What are India's prospects for revolution? To find out, we must first understand the current strength of Indian capital, and of its fighting wing: Hindutva fascism.
Hindutva's dishonest narratives
In his article from last year Hindutva: Myths & Reality, Professor Shamsul Islam debunks the multiple Big Lies which India's ruling fascists employ. These lies are:
-That Hindutva is the same as Hinduism. In reality, Hinduism has historically not shared Hindutva's belief that those outside the religion must be excluded from society.
-That the construct of the Hindu nation has been present throughout the entire Indian subcontinent since antiquity. In reality, Indian independence leader Dr. BR Ambedkar has concluded that "The Hindu provinces have no common traditions and no interests to bind them." The only dispute I would take with this statement is that the provinces do have one common interest: overthrowing the fascist state which subjugates them, and building a socialist workers state.
-That Hindutva unites Hindus. In reality, Hindutva calls for the continuation of the caste system, which innately pits some Hindus against others. As Islam assesses, Hindutva is "nothing but justification of Untouchability" for those favored by the hierarchy, with women being subjected to a system of violent misogyny and South Indian Hindus being classified as an inferior race.
-That the Hindutva ideology keeps India united. What Hindutva truly does is undermine democracy and secularism while pushing for the Hitlerian cleansing of undesirables. As Islam observes about what the ideology's literature says: "The holy book for the RSS cadres, Bunch of Thoughts, the compilation of the writings of MS Golwalkar, the ideologue of the RSS, has a long chapter titled, 'Internal Threats', in which the Muslims and Christians are described as threats number one and two respectively. The Communists get the honour of being 'Internal Threat' number three."
The RSS is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, an armed and uniformed paramilitary organization that claims to seek to "strengthen" the Hindu community by purging these elements.
-That Hindutva views the world as one big family. In fact, it's a modern heir to the racial ideology of the Nazis. As Islam assesses:
Hindutva believes in the cleansing of non-Aryans as done by Hitler and Mussolini. The RSS as flag-bearer of Hindu nationalism always believed in the superiority of the Aryan race like Hitler and the Nazis. Racism is a common tie, which binds them. Hindus happened to be Aryans belonging to the National race whereas Muslims and Christians were foreigners because they followed religions, which took birth in non-Aryan foreign lands. The RSS divided religions professed in India into two categories, Indian and foreign. Interestingly, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism were declared to be of the Indian variety but were not accorded the status of independent religions. These were simply treated as part of Hinduism.
It's for these reasons that Hindutva is the ideal ideological model for carrying out counterrevolution within the exploited world as global class conflict intensifies. Its goal is to divide and rule by indoctrinating the masses with a hierarchical worldview which goes far beyond casteism, extending to a desire to wage war against all religious and ethnic groups deemed to be inferior-and to exterminate all who dare defy capital.
Zionism applied to the exploited world
You may notice the similarities that Hindutva has with Zionism. They both portray themselves as the sole representatives of the identities they appropriate, with the Zionists asserting that anti-Zionism is the same as antisemitism. And they both claim to be carrying forth an ancient mandate for their respective regions to be conquered, with the Zionists saying that Palestine's colonization is justified by the land being the ancestral homeland of the Jews. (Even though dark-skinned Jews in Israel are frequently deported, and European Ashkenazi Jews are carrying out the settling). Their shared hypocrisy is reinforced by how enthusiastically the Hindutva fascists from India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party glorify Israel.
The BJP has come to love Israel in spite of the party's history of Nazi ties (and therefore antisemitism) because for the Hindutva fascists, Israel's subjugation of Palestine (and of certain Jews) is worth respecting. The BJP and its propagandists support Israel's efforts to annex more Arab territories, and Israel's ethnic cleansing policies in the name of "fighting terrorism," because Hindutva's goal is to successfully subjugate Muslims so that Kashmir can be fully colonized. Naturally, parallels have arisen between the BJP's "counterterrorist" terrorization of Kashmiris, and Israel's genocidal war against Gazans. And Israel has rewarded the BJP's praise by selling India a growing amount of weapons. Israel is also developing a fencing system for India's border with Pakistan and training Indian forces-including the ones who've committed abuses against Kashmiris.
Israel's role is so notable, not just in terms of India but on a global scale, because modern Hindutva is the most advanced example of how Zionism has been replicated for counterrevolutionary purposes. Israel has been providing military technologies and repressive training to numerous other repressive regimes, from Brazil to Colombia to the "free" United States. Throughout these countries, ultra-nationalists mirror Israel's brand of ethno-centrism, as well as the Zionist addiction to censorship. The Zionist settler-colonial state has become the testing ground for imperialism's global innovations in necro-politics.
Since both Zionism and Nazism are modeled after U.S. settler-colonialism, the nature of this rising fascism is one where the racism of the American empire gets replicated. And India's fascist movement has shown how this exported Manifest Destiny can be effective at staving off revolution, even during today's dire stage of capitalist collapse.
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