Capitalist Democracy at Work in India: Mass Murder, Poverty, Racism

India held its general elections in April and May. As the world’s second most populous country, its elections caught the attention of mainstream media outlets, many of which heralded “the largest democracy in the world.” India has a multi-party system, including some phony communist parties that have posted major electoral victories in the states of Kerala and West Bengal in the post-independence era.
In reality, as in the U.S., the elections were fought between the two mainstream parties, the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the liberal Indian National Congress, both of which represent the Indian ruling class and have significant links to global capitalist interests. BJP won in a landslide victory — to the delight of the global ruling class, which needs more discipline of the working class during this period of intensified capitalist crisis.
Narendra Modi, the BJP head who became the nation’s prime minister, is accelerating the bosses’ move towards fascism. Modi was formerly chief minister in the state of Gujarat. In 2002, a train carrying Hindu pilgrims caught fire and sparked violent riots directed at the Muslim inhabitants in the surrounding areas of the Godhra, leading to the vicious slaughter of over 2,500. The police in the areas reportedly stood by and even facilitated the rampage, and strong evidence suggests that Modi allowed the massacres to go on unabated. (As a result, Modi was denied an entry visa to the U.S. in 2005.)
But Modi’s role in the massacres did not prevent him from being repeatedly elected in a Hindu region where anti-Muslim racism is strong. Nor did it stop investors from funneling billions into the state of Gujarat. Modi, it seems, will wield a heavy hand to crank the profit-making machine for a handful of millionaires, while hundreds of millions in India live in absolute poverty. In the “largest democratic country in the world,” according to a 2010 report by OXFAM, eight Indian states account for more poor people than the 26 poorest African nations combined.
Modi’s BJP is in fact the political wing of the racist extreme right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist organization founded in 1925 and openly modeled on Mussolini’s National Fascist Party. RSS members regularly participate in ethnic cleansing against Muslims and Sikhs and played a major role in the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat. As the crisis in global capital spirals out of control, the ruling class aligns itself with fascism to smash working-class resistance to free-market exploitation. This is clearly the case in India, which has seen a widening resistance movement against privatization and a flaring gap between haves and have-nots.
One of the biggest headaches of the Indian ruling class is the Maoist insurrection in the Central and Eastern parts of the Indian subcontinent. With a legacy dating to 1968, the rebels have built a substantial base among the tribal populations and the historically dispossessed “untouchable” castes. Since they staged a rebellion in Naxalbari in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal, a revolt brutally crushed by the State in conjunction with the mainstream Communist Party of India (CPI), the Maoists have followed the “Chinese Path” of armed struggle in the countryside while focusing effort on political organizing in the tribal communities. Additionally, there has been a slow-developing but rigorous campaign in the urban centers, led mostly by students and intellectuals, to gain support for the militant struggle in the rural areas.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, despite splits within the Maoist movement, their focus has continued to revolve around issues of food and land, along with caste inequality and sexism. In 2004, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) merged with the Maoist Communist Centre to form the CPI (Maoist), which continues to advocate “seizure of political power by armed struggle” through a People’s War combined with political agitation of tribal communities with the aim of overthrowing the Indian State. While the immediate aim is to establish “compact revolutionary zones” that extend from India’s Southeast to Nepal, the Maoists’ stated goal is to achieve a socialist state by “accomplishing the new democratic revolution and continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Prefacing the most recent military campaign to root out “the greatest threat to India’s security” was the 2005 signing of hundreds of memorandums of understanding between the government and multinational mining corporations. A terror campaign ensued by the ultra-nationalist Salwa Judum against tribal people who refused to give up their lands for multinational development. The vicious campaign only deepened internal resistance to the state and resulted in the formation of grassroots organizations backed by the Maoist insurgency.
Although both the political right and the institutional left in India criticize the Maoists for the use of guerilla violence, the insurgency offers a glimmer of hope for workers’ anger at the system and their willingness to smash it. The mainstream phony communist parties in India, which ran numerous candidates in the recent elections, channel their energy into creating reformist alliances that leave capitalism in place.
With the crisis in capital spiraling out of control, the ruling class needs to turn to movements like the RSS and to racist demagogue like Modi.
We must fight directly for communism through the armed struggle of a mass workers’ party. The struggle of the working class in India is a symbol of continuing resistance as we build stronger ties among the international working class in creating a communist future. The beginning is now.