INDIA: RISE OF FASCIST ATTACKS

BHOPAL, INDIA—Police gunned down eight unarmed prisoners, accused as members of the Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), who fled from jail in Bhopal.
This brutal execution of Muslim workers is a part of increasing racism and fascism worldwide. As fascism rises, the bosses deceive workers into scapegoating our Muslim, dark-skinned, and immigrant working-class brothers and sisters. Anti-worker violence will not fix the problems of constant unemployment, hunger, and crisis caused by capitalism. We need to turn our outrage against the bosses and smash capitalism once and for all.
The eight men were awaiting trial for three years on a number of charges including “terror related charges, sedition, and robbery” although some were not jailed until last February. Others had escaped from a different jail and had been recaptured. One video showed the group with their hands up, seeming to surrender. A witness said they had no weapons, as did the Home Minister and Inspector General of the anti-terror squad, who added that no police were injured in the fatal encounter. However, after a video surfaced showing police pumping bullets into the body of one escapee, police said the men opened fire on them with four country-made guns.
The details don’t add up. Like Black, Latin, Muslim and Arab workers targeted by police in the United States, Indian police are targeting Muslim workers. The bosses criminalize targets of police violence to justify their racist murder, like Shantel Davis and Jessica Williams, whose deaths were justified by police claims that they had stolen cars. No worker deserves to be killed by police.
Intensifying Racism,
Stepping Stone for Fascism
In India, we have seen the assaults and killings of Muslims, and some turn their heads because they are not Muslim. We have seen the racist assaults and killings of Dalits ((lowest caste group, previously known as the “untouchables”), the confiscation of land and killings of members of Scheduled Tribes, the killings of unarmed Tamil woodcutters in Andhra. We have seen police attack and beat striking workers. We have even seen some turn their heads when women are attacked. Recently, the police killed 24 Maoist rebels (New York Times, 10/24). And we have seen the fascist leaders call for jailing and even execution for those who dare to even raise questions! The bosses’ government is using any opposition as an opportunity to terrorize and bring people into line.
We all have to fight against these racist attacks because an attack on one worker is an attack on all workers. They are stepping stones of a government attack on all workers. One aspect of fascism is when the government uses increased racism and nationalism. Fascism is a natural outgrowth of capitalism, and with growing crisis, the capitalist dictatorship intensifies.
There is a rise of Hindu nationalism in India, the country with the second largest Muslim population (Foreign Policy, 8/18/15). Moreover, U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric has emboldened racists in India. The celebration “of Mr. Trump in New Delhi in May, and others like it in India this year, are the work of a small, devoted and increasingly visible faction of Hindu nationalists in India” (NYT, 10/14).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and many other groups promote Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) combined with violent, anti-Muslim racism. These nationalist groups organize attacks on Muslim people, drive them from their jobs, and some call for the deportation of some twenty million to Bangladesh (The Washington Post, 11/27). Modi was chief minister of Gujarat state in 2002 when Hindu mobs killed more than 1,000 Muslim people (Foreign Policy, 8/18/15). He was heavily implicated in this massacre, to the extent that the U.S. refused to issue him a passport. As prime minister, he has given a green light to all racist and nationalist groups to attack mainly Muslim people, but also lower caste workers, and anyone fighting back.
These attacks are the same as what is happening in the U.S., France, the Philippines, and many other countries around the world. The bosses want us to think that other workers, not capitalism, is the problem. As fascism increases, we must fight back as a united working class.
We Need Working-Class Unity
We cannot turn our heads because all of our lives depend on supporting each other! No cover-ups! We must not tolerate attacks on any of us—Muslim, Hindu, Christian, Dalits, women, members of tribes, members of other ethnic groups, striking workers, political dissidents—because attacks against any of us are a step towards intensified dictatorship that will hurt us all. We must use our power to protest and to build the unity we all need! We are building the Progressive Labor Party, a revolutionary communist party, different from the corrupt parties, to unite workers across the world to destroy capitalism. That is the only way to permanently stop fascism. Fight for communism!