Independence Day Celebrations Become a Farce under Fascism!
Overthrowing RSS Fascism is Way for Achieving Freedom!
When there is a fundamental disconnect between the intended purpose of a celebration and the concrete realities on the ground, it becomes meaningless and a farce. In India, for instance, in a situation of widespread poverty and joblessness amid deep-rooted social divisions, oppression and alienation including massive exclusion and disenfranchisement of the oppressed Muslims and Dalits, and where dissent, freedom of speech and independent opinion are stamped as treason, even the so called “formal independence” becomes an illusion. This is the Indian situation as the 79th Independence Day celebrations are held on 15 August 2025. In this context, it is worth remembering the apprehensions regarding the survival of India as a Democracy raised by Dr Ambedkar at the time of the adoption of the Constitution in 1950.
Today, India has become a typical case of 21st century fascism both in content and form and in all its manifestations. The BJP that rules the country today is a political tool of RSS, the largest and longest-running fascist organisation in the world. All institutions of the State are in the fascist grip. The parliament has become an edifice or a mere spectator, even as policy decisions are dictated by saffron think-tanks and in the board rooms of crony capitalism defined as unholy nexus between corporates and the far-right regime. Even the judiciary, which is bound to uphold the Constitution, democracy and freedom, appears as oblivious to the toxic ground realities, when the fascist regime is undermining the character and structure of the Constitution through various constitutional and administrative moves pertaining to citizenship, secularism, election, reservation, democratic rights, federalism, etc.
It is not intended here to go into a detailed analysis of all these. Along with usual “Viksit Bharat”, while this year’s Independence Day celebrations are held under the theme “Naya Bharat”, more than 40% of the country’s wealth belongs to just one percent of the super-rich and billionaire section, even as India has become a ‘citadel of poverty’ with more than half of the world’s ‘absolute poor’, majority of whom belongs to Dalits and Minorities, especially Muslims. At the same time, keeping both State power and street power under its control, the RSS is engaged in its maddening pace towards a majoritarian Manuvadi Hindu Rashtra in which Muslims will be second class citizens and Dalits and women as subhuman as per “Sanatan” or Manusmriti.
As both Modi regime and Sangh Parivar together with ‘Godi media’ are using this year’s Independence Day to ‘promote patriotic fervour among citizens, and celebrate Operation Sindoor victory’, we are again forced to recollect that during anti-British struggle, projecting itself as a cultural organisation and defending its “cultural nationalism”, the RSS was abstaining from Indian Independence Movement and the political task of fighting colonialism altogether. Even after transfer of power, there is no concrete evidence showing any change in this imperialist servility of RSS. Rather, fascism in India today is surging ahead keeping it’s links with global corporate-neofascist centres through its innumerable overseas extentions and affiliates.
To be precise, therefore, the arduous struggle for true independence including freedom from both political-economic hegemony of internationalised corporate capital and social tyranny imposed by most inhuman casteism and majoritarian Hindutva is arduous and prolonged one. And, the primary and immediate task for achieving this is the overthrow of the fascist regime. As such, what requires is strengthening of the antifascist movement together with the struggle for democracy, freedom and personal liberty, secularism, livelihood, employment and above all the abolition of the most inhuman Manuvadi caste system which is the core ideological base of Indian fascism.
P J James
General Secretary
CPI (ML) Red Star
New Delhi
14 August 2025
