Communalism & Communal Offensives of RSS/ BJP

Communalism is nothing but a political strategy using religious symbols and societal traditions as political mobilisation tools to serve a section of oligarchic monopoly capital. The RSS-BJP cannot survive without such ugly political mobilisation tools. Their existence therefore, is necessitated by extension of communal hate politics, which is an antithesis to secular democratic values, and republican constitutional ethos. They function with a pattern of ‘divide and rule’, ‘confuse and rule’, and ‘divert and rule’. Here are the five major points that exposes the far-right’s politics of playing with people’s lives:

The BJP claimed repeatedly that it would protect the interest of the Hindus. This claim, however, had no practical implication in offering anything to the Hindus except rhetoric by targeting certain communities. India’s unemployment rate stands at more than 7 percent. The continuous increase of price of essential commodities caused great stress on the vast sections of the people belonging to the working class; lower as well as middle-income classes. If any party truly wants to protect a community, the priority must be to safeguard the basic rights and livelihood for that community. Where do the Hindus stand in India vis-a-vis their rights and necessities today? The economic depression tore apart the lives of majority of Indians. The BJP has brought the real danger to the vast numbers of Hindus. If this fact has to be hidden, the sentiment of Hindus by steering the issue of Ram Mandir, Gau Raksha etc. becomes a necessity and priority for the BJP.  So, what they are doing in the name of protecting the Hindus is essentially serving their political interest to advance the agenda of Hindutva by keeping the Hindus in a depressed condition, and channel this to unleash repression on other communities. BJP’s appeasement politics will not give any Hindu their food, clothes and shelter. A rejection of such toxic politics, therefore, is necessary.

Remember every instance in which we heard the slogan of ‘Nationalism. In all those instances, we saw a large scale propagation of hate. Two counts on which BJP’s ‘Nationalism’ is farcical slogan. Firstly, they lecture about nationalism, while all the important public sectors, i.e., the national assets, are on a massive sale. Whose national interest is being served by making Adani as one of the top rich man in the world, when the majority of the population is not even having employment, shelter, any security and dignified life? Secondly, India’s tradition and culture can never be reduced to a singular identity. Our ancestors survived the partition; they experienced the fruit of hate politics. However, they build this country to what it became after the great freedom struggle and adoption of Indian constitution with much patience, sacrifice, commitment, love, and a positive vision for the future. Anyone, who identifies as an Indian cannot forget this history; one cannot forget that the real strength of our country lies in the great diversity at every level which in fact makes India unique. If a party, which was elected by the mandate from people disregards the basic tenets of democracy and constitution, the country safety and security is under threat. The BJP has been desperate to turn India into a war zone. The hate politics have created such a vulgar culture that it stands as an insult to the thousands of Indians who fought for our country’s freedom and those who built the national assets. Thus, any real patriot today must come out in open defiance to such a hate politics propagated by the RSS-BJP, and reclaim India’s national assets, its culture, tradition and history.

The people of India had not recovered from the stress of demonetization, which the BJP-led government on a sudden call at 8 pm imposed on the masses – supposedly to bring back the black money. The unemployment status stood at the all-time high in the past 45 years. Amid all this, the priority was set to re-define citizenship. We, our parents, and their parents were asked to prove that we are all indeed Indians in a blatant violation of constitution. This was another attempt by the government to work on its ideological front to dismiss the minority, and incite the majority with communal sentiment. Whereas ultimately, the aim is to keep the common masses engaged on collecting documents, and prove that they are Indians. It was the first time in history that Indian citizenship, through this legislation was re-defined, where citizenship on the basis of religion gained importance. The RSS-BJP’s claim to care for the aggrieved ‘Hindu-minorities’ from the neighbouring countries and intentionally exclude other religious groups exposed its agenda even more visibly. Through the NPR-NRC-and CAA, the far right government wanted to force the citizens of India to prove their citizenship seriously targeting the minorities, as well as poor Indians. This was a naked attempt to harass the citizens, burden the poor to collect the documents, and further polarize the society on the basis of religion. The question remains – what benefits the Hindus would get out of this? Will they not pay Rs.1000 while purchasing a LPG gas cylinder?  Why the farce of citizenship imposed upon the already distressed Indians?

In last eight years, not only that the violence against Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims and Women have increased, but, policies were adopted cutting budget, taking away opportunities and livelihood from all these sections. There is continuous reduction of budget of programs such as MNREGA, Mid-Day-Meals, Scholarships for the SC/ST’s and OBC’. Everyday rhetoric against the reservations for the marginalised is also there. The MSME sector, which provides the largest share of employment, is being destroyed to support the cause of crony capitalists.  Hathras incident is not ordinary. One should be scared of what happened to an Indian girl and her family where not only was the brutality unleashed to her, the family was denied to perform the last rites to provide protection to the rapists. The rape accused were shamelessly garlanded in public in another instance and they were called ‘Sanskari’. Is this India’s ‘Sanskaar’? Leaving apart any concern for the marginalised, what humanism is left if this becomes the standard practice?

Cow vigilantism of the right wing BJP and the allied forces are nothing but sheer hypocrisy and with this narrative they are only targeting the minorities. The cows are being left to fend for themselves. The recent reports show that rather than being benefited, after the so-called ‘Gau Raksha’ the number of bovines have reduced. India is one of the biggest exporter of ‘beef’ and the persons who are benefiting from the export of the meat are all BJP politicians. As all the cows are left to fend for themselves, they are roaming around the streets without food and destroying the crops. Who would be affected by this – the BJP’s hypocritical politicians or those who work in the fields? There are number of instances where the cows are dying with disease or without foods in the so called ‘Goshalas’ run by the persons belonging to the right-wing organisations. It is also worth noting that even after the havoc during the pandemic when both health and education sector suffered with millions of people facing its dastardly consequence, the priority is not to build more hospitals and schools, but the Gaushalas. Will the common people benefit from this?

Love Jihad and Cow are being used as a shield to attack the minorities and there are several cases of people being attacked and publicly killed by the mob, all in the name of saving the ‘Hindu Dharm’. When a free hand is provided to the anti-social elements to disturb the law and order, would the attacks be limited only to the minorities? That is why any small rumour and fake news have led to murderous mobs moving without fear. There are many instances of people from the marginalized communities be it adivasis or dalits being attacked on flimsy grounds, baseless rumours, fake news and ‘killed’. This toxicity, false propaganda and vested interest have created a mob culture in India today – which is a threat to everyone including the so-called Hindus whom the RSS-BJP claims to protect.

Economic boycott of Muslims: The RSS-led BJP government which is not providing adequate employment opportunities and reducing the budgets of programs such as NREGA is now lending support to sangh parivar’s campaigning for economic boycott of Muslims. RSS outfits are asking people not to do business with Muslims or engage them in any work. Will this promote new business? Will this provide any new employment for the people? Except for disturbing the peace and harmony of the society, what else such boycott really offers to the people? This is just going to destroy the ‘bhaichara’ and weaken the strands among the working poor.

Bulldozer politics: Bulldozing of houses and business establishments of Muslims in the name of protecting the ‘law and order and ‘teaching a lesson’ has become the norm, but as in the case of the murderous mobs, this blatant violation of the ‘rule of law’ has led to bulldozing the houses of the working classes. It was only last month, a poor mother-daughter were burnt alive when the BJP governments bulldozer was bringing their house down.

Attacks on places of worship: Does the Hindu religion permit to attack the places of worship of people belonging to a different faith? Is Hindu religion so weak that, it can only be strengthened by destroying others’ religious places of Worship? Do we want a society, which promotes such aggressive imposition of religion? While, the physical attacks are continuing, there are also attacks on reason. BJP promoted (Fraud Godman) Dhongi Babas and their businesses (Ramdev) or the people who were convicted in charges of raping Hindus (Ram Rahim) and didn’t take any action against them. These Babas are making crores of rupees, and are charged under criminal offence. Yet, there are enjoying impunity. What precedence do such instances set for a country? Is it not a way of legitimizing crime under the shield of religion and faith?

Thus the RSS and its outfits have succeeded in creating an overarching ‘Hindu’ identity cutting across social-ethnic divides to a significant extent. This is accompanied by micro level caste based mobilizations.

‘Hindutva’, at present, is used by neo-liberalism in our country to strengthen its imperialistic international finance capital hegemony. Imperialism has abandoned its so called ‘modernity’ and embraced obscurantism in its neoliberal phase where even liberal democracy could not survive. Thus, Communalism and neo-liberalism have become mutually complementary with commonly shared goals. So, countering communal ideology and changing the hegemonic discourse need multi-pronged approach – political, ideological and cultural.

When the corporate-communal nexus and authoritarian rule threaten the very existence of democratic movement like the trade union and peasant movements along with the bourgeois democracy, secularism, plurality of the nation and allows a complete corporate takeover, then we have to formulate comprehensive strategies to fight the twin danger of corporate and communal nexus and develop an integrated plan of action in our daily activities.

Let’s Unite against Communal offensive of Fascist RSS to save our Nation

Published by Centre of Indian Trade Unions