NAGPUR ANTI-FASCIST DECLARATION
Defeat Fascist RSS/BJP!
[CPI ML Red Star’s Approach Towards 18th Indian Parliament Election Based on the Resolution Adopted by the Anti-Fascist People’s Convention in Nagpur on 10 March 2024]
1. The All India Anti-Fascist People’s Convention, convened by CPI (ML) Red Star in Nagpur on 10 March 2023, in the Resolution unanimously adopted by the delegates has appealed to the People of India to rise up and move forward to save the country from the stranglehold of RSS-Corporate Fascism by resolutely resisting and defeating BJP in the 18th Parliament Election. RSS, world’s biggest and longest-running, far-right, fascist organisation, through its political tool, BJP, is now holding the reins of Indian State with the backing of the most corrupt corporate-crony capitalists. Consequently, all institutions of Indian State power including civil and military administration and even the judiciary as well as the entire political, economic and cultural spheres of the country together with education and scientific research which are being saffronised through NEP, are now under the firm grip of RSS which is now in its maddening pace towards superimposing a majoritarian Hindurashtra over multilingual, multicultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious India.
2. As reports from across India reveal, under the Modi regime, while minorities in general are insecure and vulnerable to be attacked as in Manipur and elsewhere, Muslims are the most targeted and subjected to worst forms of alienation. During the colonial period itself, instead of targeting British imperialism as India’s principal enemy, Golwalkar, the RSS chief, had identified Muslims as number one enemy of India. Today, on the other hand, anti-Isam or Islamophobia has become the ideological basis of neofascism propped up by US and other imperialist forces at a global level. Effectively utilising this overall situation, as per RSS diktats, BJP regime has been stigmatising Muslims and building up extreme hatred towards them with all available means. And all institutions of State power are systematically used for this purpose. Even the basic structure and secular character of Indian Constitution are altered as part of the Islamophobic, majoritarian polarisation.
3. The Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) passed by the Parliament in 2019 that amended the 1955 Citizenship Act, incorporating religion as a criterion for citizenship and the latest announcement of CAA Rules for its speedy implementation on the eve of General Election are latest instances. The CAA which grants citizenship to 6 non-Muslim communities from 3 neighbouring countries and totally excludes Muslims has been characterised even by the UN as discriminatory to Muslims. While doing so, the Modi government has denied even refugee status to the Rohingya Muslims described by UN as the most persecuted minorities. Similarly, even the Sri Lankan Tamil refugees who are languishing in various refugee camps in various parts of Tamil Nadu for years are also excluded from the ambit of citizenship as per CAA. More specific in Indian fascism is the situation where Muslim minority settlements are bulldozed, mobs are unleashed against them with the backing of already saffronised bureaucracy and police across the country. Denial of right to life and livelihood for Muslims by saffron-fascist goons along with lynching of Dalits have become the ‘new normal’ in India.
4. The same anti-Muslim orientation is visible in the series of legal and administrative initiatives taken up by Modi regime. The abrogation of Article 370 that took away the Special Constitutional Status of J&K through Presidential Order in 2019 and the Supreme Court’s endorsement of the same in December 2023; building-up of Ram Temple at the very site of demolished Babri Masjid and the prime minister himself consecrating it in January 2024, thereby undermining the secular structure of Indian Constitution, promulgation of Uniform Civil Code and implementation of the same by BJP-ruled States and so on are specifically targeted against the Muslims. With these and other moves, the RSS/BJP has already laid the foundations for their ultimate aim of establishing a majoritarian theocratic Hindurashtra. It is to formally announce it, that effectively utilising the anti-Muslim majoritarian polarisation already created, BJP with its control over the Election Commission, has now announced its ‘mission 400’, i.e., winning 400 seats in parliament in 2024 General Election.
5. The unfulfilled previous efforts of RSS to superimpose Manusmriti as the Constitution of India are already known. Thus, when the Constituent Assembly adopted Indian Constitution in November 1949 after its finalisation by the Drafting Committee led by Dr Ambedkar, the RSS through its mouthpiece Organiser, had demanded to replace it with Manusmriti that treats oppressed lower castes including Dalits and women as subhuman. Now, through the 103rd Constitutional Amendment that inserted Economic Reservation (EWS), Modi government has already altered the very character of the Constitution which had Caste-based reservation as one of the basic features at the time of its adoption. With India’s lion’s share of wealth, senior posts in civil and military administration and in judiciary being already occupied by a tiny minority of Brahmanical upper castes, the economic reservation (EWS) that grants an additional 10 percent more posts to the elite upper-castes, is in tune with the tenets of Manusmriti. In the meanwhile, the RSS/BJP is staunchly obstructing the demand for an all India Caste Census on the part of the oppressed castes and democratic forces, as it will expose the upper-caste, Brahmanical grip over country’s political, economic and administrative power. In this context, the widespread concern among progressive and democratic forces and all well-meaning people that a hat-trick win by RSS-BJP in 2024 parliament election may lead to a replacement of Indian Constitution with Manusmriti needs to be seriously taken into consideration.
6. Integral to this fascist Saffron agenda, and in accordance with the far-right, pro-corporate orientation of the Modi government, the country’s wealth and resources including land, infrastructure facilities, transportation, public services and public sector enterprises are increasingly gobbled up by Adani-Ambani like crony capitalists. The series of pro-corporate and neoliberal laws enacted during the last 10 years of Modi rule pertaining to deregulation and informalisation of labour, environment and tax liberalisation have led to horrific levels of wealth appropriation by the most corrupt corporate billionaires. The move to abolish the existing 44 Labour Laws and transform them into 4 Labour Codes have taken away all the yesteryears’ hard-earned democratic rights of the Indian working class, majority of whom are condemned to the stature of bonded labourers and subjected to super-exploitation in unorganised/informal sectors. The amendment to Environment Act brought out by Modi regime is for facilitating unfettered corporate-plunder of nature. While Indian corporate tax rates are world’s lowest, the tax burden is increasingly shifted to the shoulders of the vast majority of the working and oppressed people through super-imposition of the neoliberal and regressive GST that at one stroke took away two-thirds of the tax powers of the State governments, thereby undermining the federal structure of India as envisaged in the Constitution. And the 3 draconian Farm Laws enacted by Modi government as per WTO diktats, though now kept in freezer due to resistance from farmers, are intended to totally subject Indian agriculture to corporatisation and global agribusiness interests.
7. In 2014, Modi government came to power on an anti-corruption plank, and the disastrous Demonetisation in November 2016 which was projected as “surgical strike” against black money and corruption, and which claimed eradication of terror funding and move towards cashless transactions, in fact, was a corporate-fascist offensive that suck out whatever left in the arteries of the toiling people, especially those in the unorganised sectors on the one hand and paving the way for an unprecedented ‘black money whitening’ on the other. While Demonetisation inflicted irretrievable damage to the economy and livelihood of the people wiping out millions of jobs at one stroke, not even one rupee from the black money circulating in the country could be mobilised through this move. And within one year after Demonetisation, the entire cash that was rendered invalid had come back into the circulation channels. Meanwhile, India continues as one among the most corrupt countries and a flourishing example of “crony capitalism”, the unholy nexus between corporates and the ruling regime, where policy decisions are taken in corporate-board rooms while parliament remains an edifice and a mere spectator, hoodwinking the people. The notorious ‘Electoral Bonds’ scheme which the Supreme Court has recently struck down as unconstitutional and non-transparent that allowed the most corrupt corporate companies to make unlimited contributions, lion’s share of which had gone into BJP’s coffers.
8. Today under the Modi regime, India has become one among the most unequal countries in the world, a reality that cannot be camouflaged by rhetoric on sham freebies and PM’s’ guarantees’. While the gap between the rich and poor has widened to hitherto unknown levels, the top 1 percent of the superrich Indians’ income share is now higher than that under British colonial rule, and the income share of the bottom 50 percent today under Modinomics is less than what it was in 1951. Corporate crony billionaires in whom country’s wealth is concentrated are least interested in employment-generating real production, but are engaged in stock market, real estate, money laundering and other money-spinning speculative businesses. As a result, unemployment has become unprecedented under the rule of Modi who promised the creation of additional 2 crore jobs every year. Prices, especially that of food, fuel and other essential items are skyrocketing while real earnings and purchasing power of the broad masses of working and oppressed are steeply going down.
9. Recently, the NITI Aayog that came in to being replacing the six-and-a-half decades old Planning Commission and that works as a policy think-tank facilitating corporatisation, has come forward with the claim that only less than 5 percent of the Indians now live below poverty line. But, this claim of Modi regime needs to be evaluated in the context of the latest UN report that 74 percent of Indian population cannot afford the minimum nutrition prescribed for South Asian people by Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). As such, the methodology used by Modi government by deploying pliable statisticians at its disposal to arrive at poverty estimation as desired by the regime is flawed and not in conformity with internationally accepted norms that take nutrition as the major criterion. According to 2023 Global Poverty Index, India ranks 111 out of a total of 125 countries, and with 53 percent of world’s “extreme poor”, India is characterised as the “citadel of global poverty”. To be precise, as manifested in growing inequality, unprecedented unemployment, loss of livelihood, displacement from habitats and widespread hunger, vast majority of the Indian people comprising working class, peasantry, Dalits, Adivasis, women and all oppressed including religious minorities are driven more and more into absolute poverty, which are cunningly covered-up by official agencies.
10. In this background, and in view of the impending Lok Sabha election, with the backing of corporate-saffron, Godi media, during the preceding months, the Modi government has been unleashing a no holds barred far-right, pro-corporate, majoritarian, anti-federal offensive. The series of law amendments proposed in relation to Biological Diversity, Forest Conservation, Mines and Minerals, Offshore Areas Mineral Development, and Coastal Aquaculture are intended for removing the remaining hurdles ensuring unprecedented corporate plunder of land, forests, water, biological, natural, mineral and coastal resources of the country leading to horrific levels of corporate wealth-appropriation, irreparable damage to ecology, loss of biological diversity, deforestation, large-scale land-slides in mountainous areas of the country, flooding, massive displacement of indigenous and tribal people from their habitat and so on.
11. Along with this, efforts to superimpose a pan-Indian policing in violation of the provisions of the State list of the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution and further strengthening of the draconian NIA and UAPA including the plan of opening NIA Office in each State by 2024 coupled with amendments to Criminal Laws intended to bulldoze the entire criminal law structure, Digital Personal Data Protection law ensuring fascist control over digital media and snatching away people’s right to privacy and freedom of expression, etc. are in full swing. In the name of fighting terror, many ideas such as “one data, one entry”, “one nation, one police uniform” and so on were also put forward. While almost all countries following parliamentary democracies are still pursuing the ballot system and have discarded the use of Electronic Voting Machine (EVM) due to the plausible insertion of malware in it, especially in the context of dangers associated with the advent of AI, Modi government is adamantly pursuing EVMs. And even the namesake autonomy of Election Commission is being taken away by removing the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court from the 3-member Committee for selecting it and thereby decision of electing Election Commission ultimately vesting with the Prime Minister.
12. Those who are exposing or questioning the majoritarian, Brahmanical, corporate-fascist agenda of the regime are stamped as anti-national and traitors and are subjected to draconian black laws such as UAPA and colonial-era sedition laws. Even writers and intellectuals who express their criticism, dissent and difference regarding the policies of Modi regime and crony capitalists close to it are targeted and put in jail. Hindutva fascist goons have no qualms even to assassinate renowned cultural activists and scholars like Pansare, Dabholkar, Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh. Central investigating agencies such as ED and CBI are unleashed on opposition leaders who cannot be tamed or won over through money power. However, those facing corruption charges are let off the moment they join BJP or become fascist allies. As the fascist regime is increasingly exposed, cases are imposed on even opposition chief ministers. No doubt, India under RSS/BJP has become a typical neofascist regime where even the basic democratic right to free expression and right to dissent are non-existing.
13. In this fascist situation, there will not be even minimum space for raising political issues or the organisational freedom that are essential for taking up the basic questions concerning the sustenance and livelihood of the working and oppressed people. Hence the immediate and most urgent task of the people is to remove the fascists from power at the earliest. In other words, even to carry forward the struggles of the working class and oppressed based on their political demands, defeating fascism is indispensable. In the specific case of RSS fascism which has its tentacles spread across the entire macro and micro spheres of India, and having control over both state power and street power, this task is tortuous and complex especially when along with BJP, RSS is also capable to use other political parties for its agenda. Hence, at this critical juncture and especially when the revolutionary Left lacks the organisational strength to defeat the RSS/BJP fascists, its task together with that of all anti-fascist and democratic forces in 2024 General Election is to take all efforts to isolate BJP and its allies and defeat them and thus remove RSS fascism from power at the earliest.
14. Accordingly, the crucial task of the anti-fascist democratic forces in this Parliament Election is to take all efforts and appropriate steps for maximum consolidation of anti-RSS/BJP votes by carefully taking necessary steps to avoid a division of anti-fascist votes. A resolute anti-fascist campaign ranging from the macro all India level to the micro level of parliamentary constituencies appealing people to use their voting right so to isolate and defeat fascists needs to be initiated by all Progressive-Democratic and like-minded forces. Even though non-fascist parties belonging to the India Alliance, with their roots in corporate capital are essentially neoliberal and are implementing neoliberal policies wherever and whenever they are in power, without being a part of such alliance, and consistently upholding their ideological-political independence of upholding the position of the workers and all oppressed, the Left-Democratic forces can tactically use their votes so as to defeat the fascist candidates.
15. However, on account of the ideological-political weakness of the constituents of India Alliance, even if they manage to defeat BJP, the threat of fascist come-back with the support of the most corrupt corporate capital, Brahmanical upper-castes and reactionary bureaucracy cannot be ruled out. Therefore, while resorting to the tactical step of defeating fascism by voting for the candidate who can defeat BJP, the Left-Democratic forces are bound to move forward independently organising the working class and building up movements of all oppressed with the long-term perspective evolving a People’s Alternative against neoliberal corporatisation and Manuvadi Caste system that form the material and ideological basis of Indian fascism.
16. In brief, with regard to the immediate task of overthrowing RSS/BJP fascism, CPI (ML) Red Star appeals to all who stand for the Peoples’ Right to Live and who uphold Democracy, Secularism, and Caste-based Reservation as enshrined in the Indian Constitution to rise up in solidarity with all anti-fascist democratic forces, to take all efforts according to the concrete situation in each State not to divide the anti-fascistvotes and resolutely strive forward to defeat RSS-BJP in the General Election.
Defeat Fascist RSS/BJP!
Save Constitution, Democracy, Secularism, and Caste-based Reservation!
Build-up a People’s Alternative Against Neoliberal Corporatisation!
Strive for Annihilation of Caste System!
Fight Against Islamophobia!
Central Committee
CPI (ML) RED STAR
Printed and Published by Comrade P J James, on behalf of the Central Committee, CPI (ML) Red Star
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