।। Arup Baisya ।।

            The current dominant political discourse in Assam is revolving around the citizenship question. The citizenship problem in Assam has a convoluted history and is related to demographic changes due to migration. The citizenship question in Assam is intertwined with linguistic identity. The question of language plays a pivotal role in the dynamics of power politics. In the spatio-temporal dimension of Assam politics, the intermingling of the characteristics of migration and language prepares the ground for citizenship conundrum.

           The linguistic assimilation in Assam through social interaction was hamstrung by the perverted path of capitalist development under the colonial and post-colonial rule. There is historical evidence of the presence of Muslim inhabitants in the present day lower-Assam before the advent of Ahoms into Assam in 1228. This was the time of 'Charyapada' and the people of that period cannot be identified with any modern linguistic identity. So the concept of aboriginal or Khilonjiya in local Axomiya parlance is the modern political vocabulary that has emerged to create 'other' in this geopolitical space of Assam. Being a contiguous geographical landscape of today's lower Assam and Bangladesh, the settlement of people from densely populated agricultural present-day Bangladesh into land-abundant low-lying submerged plains of lower-Assam was a natural phenomenon. The poor peasant and fishermen who roamed over the whole landscape could find it beneficial to settle in the upland of submerged plains of lower Assam. After colonial Annexation of Assam in 1826, the British allured the Bengali Muslim poor peasants of present-day Bangladesh to migrate and settle in land-abundant plains of Assam to earn revenue from agricultural production. These Bengali-Muslim peasants were hard-working and had the skill in agricultural production in low-lying submerged land; the local tribals lacked both the characteristics. The peasants were flocking to the Brahmaputra valley in large numbers, in order to settle down on its beckoning wasteland for livelihood and to free themselves from Zamindari oppression in Bengal.

              The British later introduced Line System in Lower Assam and inner-line permit system in upper Assam to ensure their administrative control for super-exploitation and drainage of natural resources, agricultural economy and tea production. The Chinese and local tribal workers who were initially engaged in tea-production were extricated because of their rebellious attitude against the almost slave-like exploitation in tea-enclaves. The native language which was suitable for the British administration at that time was Bengali. The English educated Bengali middle class especially from erstwhile Sylhet district occupied the clerical jobs of various departments when the departmental head-quarters were established in Sylhet which was part of Assam. So the colonial British ruler imposed Bengali as the official language in 1836 and treated Assamese as the dialect of Bengali. This measure caused immense disruption in the process of linguistic assimilation through social interaction and hindered the capitalist development from below through surplus-accumulation and drainage. At the hindsight, one can safely conclude that in the absence of British subjugation, Assam could have witnessed the desired linguistic assimilation in an independent market economy that could have emerged in a landscape which was resourceful both in terms of labour and nature.

             The line system which was responsible for spatial division of the landscape on the basis of linguistic community and for colonisation of the Bengali-settlers in a low-lying flood-prone areas was suitable for the domination of the colonial rulers at the time when the Quit India movement was at its peak and the militant peasant struggle on the basis of Hindu-Muslim unity was resurgent. The colonial rulers then sided with the Assamese ruling class to defend the continuation of line system which the hard-working Bengali peasantry was opposing. The position on the question of line system took a class-community dimension. The Assamese ruling class and the colonial rulers found them in the same camp as strange bed-fellows. The apotheosis of this new alignment of forces was the introduction of Assamese as the official language and the official declaration in favour of forced assimilation into Assamese nationality by accepting common language and culture in 1936. The birth of a new nationalism was thus marked by the backing of the imperialist and was pitted against the toiling masses that were linguistically and culturally considered as alien. The reactionary class dimension of Assamese nationalism was thus fixed in the garb of history at its birth. The progressive voices of English educated Assamese intellectuals were thus subdued in the social dynamics of Assam's migration politics. This reactionary trend of Assamese nationalist politics was accentuated, mutatis mutandis, during the historical events and social churning of independence and post-independence period.

           The next massive disruption in the process of linguistic assimilation occurred due to partition and the industrialisation policy of independent India to drain out surpluses from Assam's natural resources. The large scale anti-Muslim riot that broke out in lower Assam during partition forced the Bengali Muslim peasant to cross the border and take refuge in newly constituted Pakistan state. A large number of Bengali Hindu refugees came to India as partition-victims, but a small percentage of them settled in Brahmaputra valley. The lakhs of people who left Assam during the trouble-torn period of partition returned to their abode on the basis of Nehru-Liyakat Pact. But their return was not welcomed by the Assamese landed gentry and the dependent Bourgeois class and their political leadership who generated anti-Muslim passion within the Assamese peasantry who had the petty-bourgeois desire of getting the ownership of land which was developed into fertile productive land by the Bengali Muslims peasants through their skilled and intense challenging labour. These immigrants faced a lot of hindrances and harassment from the independent Assam administration and were treated as aliens in the Assamese society. The massive riots in the fifties and riots before and after every census were spearheaded for coercive inclusion of them as marginalised and submissive people into the fold of Assamese hegemony. All the Bengali schools in lower Assam were demolished. The Muslim peasantry who are called Na-Axomiya identified themselves in the Census of 1950 as Axomiya. They changed their identity without much resistance because the livelihood issue was more important for the poor peasants who were left leaderless by the migration of influential Muslim families to East Pakistan, than their identity question.

             This was the turning point when the anti-immigrant and anti-Bengali Assamese psyche in the form of inchoate social discourse had transformed into a chauvinist political force who took charge in the independent Assam as regional satraps. The ruling class of Delhi found it convenient to pander this chauvinist regional force to ensure their writ over this land and economic exploitation.

            After the submission of the Bengali Muslims, the next target was the Bengali Hindus who were in a dominant position in Government jobs due to the policy followed by the British for a long time. These Bengali Hindus were forcefully displaced from the public space of job-market in the massive language riots in the 1960s. Post-language riot, many Bengali middle-class families migrated to West Bengal in search of a safe social life. The Assamese regional ruling class treaded this bloody path of coercive assimilation and domination because of their weakness as inchoate Bourgeois class who were not in a position to establish their hegemony over the larger indigenous Assamese society and their dependence on the Indian ruling class who were in control of the regional market which was developed through colonial and post-colonial perverted path of capitalism. The Indian ruling class always pandered this Assamese psyche to keep the regional forces in good humour and this political arrangement is continuing till today, albeit in changed socio-economic circumstances.

              The Bangladesh liberation war which caused lakhs of Bengali Hindu refugee to take shelter in India had once again made the Assamese ruling class apprehensive of losing their majority position. But at that time, the migrants were sheltered in refugee camps and the majority of them were returned to Bangladesh on the basis of Indira-Mujib pact. A small section of the Bengali Hindu migrants came to Assam and those who had not returned were rehabilitated in many parts of the country.

                 The Assam movement in the 1980s was the zenith of the political turmoil that was initiated in the garb of post-partition politics. The forced assimilation of the minorities is always an Achilles heel for the Assamese domination in the state's helm of affairs, because the Assamese leadership is always apprehensive that the minorities may claim the share of political power at a time when the social balance of forces is favourable to them, and to achieve that goal, they may even go out of the fold of Assamese nationality. The UMF and AIDUF phenomena are examples of such minority assertion. This politics of numerical majoritarianism is anathema to democratic dialogue and social interaction. Bereft of that, the only option left for the Assamese ruling class to ensure their regional political hegemony is to establish their numerical strength by deporting the Bengalis. Initially, the student movement in Assam was started on the demand for regional development and regional power. But soon it transformed into anti-Bengali movement under the patronage of Assamese ruling class in tow with the Indian ruling class. The Rashtriya-swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS) was active within the movement surreptitiously and could successfully fan communal passion from within. The majoritarian politics of Assamese domination simultaneously translates the anti-Bengali and anti-Muslim sentiment into an intertwined political agenda. In 1983 when the Assam movement was at its peak, Assam witnessed the anti-Muslim genocide in Nellie and anti-Namasudra riot in Shilapathar. The imagined enemy was meticulously built in Assamese psyche through statistical jugglery to propagate the story of continuous migration as a part of the conspiracy of Bengali expansionism. The Assamese peasantry and tribals were mobilised behind the ruling class by appealing to their petty-bourgeois desire of grabbing the land of the minorities and for a "Sonar Assam" which would be the land only for Assamese to live in prosperity and happiness, and they were pitted against the minorities as frenzied mob to torch minority villages with clandestine support from police administration. This tormentous phase of Assam's history ended with the Assam Accord in 1985.

              The Assam movement was launched in the backdrop of a growing peasant struggle under the leadership of various left organisations. The Naxalbari peasant uprising was also a source of inspiration behind the rising peasant struggle in Assam in the 1970s. The chauvinist Assam movement disrupted this peasant struggle to stall the process of democratisation of Assamese society. When the left nationalist argues that the left leadership in the peasant struggle in the 1970s failed to address the nationalist aspirations of Assamese linguistic identity and that is why the peasant masses could be successfully pursued to bring them to the chauvinist fold, they actually miss the class dynamics of Assamese nationality question. Why the Assamese bourgeois class and the political leadership did not consider the peasant movement as an opportunity to flex the Assamese nationalist muscle for devolution of more power to the state to serve the regional interest and hegemonic control? The answer to this question lies in the nature of the Assamese ruling class who epitomises the nationality politics which took shape in the garb of colonial power in the 1920s & 1930s and later under the patronage of Indian ruling class.

           The left forces from RCPI in the pre-independence period to CPIM in the 1970-80s never identified the chauvinist character of Assamese nationalist politics and did not theoretically formulate any programme against chauvinism to ensure the assertion of toiling masses and their victory. During Assam movement too, CPIM and other parliamentary left considered it as a reactionary aberration of people's movement, though they stood firm against the minority bashing. But later they internalised the left-nationalist argument. Some Naxalite groups even considered post-Assam Accord ULFA experiment as the militant assertion of a marginalised nationality and underestimated the chauvinist character of their agenda to annihilate the diversity in Assam to create a monolithic Assamese identity through coercive means. The inchoate Assamese Bourgeois class which failed to establish their hegemony over the Assamese society and to promote assimilation through social interaction and market forces always treads the path of coercion and violence against the other linguistic groups. The PCC CPI(ML) attempted to combine the democratic content of the AASU movement in its formative stage with peasant question to formulate a democratic revolutionary agenda. But in the eighties, the peasants had already started losing their class power for agrarian revolution due to the changing dynamics of the social relation of production that had taken roots in the agricultural economy, and the strength of democratic Assamese intellectual class was too weak to give the society a democratic mooring. As the parliamentary and practising left never had a theoretical position and agenda against the Assamese chauvinism and never built a sustained dispassionate critique against the chauvinist politics, the intellectual section of the left and the Assamese left leadership shifted their allegiance according to the vicissitude of political discourse and the dominant trend.

          After a long phase of dirigiste development model, the 1980s was the beginning of a new phase of global capitalism under which India also started following the structural adjustment programme which was officially accepted in 1991 as reform process. In this scheme of neo-liberal reform, the class power of the old Assamese proto-bourgeoisie further eroded. The new classes started emerging in the social spectrum. At the one end of the social spectrum, there are class of people who benefited from privatisation and disinvestment, commissions from opening up of economy to national and global private players, sub-contracting of construction work in infrastructure investment, the commission from land acquisition and plundering of natural resources and this class as new regional ruling class is firmly embedded in the global chain of financial capital and the Indian compradors. On the other end, there is a meteoric rise of wage labourers who are uprooted from the agricultural economy due to agricultural distress, eviction for accumulation through dispossession and capitalist penetration. In the initial phase of the neo-liberal economic drive, there was a rise of the middle-income group and intellectual working class whose deteriorating status and their agony now becomes evident due to the deep-rooted systemic crisis of capitalism. All these classes intermingle in the market place cutting across community affiliations and that influences their worldview to be modern from the primordial chauvinist outlook. They find no solution to their angst and agony in the chauvinist project. The change of social relation of production in the rural landscape has also changed the peasant masses that were amenable to be a frenzied mass in the chauvinist call for deportation of so-called illegal migrants. The Assamese Nationality is also gripped with the symptom of fatigue due to long drawn out failed experiments of the chauvinist project of deportation of migrants from Assam. In this backdrop, the politics behind NRC, citizenship Bill, etc needs to be looked into.

          The Assamese chauvinist as the social force has lost their vital energy and mass mobilising ability due to the change in social relation of production as well as the fatigue that sets in by the repetition of same anti-migrant anti-minority political vocabulary for a long period. At the national level, the absolute control of central power is established by a politically homogenous entity which advocates the most reactionary reconstruction of national pride and that force is in a position to shape the ruling political discourse in Assam both from below and above. In the eighties, RSS was acting clandestinely to influence the Assam chauvinist movement in the anti-Muslim communal line. But this time, the RSS and Sangh Parivar set the agenda of chauvinists and establish the ideological control through their meticulously planned organisational and propaganda machinery. They have the entire wherewithal and the state backing to lead their plan of action to fruition, as the state has completely arrogated the communal-chauvinist politics. Much before the beginning of NRC process in Assam, the Hindutwa forces launched a massive campaign on the exaggerated version of Bengali Hindu atrocities in Bangladesh and their declining population in Bangladesh through their concocted stories and statistical jugglery. This propaganda blitzkrieg gave its intended result in favour of Sangh Parivar to occupy the driving seat of both communal and chauvinist politics in Assam simultaneously. It pandered the communal instinct and partition-memory in the Bengali Hindu psyche and instigated the Assamese chauvinist apprehension of becoming minority due to alleged continuous influx of Bangladeshis. The two instruments of NRC and Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) were projected in such a way in the political discourse that these added ammunitions to the arsenal of chauvinist and communal forces. NRC is for the exclusion of Bengali Muslim infiltrators and the CAB is for the inclusion of Bengali Hindu migrants. This is the trajectory designed and propelled by the Sangh Parivar to bring the section of Assamese left, left nationalist and the chauvinist in the same camp.

            The CAB is opposed by the all progressive forces on the ground that this is communal and anti-constitutional. But the Assamese intellectual stalwart and left nationalist Dr Hiren Gohain guiding the anti-CAB movement argued that CAB should be opposed as its implementation would facilitate the migration of all the Bangladeshi Hindu to settle in Assam. The idea he adumbrated and his vociferous claim to exclude lakhs of people from NRC justified the RSS propaganda of rising Islamic fundamentalism in this sub-continent, especially in Bangladesh. The parliamentary left and the Assamese leaders with left leanings preferred to join the anti-CAB movement of the nationalist and chauvinist force with a misconstrued notion of combating the BJP with Assamese nationalism. The left became befuddled because of their credulity to believe that the Assamese nationality has the class power to challenge the Delhi's writ. The polemics on chauvinism within the parliamentary left circle in the eighties when they stood firm against the Assam movement was never more than hieroglyphics in nature. The left never conceded the fact that Assamese nationalism is inherently chauvinist right from its birth because of its tendency to suppress the cultural diversities within the national identity and to surrender to Indian ruling class to buy the status of regional satraps. This time when the regional political forces were heading towards complete decimation through the merger with most reactionary ultra-nationalist Sangh Parivar and when the AGP was sharing power with BJP at the state-Assembly, the state CPIM leader was pleading the AGP to take leadership of the anti-CAB movement for Assamese nationalism. Many other left forces in Assam had an almost similar position on Assamese nationalist movement. The befuddled left completed its full circle of bankruptcy from theoretical obscurity to the falling in the trap of communal-chauvinist stratagem. The inevitable had happened in pre-poll political realignment when both the pro and anti-CAB forces in the apparently separated camps of communalism and chauvinism joined BJP bandwagon.

              Before the full-blown imbroglio of Assam's turmoil centering around NRC and CAB issues, Assam witnessed the vibrant and sporadic movement of a diverse section of the organised, unorganised and intellectual working class. Had the united left launched a movement against the undemocratic division of original (Khilonjiya) and non-original citizens in NRC process, the uncivilised imposition of onus of proof of citizenship on citizens themselves, the immense harassment of citizens especially the religious and linguistic minorities in the name of D-voters and detention camp, and stood firm against the centralisation of power and curtailment of working-class rights, the communal-chauvinist politics in Assam would have faced formidable challenge of people's movement this time. But instead of visualising the nationality question from a working-class perspective and challenging the reactionary middle-class perspective, the left and democratic forces missed the opportunity and succumbed to the machination of the Sangh Parivar and allowed the snowballing of the citizenship question in Assam into a dire humanitarian crisis. But everything is still not lost, the rapid disenchantment in Hindutwa politics will once again transform the objective reality for regaining the opportunity lost. The left and democratic forces should rapidly reconstruct their political discourse from a working-class perspective and build the mass organisational foundation that can be used by the toiling masses as their instrument to combat the onslaught of the state and to empower themselves.

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Arup Baisya

(Published in Frontier) 

       

   During initial post-independence formative phase of nation building, Congress could maintain its hegemony over the Indian masses through ‘economic development policy’, by maintaining certain characteristic traits of welfare state. A crisis of hegemony occurs when a force that has formerly exerted political, economic and ideological leadership over society is challenged from below and is no longer able to sustain a cohesive bloc of social alliances. Within the garb of a welfarist and import substitutionist approach, the Indian economy was never delinked from global imperialist thrust and as such policy of income-deflation of majority of Indian masses was followed to serve the interest of the imperialist metropolis. The uneven development of Indian economy which has never been adequately addressed in the post-independence state formation has been operational through the class-caste-community and urban-rural cleavages, and the graph of inequality has always revealed an increasing trend despite ameliorative measures like poverty alleviations. This has become more prominent in the case of religious minority community which, unlike the other various caste groups, was deprived of the benefit of reservation by the state in a bid to compromise with communal pressure from within in the post-partition social milieu. When a substantial middle class has emerged in big cities and medium sized towns, mass poverty and illiteracy have remained permanent features of much of the landscape of rural India. A growing urban underclass, especially susceptible to communal incitement, has also appeared in countless slums and shantytowns.

              The structural deficiency in the history of twentieth-century nationalism is embedded in the fact that religion played a central role from the beginning in organising those movements. The most significant cases are, those which eventually founded stable parliamentary democracies. The three leading states of this type in the world today are Ireland, Israel and India. In all three, the nationalist party that came to power after Independence—Fine Gael, Mapai, Congress—distanced itself from the confessional undertow of the struggle, without, however, ever being able to tackle its legacy head-on. In each case, as the ruling party gradually lost its lustre, it was outflanked by a more extreme rival that had fewer inhibitions about appealing directly to the theological passions aroused by the original struggle—Fianna Fail, Likud, BJP. The success of these parties was due not just to the faltering of the first wave of office-holders, but to their ability to articulate openly what had always been latent in the national movement, but neither candidly acknowledged nor consistently repudiated. In each case, the setting was a parliamentary system, in which they operated constitutionally.

            Though the long history of parliamentary system of Indian democracy played a vital role in mitigating certain weaknesses of the Indian independent state at its birth, the deformities at the birth have its bearings on the future statecraft. Perry Anderson in his book 'The Indian Ideology' has very aptly described the character of the Indian independent slate at the time of its birth in 1947. At the time of Indian independence, only 12 percent of population could read or write. As for poverty, per capita income in India was abysmally low and is not very significant till today. It is these magnitudes that make Indian democracy so remarkable a phenomenon. But the colonial bureaucracy and army was left intact, minus the colonizers. In the mid-30s Nehru, denouncing the Indian civil service as 'neither Indian nor civil nor a service', declared it 'essential that ICS and similar services disappear completely'. By 1947 pledges like these had faded away as completely as his promises that India would never 'under any circumstances' become a dominion. In the last year of the Raj, its upper ranks had been Indianised and there was no other corps of native administrators available. But if this was true of the bureaucracy, it was not of the army. Indigenous officers and soldiers had fought bravely, arms in hand, against the Raj in the ranks of the Indian National Army. What was to be done with them, once the British left? Their record, a potential reproach to Congress, they were refused any integration in the armed forces of the former colonial power, veterans of domestic oppression and overseas aggression fresh from imperial service in Saigon and Surabaya, that now became the military apparatus of the new order. Nor was there any purge of the police that had beaten, jailed and shot so many in the struggle for independence: they too were kept intact. Some 250 out of its 395 articles were taken word by word from the Government of India Act.

             On the ideological front, Indian post-independence statecraft has also failed to maintain a safe distance from religious symbols and vocabularies. Barring the constitutional provisions for allowing the autonomy of minority institutions, the rampant use of Hindu religious symbols in almost all the institutions of the state and the state-sponsored functions leaves an indelible mark on the muslim minds about the biasness of the state and alienate the minority section from the process of building a secular state.

The Decline of Congress

          These weaknesses of the Indian state during its post-independence formative period make it vulnerable to occasionally succumb to the pressure from religious bigotry from within. The 'Hindu nationalist' campaign which was an undertow within the freedom movement has been, in the main, a war of position with a long-term vision of Hindu state. The hegemony in competitive party-politics was reflected first in a dramatic decline in support at all-India, regional and provincial levels at the first general election after Nehru's death in 1967 followed by the split of Congress party in 1969. This is the time when Kynesian welfarist economy in post-war global capitalism has also entered into crisis of kondratiev cycle. It was the decline of the old Congress that explained the rise of Mrs Indira Gandhi. The emergency was nevertheless a watershed in Indian politics since popular reaction against it broke for the first time the monopoly of government in Delhi enjoyed by Congress since independence. After massive backlash against Mrs Gandhi's Emergency regime (1975-77), Indira Gandhi stormed back to office in 1980, but her mandate did not mean renewed stability, rather it was an electoral rejection of dysfunctional Janata coalition. Drifting away of popular support for Congress in various provinces was formidable by next general election due by end-1984. Mrs Gandhi then resorted to placate Hindu votes by campaigning on Hindu communal line and that the Hindu BJP supporters shifted allegiance to Congress was reflected in J&K and Delhi election. Communal appeal, ultra-nationalist rhetoric and centralisation of power were the game plan Congress resorted to woo the Hindu vote base influenced by the RSS organisational network. In the social turmoil in northern India on caste line, Congress also exposed its upper caste bias by sending the Mandal Commission report in cold storage. Congress was vacillating between its original organisational policy of maintaining coalition character and the soft Hindutva and casteist bias at a time when the structural adjustment programme as neo-liberal policy drive, had its sway on economic front. The soft Hindutva and the uppercaste biases have shattered the Congress character of representing the rainbow coalition of various identities, and the Congress was ousted from power in 1989. The upper-caste consolidated behind the BJP, a party rhetorically committed not only to the indivisible, organic unity of the 'Hindu Nation', but also the political affiliate of an organisation, RSS, which has consistently displayed unflinching hostility to the idea of 'reservation'. The announcement made by V P Singh in 1990 to implement the recommendation of Mandal Commisssion report opened up the Pandora's Box. The timing itself was largely coincidental, and was the culmination of a long process of alienation of Kashimiri Muslims from Indian state due to the denial and subversion of their basic democratic and human rights. The Kashmir uprising has however supplied the Hindutva movement with an unrivalled propaganda weapon. For here was 'evidence' of the diabolical design of a group of Muslims living in India to destroy India's unity in conjunction with the historical enemy, Pakistan. The 'enemy within' and 'enemy without' conspiracy theory, a longstanding staple of 'Hindu nationalist' worldview, was ostensibly finding some vindication. In these circumstances, the Hindutva forces found it as an opportune moment to make a tactical shift from their long drawn out war of position to war of movement. Ramjanambhumi issue which was hitherto played by the Congress regime as a low intensity propaganda tool to assuage so-called Hindu sentiment was snatched by BJP with aggressive posture and nationwide movement. This culminated into the demolition of Babri Mosque, and in the post-independence period, in the 1990s communalism has once again taken a centrestage in academic and political debates seeking to preserve or capture centralised state power. The Congress, and particularly PM Narasimha Rao, before and after December 6 appears so disastrous, indeed suicidal, even from the point of view of narrow party interest, appears to be an attempt to compete with the BJP for the 'Hindu Card'. Successive Congress regimes in the 1980s surreptitiously invoked a nebulous form of Hindu majoritarianism which has been crafted into a more potent political ideology by the forces of Hindutva. In the post colonial scenario in general, and the conjuncture created by the Ayodhya controversy in particular, the Indian secular response has been to tar both Hindu majoritarianism and Muslim minoritarianism with the brush of communalism. While exploring the nexus of culture and political power the argument avoids presuppositions which erroneously link a religiously informed cultural identity with the politics of cultural nationalism. By contrasting the muslim politics in the sub-continental context, it aims at demonstrating the largely arbitrary and exclusionary nature of the term 'communal' as it has been applied to individuals and political groupings claiming to represent Indian muslims. The dominant Hindutva majoritarian campaign with a desire to build a monolithic Hindu social unity and a Hindu state finds no difficulty to interpret this binary of secular response, inter alia, in their favour.

Nazism in Germany

            Though comparative studies is not very effective in judging a phenomenon which has a past historical setting, but it sometimes gives a clear vision of a model that can predict what is forthcoming. Moreover, rise of fascism in one country cannot be sui generis; there must be some resemblances and a common law of motion everywhere. If we ignore the similarities and dissimilarities of the historical and civilisational past of the Indian sub-continent and that of Western Europe, we can safely delineate the certain aspects of the phenomenon of rise of fascism in Germany in the 1930s to understand present day Indian socio-political and economic turn of events.

              By the time of the Social Democratic Party's (SPD) successful 1928 election campaign, socialists and representatives of capital alike had come to believe that the weekly wage was a political wage, dependent on the political representation of labour. Incremental social and wage gains lay at the centre of labour's strategy—capital's fears. Indeed, successful social democratic reformism appeared as more of a threat than communist agitation. Wage and social welfare policy became the sine qua non of left politics in Weimer.

              Although capitalism was by far the dominant mode of production in Weimer Germany, other modes also existed—the family peasant, small commodity, and even feudal modes coexisted with industrial capitalism. The economic, political, and ideological practices of all these partially amalgamated sub-societies constituted the German social formation. Both Germany and Italy were societies experiencing accelerated capitalist transformation, through which entire regions were being visibly converted from predominantly rural into predominantly urban environment. In both cases the process was extremely uneven with large region trapped into social and economic backwardness. This situation produced complex political effects. The pace of social change outstripped the adaptive capabilities of the existing political institutions.

If one delves into the Indian reality post eighties, it becomes apparent that the somewhat welfarist character of the Indian state has been anathema to the neoliberal economic policy. The austerity measures to cut the social expenditure of the state and unbridled privatisation to dismantle organised labour and to maximise private profit have been most sought after policy drive of the neo-liberals world-wide. The urbanisation and pauperisation are the fallout of the implementation of the policy officially adopted by the Indian state in 1990. Though the capitalist mode of production is in the driving seat of the Indian economy, all other pre-capitalist relations do exist to keep the level of income of the vast Indian masses low under duress. India, like the Weimer period of Germany, has been suffering not only from its development of capitalist production, but also from its incompleteness.

             In the context of the Weimer crisis, adjustment within the existing institutional arrangements looked increasingly untenable, and more radical solutions beyond the boundaries of the existing political system consequently became more attractive. The problem of defining fascism is therefore not exhausted by describing its ideology. Fascism was not just a particular style of politics; it was also inscribed in a specific combination of political conditions. The political crisis of war and revolution between 1914 to 1923 and the crisis associated with the great depression after 1929 is the objective reality on which fascist movement arose.

          German communist party's erroneous perception on fascism and its role from 1928 to 1935 contributed indirectly and substantially to Hitler's victory. The conservative and authoritarian governments of Chancellors Henring Bruning, Franz von Papen, and General Kurt von Schleicher in Germany between 1930 and 1932 described as already fascist, thus trivialismg the danger of Hitler's accession to power. And social democrats were branded a twin of the moderate wing of fascism.

Alternative Discourse

             The Indian status distinction between mental and manual workers is much wider than that of the then German society. The presence of professional managers and administrators among Nazi activists is now well attested, and the similar phenomenon cannot go unnoticed in India too. The Indian caste system created a structural and functional barrier against working class unity to resist fascist upsurge in the backdrop of launching an all out onslaught on labour rights.

              The lack of clear vision about the rise of Hindutva forces in India and the strategic dilemma to face this menace keep the secular and democratic forces in doldrums. Instead of analysing the socio-political and economic reasons responsible for the rise of Hindutva, the discourse on the basis of majority vs Minority appeasement obfuscates the real danger of fascist takeover of the Indian state.

             One major distinction between the Hindutva of today and European Fascism, particularly the Nazi variety, lies in a very different relationship with established religious traditions. Nazis sought to ground identity on race, not religion, and called on youth to build a new civilisation which could at times sound openly anti-Christian. The Sangh Parivar, by very definition, has to preach total adherence and deference towards Hindu traditions even while fundamentally transforming them. That this has been a source of tremendous strength hardly needs to be stated; just possibly, it could also be transformed into a weakness given effective counter-strategies.

             In India fascist tendencies are currently at work in two forms, one direct, other more insidious. The more direct form consists chiefly in the mobilisation of a communal mass base which fluctuates in intensity but is clearly seen by the RSS as the organic strategy, and the one most directly linked to its ideology of extreme nationalism. Mass communalism and sustained communal propaganda have been supplemented by more insidious subversions of democracy that combine the elements of a war of position with a war of movement. The Ramjanambhumi movement and the recent cow vigilantism are such fascist mass movement to build monolithic Hindu culture with one supreme heroic one-dimensional characterisation of Lord Ram and religiously codified common lifestyle by destroying and replacing the diversity ingrained in Indianness and even in the Hinduism itself. The economic ramifications of ban on cow and buffalo do not deter the fanning of cow nationalism to steer the fascist ideology to grab the masses as it mostly effect the muslims and lower castes Hindus who cart cattle, labour in tanneries and make shoes, bags and belts including for big name brands such as Zara and Clarks. These fascist movements are preparing the ground for the rise of fascist forces because communalism is on the rise not so much because large numbers of communal riots are taking place, but because large numbers of people who not only keep away from communal riots but also sincerely condemn them, become participants in kind of communal consensus in which series of assumptions and myths have turned into common sense.

          In the absence of an agenda and force for radical change of crisis-ridden Indian society, the passive revolution of fascist variety is taking place. The passive revolution which Gramsci also calls 'revolution-without-a-revolution" is a historical situation in which new political formation comes to power without fundamentally reordering social relations, bit rather by adapting to and gradually modifying the status quo.

           The objective aims of fascism are largely irrational in so far as they contradict the material interest of those whom they try to embrace. Since it would be impossible for fascism to win the masses through rational arguments, its propaganda must necessarily be deflected from discursive thinking; it must be oriented psychologically, and has to mobilise irrational unconscious, regressive processes. Theodor W Adorno in his essay 'Freudian theory and the pattern of fascist propaganda' explained that under the prevailing conditions, the irrationality of fascist propaganda becomes rational in the sense of instinctual economy. For if the status quo is taken for granted and petrified, a much greater effort is needed to see through it than to adjust to it and to obtain at least some gratification through identification with the existent—the focal point of fascist propaganda. This may explain why ultra-reactionary mass movements use the 'psychology of masses' to a much greater extent than do movements which show more faith in masses. However, there is no doubt that even the most progressive political movement can deteriorate to the level of the 'psychology of the crowd' and its manipulation, if its own rational content is shattered through the reversion to blind power.

                 An alternative discourse challenging the allegiance to blind power and based on working class perspective—on cultural diversity endorsed by our civilisational past—and on united efforts of all oppositional forces to resist the rise of communal politics can only defeat fascism.

References :

(1)   The Indian Ideology, Perry Andersion, 2014, Three Essays Collectives.

(2)  Fascism : Essays on Europe and India, Edited by Jairus Banaji, 2016, Three Essays Collectives.

(3)  Radical Perspectives On The Rise of Fascism In Germany, 1919-1945, Edited by Michael N. Dobkowski & Isidor Walliman,,2003, Cornerstone Publications.

(4)  Nationalism, Democracy, Development : State and Politics in India, Edited by Sugata Bose & Ayesha Jalal, 2012, Oxford University Press.

(5)     The Culture Industry, Theodor W. Adorno, 2001, Routledge Classics.

Frontier

Autumn Number

Vol. 50, No.12-15, Sep 24 - Oct 21, 2017