Ever since the adoption of neo-liberal policies by the Indian state in the early 1990s, there has been simultaneously a spurt in the rate of growth of the GDP, sustained attack on the traditional livelihoods of farmers, tribal people and artisans forcing them to alienate their traditional resources to corporate capital and take to ‘self-employment’ or low paid casual labour in the burgeoning ‘informal service’ sector, an unprecedented increase in the gap between the super rich and the super poor and an increasing attempt at polarising the people on communal, religious and caste lines reinforcing the powers of the upper castes. Understandably these changes cannot be ushered in ‘peacefully’ in normal course of development and require an extraordinary use of force, both ideological and physical. This has taken the form of arming the state with immense coercive powers aided by electronic surveillance and use of Artificial Intelligence, and promoting an alarmingly strident orthodox Hindu chauvinism targeting minority communities, especially Muslims but also Hindus not subscribing to this variety of upper caste orthodoxy. The coercive power of the state has not only been used against left wing activists and trade unionists, but also against bourgeois opposition parties, so as to establish a single party hegemony. The communal polarisation is being promoted by violent front organisations and vigilante groups drawn from unemployed lumpen middle classes, aided and abetted by state agencies. There has been a systematic attack on all liberal and pluralist democratic institutions and institutions promoting scientific and critical research, NGOs, trade unions, popular organisations and critical media.

It is not merely the minorities that are at the receiving end of the present dispensation. The last decade has seen a significant consolidation of upper caste forces which have forged a front with the middle landowning castes to dilute and eliminate the special provisions in the Indian constitution for the protection and promotion of the historically oppressed and marginalised Dalit (hitherto treated as ‘untouchable castes’) and tribal communities. In the same vein the hard-won rights of the working class enshrined in the labour laws have been made in-operational by simply dismantling the old kind of industrial production and replacing it with ‘outsourced’ labour processes and employing ‘contractual or informal labour’. Today, almost over 95% of the working class is not under the cover of these laws. As a result no protection or social security is available to the labouring people. An example is the gradual elimination of 8 hour working day as a norm and replacing it with a 12 hour norm. Indeed all the old labour laws have been replaced with four labour codes, which were hurriedly passed in the parliament without any meaningful discussion, and even without any process of consultation with the established trade unions of the country.

Similar undermining of hard-won protections by the small and middle farmers – protection from arbitrary land acquisition by the state on behalf of corporate houses, protection for prices of key agricultural products against speculative control over agrarian market by agribusiness conglomerates. It took prolonged struggles by the farmers to roll back these measures. Even so, the state has been systematically assisting the corporate houses to gain control over agriculture through new forms of ‘putting out system’ going by the name of ‘contract farming’.

These processes initiated by the Indian National Congress in the 1990s, are now being spearheaded by the Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) backed by its parent organisation the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is today also promoting the personality cult of the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi and his right-hand man, Amit Shah. This regime has been propped up and supported to the hilt by the leading corporate houses of the country which have benefitted the most from it while many other corporate houses feel helpless and have been forced into submission.

Fascism in the Marxist-Leninist tradition has been defined as the ‘open terroristic dictatorship of the most reactionary section, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital’. While India is still short of this extreme situation, we can see some of the key elements of the establishment of such a regime. The strengthening of the coercive powers of the state, building aggressive mass organisations targeting activists and minorities, pushing a reactionary racist (casteist-communal-nationalist) ideology, dismantling liberal democratic and scientific institutions, promoting a mass media to build mass hysteria and acceptance of the reactionary ideology and blatant lies, promoting a single party rule focussed on a charismatic saviour leader…. These were the ingredients which helped German monopoly capital to build the most dreaded form of fascism designed to radically alter industrial and agrarian relations. That is why we term this regime an ‘emergent fascist’ state. Of course it is being suitably modified to suit the needs of a globalised neo-liberal regime in which autarkic national economies is not possible. The communal nationalist ideology seeks to camouflage an abject surrender to international capital and the ‘opening’ of Indian markets and investment opportunities to transnational capital. In our own times this also takes the form of aggressive destruction of forest cover, promotion of ‘infrastructure’ building designed to undermine ecological balance, reckless mining of natural resources leading to immediate natural disasters and long-term environmental degradation.

This building of a fascist state has been resisted by the mass of the people in multiple ways. We have mentioned the historic struggle of the farmers against the changes to land acquisition laws and laws pertaining to marketing of agricultural produce. These very farmers have continued to express their resistance by voting for the opposition in the recent elections to the union parliament and the provincial legislatures. This has given a major boost to the opposition parties which have faced the prospects of being rendered irrelevant in Indian politics. Prior to the massive farmer movement, there was the movement of Muslim women against the amendment to citizenship laws (Citizenship Amendment Act or CAA) designed to target Muslims and other minorities. Another major resistance force which made significant difference to the voting pattern in elections, has been the Dalit communities who stand to lose their hard won positive discrimination (laws relating to reservations in education and public employment and representation in legislative assemblies and also laws against casteist practices).

On the other hand the working class whose ranks have been swelling due to influx of dispossessed farmers, tribal people and artisans, and who have faced the brunt of neo liberal restructuring of urban production, has been on a back foot. Traditional Trade Unions have become ineffective as the old industrial regime to which they catered has been more or less dismantled. With the working class being employed under debilitating conditions, or left to work in the unorganised and ‘self-employed’ sectors, building unity and organisations representing their interests have become very difficult. This is not to imply that the working class is not resisting. The resistance is diffused and incipient occasionally bursting out into spurts of public action. The movement of Maruti Suzuki workers over the last few years, the current struggle of workers of Tamil Nadu Samsung plant, the outburst of women textile workers in Bengaluru some months ago are examples of such actions. Recent labour surveys indicate a declining female labour participation. This actually is actually a camouflage as more and more women have been drawn into capitalist circulation and production cycles without being designated as workers. However, wherever women have joined the workforce they have been at a disadvantage and forced to accept roles ostensibly in the category of ‘service’ and are expected to make sacrifices to provide services to the community (teaching, nursing, child care…). However, a large number of women employed in this manner have been organising themselves and demanding regular working conditions and appropriate wages. Special mention may be made of the movements of Anganwadi workers (early child care centres) and para teachers. However, these movements of urban workers have not been able to consolidate themselves into organisations and force legal and real changes in working conditions and wages.

Part of the reason for this weakness of the working class is the structural weakness of the neo-liberal ‘growth’, the inability of this growth to provide stable employment and the resultant oscillation between state of being employed and unemployed for the workers. It is evident that the neo liberal growth powered by the Information Technology sector is a jobless growth in which a few employed on precarious basis are paid very high salaries for the duration of employment. The rest of the labouring poor eke out an existence based on the circulation of these salaries providing services of diverse kind, including the burgeoning ‘gig economy’. The dream of ‘manufacture in India’ couldn’t be realised and world capital refused to invest in the manufacturing sector in India. As a consequence the state has been forced to invest in massive infrastructure projects like road building, railway building, and other forms of construction industry including the massive redesigning of the national capital. This has kept the economy going, generating much casual employment. But it has not succeeded yet in attracting capital investment in stable manufacturing projects. This has resulted in massive movement of labouring population across the country (migrant labour is one of the most pliant form of labour used extensively in the construction sector). Yet the work offered is extremely precarious and the wages pitifully low and the opportunities for organised resistance even less.

Given this challenge of emergent fascism, it is imperative for all democratic and socialist forces to join hands to defeat the designs of the RSS, BJP and the present government, and at the same time strengthen the autonomy of the movements of the labouring people, of workers, peasants, Dalits, adivasis, students, youth and women. It is important to carry out a sustained campaign against the ideology of upper caste Brahmanic Hindu supremacism and its concrete manifestations like pogroms against minorities, workers and peasants.

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