis upon their shoulders.

Ironically, the big-business succeeded in channelling the anger of the masses against its own regime and its own policies, to induce a push, towards the right, bringing the arch communal BJP to power.  

BJP is the political front of most rabid communal formation, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), that is ferociously hostile to working class and socialism, and is modelled on the patterns of Fascist black shirts under Mussolini in Italy. It holds its traditional social base among most backward sections of petty traders and small businessmen and ropes in most conservative elements in bureaucracy, security agencies, police and army, that are deeply inimical to working class and poors. It is flanked by equally communal Shiv Sena and MNS in Maharahstra, Akalis in Punjab and ethno-linguistic AIADMK in Tamilnadu, and TDP and TRS in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana respectively.

Rise of the BJP to power, is direct, first and foremost result of the shameful failure of the Stalinist left, which has failed the entire working class, behind it. Fascists could have and really have rode to power, only on the back of this failure of working class, to put challenge to the misrule of big bourgeoisie.

The left under Stalinists, instead of leading an opposition to the anti-people regime of Congress-led UPA, remained adhered to it and kept the working class completely dormant, inert and sterile. For decades, stalinist parties continued to support and sustain the minority governments under Congress. Even when the most reactionary neo-liberal policies were being put in motion since 1991, by the Narsimha Rao government, trashing even residues of ‘congress socialism’, public assets were being sold off to corporates at throw away prices, Stalinists stood support to this party of the big-bourgeois, on false slogans of democracy and secularism.

BJP led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) had come to power in 1998, due to the pro-investor thrust of Congress government since 1991, supported by Stalinists. But Stalinists drew no lessons and again supported the minority UPA-1 in 2004, assisting in resolving the political and constitutional crisis of the bourgeoisie. They continued the support till in June 2008, they were kicked out of the alliance on the nuclear issue. Still refusing to draw any lessons, they continued to lend support to the government of UPA-II formed in 2009 general elections, by holding back any opposition from the working class to the policies and actions of bourgeois government. More recently, Stalinists had been sending feelers for an alliance with Samajwadi Party (SP) of Mulayam Singh, while SP has been associated with the communal riots in Mujaffarnagar, hand in gloves with the BJP, to communally polarize the people in vote banks. It is worth to mention that similarly, CPI (Maoist) was instrumental in bringing the right-wing Trinamool Congress (TMC) under Mamata Banerjee to power in last assembly elections in West Bengal.

The state governments, that were led by Stalinists, in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, were platforms for implementation of the same neo-liberal and pro-investor policies, that were implemented by other governments including the right-wing governments. The government under Stalinist left-front in West Bengal was discredited for deploying the most rabid means through concerted police-goon violence against poor peasants, in Singur and Nandigram regions, while forcibly seizing farm-lands for big capitalists like Tatas. Tatas, were among the chief funders for recent election campaign of BJP.

Workers and toilers have again and again voted for Stalinists in expectation that these bearers of red flag would lead them in opposition to capitalism,  but Stalinists have betrayed them everytime, by delivering them, bound hand and foot, to the leaders and parties of capitalists.

Out of total 67 years, since the Indian bourgeois came to power in 1947, Congress had led the bourgeois governments at the centre for 54 years. In all these years, Stalinists had stood support to the regime, open or tacit and have assisted these governments to employ the most reactionary measures for loot and plunder of working class and toilers.

This political strategy of Stalinists, is, in turn, guided by the false Menshevik policy of Stalin and Mao, who argued that in democratic stage of revolution, working class has to ally with the bourgeoisie. For Stalinists, it is the democratic revolution in India, going on for decades, that underscores the need of an alliance between parties of workers and capitalists. Due to their misunderstanding of revolution in general and the democratic revolution in particular, Stalinists keep adhered to the parties of bourgeois, one after the other, chiefly to the Congress, the central party of the big Indian bourgeoisie. Through this adherence, Stalinists keep the working class tied to the political regime of bourgeois, and prevent it from taking to independent road, from rising in opposition to the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie under the guise of democracy.

In this, four major parties of Stalinists and Maoists- CPI, CPM, CPI ML Liberation and the CPI (Maoist) share the essentially same perception and program, despite superficial differences among themselves, which remain of no more than archival importance in face of their rooting in the same politics of democracy extricated from socialist revolution, acceptance of alliances with bourgeois parties, and finally denial of proletarian dictatorship as the starting point for revolution.

As Stalinist-Maoist parties ally with the parties of Indian bourgeois, the hopes of the workers, toilers and rural and urban poors, get dampened and the ready vacuum is created instantly for manipulations by the ruling bourgeois to push the political swing towards more and more right.

Despite a strong anti-incumbency wave in the offing against the Congress-led regime, the Stalinist left front, instead of leading the working class and toilers behind it against the misrule of Congress, continued to look out for alliances with regional bourgeois parties like AIADMK, TDP, SP, RJD etc. into a third front, while these parties were engaged in bargaining between the chief bourgeois alliances of UPA and NDA.

Stalinists got total 11 seats in Lok Sabha in 2014 , i.e. half of the seats they secured in 2009. In 2009, they could secure half of what they secured in 2004. In 2014, the largest party of Stalinists, CPIM, failed to secure its official recognition as a national party.

Despite all demagogy in the name of the working class, Stalinists and Maoists, both have no faith in the strength and potential of the working class and their whole politics is centered around collaborations with sections of the bourgeoisie. Their fate is bound up with sections of bourgeois, its leaders and parties.

All other factors, like colossal propaganda campaign funded by big capitalists, role of corporate media etc. are of secondary importance in bringing BJP to power. The primary factor is the role of Stalinists in failing the working class, that has created an instant space for rise of fascists.

Without much effort, one would see, that in the face of a fascist advance, not only the Stalinists, but other bourgeois and petty-bourgeois formations of liberals, reformists and ambedkarites, proved themselves of no real worth at all. Even put together, they could not have prevented the fascists from taking to power. The truth, however, remains, that all these petty-bourgeois tendencies find themselves more in proximity and in agreement with fascists, than the revolutionary working class. They play dubious role in dividing the working and toiling people on the lines of caste, community, nationality, language, regional and ethnic identities.

Fascists have risen to power, albeit, by misinterpreting their real agenda to the masses, fanning wild hopes of millions for better living conditions, employment, curbing of corruption and crime, expansion of economy etc. However, in the settings of a full blown economic crisis under way on national and international arena and the self-contradictory nature of their agenda, that calls for far more social spending than ever before on the one hand and complete wiping out of last remnants of the welfare state on the other, the farcical agenda and false promises would blow up, very soon.

Despite its initial strivings to strike a balance between the two, the new government would soon find this balancing impossible, and would be forced to lean furiously against the aspirations of masses. Within no time this government would expose itself as a battering ram in the hands of corporates, imposing their savage agenda of most intense exploitation and violence against the people. The government, breaching all promises it had made to woo the voters, would fall back to old fundamentalist agenda of BJP- abolition of Article 370 of the Constitution that gives privileged status to Kashmir, Construction of Ram Temple in Ayodhya, and above all ouster of Bangladeshi migrants. It is also bound to trigger some sort of conflict with neighbouring countries, as the BJP had been long-time critique of Congress governments for going soft on Pakistan and China.

The hindu communal and fascist colouration of the BJP government, is bound to come in direct conflict, sooner than later, not only with religious minorities like muslims and Christians, but also with national, regional and ethnic minorities, apart from the working class and poors. This, in turn, would set off a whole series of social explosions, coupled with widest ever resistance, to its policies on economic and political front, bringing the mass of workers and toilers in direct conflict with the right wing government of big-bourgeois, and may have devastating consequences for it.

However, on this radical turn in history, the working class, the only class capable of rescuing the humanity from the clutches of capitalism decaying into fascism, remains on the fringes, fragmented and demoralized, due to decades of dominance of Stalinism over it. Bound up closely and subordinated to the sections of bourgeois through its leaders and parties, by the Stalinists, the working class has lost the last shreds of political class consciousness.

In order to push the political swing towards left, i.e, towards a proletarian revolution, working class has to strive, above all, for its class independence from all influence of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie. However, the present opportunist leadership of labour movement, the Stalinists and Maoists, would never permit this to happen. Therefore, purging of the old and emergence of the new leadership in the movement of working class, armed with a program oriented towards the October revolution, is the foremost requisite for a proletarian revolution. Only such leadership, organized into a party, can lead the working class to triumph over capitalism.

-Rajesh Tyagi/ 19.5.2014

Reblogged from http://workersocialist.blogspot.co.nz/2014/05/how-right-wing-bjp-could-secure.html

Also check these articles:

http://workersocialist.blogspot.in/2009/05/india-general-elections-lead-to.html

http://workersocialist.blogspot.in/2012/04/20th-party-congress-of-stalinist-cpm.html