by Bhabani Shankar Nayak 20 January 2021
The pestilence of Coronavirus has given a free hand to the Hindutva fascists in India to undermine all democratic norms and constitutionally established institutions. The caste, class, and gender-based structural violence are ubiquitous. Both the organised and fragmented nature of Hindutva violence is accelerated by the current political regime led by the BJP government under Mr. Narendra Modi’s leadership. There is an asymmetrical relationship between the rise of the Hindutva cult of fascist authoritarianism, violence and declining of democracy, and failure to consolidate India’s governing liberal values. In the name of cultural nationalism, the Hindutva forces are pushing India to dark ages and actively manufacturing misinformation and myths by rewriting history. The Hindutva narratives are not symbolic but engage with the material realities of individuals’ and communities’ everyday lives. Hindutva ideology’s centrality is all about controlling individual rights by forcing food habits, dress patterns, reproductive choices, religious and spiritual freedoms.
Hindutva forces hide their regressive social, political, religious, and cultural outlook by intensifying propaganda to advance and implement neoliberal economic reforms in the name of economic growth and development. These flawed policy perspectives accelerate social and economic crises by overemphasising the role of market forces. Market forces find their natural ally with Hindutva force to run their capitalist consolidation processes’ errant political economy. In the absence of democratic polity and representative opposition, the market forces develop an oligarchical economic system where the state and Modi government ensures protection and facilitates capitalist accumulation processes in India.
The rampant privatisation of public resources has served the corporations but puts pressure on the government’s ability to generate revenue for public welfare. There is a massive reduction of funding to public health and education. This helps in the growth of private healthcare and education institutions in India. The Modi government has failed to check growing unemployment in urban areas, agrarian distress in the rural areas, the crisis in both formal and informal sectors of the Indian economy. As the poor’s social and economic condition has continued to worsen, people are looking for alternatives, but BJP led Modi government is directionless. It continues to divert public attention from real issues of people by focusing on the supercilious agendas of Hindutva that threaten the unity and integrity of India.
The Hindutva regime, in unison with neoliberalism, has created a condition in which Indians have lost their control over their democratic rights. The predetermined fascist ideology of Hindutva and neoliberalism are incompatible with democratic norms and traditions. The culture of corporate dominance over state and government, political and social repression, authoritarian intimidation, and surveillance are everyday outcomes of the Modi government and its prevailing misgovernance model. It strengthens of power of lynch mobs promoted by the RSS Hindutva cult. It is a systematic strategy to accelerate social and religious conflicts to destabilise India’s constitutional and liberal democracy by electoral means. Hindutva forces follow four strategies to normalise religious violence, social conflicts, and economic marginalisation in India. It follows the politics of assimilation, co-option, dominance, and monopolisation over the making of narratives with the organisational network of the RSS. Such a combination of strategies helps in diverting issues of poverty, inequality, and unemployment.
The normalisation of everyday violence by lynch mobs helps Hindutva hide their bourgeoisie hypocrisy and failures in all fronts of governance. Violence always strengthens the power of ruling and non-ruling elites, whereas it disempowers the masses and perpetuates impoverishment, disparity, and exploitation. Such an outcome is visible in India under BJP led Modi government. The Hindutva forces and cult of violence provide central social and political institutions and create capitalist accumulation regimes for the crony capitalists in India. Both structural and erratic forms of violence are integral to Hindutva and the capitalist system, where peace, prosperity, and progress are necessary illusions for the survival of ruling capitalist regimes. Mr. Narendra Modi’s government displays this illusion in the everyday governance of India and its people. These forces talk about peace and progress but practice violence that destroys prosperity.
Such a process helps establish the hegemony of Hindutva and its violence, which reduces people’s understanding of the nature of our everyday crisis. The culture of fear and struggle for survival becomes primary, taking a toll on intercultural and interreligious social relations in India. The prevailing crisis is an opportunity for the crony capitalist friends of Hindutva to pursue regulations and economic policies that are concomitant with the requirements of capital and market forces. The Modi government is proactively doing this work for his corporate friends who provide him with lump sum money through electoral bonds. In this way, violence breeds political dividends for Hindutva forces and profits for capitalists. Hindutva politics and the capitalist system are twin beneficiaries of Hindutva violence. In this way, Hindutva is an ideological ally of capitalism and its authoritarian culture of governance led by caste and class elites in the Indian society. The RSS ideologically grooms the Hindutva foot soldiers to normalise violence to perpetuate caste-class hegemony and weakens working-class struggles for justice and equality.
Violence in contemporary India is not natural. The Hindutva forces manufacture it. From organising riots to garlanding of mobs, lynchers have become an unofficial policy directive of the BJP governments in the states and at the centre. The cycle of violence is pushing India backward and putting Indian in a long-term crisis. Within this context, democratic, liberal, secular, and progressive forces in India need to mobilise the masses for peace, equality, liberty, citizenship rights, and justice. The collective struggle against Hindutva violence can only ensure these objectives for India’s future and the survival of Indians with dignity. There is no alternative to mass movements. An only mass movement can defeat Hindutva politics and its entrenched regressive ideology based on everyday violence. The emancipation from violence is a necessary condition for participatory democratic development in India. Unity, solidarity, and struggles are three undefeated strategies in history to defeat Hindutva violence and repair India’s broken republic.