COMMUNALISM TODAY IN INDIA--FINAL

I. IntroductionAny discussion on communalism in India has to be situated in thewider South Asian context. This is particularly important for tworeasons. In the first place, ever since the attacks on the twintowers in New York, Muslim communalism, (often labelled asfundamentalism in the west) has been singled out as the source ofproblems in South Asia. The imperialist media has portrayedMuslim fundamentalism as the principal threat to moderncivilisation, and made any identity linked to Islam the next ofkin of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. A gleeful Hindu Right, as well asthe mainstream bourgeois parties like the Congress in India,seized on this to attack Pakistan. Second, I would argue thatwhile India has a powerful capitalist class and a Hindu majoritypopulation, so that Hindu communalism had been able to transformitself into an aggressive fascist movement, Muslim minoritycommunalism in India cannot expect majority support, nor can itexpect support from Hindu capitalists if it makes a call for thedestruction of Hindus. In Pakistan or Bangladesh, Muslimcommunalism can be very dangerous, but lacking a powerfulcapitalist class, it cannot become fascism.

II. Marxist Views of Fascism

Historically, there were three strands of Marxist arguments aboutfascism1. The ultra-left model (Bordiga in Italy, the CommunistInternational under Stalin, and the Communist Party of Germany)saw fascism as a tool of the bourgeoisie, denying itsspecificities, and often claiming that the fascists and socialdemocrats were twins. The right wing Social Democratic model, in

the name of stressing the mass nature of fascism,ignored/minimized its bourgeoisie linkage. August Thalheimer,Leon Trotsky, Antonio Gramsci and Ignasio Silone took adialectical approach. Presenting his case at the very period whenHitler was moving to power, Trotsky argued that fascism was botha mass movement based on the petty bourgeoisie, and a politicalforce that enabled the bourgeoisie to overcome its structuralcrisis of accumulation, particularly in countries with powerfulworking class movements, where it is not possible to uproot tradeunions, or other mass organisations of the working class, simplythrough police action or military dictatorship. Big capitalallied with fascism only as a last resort, because in a period ofcrisis it needed to smash working class organisations at anycost. The price it paid was that fascism politically expropriatedthe bourgeoisie even while protecting its economic domination.

In the Indian context, this debate has resurfaced. While SumitSarkar, Marzia Casolari, Prabhat Patnaik or Kunal Chattopadhyay2

characterise the Hindutva movement led by the Rashtriya SwayamSevak Sangh (RSS) as fascist, Achin Vanaik contests thisassessment3. So we need to discuss why the RSS including itselectoral front, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), can be calledfascist.

1 See for a detailed analysis Dave Renton, Fascism2 Sumit Sarkar (1993), ‘The Fascism of the Sangh Parivar’, Economic and PoliticalWeekly; M.Casolari (2000), ‘Hindutva's Foreign Tie-Up in the 1930s: ArchivalEvidence,’ Economic and Political Weekly; Prabhat Patnaik (1993), ‘The Fascism ofOur Times’, Social Scientist; Kunal Chattopadhyay, ‘The Fascist Upsurge’ in KunalChattopadhyay (Ed) The Genocidal Pogrom in Gujarat: Anatomy of Indian Fascism.3 Achin Vanaik, Communalism Contested (published outside India as The Furies ofIndian Communalism). Vanaik that fascism arose as a response to a specifickind of post-world war I crisis of capitalist accumulation, and that thelabel therefore cannot be extended to today’s neoliberal offensive. He fearsthat the label can be used to justify opportunistic alliances with bourgeoisparties.

II. Hindutva’s own claimsHistorically, the RSS4 and its close allies had openly affirmedtheir affinity to fascism. This is evident from the writings andspeeches of V. D. Savarkar (the leader of the Hindu Mahasabha),M. S. Golwalkar (the Second Sarsanghchalak or supreme leader of theRSS -- the RSS always follows the Fuhrerprinzip5, [Ek ChalakAnuvartitva]) and other ideologues of the RSS. Both supported theNazi actions against the Jews and drew a parallel with the statusof Muslims in India and what should be done to them.6 Moreoverthe anti-communist agenda of the Sangh Parivar [the RSS and itsfronts] is quite visible when Golwalkar’s argued in his Bunch ofThoughts, that democracy is bad, because it enables communists tocompete for power, and forces other parties to compete with themin offering sops to toiling people.

III. Hindutva till the early 1980s – a synoptic view

4 The RSS originated as a Hindu “revivalist” organisation, committed toensuring a form of Hindu unity which would also challenge lower casteassertions, and targeting Muslims as the Other of the Hindu Nation. Despiteits claims of being the most nationalist and patriotic organisation, it issignificant that the RSS always stayed away from mass nationalist strugglesagainst British rule. For details of RSS history, see Tapan Bose et. al.,Khaki Shorts, Saffron Flag.5 Obedience to one leader6 “A Nation is formed by a majority living therein. What did the Jews do inGermany? They being in minority were driven out from Germany”. – Savarkar,speech of October 14, 1938. “The foreign races in Hindusthan must eitheradopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold inreverence Hindu religion, … and must lose their separate existence to mergein the Hindu race, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to theHindu Nation, claiming nothing… not even citizen's rights.” – Golwalkar, We, Or OurNationhood Defined, 1939. “If discipline, organised centralism and organiccollective consciousness mean Fascism, then the RSS is not ashamed to becalled fascist. The silly idea that fascism and totalitarianism are evilsand parliamentarism and Anglo-Indian types of democracy are holy, should begot rid of from our minds.” – Anthony Elenjimittan -- The Philosophy and Action ofthe RSS for the Hind Swaraj, 1946.

As I am concerned chiefly with the present, I will not discuss indetail the history of Hindutva. Hindu cultural nationalism withHindu supremacist agenda, identifying Indian with Hindu, emergedin the late 19th century, and it seldom targeted British rule asthe principal enemy. By the early 1920s, Muslims had beenfashioned as the “real” enemy of this Hindu nationalism. TheHindu Mahasabha was the first organisation that tried to uniteHindus as Hindus, on a communal basis. RSS leaders like K. B.Hegdewar and M. S. Golwalkar simply took over Savarkar’saggressive Hindutva as well as developed a strategy ofestablishing hegemony over civil society before moving on to thestruggle for power, distinguishing it from the Mahasabha. Right from this period, the creation of a core constituency meantcreation of a common Hindu identity to bring the lower castesunder upper caste hegemony, and at the same time the demonisationof Muslims, and of Islam, as the ultimate enemy. It is alsonecessary to underscore the fact that gender was central to theHindutva ideologues’ redefinition of the Hindu. Hindu men wereexcoriated for having lost their manhood and were asked to regainit.7 A politics of demography also became vital, with claims thatconversions, Muslim hyper-fertility, and Hindu impotence wouldsoon lead to Muslims overtaking Hindus. (After independence itwould add the rhetoric of Muslim polygamy as a threat, once Hindupolygamy was halted). There was the aggressive male of the“other” race, daily raping and abducting “our” women, who asbearers of children were the boundaries of the Hindu “nation” or“race”. The victimhood of women reinforced the image of a fearfulcommon enemy threatening, not just individual Hindus, but theexistence of the Hindu community. Hindu virility was to be

7 Charu Gupta, Sexuality, Obscenity, Community.

manifested by imposing controls on women and by resorting toretributional violence on the Muslim males along with openadvocacy of rape and torture of Muslim women (advocated in aparticularly frenzied tone by V. D. Savarkar in his Six GloriousEpochs of Indian History). Women were exhorted to replace theireternal weak, vulnerable victim image by that of ‘sisters inarms’ capable of protecting their chastity, and therewith thehonour of the community -- a response to changing situations andwomen’s entering the public domains. The Hindu mother and wifewould be simultaneously brave women capable of striking terrorinto the enemy, and of prompting husbands, brothers, and sons toaction. Savarkar also defined community as a political entitybased on race and the joining of religious dogma, so as tomobilise the majority of Hindus while streamlining alldifferences, creating a monolithic entity. The immediate pre-partition years saw all communalisms growrapidly. But once the immediate crisis of partition was tackled,the Indian ruling class had little use for the RSS and theMahasabha. Till the mid-1970s, the Sangh Parivar remainedrestricted to certain classes and groups of people. Facingillegalisation after Gandhi’s murder (30 January 1948), the RSSpromised to keep out of politics (by which it only meant keepingout of elections), and therefore created frontal parties – firstthe Jana Sangh, later the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), knowntill the early 1980s, as a Brahmin-Baniya party, lacking genuineall India social base. It favoured unfettered access to domesticmarkets combined with restrictions on international competition.It opposed trade unions and workers' struggles and promotedreactionary and jingoistic nationalism. The rise of Hindutvabegan seriously in the 1980s, especially with the Ram Janmabhoomi

campaign a major mobilizer of aggressive petty bourgeois youth(to destroy a four century old Mughal Babri Mosque and put up aRam temple in its place, based on the spurious claim that themosque had been put up by destroying a temple).

IV. The Convergence with the Ruling Class

The capitalist state in independent India had a strategy ofproviding protection to petty commodity producers while keepingthem subordinate to capital. This made possible their survivaland ruling class hegemony. But since the 1980s, a range ofmovements, by powerful intermediate as well as oppressed castes(dalits), and adivasis, from regional identity based politics, allmaking demands upon the state for various kinds of communitybased protection. This undermined the ability of the state tobalance between claims and weakened the Congress hegemony. At thesame time, Indian capitalism, by this time relatively strongenough to swallow up much of the petty commodity producingeconomy, was demanding a shift from a protected economy toliberalization. This was the period when Hindutva grew rapidly,displaying features more appealing to the Indian bourgeoisie.Moreover Hindutva organizations, (the RSS and its wider family)displayed remarkable ability to mobilize masses, while opposingthe “subaltern” mobilisations of Mandal and the regional partiesand highlighting Hindu Rashtra [state] as a “nation” that existsas an organic and harmonious unity between “Hindus”. It alsoopposed state intervention for lesser communities, projecting theHindu nation as the sole legitimate and moral community. Itsideological make up reduced social processes to individualchoice. The Parivar aims to solve Hindu society's problems byinculcating ‘correct values’ in upper caste men. Its resolutionof class conflict is restricted to, for example, Golwalkar’s

suggestion that everyone should be called aap, instead of theclass divisive aap and tu. Divisions within this collectivity areunnecessary and pathological; the only division that is ofimportance is the line between "society" and its “other”, theforeigner. Thus, for the RSS, class difference is artificial, butcommunity and gender are essential identities. Malignantforeigners are seeking to break up the unity and harmony of theHindu nation. In a number of ways, neoliberalism found a resonance in Hindutva.Indian capital endorsed Hindutva because, as a hegemonic project,it not only sought the breaking down of the collectivities(intermediate castes, regional groups, ethnic groups, etc) thatthe 1980s' movements had made the central feature of Indianpolitics, but also sees organisations like trade unions in acorporatist manner. The Bhratiya Majdoor Sangha, (RSS tradeunion) is the one trade union that observes the Viswakarma Puja(worshipping a god of artisans) instead of May 1.The triumph of neoliberalism has been incomplete in India. Whileall major parties, including the left when in power, have beenforced to accept its demands, popular resistance has been verystrong. Democratic politics and the existence of parties based onvarious social groups, regional interests, etc, have meant slowimplementation of neoliberal reforms. As a result, the firstdecade of the 21st century has seen direct assaults, attempts toexpropriate direct producers, using the judiciary, colonial laws,as well as new laws, along with brutal attacks on rights ofanyone critical of super-exploitation concomitant of the neo-liberal agenda. But unlike other mainstream parties, the BJP,notably under the chief minister, Narendra Modi in Gujarat, wonelections despite open support for neoliberalism and his role in

the Gujarat carnage in 2002. The gradual growth of the alliancebetween Hindutva and neo-liberalism in the 1990s shows howHindutva ideology fits in with neoliberal goals. Neoliberalismtoo reduces social processes to individual consumer choice andsees the state as the guarantor of the market, not the protectorof subaltern groups. Finally the civil society is legitimised asthe sole overarching institution, brushing aside caste, class,gender. The Sangh Parivar, by offering a social network, appearedas a saviour to many socially and economically deprived groups inGujarat, who were facing the assault of neoliberalism. As aresult, despite heavy bankrolling by big capital, the BJP inGujarat could also portray itself as the voice of common people –a unified Gujarati people, repeatedly invoked by Modi with hisrhetoric of Gujarati asmita [pride]. As with Nazism, the BJP inGujarat simultaneously projected itself as the party of thepeople, the nationalist party par excellence, as well as theparty that would deliver the goods to the big bourgeoisie.At the same time, in order to go forward to power, the SanghParivar has decided to keep its more aggressive Hindutva slogansin the background, even while repeatedly affirming that once theyget full power that programme will be implemented, as indeed theycame close to doing in Gujarat.

V. Gujarat Pogroms, Hindutva and CapitalismThis growing convergence between fascism and neoliberalcapitalism has found attempts at creating a common praxis, and inthis, Gujarat has been a model. Though widely reported andcondemned, Gujarat-2002 events were sometimes seen as anaberration that is over. In fact, what happened from 28 February2002 was no aberration, but the consequence of a systematiccommunalisation of state and civil society for several years. An

independent inquiry team, Report to the Nation, one of the earliestreports emphasised that suborning the Gujarat government to carryout its ideological and political agenda was crucial for theSangh Parivar. Without it they could not have planned, instigated,mobilised, and implemented the communal pogrom. There was acommunalisation of the police, with Muslim officers shunted offto duties that would not enable them to take charge againstrioting mobs. In the five years prior to 2002, some 12,000 VHPcadres had been recruited into the Home Guard.Penetration of civil society had been even more insidious. Since1998, there was a systematic development of hate literature. Asevident from Communalism Combat magazine Sangh cadres have beensystematically using the print/electronic media, includingmassive use of the internet, to whip up anti-minority hatred.Circulars sent out by the DG intelligence asked the police togather information about Christians and particularly Muslims.This kind of state support emboldened the activists. The Gujaratinewspaper Sandesh prepared and published a list of names of Muslimhotel and shop-owners in 2001. According to one estimate, some1150 hotels have been destroyed in 2002. Health professionals,according to two reports, were so indoctrinated that often theydecided whether or not to treat patients depending on theirreligion.8 Thus the state and society provided fertile ground for theHindutva discourse. Savarkar’s equation of Hindus and Indians,and the claim that Muslims, Christians and communists wereexternal elements to the nation, meant citizenship was reservedfor Hindus. Since Islam per se is a threat to the Hindu nation,therefore revenge may be taken on any Muslim anywhere for

8 Editorial in Issues in Medical Ethics, and report by the Medico Friends Circle.

anything that any Muslim could do or had done. This is crucial,for it alone explains Modi's action-reaction theory: Muslims offar-away Panch Mahal (eastern province) or Ahmedabad justifiablypaying for an action done at Godhra9. (It also allows therepression of any Muslim anywhere in India for the crimes ofAjmal Kasab, the sole living terrorist among those who attackedMumbai on November 26, 2008). The sexual violence on Muslim women and children and theslaughter of children in front of mothers could not be simplytreated as the work of a lunatic fringe. This is nothing lessthan a practical application of the argument that unlessMuslims accept Hindu supremacy they must be destroyed. The actof burning was not just an act to destroy evidence, but alsoto impose the Hindu cremation on the Muslim dead, in a finalgesture of contempt for their religious beliefs.10

When Maitree, the West Bengal-based women’s network took out apeace rally in Calcutta, as late as May 1, 2002, our meetingwas confronted in a place by large numbers of Hinducommunalists by attacks about our being funded by the ISI, andit was proclaimed that in exchange for every Hindu life lost,it was legitimate to take many Muslim lives. Parenthetically,this happened in West Bengal, where at that time the Left9 On 27 February 2002, some people set a bogey of the Sabarmati Express onfire, and about 56 people died as a result. It was alleged that all thepeople killed were kar sevaks returning from Ayodhya, and the killers wereMuslims. Communal newspapers like Gujarat Samachar and Sandesh reportedfurther lurid and false stories, such as women having been dragged out ofthe train, taken to a Madrasa and raped and then killed after their bodieswere mutilated. In fact, inquiries have failed to establish who set thetrain on fire. The Press Council of India rejected as false the story aboutrape and murder of Hindu women mentioned above. 10 For my analysis of the violence on women’s bodies, I am much indebted to discussion with Tanika Sarkar. Her own views are set forth in the essay ‘Semiotics of Terror’. My analysis, in detail, is to be found in my introductory article in Garbhaghati Gujarat.

Front had been ruling for 25 years, implying a failure ofsecular (and even left) forces to combat Hindutva at the levelof civil society.In this context, I want to make a point about how the SanghParivar has attempted to capture NRI support, as well as thetussles before the alliance between Hindutva and big businesswas sealed. Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee’s sharp reaction tothe cautious of the Confederation of Indian Industries’criticisms of the carnage shows how strong he and his RSSmentors were feeling. Besides a large Gujarati capitalistchunk opposed this, threatening to walk out of the CII.11 Thishighlights the fact that the newly emerging Gujaraticapitalist class including its NRI component, delinked fromtraditional community culture, found an alternative ethos of aterrible kind in the preaching of the RSS, the Viswa HinduParishad and the Bajrang Dal. At the same time, the threatposed by much more powerful U.S., European and Japanesecapital is compelling Indian big capital to seek ways ofdestroying trade unionism and driving down wages andeliminating all job security. No wonder a number of India’sbusiness icons like Anil Ambani, Sunil Mittal and Ratan Tatalauded Modi's dynamism and virtually hailed him as India'snext prime minister.

VI. Beyond Gujarat

Gujarat was hailed by the RSS as the laboratory of Hindutva.The results of the laboratory model were then applied in anumber of provinces, either where the BJP held/co-sharedpower, or where it aspired to come to power -- like

11 Nasir Tyabji (2002), ‘Has the Bourgeoisie Truly Come of Age in India’, Economic and Political Weekly.

Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, and Orissa. But while ithas taken to the streets, its opponents all too often rely onthe state, wait for overt violence before moving into action,or even use soft Hindutva politics, hoping to pre-empt thehard variety.In Rajasthan, by the turn of the century, the VHP and the BDwere terrorising Muslims and Christians, even as they startedmaking inroads among the adivasis with great deal of statesupport.12 Assimilation of tribals to Hinduism has beenattempted by numerous methods, including assimilating spacefor tribal gods in Hindu pantheon and whipping up frenzyagainst Christians and Muslims in order to mobilize a Hindutvamob. Thus, repeated allegations are spread about Christianpriests getting young women pregnant and the girls committingsuicide, or about Christian priests sodomizing young boys.Occasional real or partially real incidents have been used totarget Christians in a violent manner, like the case when thebody of a young woman reportedly raped and strangulated todeath was found in a mission compound in Jhabua, MadhyaPradesh. The incident was immediately used by RSS forces inRajasthan’s Banswara district, preaching the need to teach theChristians a lesson – a campaign fortunately deflated when itwas reported that a Hindu had been arrested by the police, inBJP ruled Madhya Pradesh. The Sangh also organized tours of‘oppressed’ tribals from the North East of India (e.g., 13girls from refugee camps in 2000, showcased as proof ofChristians’ atrocities against ‘Hindu’ tribals) to recounthorror stories of Christian misdeeds against Hindus, storiesthat the tribals have no way of cross-checking. The BJP regime

12 Communalism Combat, Issue 102, October 2004.

in Rajasthan, which took over in December 2003, was of greathelp to the Hindutva brigade. Backed by the state tribal areadevelopment minister, Sangh activists could go aroundthreatening the Christians, saying it was high time they re-converted or else they would be deprived of their ST status.On August 14, 2004, the VHP organised a trishul deeksha[distribution of tridents] programme barely a kilometre awayfrom the state secretariat in Jaipur, protected by uniformedpolicemen. The state home minister, Gulab Chand Katariaannounced a lifting of the ban on trishul deeksha. In the sameyear the government in its attempt at providing asylum to allHindu extremists started withdrawing cases against thoseaccused of indulging in arson, attacks and looting against theminority community. Around 150 cases had been withdrawn bymid-September 2004 and the process continued despitevociferous protests from civil rights organisations. Equally serious has been the experimentation in Hindutva-ization in Karnataka. The BJP first broke through when H. D.Deve Gowda, the former Prime Minister and leader of themisnamed Janata Dal (Secular) decided to form an alliance withthe BJP in 2006 which resulted in open state support forextreme communalism. The combination nominated Hindu Yuva Senaleader Yashpal Suvarna, prime accused in Udupi communalviolence in March 2005, to the Udupi Town Council. On March13, 2005 two residents of Mooluru village near Udupi wereparaded naked and brutally assaulted in front of an audienceof more than 100 people by fascist Hindu right wing forces forsupposedly taking part in cow slaughters. Within a week of theincident, the Karnataka Komu Souharda Vedike [Communal HarmonyForum], with the perspective that communalism was not merely

an onslaught on religion but rather an attack on democraticprocesses brought together all progressive movements in thestate and organised a massive demonstration in front of thethen Udupi deputy commissioner’s office. Fascist onslaughts became rampant once the BJP was strongenough to form a government of its own in 2008. Recent attack(January 24, 2009) on women for going to pubs in Mangalore, acity in coastal Karnataka was organised by Pramod Muttalik’s(expelled from the BD in 2004) Sri Ram Sene. And it is ofcourse no coincidence that moral policing targets women. TheState administration, police, and political leadership,reacted in a tardy way, and some of them dismissed this as a'minor incident'. It is evident that in this instance theattackers were emboldened to carry out the unprovoked assaultin a political environment that supports a particularly narrowand fanatical view of Indian culture as also a repressiveattitude to women. This has come in the wake of numerousefforts over the past years to communalise the situation inKarnataka. Thus, the media has been used to whip up anti-Muslim feelings. The issue of “morality” is couched in all-outattack by the Rama Sene on westernisation and so-called “pubculture”. This has been buttressed by National Commission forWomen member Nirmala Venkatesh (formerly a Congress MLA inKarnataka) who deviously attempted to “shift the debate fromthe criminality of the assault to the legality and functioningof the pub”. This fascist kulturkampf has, as usual, targetedwomen’s bodies as the “repositories of an imagined homogenousIndian culture.”13 As women’s organisations in Bangalore, likeVimochana, pointed, out that Mangalore is an experiment, just13 Sumi Krishna (2009), ‘Understanding and Responding to the Mangalore Assaults’, http://www.sacw.net/article642.html (accessed on 1.3.2009)

as Gujarat was. Alternative Law Forum’s (based in Bangalore)survey shows that more than 80 attacks and cases of moralpolicing have been reported from all over Karnataka in thelast six months. Series of onslaughts against cow-slaughter,Churches, mixed religion couples, women in pubs areperpetrated to keep a continuous tempo to create a climate ofintimidation and fear14. In Kandhamal, Orissa, the violence that broke out in 2007 and2008 is a significant pointer. When a VHP leader namedLakshmanand Saraswati was murdered by unknown people on 23August 2008, the VHP, Bajrang Dal, and other outfits respondedby rapidly targeting Christians, while the governmentauthorities claimed the killers were Maoists without anyinquiry. As with Godhra, secular forces were condemned byHindu communalists for supposedly not condemning the murder ofSaraswati at par with condemning the planned mass violencethat followed. It has been a long standing argument of theHindu communalists that Christian churches use their socialwelfare programmes to carry out conversions. There has been asustained demand for something called reconversion, which isbeing projected as something morally different fromconversion. When a tribal, whose ancestors had worshipped godsin no way identifiable with Hindu religious figures, isconverted from Christianity to Hinduism, it is calledreconversion. On the other hand, Christians, especially thechurches, are major targets, in a number of tribal areas, asthe Sangh seeks to consolidate the tribals into its fold,using the Vanavasi Kalyan Ashram (had assistance programmes

14 Letter by Shakun on behalf of Vimochana, Forum for Women’s rights to Nandita Gandhi, of Forum against Oppression of Women, Mumbai, 27.2.2009 in nccindia@yahoogroups.com

for adivasis in a number of provinces) as well as the VHP andthe BD. The BJP, as a member of the governing coalition,supported the Sangh Parivar’s call to 12-hour bandh on August24, and the government of Orissa ordered that educationalinstitutions across Orissa remain closed. Hindutva affiliatesasked the BJP to sever its alliance with the Biju Janata Dal(BJD) and contest the forthcoming elections from an immoderateHindutva platform. Both in December 2007 and in August-September 2008 anti-Christian riots, the Sangh Parivar prioritised extralegalintervention, authorising its militias to mob violence.Churches, homes, businesses and Christian organisations wereattacked in Kandhamal. They torched 4,000 homes across 200villages. A Catholic nun from Nuagaon was raped. A 19-year-oldHindu woman cook was burnt alive at a church-operatedorphanage in Bargarh district. More than 12,539 people soughtshelter in 10 relief camps. While this might be proven thework of a Maoist group, Maoists are largely not operational inthe area which witnessed an upsurge of Hindu communalistgroups in recent years. Hindu activists charged Maoists withthe December violence as well. Ideologically, Maoist groups donot have reason to target Christians. The whole point of theKandhamal violence was to use a starting point, an alliancewith a supposedly secular party to pitchfork aggressive,fascist communalism centre-stage. The Rape of the nun, sister M, has a longer background. Thisis not the first time that Hindutva forces have targeted nuns.In Jhabua, the rape of four nuns in 1998 was followed by theargument that it was the result of anger by patriotic Hinduyouth. Being Christian was therefore unpatriotic, and raping

nuns, who had vows of celibacy, was a particularly pleasantmanner of teaching lessons in patriotism. Thus rape as asystematic political strategy of mobilisation, opposingconversions and uniting Hindus, has found a space in Sanghpolitics across India.I would like to make a few brief and inadequate comments aboutthe sustained Hindutva targeting of NRIs.15 Diaspora Indians,located a long way from home, alienated from the local culturebut also cut off from home, fall easy prey to an imaginedIndia and are therefore relatively soft targets. Mythscirculate as truth – myths about Muslim polygamy and thethreat to Hindu national existence; Muslim educationalinstitutions and the training of terrorists; the assertionsthat the call for the trifurcation of Kashmir is legitimate orthat Ayodhya is a defensible expression of national-culturalpride. As fund raisers for Hindutva, as lobbyists for theHindu Right in the corridors of power in the developedcountries, they serve as witting or unwitting assistants tothe rise of authoritarianism and tyranny in India. Those onthe left or liberal positions, often sustained by the memoryof a left of centre past in India, need to plan betterstrategies to combat Hindutva, and to forge alliances withboth the forces fighting in India, and with radical forces inthe countries where they live. I hope the present conferencewill serve as an important step in that direction.In this connection, let me mention two issues that are veryimportant weapons of all India, as well as internationalcampaign and mobilisation by the Hindutva forces. The Saffron

15 See further Angana Chatterji, ‘Myths and Dreams: Hindutva Nationalism and the Indian Diaspora’, Dissident Voice, March 10, 2003, http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles2/Chatterji_Hindutva.htm

Consortium hijacked the campaign for a Uniform Civil Code, afeminist demand since the 1930s, by stressing that Muslimwomen were deprived, oppressed (due to polygamy, the tripletalaq, and so on). This on one hand consigns to the trapdoor ofmemory the fact that Hindutva forces had fought against theabolition of Hindu polygamy (and that illegal Hindu polygamyis more prevalent than Muslim polygamy in India, as per thecensus of 2001), and on the other hand ignores the fact thatHindu personal Law has been codified but by no means turnedinto gender just laws. From the Shah Bano case of 1985 to theSarla Mudgal case of 1995, communally-tinted court verdictsarguing that laws on marriage, divorce, maintenance etc werebiased against Muslim women, were used to launch campaigns fora fraudulent UCC, which would simply be an imposition of Hindulaws on Muslims, rather than gender just laws for all.16 At thesame time, through their organisations like the Rashtra SevikaSamity or the Durga Vahini, the Sangh combine offered women asafe form of public space that did not challenge patriarchybut allowed women to be active in public areas. Butparticipation in this fold came with a price tag. Feminism wasnot only opposed, but blamed for violence on women. AshaSharma, a member of the Rashtrasevika Samiti, the women’s wing ofthe RSS, told historian Tanika Sarkar that rapes occur because“women have forfeited their older modes of honour andmotherhood status by being addicted to struggles and enmitywith men.” The other issue is falsification of history. It has been amajor part of the Sangh political project of desecularisingcivil society, without which, at the merely political level,16 For a relatively recent survey of the UCC debate see Geetanjali Gangoli(1996), The Debate on the Uniform Civil Code, Bombay: Akshara.

the fascist form of communal politics cannot succeed. In 2000,the NDA Government put pressure on the Oxford University Pressto halt publication of two volumes of the Towards Freedomproject, edited by Sumit Sarkar and K. N. Panikkar, two ofIndia’s most eminent Marxist historians. The real reason wasthat these volumes show with great clarity that the RSS playedabsolutely no role in the freedom struggle. In 2001 Hindutvaforces made a hue and cry over D.N. Jha’s book The Myth of the HolyCow (2001), and his Indian publisher was forced to pulp thebook. Using Hindu, Buddhist and Jaina religious scriptures,Jha argues that the flesh of the cow played an important partin the cuisine of ancient India, rather than being an Islamicintrusion, and abstention from it cannot be a mark of ‘Hindu’identity17. A few years later there was the attempt to shut upRomila Thapar, India’s most respected historian of AncientIndia, when she was appointed the first holder of the KlugeChair in the Library of Congress in the United States (2003),because of her commitment to scholarship and refusal to acceptthe myths spread by Hindutva (e.g., the Indian origin ofAryans, the degree of India’s antiquity, etc). These are notstray incidents. Since Hindutva’s central claim is that Hindusconstitute the nation, and that struggle betweencommunities/nations has been central to Indian history,alternative, particularly progressive views of history have tobe silenced by them. This makes history a sustainedbattleground. The reason NRIs come into a discussion here isthat because they are cut off from the quotidian reality of

17 See for an detailed analysis of an earlier period of Hindutva politics of history writing, Soma Marik, ‘History and the Politics of Hindutva’, in Kunal Chattopadhyay (Ed) – The Genocidal Pogrom in Gujarat: Anatomy of Indian Fascism, Inquilabi Communist Sangathan, Vadodara 2002.

India, they are more prone to an imagined history. But ofcourse, this is a struggle that is going on all the time, inschools and universities across India. When the NDA was inpower, it tried to impose text books on students thatdownplayed the Russian Revolution, while in Gujarat there aretext books that have highlighted Hitler as a nationalist whowanted the upliftment of the German nation. Hate campaignscaptured the social mindset in such a way that even in Left-Front ruled West Bengal, with leftists leading teachers’organisations at all levels, a routine question in history is,‘Write an essay on Muslim Politics 1906-1940’, whereas Hinducommunalism is never taught. Savarkar is shown as a freedomfighter.The all-pervasive attitude, that communalism is actually afeature of Muslims, naturally assists the Hindutva ideology inbecoming virtually the common sense of the country. Anotherexample of this is to hold all Muslims responsible for anyterrorist violence. Every time a terrorist attack occurs, allMuslim organisations are expected to issue separatestatements. After the November 26, attacks, celebrities whowere Muslims, whether film personalities like Shah Rukh Khanor Amir Khan, or players like Sania Mirza, were constantlyasked to appear on television, give interviews to newspapers,all on their attitude to what India was doing. As NasiruddinShah, a veteran actor, asked, why must Muslims constantlyprove their credentials as Indians?

VII. Minority Communalism Terrorism and Left StrategyYears of British colonial discourse of ‘backwardness’,majoritarian violence, soft Hindutva peddled by the liberals,frustrations and dehumanised conditions generated by the neo-

liberal onslaughts combined to push individuals, particularlyamong the minorities, more and more to their communityidentities. While in theory the left has always opposed allcommunalism, in practice, electoral compulsions have sometimesled the Left in power to compromises with Muslim communalists.Even the Maoist organizations or left intellectuals (who arenot participants in electoral politics) defence of minorityrights have sometimes been confused with defence of minoritycommunalism instead of addressing their lived realities. Thismay intensify Muslim communalism, or for that matter can leadto embracing terrorism by some of those forces. Unlike theSangh Parivar, they cannot hope to turn this terror intoeventual state sponsored terror. But its existence, and linkswith Muslim communalism in Pakistan, is in fact desirable forthe RSS and its allies. If the Bangladesh government’saggressive anti-minority postures lead to Hindu-migration toWest Bengal or Assam, it helps the Sangh combine in whippingup anti-Muslim chauvinism as well as anti-Bangladeshisentiments, so that any Bengali speaker of Muslim originliving anywhere outside West Bengal becomes an automatictarget of attack, as has happened in Mumbai and Delhi attimes. If we look at recent developments, since the terroristattacks on Mumbai on November 26, 2008, the picture thatemerges is terrifying. War is threatened on Pakistan and ajingoistic atmosphere was whipped up as a pre-electionmobilisation by the UPA, thereby virtually strengthening theSangh agenda. Within 3 weeks of 26/11 the Indian Parliamentunanimously passed the draconian Unlawful Activities(prevention) Amendment Act and the National InvestigationAgency Act restricting civil liberties.18 Terrorism has been so

defined that majoritarian violence is excluded. However thesame government has not shown same promptness in tacklingcommunal violence by pushing the proposed Communal Violence(Prevention, Control and Rehabilitation of Victims) Bill,gathering dust in the Parliament since 2005. The tardiness ofthe government becomes more glaring when the insidious linkageof the majoritarian terrorism was revealed in theinvestigation of pipe bomb blast in Malegaon (September 29,2008) killing 6 persons on, the eve of Id celebrations in themonth of Ramadan19. This in fact brings us to a consideration of India-Pakistanrelations and the place of communalism and terrorism withinthat. We who are located in India are of course regularlybombarded by information saying how much Pakistan promotesterrorism in India, whether in Kashmir, or in other parts ofthe country. I am not disputing the fact that there are forcesin Pakistan who do support and sponsor Muslim communalism,whether in Pakistan or in India. But I do question theassumption that but for Pakistani intervention we would havehad an untroubled existence. For sixty years, India hasrejected the right of Kashmiris to self-determination, and hasconsciously targeted those who talked of Kashmir’s

18 Prior to this there were the Terrorism and Disturbed Area Act or TADA, used extensively in Gujarat to arrest and harass Muslims. Later the NDA Government brought in the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA -- June 2002), following an attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001. The UPA repealed POTA in September 2004. 19 Teesta Setalvad, ‘Hindutva Terror. The terror trail: From Nanded to Malegaon and beyond’, Communalism Combat, February 2009, Year 15, No.137. Investigations traced the masterminds of Srikant Purohit, a serving lieutenant colonel in the Indian army, also connected to an organisation called Abhinav Bharat and a Sadhvi, Pragnya Thakur, whose association with student wing of the BJP, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad was not unknown.

independence and a unified Kashmiriyat, curtailed the originalautonomy given under Article 370, forcing Kashmir repeatedlyunder Delhi’s direct control, and choosing to strengthen thosewho see the Kashmir issue more in communal terms. Moreover, asthe Sachar Committee report (June 2006) shows, Muslims inIndia are in a state of extreme marginalisation. If Indiakeeps Muslims badly educated, economically among the mostdeprived, if India pushes Muslims towards communal leaders,and if at the same time India continually uses state violenceon Muslims, arresting them whenever any perceived terroristthreat looms, India generates enough internal forces to pushMuslims in the direction of communalism and terrorism. This deprivation among Muslims is a widespread phenomenon, notrestricted to states ruled by the BJP or states normallyidentified as communalised. The Sachar Committee Reportbrought it home that we in West Bengal, who have proudlyclaimed our secular mantle, have really done very little. Theshare of Muslims in government jobs is 4.2% against apopulation of 25.2% in the state, expenditure by Muslims isless than that of Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes, Muslimsin judicial services in the state are merely 5% and there areno Muslims in higher positions in state PSUs. Once again LeftFront’s lip-service to secularism and vote-bank politics areexposed when it appeased the minority patriarchs in the nameof protecting the minority rights in the Taslima Nasreenissue. A part of her autobiography, Dwikhandito, was banned bythe Left Front government in 2003 on the ground of hurtingreligious sentiments. The repeated attacks on the rights offreedom of expression and mobility of the secular feministauthor including offers of money for her head, or allowing All

India Minority Forum to hold Calcutta to ransom on November21, 2007 and her subsequent removal from the state on the nextday, can only create the impression that the Left hassuccumbed to Muslim communal threat in connection with aperson who does not have a single vote. After Nandigram20, theLeft Front was apprehensive that it might be losing thesupport of Muslims. She was then asked to move out of India inMarch, 2008 by the UPA government, after being virtually helda prisoner. To take a more general case, “secular” forces haveoften allowed organizations like the All India Muslim PersonalLaw Board to decide the pace and agenda of reforms, includinggender related reforms. Thus, even laws on adoption, proposingthat one need not declare one’s religion in order to adopt,have been opposed in the name of Muslim Personal Law, thoughin this case, the proposed law was simply an enabling law, andwas not targeting any religion. The argument, that Muslimsmust not be allowed to adopt, is therefore an argument aboutso-called community heads proclaiming their right to controlall members of their community in every possible way. WhenMuslim women’s network like Awaaz-e-Niswan mobilised women topressurise the Muslim Personal Law Board to adopt astandardised Nikahnama [marriage contract] drafted by manywomen, explicitly containing women’s right to divorce andproper maintenance and when Christian Women’s organisationssuch as Joint Women’s Programme or Bailancho Saad sought theimplementation of revised, gender just personal law codes forChristians they were not merely asking for law reform, but20 A site of violence by the ruling party throughout 2007, when the government tried to seize land forcibly for constructing a chemical hub. It remained a liberated zone from government interference for months. In a Muslim majority area with Muslims as majority of the victims the CPI(M) faced a challenge from the community, primarily used as vote-bank.

were taking upon themselves the role of describing the kind ofchanges that would pave the way for women’s equality. Theirpositions were of course very different from some secularists,such as Flavia Agnes, who also talked about law reform fromwithin, but who by this meant reforms acceptable tocommunalists of the minority type.21 If the RSS and the Sangh combine are a clearly fascist force,what does it mean in terms of developing a leftist response tothem? I would like to argue that class, community and genderrights are all issues that need to be viewed very seriously indeveloping our strategies. I have been arguing that Hindutvain recent years has been developing very close relationshipswith the Indian big bourgeoisie. This means that any politicalstrategy that seeks to combat the fascists by envisaging anall embracing anti-fascist alliance extending up to“democratic” bourgeois forces would be a chimera. Such astrategy was in fact tried out, when the major left parties inIndia supported the United Progressive Alliance (Congress ledneo-liberal coalition) from 2004 to mid-2008. The policy ofthe UPA is best described as neo-liberalism with occasional21 For details of Christian law reform initiatives, see Rita Monterio (Ed.), Secular Legal Initiatives by the Christian Community, Bombay, (n.d. 1996?).The documents include a letter from Alan de Lastic, Archbishop of Delhi, writing on behalf of the Catholic Bishops of India that they have no objection to the proposed changes in the marriage/divorce laws submitted in1994. See also Flavia Agnes, Law and Gender Inequality, pp. 150 – 154, 211-12. Agnes defends the decision of the central government not to introduce the bill in the name of not giving an opportunity to the Hindu communalists to raise a row about Muslim Personal Law.(p.154). The Christian initiative wasa model case of reform from within. By all the logic of communitarianism Agnes had been uttering all these years, she should have been vocal in her condemnation of the government for not pursuing it. Instead, by now linkingits future to a hoped for decline of Hindu communalism, she asked the women’s movement to stop putting forward demands that would go beyond what “secular” political parties and their governments are willing to throw in the direction of women.

space for some small popular gains. But its overall thrust hasmeant inflation, loss of jobs, increasing exploitation,eviction, competition between small commodity producers andbig (indeed, giant) producers, small traders and big ones likeReliance Fresh, Metro Cash and Carry, or huge shopping mallsagainst local stores. Neither working class, nor urban orrural petty bourgeoisie and peasants have really felt anywarmth for the UPA, despite its occasional sops, such aswriting off peasant loans. The UPA is almost sure to collapsein the elections of 2009, which are currently under way. Evenif they do not, the UPA of 2009 will be openly more rightwing. For example, in West Bengal they are allied to theMamata Banerjee-led Trinamul Congress, which has a singleagenda of removing the CPI (M) from power and which in thepast was allied with the BJP. Left strategy must seek allieswithin minorities by looking at the fracture lines, of class,gender, so that these can eventually be alliances in thestruggle against neo-liberalism and Fascism, instead ofserving repeatedly as foot-soldiers in the Congress’ attemptsto remain in power by using the threat of a Hindutva. And whenconfronting the fascists, this means stressing more the needto fighting them on the streets rather than in theparliamentary space. Only by building an independent left polecan we get out of this crisis. For this very reason we cannotnot make us amenable to the strategy adopted by some of theMaoists in West Bengal to forge an united front with Trinamulto defeat the Left Front, which has moved considerably to theright even alienating the peasants which has been its coreconstituency for three decades. But to argue that there is nodifference between Social Democracy which is moving right and

Fascism is to echo the same kind of pseudo-leftism of theComintern which helped Hitler seize power.