As part of a renewed effort to build our international relations, the aim of which is to put Italian comrades in touch with the most advanced points of view and analysis developed by communists, socialists and anti-capitalists from all over the world, we publish a long interview with PJ James, General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (ML) Red Star.

We believe that the extraordinary richness and analytical depth of his answers can offer useful insights for understanding the current situation of a country, India, whose developments will have a profound impact on the future of Asia, and therefore of the world.SS

The impression one gets, observing the evolution of the Indian political framework from the outside, is that of a rapid transformation of the country in an authoritarian direction, driven by the Sangh Parivar galaxy of which Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP party is a filiation. How does this evolution manifest itself in the concrete life of the country?

Since 2014, under the BJP government led by Narendra Modi, India, the world’s most populous country, has been a typical example of 21st-century fascism or neofascism, i.e. fascism under neoliberalism which, of course, is not a true copy of classical fascism. The BJP, the world’s largest political party that leads the Indian regime, is a political tool of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), the largest and longest-running fascist organization in the contemporary world. With its countless extensions and overseas affiliates such as the HSS (Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh), the VHP (Vishwa Hindu Parishad) and others, which fall under the great umbrella of the “Sangh Parivar” (Family of the Sangh), the RSS has extended its tentacles to 156 countries around the world. While the centenary celebrations of the RSS are taking place in India with the full support of the Modi regime, it has reportedly reached the goal of 100,000 shakhas (sections) across India.

The founding of the RSS in 1925 was contemporary with the classical fascism associated with both Mussolini and Hitler, and maintained close ties with them throughout the 1920s and 1930s. In this sense, the RSS represents the only fascist organization in the world with a historical continuity that goes from the colonial period to the neocolonial-neoliberal phase of imperialism. With its ultimate goal of establishing a majority Brahmanical Hindu Rashtra (Hindu nation), the “cultural nationalism” of the RSS, since its very inception, has been the camouflage of extreme subservience to Britain, when India was its colony, and dependence on the United States in the period of post-war neocolonialism. In other words, the RSS was never part of the anti-colonial struggle and, after Britain’s formal withdrawal in 1947, the RSS conceded its absolute allegiance to US imperialism. Like its Zionist counterparts, the extreme right subservient to international monopoly capital represented by the RSS also exercises a flourishing lobbying activity in the United States, through the Republican-Hindu Coalition, Overseas Friends of BJP and other structures.

The demonstrations of RSS fascism in India are truly horrible. The entire political, economic, administrative, judicial, military, cultural and educational sphere of India is in the fascist grip of the RSS. And state power is not enough: much like Mussolini’s blackshirts and Hitler’s brownshirts, the RSS thugs (also called Sanghi or Saffron) control street power in India. To be precise, the entire micro and macro sphere of Indian society today is under the firm grip of RSS fascism. When RSS thugs unleash terror, including lynching “untouchable” Dalits and minority religious communities, especially Muslims and Christians, law enforcement agencies often remain inert bystanders, when they do not openly support fascists. Political decisions are dictated by neoliberal centers (the IMF-World Bank-WTO trio) or taken in the offices of the RSS and in the boardrooms of the most corrupt monopoly billionaires, directly connected with the fascist regime through the most sordid constraints, while the parliament remains an empty shell or a mere spectator. While the Modi regime promotes India as the “Mother of Democracy”, freedom of speech and expression are restricted under the guise of national security and through draconian laws.

The government’s discriminatory policies against the Muslim minority, which, it should be remembered, in India numbers over two hundred million people, are becoming increasingly evident. How do these discriminations manifest themselves and what forms of contrast are developing on the part of the Indian democratic forces?

According to the most recent estimates, out of 1,470 million inhabitants in India, 202 million are Muslims and 32 million are Christians. According to Hindutva, or “political Hinduism,” which constitutes the central ideology of the RSS, the number one enemy of the Hindu nation is Muslims, the second is Christians, and the third is Communists. It is revealing that Golwalkar, the main leader of the RSS who took over the leadership in 1940, was at the time an admirer of the anti-Semitism of German fascism, including the Nazi method of “purifying” society of so-called “inferior races”, mainly Jews. And Golwalkar suggested the same Nazi method as a good example for India to solve the “Muslim question.” More to the point, while US-led imperialism has adopted Islamophobia (along with the usual anti-communism) as the ideological basis of post-Cold War neo-fascism, for the RSS Islamophobia has been the ideological foundation since colonial times.

Since 2014, when the RSS, through its political instrument BJP, took the reins of the Indian regime, the structure and character of the Indian Constitution have been systematically weakened through the introduction of religion as a criterion for Indian citizenship. For example, the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) of 2019, for the first time, enshrined the selective position of denying Muslim migrants access to Indian citizenship. Now, after transforming the Electoral Commission into an appendage and a flexible instrument of the executive (Modi regime), millions of Muslim voters are being removed from the electoral rolls under the so-called Special Intensive Revision (SIR), thus systematically depriving them of the right to vote. In continuity with the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 (destruction of a mosque in Ayodhya by a mob of Hindu activists, an event that triggered serious interreligious violence in India, Ed.), the Modi regime built the temple of Rama (the main Hindu deity) on the very site of the demolished mosque, and Modi, as prime minister, he assumed the role of high priest there. Now, across India, mosques and Muslim settlements are being demolished and erased with the support of the fascist regime and its police, while the judiciary remains silent. Those who protest are imprisoned using anti-sedition laws. And all the constitutional protections guaranteed to Muslims are progressively removed through stigmatization, deprivation of political rights and denial of citizenship. Although the protests emerge in various forms, the Modi regime represses them with extreme harshness, through repressive laws.

Our Party is at the forefront of ongoing campaigns and protests against RSS fascism in a number of ways. As part of this, on December 6, 2025 (the anniversary of the demolition of the Babri Masjid), we held a National Conference Against Fascism RSS together with organizations from Muslim and Dalit oppressed communities, and the Party, alongside its long-term strategic tasks, is taking up this struggle against fascism as an immediate task in today’s India.

How do you assess the impact of the recent economic and labour market reforms led by the Modi government on the urban and rural working classes?

India has about 650 million workers distributed between agriculture (41%), industry (26%) and services (33%). Unemployment is very high, even among young people (aged 18–30), and exceeds 10%. Of the total workforce, more than 94% fall into the informal/unorganized category. In addition, globalization, liberalization and privatization under neoliberal corporatism are pushing more and more workers towards precarization and undeclared work.

With the intensification of far-right neoliberal policies since 2014, Modi’s pro-monopoly regime, illicitly in cahoots with the most corrupt crony capitalists and junior corporate partners from imperialist countries, has systematically stripped the Indian working class of all the rights hard-won through decades of struggle. For example, since colonial times India had a series of labor laws guaranteeing minimum wage, 8-hour workday, employment guarantee and social security, which received further reinforcement under the developmentist state by Nehru, as part of the “welfare state” that US-led imperialism maintained as an ideological weapon against communism until the 1970s. However, the collapse of the Keynesian welfare state in the 1970s and the subsequent adoption of neoliberalism, which conferred unlimited freedom on monopoly capital, also had repercussions in neocolonial India, leading to its complete integration into the flows of international finance capital.

One of the effects was the imposition by the Modi regime of the notorious labor reforms, in the form of four labor codes that completely replaced the 44 laws inherited from the “Nehruvian model.” This measure completely liberalized the Indian labor market according to IMF-World Bank directives, making India compliant with the requirements of “easy of doing business” and “favorable to investors” (i.e. multinationals). As a result of the internationalization of capital and the consequent new international division of labor, including the global relocation of production, India, with its inexhaustible labor force, has become one of the cheapest sources of production for multinational corporations and their subordinate Indian partners such as Adani, Ambani, Tata, Birla, etc. This has also led to an unprecedented extraction of surplus value and a super-exploitation of the Indian working class, increasingly driven towards unprotected undeclared work.

The effect of the rapid global progress of so-called “frontier technologies”, including digitalisation, robotisation and artificial intelligence, on the Indian working class is that it is becoming increasingly disorganised and submerged, with no distinction between urban and rural society. In addition, due to the corporatization of agriculture led by the WTO, which leads to the expropriation of farmland and the abandonment of the countryside, India is experiencing one of the largest internal migrations in history, in which more than 100 million workers without means of subsistence are forced to survive in the underground economic sectors and migrate to urban centers, crowding into ever-expanding slums. Of course, as a consequence of the increasing integration with the international financial economy, the productive sphere is also relatively stagnant in India while the speculative sphere thrives, leading to international reports that indicate India as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

How is the political framework described here affecting the survival of the caste system in Indian society? What movements are developing within it for the destruction of the caste system?

The caste system is a peculiarity of South Asia in general and, more specifically, of India. India’s caste system is the world’s most inhumane social institution, treating the vast majority of India’s working people as “subhuman,” meaning they are even below animals in terms of dignity. The system divides people into four castes: the Brahmins (the divine or priestly class, superior to all others, almost on a par with God), the Kshatriyas (the warrior class from which kings come and who must serve the Brahmins), the Shudra class (made up of merchants and businessmen) and the Dalits, who are the “untouchables” and are forced to serve the other castes through unpaid and bonded labor, always keeping an established distance from them. The Indian caste system is both the ideological and material basis of the fascism of the RSS, which identifies the Indian nation itself (Hindu nation) with the caste system. According to Manusmriti, the ideological reference text of the RSS, untouchable Dalits and women are subhuman and deprived of any human rights. Today, Dalits include agricultural workers, informal workers, manual waste removal workers, sewer workers, rag pickers, and other manual and unskilled workers. According to caste rules or the Manu code, Dalits cannot own land, wealth, education, art, literature and must remain on the margins of society.

With the emergence of the anti-caste movement and the sincere efforts of the greatest leader of the Dalits, Dr. Ambedkar, some principles and actions have been included in the Indian Constitution, such as caste-based reservation in public workplaces and the provision that untouchability is a criminal offense, etc. However, the caste system is still entrenched in Indian society and Dalits, with a few exceptions, are always on the margins of society, although the fascist RSS-BJP parties (and other non-fascist ruling class parties, including some left-wing parties) are trying in every way to co-opt and assimilate Dalit organizations and their leaders into the support base of Hindutva (i.e. political Hinduism) and to secure electoral advantages. Despite reservations, only about 1% of bureaucratic posts are still accessible to Dalits (Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, as referred to in the Indian Constitution), while they make up almost 25% of the Indian population. Brahmins, on the other hand, who make up 3% of the population, occupy more than 60% of high-level bureaucratic posts and, including the Kshatriyas, the top 10% of the population hold 80% of top bureaucratic positions. Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Muslims, Christians and Dalits, who together make up about 90% of the population, have only 20% of government posts.

Of course, it is necessary to state self-critically that the Indian communists, from the right-wing reformists to the left-wing sectarians, have totally failed to approach the caste question in the correct Marxist perspective. Although he had only second-hand information about Indian society from colonial writings and documents, Marx had specifically mentioned the Indian caste system in almost all of his works, such as articles for the New York Daily Tribune, For the Critique of Political Economy, Capital, and, above all, in the Ethnological Notebooks, which, written between 1880 and 1882, they were compiled and edited by Lawrence Krader in 1972, in which Marx provided a detailed analysis of non-Western societies. Also with regard to his analysis of the “mode of production”, Marx believed that the “capitalist mode of production” he had elaborated for Europe was not applicable to non-European societies. According to Marx, “there is no general path of development prescribed for all nations.” It is in this context that Marx conceptualized the “Asian mode of production” (formerly “Eastern despotism”) with reference to Indian caste-marked society. And for more than a decade, from 1919, the Comintern also held this Marxist position with respect to non-European societies. In line with this, the Communist Party of India (ICC), founded in 1920, also held the same position, as evidenced in the Draft Platform for Action published in 1930, in which the CPI unambiguously stated that even minimal democracy in India requires the abolition of caste.

However, the Leningrad discussions of 1931 abandoned that Marxist understanding and, under pressure from Soviet Russia, neglected the specific and concrete realities of oppressed peoples in non-Western societies. On the contrary, under the pretext of an exclusive ideological focus on class struggle, they adopted a rigid and mechanistic approach, including a unilinear position on historical development, rejecting the socio-economic structures peculiar to non-Russian societies, including the Indian caste system and the Marxian conceptualization of the Asian mode of production, the solid basis of which, according to Marx, it is caste. When the Comintern began to propagate this Russian position in total disregard of the earlier Leninist slogan “proletarians and oppressed peoples of the world unite”, adopted at the Second Congress of the Comintern on Lenin’s initiative, Mao Zedong adopted a different approach, in line with the concrete reality of China, leading to the success of the Chinese Revolution in 1949. On the contrary, under the influence of the Soviet Union and the British Communist Party, instead of developing a class analysis appropriate to Indian caste-marked society and thus applying Marxism-Leninism to India’s concrete conditions, the CPI abandoned the Marxist caste approach and rejected Marx’s Asian mode of production, as outlined in its 1930 Draft Platform. As a result, the CPI also abandoned its own unity with the initiatives of the oppressed castes of Ambedkar, prompting it to refer to communist leaders as “Brahmin boys”.

This Eurocentric orientation on the part of the CPI, which alienated it from the vast masses of the oppressed castes that make up India’s working class, caused serious damage to the communist movement over time. The mechanical copying of Russian or European class analysis in the Indian context was one of the most serious mistakes. For example, in India the division of labor, the wage structure, the extraction of surplus value, the ownership of the means of production including land, etc., are determined by caste. More precisely, in India caste and class are inseparable, and any class analysis that ignores caste relations is mechanistic and meaningless. However, there are still Marxist scholars who maintain that caste is part of Indian feudalism, and others who believe that caste will disappear with the progress of modernity, i.e. that the material basis of caste will disappear with the end of feudal relations. The revisionist communist parties, which share or have shared power with the ruling class parties at the state level, regard caste as part of the superstructure. These mechanistic Marxists do not understand that caste is capable of traversing social systems and has even migrated to Silicon Valley. In many Indian higher education institutions, research centers and scientific institutions, untouchability, caste discrimination, killings and suicides of Dalit students and researchers are recurring news. Contrary to the predictions of mechanistic materialists, despite the “progress of modernity”, the caste is firmly seated on the throne of Indian scientific institutions.

It is in this context that, since 2011, our Party has adopted, in its program, the annihilation of the caste system as a strategic task of the People’s Democratic Revolution in India, as an indispensable prerequisite for the transition to socialism. It was the first communist party in India to do so. The Party Programme states: “The mechanistic approach that evaluates the Indian caste system as a superstructural phenomenon and the inability to understand how it is intertwined with the Indian social formation across both structure and superstructure, has rendered the Communist Party unable to lead the struggles of both the working class and the oppressed, and thus to establish its own leadership in the struggle for independence.” It is in this perspective that the Party, in 2011, took the initiative to form the Movement for the Abolition of Castes. The Party Program, updated at the 2022 Twelfth Congress, further states: “The People’s Democratic State will take concrete steps for the abolition of the inhumane caste system, eradicating all forms of untouchability, oppression and caste discrimination in all areas of life. All caste practices and reactionary institutions must be suppressed and those responsible for such crimes will be punished…”

To what extent do you think that the caste system also influences the internal life of democratic forces and the left?

It is evident that not only democratic forces, but also communists regularly practice the caste system and untouchability in their social and family relationships, including marriage. In India, people of the upper castes, especially Brahmins and Kshatriyas, use the caste surname as “social capital” in their relationships, as those who belong to the upper and elitist castes automatically receive veneration, respect, and preference in all spheres. Logically, those who belong to Dalits and lower castes usually do not reveal their caste for fear of the social ostracism they face.

For this reason, at the last congress of our Party a resolution was also passed to abolish the caste surnames of all members of the Central Committee, starting with me. And it is very revealing that a section that advocates the traditional and mechanistic approach to caste has left our party and formed another organization, which later became a member of the international ICOR network. There is no doubt that India is a society marked by castes in all their manifestations, and revolution in India is only possible through the breaking of caste barriers.

This year, India announced that it had surpassed Japan in terms of GDP, becoming the world’s fourth-largest economy. Despite the fact that it is fully among the so-called BRICS countries, competition with China and growing tensions with the Muslim world have pushed India to an increasingly close embrace, albeit amidst a thousand contradictions, with the US and Israel. Is there a widespread consensus in society for these choices?

Contrary to the claims of the Modi regime, according to the IMF’s April 2026 World Economic Outlook, India’s nominal GDP is estimated at $4.15 trillion, placing it behind the United Kingdom ($4.26 trillion) and Japan ($4.38 trillion). As a result, Japan is the world’s fourth-largest economy, while India is the sixth. It is said that statistics measured by experts are not experienced by people. This is true in the case of GDP measurements in India. Even if India surpasses Japan in terms of GDP, this would not make any qualitative difference to India’s population, the world’s most populous country with 1.470 million inhabitants. In fact, while Japan’s GDP per capita in 2025 was about $36,000 according to the IMF, India’s was only about $2,800. In fact, in the GDP per capita ranking, India’s position is among the lowest, ranking 146th in the world, far below other South Asian countries, although India is their “big brother”. In addition, 40% of India’s wealth produced in a year is absorbed by the richest 1% and corporate billionaires, including crony capitalists and corporate junior partners such as Adani and Ambani, making India one of the most unequal countries in the world. Of course, the caste system we were talking about earlier plays a dominant role in perpetuating this terrible inequality.

For example, according to the World Bank’s definition of “absolute poverty” (a situation in which people live on less than $2.15 a day), out of some 700 million “absolute poor” or “extremely poor” in the world, more than 50% are in India, leading many analysts to call India a “stronghold of global poverty.” The severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food essential for survival, safe drinking water, sanitation, health, housing, education and high infant mortality rates, is the very essence of the so-called “Mother of Democracy” promoted by the fascist regime in India. It is revealing that the neoliberal centers and the Western media are reluctant to expose these harsh realities, as the Indian ruling classes have opened every sector of the Indian economy to the uncontrolled plunder of imperialist capital. Moreover, for US-led imperialism, India is a launching pad for its manoeuvres against China and a junior strategic partner of the US in the geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific.

As for the China-led BRICS group, despite being a founding member, in line with the extreme servility of the RSS to the United States, the Modi regime constantly clings to the layers of Yankee imperialism. While China uses the BRICS as a tool against the US in the Sino-US contradictions, Modi has already given his firm assurance to Trump that India will not be part of the de-dollarization process initiated by China in the BRICS. Materially, India is incapable of taking an independent position on many international issues. For example, although the United States continues to be the world’s largest military machine, in the productive sphere and frontier technologies China’s state monopoly capitalism has already surpassed the United States. Through the “New Silk Road”, China has become the largest exporter of capital as well as the largest exporter of goods. India is a long way from China in this regard. For example, while more than 30% of global manufacturing output belongs to China, the predominantly speculation-driven U.S. economy has less than half of China’s industrial output. On the other hand, the so-called “rapidly developing” India has an industrial production equal to only about a tenth of that of China. In frontier technologies, including digitalization and artificial intelligence, India is totally dependent on China for hardware and the United States for software. In addition, India imports 90% of its crude oil. On the instructions of the United States, India had already stopped importing oil from Venezuela and Iran. Later the United States allowed the import from Russia. Later, sanctions were also imposed on Russian oil imports. Now Modi is appealing to the United States to ease sanctions on crude oil imports from other countries. As a result of all this, India’s domestic oil prices are skyrocketing and the Indian rupee, pegged to the dollar, has plummeted to an all-time low.

The undeclared alliance between Trump, Netanyahu and Modi has become even more evident in the context of the US-Zionist aggression against Iran. It is evident that the main ideological enemy of Hindutva is Islam. As a result, Islamophobia forms the solid ideological basis of the dangerous Evangelical-Zionist-Hindutva alliance (Trump-Netanyahu-Modi trio). As in the case of the US-India strategic alliance, the Modi regime maintains close military, infrastructure and trade treaties with Israel. And, as made evident by the Modi regime’s use of the Mossad’s notorious “Pegasus” spying software against political opponents in India, investments in the Israeli port of Haifa by Adani, Modi’s closest crony capitalist, etc., the neoliberal-neofascist period saw close integration between Zionist Israel and Hindutva India. And while many African-Asian and Latin American countries, including South Africa and Brazil, founding members of the BRICS, are strongly condemning the illegal US-Zionist aggression against Iran, the Modi regime has significantly avoided any statement of condemnation. This is a U-turn by India under RSS fascism, as India was a firm ally of the Palestinian people until the onset of neoliberalism in the post-Cold War period. Mahatma Gandhi, although a bourgeois liberal political leader and considered the Indian “Father of the Nation” (assassinated by Godse, a former member of the RSS and an element of the Sangh Parivar, in 1948), was firmly opposed to the US-UK imposition of a Zionist state on the Palestinians, even when the Stalin-led Soviet Union was the first country to recognize it. However, all this now belongs to history. Of course, opposition parties, communists and all democratic forces, including the CPI(ML) Red Star, are strongly opposing this betrayal of India’s previous pro-Palestinian stance by the Modi regime. At the same time, the fascist regime is repressing such stances in various ways.

In what forms is anti-imperialist resistance manifesting itself in your country, and what role do communists play within it?

In general, the anti-imperialist political orientation, despite the Indian regime’s heavy dependence on US imperialism, is weak today. When the RSS remained a staunch supporter of colonial Britain, the Indian people, led by many political forces with different ideological orientations, had a glorious history of anti-imperialist struggle. Following the US-led “decolonization” in the post-war period, colonialism turned into neo-colonialism and Britain was forced to transfer power to the Indian state, led by the Indian National Congress, then the main party of the ruling class. However, in the post-war phase of US-led neo-colonialism, and mainly because of the ideological-political delays suffered by the communists and their weakness in understanding the workings of “pernicious and insidious” neocolonialism, anti-imperialist sentiment has relatively weakened in India. Several parties of the depoliticized left have even become apologists for imperialism in the neoliberal-neofascist period. In this context, we consistently organize resistance struggles and campaigns against the neoliberal-neofascist and anti-worker and anti-peasant policies of the Modi regime, in line with the diktats of the IMF-World Bank-WTO trio and other US-led agencies.

However, the main issue in the left in general concerns the concrete understanding of neoliberal imperialism in relation to the internationalization of capital. In this regard, when the German MLPD party put forward its thesis of the “new imperialism” in 2015, as Deputy Principal Coordinator of ICOR (the MLPD is the main coordinator), the CPI (ML) Red Star intervened by denouncing this erroneous view. For example, according to the MLPD, in addition to the existing Anglo-Saxon imperialist powers, Japan, Russia and China, as well as 12 other countries such as India, Indonesia, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iran, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico and Argentina would also become imperialists. We challenged this hypothesis by publishing arguments and counter-arguments in a 200-page book entitled “Polemics on New Imperialism” in 2018. If one accepts the MLPD’s hypothesis of the “new imperialism”, this is tantamount to stating that more than 90% of the world’s population lives in imperialist countries. This would render irrelevant and meaningless the strategy of the Anti-imperialist People’s Democratic Revolution in the Afro-Asian and Latin American countries, and the communist parties of these countries would have to be dissolved or revise their program directly towards the Socialist Revolution. This position of the MLPD represents a direct violation of the Leninist position that, in the present era, the world revolution comprises two currents, namely the Socialist Revolution in the imperialist countries and the People’s Democratic Revolution in the oppressed countries. On the basis of this theory, the MLPD has replaced the recognized slogan “Proletarians and oppressed peoples of the world, unite” with “Proletarians of the world, unite” on the ICOR website. After our intervention and following objections from other ICOR members, the Leninist slogan was reinstated, but the MLPD continued to support its own hypothesis of the “new imperialism”. As a result, despite being one of the founding members of ICOR, we are no longer active members of it. We have also already published many of our close debates with the MLPD. I mention this only to highlight the continuing and serious ideological differences among communists regarding the understanding and conceptualization of imperialism in the twenty-first century. Of course, this is a question that would require further study.

In recent years, the peasant movements and protests that have taken place in your country have had great visibility, even at the international level: what role has your party played in supporting them? What methods of action have you adopted?

From the beginning, the CPI(ML) Red Star has played an active role in the Peasants’ Movement against the three draconian agricultural laws, from their promulgation in September 2020 by the Modi government until their repeal in November 2021. The peasant sector of our Party, the All India Krantikari Kisan Sabha (All India Revolutionary Peasant Organization), was a component of the Peasants’ Movement that led the struggle.

When India was under the strictest lockdown during the Covid pandemic, it was under pressure from the WTO, more precisely under the provisions of the Agreement on Agriculture (AoA), that without any parliamentary discussion these agricultural laws were passed, as the deadline for compliance was September 30, 2020. As a result of the peasants’ struggle, the entire Capital Region was paralyzed.

The agricultural laws aimed to open up India’s vast agricultural sector to agribusiness multinationals, abolish public procurement, the minimum price of support (MSP) and, in the process, transform Indian agriculture into industrial agriculture, or what is termed the corporatization of agriculture. More precisely, these laws aimed to align Indian agriculture with the principles of free trade promoted by the WTO and imperialist powers such as the United States and the European Union and other international bodies. Thanks to unprecedented popular support, including that of Indians abroad, the fascist regime was forced to give in to the historic struggle of the peasants.

Your country has a rich and fruitful tradition of the left and communist. The state in which you reside, Kerala, continues to be a more “traditional” and reformist model of government of the Indian communist movement. How does your party stand with respect to this legacy? Do you think that the current fragmentation of the movement can, at least in part, be reduced to unity?

I will be brief on this complex issue, which nevertheless requires a thorough discussion. For reasons of time, I will limit myself to a brief exposition. The Indian communist movement has had a glorious tradition since its formation on October 17, 1920 in Tashkent, then part of the Soviet Union, with Mohamed Shafiq as its first secretary. Despite the great sacrifices of the communist cadres, part of the failure of the CPI to lead the anti-imperialist people’s democratic revolution, as already explained, is related to the inability to develop a concrete understanding of Indian society, particularly with regard to the caste issue.

In fact, the first communist government to come to power through elections was in Kerala, a federal state in India (of course, I must acknowledge the historic victory of the Italian Communist Party in the 1946 municipal elections in Italy). This victory of the CPI took place against the historical background of the long and heroic struggles against the caste system that preceded the communist movement in the Principality of Travancore (present-day Kerala) since the beginning of the twentieth century. As a result, all the workers and masses of the oppressed castes in the state united compactly behind the CPI, leading it to its historic victory in the 1957 Kerala Assembly elections, following the formation of the language states in the Indian subcontinent in 1956.

Following direct intervention by the CIA (see the book “A Dangerous Place” written by Patrick Moynihan, former U.S. ambassador to India and to the UN) and the so-called “Liberation Struggle” led by the Roman Catholic Church against the CPI government, the Congress-led central government dissolved that state government in 1959. However, under the influence of the Brahmanical caste system combined with the CPI’s surrender to Khrushchevian revisionism and links with the then British Communist Party, the CPI government in Kerala failed to fulfil all its electoral promises to the people. For example, on the eve of the state elections, the CPI declared that the hundreds of thousands of hectares of plantations illegally held by British companies in Kerala, in violation of the Indian Constitution and the country’s sovereignty, would be nationalized once in power. But once in government, the CPI ignored this promise, revealing its neocolonial dependence. Similarly, because of its inherent casteism, the land taken from feudal landlords through state-sponsored land reforms was not distributed to the Dalits, the true cultivators of the land, although the communist slogan was “land to those who work it.”

Over time, both the CPI and the CPI (M) (which arose from the former in 1964) have completely degenerated to assume positions of the ruling class, now applying neoliberal policies with a “more royalist than king” attitude compared to the other parties of the ruling class. The current CPI(M)-led government of Kerala is a typical example of this. For example, it was Pinarayi Vijayan, the CPI’s Kerala prime minister, who led the opening ceremony of the London Stock Exchange, a symbol of global financial speculation, on May 17, 2019, as part of attracting foreign investment through “Masala Bonds.” Soon after coming to power in 2016, Pinarayi appointed Gita Gopinath, a neoliberal economist at Harvard, as his economic adviser, who later became chief economist and deputy managing director of the IMF, a neocolonial instrument in which the United States still retains veto power. He has even resorted to disqualified global consulting firms such as KPMG and PwC, defined as “architects of multinational tax avoidance”, to develop proposals aimed at turning Kerala into a “showcase” of neoliberal corporatism.

The CPI(ML), born in 1969 against the revisionism of both the CPI and the CPI(M), adopted a sectarian position, advocating armed struggle as the only valid form of struggle. He also advocated the “Chinese way” as the only revolutionary way for India and other Afro-Asian and Latin American countries. Completely ignoring the penetration of global capital into agriculture and the countryside and the changes in land relations, the CPI(ML) totally neglected the neocolonial transformation of post-war India and defined the country as semi-colonial and semi-feudal. He also initially supported the Maoist theory of the “Three Worlds”, which he called “Soviet social-imperialism” more dangerous than US imperialism — a theory formulated by Mao in early 1974, following the visits of Kissinger (three times) and Nixon to Beijing and the subsequent entry of mainland China into the UN and the Security Council instead of Taiwan.

All these ideological-political confusions led to numerous splits in the CPI (ML). The CPI(ML) Red Star is also one of their achievements. Born as the Central Reorganization Committee (CRC), we have started a long process of self-critical evaluation of the entire communist movement both internationally and in our country. We support Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought as our ideology and reject “Maoism”, which we consider sectarian. We support the perspective that everything is constantly changing (or the law of impermanence that every phenomenon changes). According to our understanding, Marxism-Leninism must be developed through its concrete application to the specific conditions of countries, as Lenin asserted. We also believe that there is no “universal key” that applies to all societies. We are open to discussion and debate and want to learn from the experiences and opinions of others.

Some of our positions are available on our website: www.redstaronline.in, and on this basis we are constantly trying to connect with like-minded organizations. In India, from our experience, we have decided that unity or merger between parties is possible only on the basis of ideological-political unity on strategic issues such as imperialism, fascism, caste question, etc. Otherwise, we are in favour of united front activities based on a ‘common minimum programme’. At the same time, with regard to the immediate task of defeating fascism, tactical unity is also necessary with all anti-fascist forces, without however renouncing the long-term strategic interests of the communists, i.e. those of the working class and all the oppressed. (

What principles and objectives inspire your internationalist work?

In the current context there is no room for an International Communist Movement on the model of the former Comintern. There is no doubt that corporate finance capital, with its global reach, is unleashing a terrifying super-exploitation of the working class, unprecedented oppression of the world’s peoples, and hitherto unknown levels of plundering of nature. In the face of this, although the growing popular discontent manifests itself in various forms, the communists fail to have a coordinated initiative to adequately guide popular discontent, mainly due to ideological-political and organizational weaknesses. Despite this, the time has come to create an international platform capable of confronting imperialism and growing neo-fascism at the global level, even if the subjects participating in such a platform/forum/coordination may have different ideological orientations. At the same time, such coordinated efforts are also important to achieve greater ideological-political clarity on the functioning of finance capital both globally and in relation to the concrete conditions of countries under imperialism and neofascism in the 21st century.

At the same time, all paternalistic, supercilious and bureaucratic attitudes on the part of the various components participating in this coordination or platform must be consciously avoided. The imposition of the position or visions of one party on the others, or their presentation as the position of the entire forum, would make joint work difficult. While mutual consultation, exchange of views, and discussions on crucial issues are welcome, the final decision on country-specific issues should be left to that country’s parties or organizations. For example, the intertwined historical, political-economic, and cultural dimensions of Europe are fundamentally different from those of Asia, Africa, or even Latin America. Ignorance or denial of this fact can lead to reductive views on complex issues concerning Trumpism, Zionism, the Palestinian question, RSS fascism and the class character of regimes such as India’s, the understanding of what we call “imperialism with Chinese characteristics”, or even the equating of imperialism with fascism, resistance struggles against fascism, and so on.

In general, it can be said that the immediate task of communists and the left is to achieve ideological-political clarity on imperialism and fascism in the twenty-first century in general, and in relation to the concrete conditions of different countries. From this perspective, Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary parties and organizations must initiate bilateral and multilateral discussions to build broad coordination and anti-imperialist and anti-fascist movements, accompanied by a self-criticism of the failures and setbacks suffered by communists, while the structural crisis of the world imperialist system is intensifying.

The post India: Anti Fascism and Social Struggles. Interview with P J James, General Secretary of CPI(ML) Redstar appeared first on CPI(ML) Red Star.

Abandoning Marx’s Asiatic Mode of Mode of Production was a Fatal Mistake of Indian Communists!

P J James

Introduction

Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP) was conceptualized by Marx mainly in his writings on Asia, more specifically India, during the 1850s. Through AMP, Marx pointed out the incompatibility of European mode of production (social formation) and class analysis in the case of non-Western/non-European societies like India. To be specific, the theory of AMP suggested how India is run by an ‘elite’, ‘despotic’ ruling clique that directly expropriates surplus from village communities. Marx also tried to explain the absence of European model of feudalism or land ownership in India, and instead pointed out how an elite state class always runs the regime or the ruling system with specific linkage between agriculture and manufacturing based on socio-cultural relations whose “solid basis” being the Indian Caste system.

Of course, the theory of AMP has been one of the most controversial and hotly debated Marxist conceptualizations. Academic and scholarly debates on AMP among a whole set of Leftist scholars and Marxist historians, and a large body of writings on the concept are there in the public domain. However, and very revealingly, the Communist parties in India, ranging from the revisionists to the sectarians, including their entire cadres, are totally insulated or immune from this discussions and debates regarding AMP, as they are often taking place in the form an intellectual discourse. As such, this note is not for adding any new information to the theory of AMP, rather it  intends to point out two inter-related issues, viz., a) the context for the altogether abandoning of AMP by International Communist Movement (ICM) and Indian Communists, and b) the consequent failure on the part of Communists in accomplishing the revolutionary tasks according to the concrete conditions of caste-ridden Indian society.

Marx and Engels’ observation on Indian Caste system and conceptualization of AMP, are spread across German Ideology (1845-46), Articles on India in New York Daily Tribune (1853-61), Marx-Engels Correspondence (1852-62), Economic Manuscripts (1857-1859), Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Capital Vol.1 (1867), and even in the 454-page Ethnological Notebooks (which Marx compiled during 1880-82, edited by Lawrence Krader and printed by International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam in 1974). In the theory of AMP, Marx and Engels distinguished Asiatic production from all other pre-capitalist production forms. In fact, in the beginning, Marx was also using the generally accepted term “Oriental Despotism” popularized by French philosopher Montesquieu, to refer to the ruling system in Asia. However, it was in conformity with his historical-materialistic interpretation of society that Marx later modified Oriental Despotism as the theory of AMP. This was based on his understanding and analysis of production/class relations (or Oriental Despotism) with respect to the unique Indian caste system that acted as their “solid foundation”. Accordingly, surplus labor always belongs to the despotic class or the ruling class (often identified with the elite, upper, Brahmin caste in India) which has exclusive rights to extract surplus from peasants and toiling people in the form of a “tribute”, and irrespective of the changes in regime or political power, “the structure of the fundamental economic elements of society remains untouched…”

The AMP that did not fit in with the ‘European feudal model’ was also in conformity with Marx’s rejection of a “unilinear” theory of history, as Marx never suggested a “master-key” or “general path of development” applicable to all societies. After Marx and Engels, the Second International (1889-1916), on account of its Eurocentric and unilinear orientation, and inability to grasp the concrete social relations in non-European societies like India and China, often collapsed into a European model of slavery and feudalism, and tended to ignore or sideline AMP. However, while acknowledging Marx’s AMP in most of his analyses including in “What the ‘Friends of the People’ Are”, Lenin used it according to the concrete Russian situation through such terms as “semi-Asiatic” to characterize Russian monarchy and bureaucratic structure. Of course, till the completion of October Revolution, Lenin had little time to go into the details of Indian caste system and its link with Marx’s AMP. Other Russian leaders like Plekhanov had also embraced AMP, more or less in a way applicable to Russia. On the other hand, after the October Revolution, Lenin’s pre-occupation was with global anti-imperialist tasks in the epoch of imperialism. At the same time, Lenin’s modification of the earlier slogan, “Workers of the World, Unite” that was applicable to industrial capitalism (pre-monopoly capitalism) to “Workers and Oppressed Peoples of all Countries, Unite” at the Second Congress of the Communist International (Comintern) in 1920, was sufficient enough to include other oppressions including that from Indian caste system. For instance, Lenin’s emphasis that “labor in the white skin can never free itself as long as labor in the black skin is branded” in general highlighted the strategic significance of the struggle against caste, race, nationality, etc.

Leningrad Conference of 1931 and Banning of AMP from Comintern Documents

However, the 1920s witnessed intense debates within the Comintern about the nature of Asian societies, mainly regarding the course of Chinese Revolution, though the trend was firmly toward belittling relevance of the concept of the AMP. Soviet scholars have rejected AMP on the ground that the socio-economic formations of pre-capitalist Asia did not differ enough from those of feudal Europe to warrant special designation. Still the concept of AMP was there in the official documents, and during the 6^th Congress of the Comintern held in 1928, following the adoption of its “class against class” policy, the entire orientation was towards a disapproval of AMP as the Asian societies could be interpreted in class terms as “feudal” or “semi-feudal”. The understanding was that Eastern societies like China (and India) were essentially feudal and hence were amenable to the unilinear stage theory of Marxism as applicable to Europe. As such, everything began to be included in the broad framework of anti-colonial/anti-imperialist, anti-feudal struggles without any emphasis on AMP, though the concept still prevailed in the deliberations.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Academic Conference held in Leningrad or the so-called Leningrad Discussions in 1931 which focused on AMP, took a qualitative turn in this regard. In a way, it culminated in standardizing ‘Soviet historical materialism’. Amid differences from minority sections, the strong Soviet-backed anti-AMP faction that got majority in the Conference argued that the use of AMP as a separate category is a deviation from ‘official’ Marxist class approach, and a negation of the 5-stage theory – primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, and socialism/communism – of historical development. This was contrary to Marx’s unequivocal position as stated by him in 1877 that there is “no general path of development prescribed for all nations”. Differing with self-professed Marxists who stood for a “general path”, which is European path in essence, in his Letter to Vera Zasulich in 1871 itself, Marx had clearly stated that his analysis of capitalist mode of production was limited to the countries of Western Europe. It was against this perspective of Marx himself that, the Leningrad Conference rejected AMP interpreting it as a non-Marxist artificial category in direct opposition to standardized European/Soviet framework. This Soviet intervention to remove AMP has prompted critics to allege the close similarity between AMP and “despotic”/bureaucratic nature of USSR, and anti-Soviet theorists of the time also used AMP against Soviet Union itself.

Following this, the Comintern which came under the control of Soviet Union completely rejected AMP and depicting it as obsolete, expunged the entire concept of AMP from official Marxism altogether, and superimposed European feudal/semi-feudal model on Asiatic societies since 1931. To put it differently, according to Comintern, the ‘specific features’ of “feudalism” attributed to Asian countries were secondary or unimportant and hence did not fundamentally change the basic mode of production in them. At that time when almost all parties upheld the rejection of AMP by Comintern, Mao Zedong, while accepting the general framework of Comintern, diverged from the 5-stage European-model unilinear orthodoxy and began focusing on formulating Marxist praxis according to Chinese conditions. For instance, while Comintern insisted on focusing the urban working class, led by Mao, the Communist Party of China (CPC) after rejecting the Eurocentric 5-stage model, mobilized the peasantry in rural base areas as the primary force of Revolution in tune with the concrete Chinese situation. Interestingly, questioning this Chinese line, the “Soviet Marxists” had even labelled Mao’s strategy as “oriental” error. Thus, bypassing the traditional standardised capitalist development that has to precede socialism as put forward by the then Comintern, the CPC led by Mao proposed “New Democratic Revolution” for moving towards socialism.

Discarding AMP as Tragic Failure of the Indian Communists

Obviously, unlike the stance taken by CPC under the leadership of Mao, which enabled China to successfully complete revolution in 1949, the Communist leadership in India being tied to  Soviet policies, and often depending on the advice from British Communist Party, miserably failed in applying Marxism-Leninism as suited to caste-ridden Indian society. Of course, despite these limitations and while facing severe colonial repression through a series of conspiracy cases during the 1920s, the Indian Communists, in general, were pursuing the Comintern line, and based on the Leninist slogan “Workers and Oppressed peoples, Unite”, moved forward building up class and mass organisations uniting both workers and the oppressed. After all, the solid ideological-material basis of Marx’s AMP being caste, the theory was more specific to India. However, as noted above, influenced by the main orientation of Soviet-led Comintern in the 1920s, there was no ideological-political intervention on the part of CPI to apply the concept of AMP in India.  At the same time, even without reference to AMP, the CPI was seeking to mobilize the toiling masses including the oppressed “outcastes” (pariahs) into a united front against British imperialism and feudalism.

It was in consonance with this orientation that the “Draft Platform of Action” prepared by CPI in 1930, resolutely put forward the complete abolition of the Indian caste system with special relevance to Indian social structure.  For instance, the Draft Platform of Action, in its Part 2, Subsection D, says: “Emancipation of the Pariahs and the Slaves:  As a result of the rule of British imperialism in our country there are still in existence millions of slaves and tens of millions of socially outcast working pariahs, who are deprived of all rights. British rule, the system of landlordism, the reactionary caste system, religious deceptions and all the slave and serf conditions of the past throttle the Indian people and stand in the way of its emancipation. They have led to the result that in India, in the twentieth century, there are still pariahs who have no right to meet with all their fellow men, drink from common wells, study in common schools, etc…  The CP of India calls upon all the pariahs to join in the united revolutionary front with all the workers of the country against British rule and landlordism. The CP of India calls upon all the pariahs not to give way to the tricks of the British and reactionary agents who try to split and set one against the other the toilers of our country. The CP of India fights for the complete abolition of slavery, the caste system and the caste inequality in all its forms (social, cultural, etc.).”

It was this Draft Platform of Action with its clear-cut perspective on “complete abolition of … caste system” that served as the foundational ideological framework for CPI’s alliance with Dr. B R Ambedkar in the 1930s. This was based on a shared focus on bringing together workers and India’s oppressed castes (“depressed classes”) in a “united revolutionary front” against colonial oppression and Indian caste system. Though Ambedkar was not a Communist, his Independent Labour Party formed in 1936 (the same year when Ambedkar released “Annihilation of Caste”) became a left force working together with CPI. For instance, the CPI-affiliated All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) and Ambedkar’s Independent Labour Party jointly called a massive strike of over 100,000 workers in Bombay in 1938 to oppose the Trade Disputes Act of 1929. This merger of the politics of “caste and class” jointly addressed the demands of the workers and the need for abolition caste practices in factories. However, towards the end of the 1930s, the upper-caste orientation of the Communist leadership became pronounced, leading to serious ideological differences and accusations between Ambedkar and Indian Communists, the details (for instance, Communist leaders labelled Ambedkar a “stooge of imperialism” while Ambedkar branded Communists as ‘Brahmin boys”) of which are already available in the public domain.

In fact, the roots of this ideological difference between Indian Communists and Ambedkar lay deep in CPI’s withdrawal from its stand on “abolition of caste” as laid down in Draft Platform of Action in the context of the rejection of AMP by Comintern following 1931 Leningrad Conference. While the Comintern leadership was busy with the Anti-Fascist Struggle of the 1930s, there was a time-lag for the conclusions of the Leningrad Discussion, especially its ‘sectarian class approach’ to reach India and take on a dominant position among the Indian Communist leadership. To be precise, the worsening of CPI’s relation with Ambedkar was coterminous with the abandonment of the approach to “abolition of caste”, as laid down in the 1930 Draft Platform of Action. As already pointed out, following Comintern’s rejection of AMP and embrace of sectarian, unilinear “class only approach”, CPC led by Mao Zedong differed from it and took an independent position based on the concrete analysis of Chinese society. On the other hand, the CPI, on account of its heavy dependence on Comintern and Soviet advice, was unable to take an independent position on AMP, though the concept was of strategic importance and more suited to caste-ridden India than China.  While this operational independence enabled CPC to correct the mistakes made by Comintern and adapt Marxism-Leninism to Chinese conditions, due to CPI’s dependence on the then British communist leaders who interpreted Comintern guidelines, it failed to apply Marxism-Leninism according to the ground realities of caste-ridden India.

Conceptualization of Caste as Superstructural Phenomenon

As already stated, the context of the cordial relation between CPI and Ambedkar (symbolizing the strategic unity between workers and oppressed in the Indian context) during the 1930s was in accordance with the position in the 1930 Draft Platform of Action that unequivocally upheld “abolition of caste” as an integral part of the anti-imperialist People’s Democratic Revolution (PDR) in India. Conversely, this unity ended when the CPI embraced sectarian ‘caste-only’ approach following Comintern’s rejection of AMP, and the consequent freezing of the Draft Platform of Action by CPI. Thus, in gross disregard of India’s historical caste-class integration or inseparable link between caste and class, the mechanical and reductionist approach to caste as a superstructural phenomenon started dominating the Indian Communist movement since the early 1940s. Of course, though the usual condemnation of caste-oppression, caste-discrimination and caste atrocities had been there, the CPI documents kept a revealing silence on annihilation or abolition of the caste system. No doubt, this was a serious mistake that did immense damage to the cause of Indian revolution.

Meanwhile, rejection of AMP by Comintern and consequent CPI’s move away from its earlier approach to Caste, logically led the Communist leadership since the beginning of 1940s, to conceptualise caste as part of the superstructure, or as a remnant of pre-capitalist feudal relations, and hence secondary to class struggle. Put it differently, identification of caste with cultural superstructure rather than political-economic base also resulted in a mechanical text-copying of the European class analysis to India, which Marx himself had said in the 1870s as inapplicable to non-European societies like India. For instance, if we make a concrete analysis of the Indian society based on objective facts, it is easy to comprehend how ownership of wealth including land and means of production, division of labour, wage structure, surplus value extraction and profit accumulation together with cultural and political power, etc., are essentially caste-based. There are sections who still argue that caste solely belongs to (or a legacy of) Indian feudalism. Hence, they argue that the march of modernity and advancement of capitalism will lead to a withering away of caste altogether. Of course, then the question comes how caste is safely and comfortably sitting on the throne of modern industry, and in scientific and higher institutions of learning?

Thus, caste can easily cut across both economic base and cultural superstructure, it can cut through religions, can migrate from one socio-economic system to another or from feudalism to capitalism and even penetrate into modern science and technology, and even capable to migrate to Silicon Valley, the so-called citadel of modern technology. This inherent laws of motion of Indian Caste system, where both caste and class are inseparable and interpenetrating, point to a qualitatively different social formation (mode of production) compared to Western societies, where people belonging to the oppressed and lower castes form the real working class of India. It’s the greatness of Marx that, in spite of lacking personal and direct experience, or any first-hand information, and merely based on historical facts and secondary data from colonial documents and writings, he could clearly realise that the mode of production conceptualised by him in the context of Europe, was not applicable to India. And, it is in this context that he put forward Asiatic Mode of Production (AMP) with caste as its solid foundation. This ideological-theoretical breakthrough regarding India proposed by Marx, was totally abandoned by Communists leading to grave political setbacks suffered by them in course of time.

Conclusion

As stated at the outset, instead of adding any new theoretical formulation on AMP, the scope of this note is limited to bring to the attention of all genuine Communists the immense damage inflicted on them due to the abandonment of Marx’s AMP and consequent neglect of the task of annihilating Caste, the most inhuman social institution in human history. Contrary to the perspectives of both mechanical materialists and sectarians that economic transformation coupled with scientific-technological advancement will weaken Indian caste system, untouchability and casteism in all their manifestations are flourishing without any let up. On the other hand, in continuation of the mechanical approach towards caste and ideological antagonism towards Ambedkar, the Communist parties themselves have alienated from the caste-oppressed people who comprise vast majority of the real proletarians of India. Further, if the Communists and the oppressed caste-movement led by Ambedkar that prevailed in the 1930s, had unitedly proceeded ahead as a strategic united front of working class and the oppressed in consonance with theory of Marx’s AMP, the history of India would have been different now.

Today this issue becomes all the more significant in the fascist context when RSS, world’s largest and longest-running fascist organisation, is now engaged in a maddening pace towards its ultimate goal of establishing a majoritarian Hindu Rashtra. While Muslims are its declared enemy number one (as identified by Golwalkar), the ideological basis of Indian fascism is “Casteism” as laid down in Manusmriti, according to which the most oppressed Dalits are subhuman. Regarding this, it was Ambedkar who resolutely came forward uncompromisingly resisting Hindutva and its ideological foundation. As exemplified through such historic moves and initiatives as burning of Manusmriti on 25 December 1927, publishing of “Annihilation of Caste” in 1936, drafting of Indian Constitution against which RSS proposed Manusmriti, proposing the Hindu Code Bill for which RSS burned Ambedkar’s effigy along with that of Nehru on 12 December 1949, and so on, Ambedkar stands head and shoulders above everyone as the undisputed ideological enemy of casteism and Hindutva. As such, it is high time on the part of Communists to have a self-critical evaluation of their ideological clashes with Ambedkar. At this critical juncture, and to be precise, for taking up both the strategic task of caste-class annihilation, and immediate duty of overcoming RSS fascism, it is the solemn task of Communist revolutionaries in India to have an objective evaluation on the inherent ideological-political convergence between Marx’s AMP and Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste, as a precursor for relentless ideological-political offensive in the days ahead.

[This Article is an Edited Version of the Speech delivered in the Seminar on “Asiatic Mode of Production” Organised by Proletarian Samaran Team, Tamil Nadu in Chennai, on 15 February 2026]

The post Abandoning Marx’s Asiatic Mode of Mode of Production was a Fatal Mistake of Indian Communists! – P J James appeared first on CPI(ML) Red Star.

In Noida, Uttar Pradesh, several migrant workers who had come from West Bengal had been living for a long time. Among them were Sonali Bibi and Sweety Bibi from Birbhum district of West Bengal. Hearing them converse in the Bengali language, the Uttar Pradesh police detained them under the “Drive Out Bangladeshis” campaign. Pregnant Sonali, along with her husband Danish and their eight-year-old son, as well as Sweety Bibi and her two minor children, were handed over by the central government to the Border Security Force (BSF). Despite repeated protests by these people, the BSF pushed them back across the West Bengal–Bangladesh border and sent them into Bangladesh.

In this manner, many Indian citizens have been forcibly pushed into Bangladesh and continue to be pushed out. The Modi government ran into difficulty only when a Bangladeshi court identified them as Indian citizens and sent them to jail. Meanwhile, there was considerable uproar in West Bengal over this issue. On the appeal filed by Sonali Bibi’s father, Bhodu Sheikh, seeking the return of Sonali, her son, and her husband to India, the Calcutta High Court expressed a positive opinion, stating that Sonali is an Indian citizen and pregnant, and directed the central government to immediately make arrangements to bring her back to India. However, the Modi government stood by its decision, declared Sonali to be Bangladeshi, and refused to bring her back.

The Calcutta High Court then initiated contempt proceedings against the central government and once again ordered it to bring Sonali back from Bangladesh. Even then, the Modi government did nothing, treating the matter as an issue of prestige. The case then went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court directed the central government to secure the release of the pregnant Sonali Bibi from a Bangladeshi jail, bring her back to India, and ensure proper medical treatment for her.

One of Sonali’s relatives went to Bangladesh and tried to arrange bail for Sonali Bibi and Sweety Bibi. On humanitarian grounds, a Bangladeshi court granted bail to Sonali Bibi. However, her husband Danish, Sweety Bibi, and Sweety’s two minor children have still not been able to leave Bangladesh. After Sonali Bibi and her eight-year-old child returned, the West Bengal government ensured proper medical treatment for her. Sonali is very happy to be reunited with her family in Birbhum, but she remains deeply worried because her husband Danish and Sweety Bibi are still stranded in Bangladesh. Meanwhile, during the SIR process in Birbhum, since Sonali Bibi’s father Bhodu Sheikh’s name appeared in the 2003 voter list, Sonali’s name has also been updated in the new SIR list.

The Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, the self-proclaimed new “Hindu Hriday Samrat” Yogi Adityanath, has now resolved to outdo Assam in promoting this new model of Hindu Rashtra. During the CAA/NRC period in Assam, under labels such as “illegal migrant,” “infiltrator,” or “stateless foreigner,” people were arrested on mere suspicion, incarcerated in detention camps on a massive scale, tortured and harassed, and driven to the point of suicide. Now, under Yogi Adityanath’s leadership, Uttar Pradesh is moving in the same direction.

Proof of this is the recent order issued by the Uttar Pradesh government to all district collectors, instructing them to identify infiltrators, illegal migrants, and foreigners in their districts and to set up temporary detention centers in every district. Identified “illegal migrants/foreigners” are to be sent to these centers and then deported as per central government directions. At present, in districts such as Bahraich, Varanasi, Ghaziabad, Mirzapur, Aligarh, and others, the Uttar Pradesh police are engaged in a witch-hunt-like search for so-called Bangladeshi or Rohingya infiltrators. In this campaign, the UP police are particularly targeting Muslims, especially Bengali-speaking Muslims from West Bengal.

For now, the lapdog media has no other work except hunting for “Bangladeshis” and “Rohingyas” in Uttar Pradesh and using this as a pretext to spread hatred and division. Switch on the TV and one is confronted with hateful headlines such as: “Yogi’s Strike, Panic Among Infiltrators” or “Bulldozer Baba’s Terror, Wrath on Bangladeshi Infiltrators,” and so on. This endless hatred claimed the life of Ramnarayan Baghel, a Dalit migrant worker from Chhattisgarh who had gone to Kerala in search of work. In Palakkad district, saffron goons beat him so brutally on the suspicion of being Bangladeshi that he died. According to the doctors who conducted the post-mortem, they had never seen such brutality—every part of his body was broken. What is more, even in supposedly progressive Kerala, when saffron goons demanded proof of Indian citizenship and beat Ramnarayan, he was not speaking Bengali but Hindi-mixed Chhattisgarhi. Yet, the RSS goons killed him. Similarly, in Maharashtra, Odisha, and several other states, Muslim migrant workers from West Bengal have been killed by saffron gangs in this storm of hatred.

After Bihar, among the 12 states where the Election Commission has implemented SIR, Uttar Pradesh stands out as the state with the largest number of voters in the country. The real objective of SIR is not to identify fake voters but to identify migrant workers/citizens, strip them of their voting and civic rights, and promptly send them to detention centers for deportation—this is abundantly clear from the actions of the Uttar Pradesh government. The Chief Minister has justified this in the name of maintaining law and order, communal harmony, and above all “national security.”

According to the latest SIR figures from these 12 states, Uttar Pradesh has a total of 154 million voters. In the SIR process, the highest number of names deleted from the voter lists anywhere in the country—28.9 million—has been in Uttar Pradesh. Yogi Adityanath and his administrative officials surely know that the United Nations has classified Rohingya refugees among the most persecuted communities and has urged governments worldwide to take special measures for their protection. In any case, the number of Rohingya refugees in India is very small; most are in Bangladesh.

As long as the Awami League under Sheikh Hasina was in power in Bangladesh, the fascist Sangh Parivar had no concern about “Bangladeshi infiltrators,” because the Modi government enjoyed cordial relations with the Hasina government. But circumstances have changed. Since Hasina was ousted from power in Bangladesh and granted diplomatic asylum by the Indian government, the Sangh Parivar and its blind followers have been projecting infiltrators—especially Bangladeshi or Rohingya Muslims—as the cause of all problems in the country. In BJP-ruled double-engine states such as Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Delhi, Bihar, and Assam, all these maneuvers are driven by Islamophobia—hatred toward Muslims and an attempt to isolate them.

In Uttar Pradesh, under recent government instructions, 17 municipal corporations have been asked to identify Bangladeshi and Rohingya workers employed alongside sanitation workers and hand over lists to the police. The Yogi government has even abolished the Christmas holiday on December 25.

While this orgy of hatred and division is underway in Uttar Pradesh, the state ranks very low on the Human Development Index according to official data. Unemployment and poverty are at their peak. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, atrocities against Dalits/oppressed communities, women, and minorities are the highest in the state. Demolishing the homes of the poor, workers, and minorities with bulldozers; allowing upper-caste strongmen’s hooliganism to reach its zenith; and killing oppressed people and minorities in fake encounters and declaring the state “crime-free”—these are the Uttar Pradesh government’s crowning achievements. But none of this is visible to the petty journalists of the corporate-controlled lapdog media who survive on crumbs while worshipping Bulldozer Baba daily.

In Assam, the state government justified detention centers as necessary for securing the northeastern borders. But Uttar Pradesh shares an international border with only one country—Nepal. So which country is Uttar Pradesh threatened by? Relations with Nepal are stable, and Nepali citizens in Uttar Pradesh are not being harassed by saffron goons or the state government. Then why this hateful campaign against Bengali-speaking working people in Uttar Pradesh?

Across all BJP-ruled states, hateful and violent campaigns against Muslims and, more recently, Christians are intrinsic to their Hindu Rashtra project. On December 23, in Raipur, the capital of Chhattisgarh, the police forcibly picked up 120 elderly Muslims—many of them women—who had just returned from the Haj pilgrimage, from their homes at midnight, detained them all day, and subjected them to humiliating interrogation. The Muslim community in Raipur protested against this. Similarly, in every BJP-ruled state, there is a hunt for infiltrators—especially Bengali-speakers—leading to indiscriminate arrests and harassment.

In reality, this violent campaign to crush “infiltrators” under the guise of SIR has a larger objective: to conquer Bengal. With this aim, on the occasion of the RSS completing 100 years, its chief Mohan Bhagwat organized several conferences in Bengal, including public recitations of the Gita. According to him, everyone residing in India is Hindu, and there is no need to declare a Hindu Rashtra—India already is one. Mohan Bhagwat, who reveres Hitler, has even claimed that this time there will be “change” in Bengal and a pro–Hindu Rashtra government will be formed. That is why the political arm of the Sangh Parivar, the BJP, is aggressively targeting Bengali-speaking working people.

Among BJP Chief Ministers, there is intense competition over who can run the most violent Islamophobic campaign. In this race are Himanta Biswa Sarma, Devendra Fadnavis, Pushkar Dhami, Bhajan Lal Sharma, and Mohan Yadav. Vishnu Deo Sai is busy proving himself a “pure Sanatani,” while Rekha Gupta has mastered hate speech. And Yogi Adityanath is running just behind Modi in the race to become the supreme “Hindu Hriday Samrat.” Therefore, even after the Bengal elections, the fascist Sangh Parivar’s primary weapons—hatred, fear, and division—will continue unabated, whether in Uttar Pradesh or in whichever state faces the next election.

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Modi regime’s role as a corporate-facilitator together with its maddening pace towards a majoritarian Hindu Rashtra, is steadily assuming unprecedented far-right political-economic dimensions. A notable move in this direction, which is also perfectly in tune with the ‘cultural nationalism’ of RSS, has been the anti-Federal move towards simultaneous elections to Parliament and State Assemblies (also called “One Nation One Election” – ONOE). As is obvious, the objective behind this is the establishment of a unitary, highly centralised and majoritarian fascist regime and total demolition of whatever left of Federalism in the Indian Constitution. And, it is also inseparable from the ongoing efforts to super-impose one culture, one religion, one language, one police, and so on, at the pan-Indian level.

Along with opposition parties, all democratic forces and well-meaning people from all walks of life have come up against this fascist move, even as the ruling regime has justified simultaneous elections in terms of saving in cost and for avoidance of disruptions in development work due to elections. In September 2023, the government had appointed a High Level Committee headed by Ramnath Kovind, former President of India, to examine the whole issue of holding simultaneous elections for the Lok Sabha, State Legislative Assemblies and Local Bodies of all States. And, in spite of serious objections, the Modi government has introduced the 129th Amendment Bill for changing the basic character of the Constitution in relation to this. Now, this Bill which was introduced in Lok Sabha in December 2024, is referred to a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) for scrutiny.

Revealingly, two prominent neoliberal economists have recently appeared before the JPC in the guise of sharing valuable insights regarding ONOE. Of the two, one is the renowned Gita Gopinath, a naturalized American citizen. As a prominent American economist from Harvard, which plays a leading ideological role in shaping global neoliberal governance, Gita became the Chief Economist and later the First Deputy Managing Director of IMF, the key promoter of neoliberal corporatism, the hallmark of which is unfettered cross-border mobility of corporate capital through liberalisation/deregulation, privatization and globalisation. Revealingly, till her appointment as Chief Economist of IMF, during 2016-18, Gita was the Honorary Economic Advisor to Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, leader of the depoliticised CPI (M). She was also a Member of the Eminent Persons Advisory Group on G-20 Matters for India’s Ministry of Finance. Gita’s appearance before the JPC, as the former IMF Deputy Managing Director, and sharing of her views ardently supporting ONOE, have already got much attention from Godi media.

The second expert, who appeared before JPC and shared his positive views on ONOE along with Gita, was Sanjeev Sanyal, a member of Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) since 2022, with the rank of Secretary, Government of India. Though a neoliberal economist by profession, Sanyal is widely known as a Sangh Parivar ideologue, especially as a staunch advocate of “new history writing”, a major trend in 21st century neofascism at a global level. As such, while remaining an EAC-PM member, Sanyal’s main work is linked with the ongoing majoritarian and Islamophobic campaign to create a new Hindutva-oriented history. Many concerned scholars and historians have already exposed his affinity to majoritarian prejudices, accused him of “historical distortion”, lack of scholarly rigor, depth,”contextual understanding, and even called his conclusions as “bastardized form of early colonial interpretations”. However, as usual, the corporate -saffron media have no qualms in eulogising him and highlighting his appearance to JPC along with Gita Gopinath.

As representatives of neoliberal corporatism, the wholehearted support of far-right experts like Gita and Sanyal to ONOE serves an ideological function too. Of course, already being integrated with the Hindutva bandwagon, Sanyal’s support to ONOE is perfectly in tune with his anti-federal, unitary, and majoritarian Hindutva orientation. On the other hand, Gita’s solidarity with simultaneous indian elections is intertwined with IMF’s prescription on downsizing of government and rollback of state expenditures. At a time when horrific proportions of public funds are appropriated by corporates and crony capitalists, and even as trillions of rupees worth corporate tax exemptions are available to them, Gita’s main concern is with the expenditures (for Lok Sabha election, average total expenditure by Election Commission, Parties and candidates is estimated at around ₹50000 crore in India) required for separate elections. Another argument in favour of ONOE by Gita is that separate elections will disrupt the development effort which, amid the rhetoric of Viksit Bharat, is very appealing to Indian rulers.

As a matter of fact, if Gita Gopinath, as an American citizen and as a former IMF expert, is that much concerned about election expenditures, then she should have raised this issue before appropriate US bodies or in front of US voters. For, as already noted, when the Indian parliament election requires ₹50000, US presidential election alone needs an expenditure of ₹ 135,000 crore ($15 billion dollar). Further, US presidential election and State elections are separate and take place at different levels, and the entire election proces including constitutional procedures and funding, etc., amply reflect significant powers for federal states, which have different sets of rules and regulations. All these make American election expenditures several times larger than that of India, the most populous country in the world. Obviously, US imperialism, the supreme neocolonial arbiter does not require Gita Gopinath like experts’ advice in this regard. Same was the case when GST was super- imposed over India, the blueprint of which was prepared by a whole a set of US agencies. When GST that took away the federal tax powers of States in India, no neoliberal expert has come forward with a similar GST proposal for the US.

To be precise, the direct involvement of pro-corporate neoliberal experts in the Hindutva fascist project of demolishing Indian federal structure emanates from global corporate capital’s need of a unified Indian market in gross disregard of the complexities and diversities of multi-lingual, multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and multi-religious India. In the specific case of India, in accomplishing this task, Gita Gopinath like Indian-born American experts act as bridge between neoliberal imperialism and Indian ruling regime, it’s faithful lackey.

Postscript : In this context, the adorable initiative on the part of a group of leading International Experts including Nobel Laureate, renowned economists, policy experts, and others, in writing an Open Letter addressed to Modi government on MGNREGA repeal, should be duly acknowledged. Raising their concerns on demolishing MGNREGA, world’s largest rights-based public employment programme, and replacing it with VB-G RAM G as a tool of Central regime that puts the financial burden on States, these world-famous experts, mainly from US and EU, have characterised the move as a “structural sabotage” and a “historic error”. While upholding the heartwarming response of these concerned scholars and experts, as Indian citizens, it is our task to expose the pro-corporate and anti-people essence of neoliberal think-tanks.

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On the Immediate Task of Building up the All India People’s Movement against RSS Fascism!

(Synopsis of Keynote Speech at the Anti-Fascist Convention on 6 December 2025)

Introduction

6th December, is the day when Sangh Parivar goons demolished the Babri Masjid 33 years ago, i.e., on 6 December 1992. 6th December is the death anniversary of Babasaheb Ambedkar too, and is observed as “Mahaparinirvan Diwas” (a term borrowed from Buddhism) to honour the great contributions of Dr. Ambedkar as the chief architect of Indian Constitution. True, Ambedkar is widely considered as the “greatest ideological enemy” of RSS and its Hindu Rashtra agenda as codified in Manusmriti (Code of Manu) which Ambedkar burned on 25 December 1927. And, when the Constituent Assembly adopted the Indian Constitution on 26 November 1949, RSS even proposed Manusmriti, which identified Dalits and Women as subhuman, as India’s Constitution.

Since the time of its founding on 27 September 1925, the RSS has been the proponent of “Sanatan Dharma” (as laid down in Manusmriti) that is synonymous with Indian Caste system, the most inhuman social institution in history. The “cultural nationalism” of RSS is rooted in Brahmanical “Sanatan Dharma”. Golwalkar, while interpreting “Hindu Nation” as synonymous with “Casteism” also defined “Hindus as a nation unto themselves”. As such, he also identified Muslims, Christians and Communists as internal enemies, with particular emphasis on Muslims as enemy number one. And, together with its genocidal hatred towards Muslims, the RSS totally dissociated from the Indian Independence struggle. Thus, the “cultural nationalism” of RSS has been a camouflage for its servility to British colonialism and betrayal of Indian independence struggle. Therefore, “cultural nationalism” of RSS is the antithesis of oppressed people’s “nationalism”, which is invariably anti-colonial and anti-imperialist in essence. Of course, before its proposal of Manusmriti as Constitution, the RSS was banned for some time following the assassination of Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi by Godse in 1948. Since then, for almost two decades, i.e., till the 1970s, the RSS kept more or less a low profile.

RSS’ Sudden Shot Up Since the 1970s

Historically, fascist forces are adept in transforming crises into opportunities, and this is applicable to RSS also. Thus, the 1970s that witnessed turbulent political-economic crisis leading to the abandonment of “welfare state” and embrace of neoliberalism at a global level, had its repercussions in India too, leading to the declaration of Emergency in June 1975. This turned out to be a godsend opportunity for RSS to come to the political limelight from more than two decades of its relative obscurity. Taking advantage of the weakness of progressive-democratic forces, the RSS came to lead the anti-Emergency struggle that also enabled its pan-Indian expansion. After the Emergency, the RSS replaced Jan Sangh with BJP as its political tool in 1980. Today, the BJP has become the world’s biggest political party, whose ideological fountainhead is RSS, the largest and longest-running fascist organisation in the world.

Since the 1980s, the RSS had to traverse a series of Hindutva milestones marked by Ram Janmabhoomi movement that began in 1984, Shilanyas of 1989, demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992, ascendance of the first BJP government led by Vajpayee by the turn of the 21st century, 2002 Gujarat Pogrom on Muslims, and a number of riots (such as Nellie pogrom on Bengali Muslims, 1983; Anti-Sikh violence in Delhi, 1984; Bhagalpur massacre of Muslims, 1989; Kandhamal violence against Christians, 2008; etc.) targeted against minorities, more frequently against Muslims, finally culminating in the coming of Modi regime since 2014. And now under Modi 3.0, RSS’ fascist hold over the Indian state power is of unimaginable proportions. Today, RSS has its tentacles over the entire micro and macro spheres of Indian society. Using the BJP regime, it has systematically penetrated into all institutions of power including civil administration, military, judiciary, police, culture, education and even scientific research. Affiliated organisations or wings of RSS, which come under the umbrella Sangh Parivar, have spread across trade union, organisations of women, students, youth, tribals, medical service, media, legal profession, religion, industry, agriculture, finance, rural mission, cooperative societies and even charity and philanthropy. As such, though not a registered organisation and accountable to none, leading hundreds of secret and open organisations including innumerable overseas extensions and affiliates, RSS is now in a maddening pace towards the establishment of an intolerant, majoritarian, theocratic Hindu Rashtra.

Multi-Dimensional Political-Economic, Social and Cultural Impact of RSS Fascism

Obviously, with its far-right, pro-corporate political-economic agenda, coupled with Manuvadi and Islamophobic “cultural nationalism” as ideological basis, the brunt of the multifaceted fascist oppression unleashed by RSS-BJP is borne by common people comprising the super-exploited workers, caste-oppressed Dalits, Adivasis, Women and above all Minorities, especially, Muslims. While Modi himself is claiming that India is on the verge of becoming world’s third largest economy in his third term, according to the latest World Hunger Index, India’s rank is 105th out of 127 countries. With more than half of the world’s “extreme poor” (or “absolute poor”) people, India has become a “citadel of global poverty” and one of the most unequal countries of the world now. While 40% of the country’s wealth is appropriated by the top one percent of the superrich comprising crony capitalists like Adani and Ambani, the bottom 50% of the population holds only 3% of the country’s wealth. Parliament remains a spectator under ‘crony capitalism’ – i.e., close nexus between most corrupt capitalists and the regime that is transformed as a ‘corporate-facilitator’ – while policy decisions are taken in corporate board rooms or in RSS headquarters. Public assets and national wealth are systematically sold out to crony capitalists while laws pertaining to tax, labour and environment are liberalised for facilitating corporate plunder. More than 90% of the Indian working class now belongs to the category of informal or unorganised workers and are condemned to subsist as bonded labourers or contract workers, devoid of basic democratic rights. The draconian pro-corporate Farm Laws and Labour Codes were designed to deny peasants and workers their hard-earned rights, as they are increasingly driven to landlessness, unemployment, poverty and destitution.

Since 2014, concerted efforts have been in full swing to alter the basic structure and character of the Constitution, including undermining of Federalism, which Golwalkar interpreted as a “poisonous seed” of disruption. Many of the moves in this direction were aimed at the establishment of a unitary, majoritarian Hindu Rashtra. For instance, the superimposition of GST in 2017 undermined the economic basis of federalism in India. Islamophobic undertones of Abrogation of Article 370 that took away the special status of J&K, the CAA that incorporated religion as a criterion of citizenship, prime minister himself leading the consecration ceremony of Ram Mandir constructed at the very site of demolished Babri Masjid, Waqf Act, move towards Uniform Civil Code and so on, are self-evident. And, the ongoing SIR is functioning as the re-incarnation of CAA and NRC, specially constituted for disenfranchising Muslims. For instance, according to reports, 24.7 lakh Muslims alone were removed from voter’s list through Bihar SIR. Move towards simultaneous elections to Parliament and Assemblies, and proposals like ‘one nation, one police’, ‘one nation, one language’, etc., are all aimed at altering the multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-religious character of India.

Meanwhile, by incorporating upper caste-oriented EWS into the Constitution through 103rd Constitutional Amendment, caste-based reservation is also undermined or diluted. On the one hand, RSS is trying to deconstruct various caste organisations by depoliticising and disorienting them, while on the other, a process of integrating the oppressed castes into the Hindutva bandwagon is also going on, thereby diverting attention from the badly needed Caste Census. A process of saffronisation, Sanskritisation and corporatisation of the entire education is taking place through the NEP. As part of it, Sanskrit, already a ‘dead’ language, and Hindi are superimposed on other linguistic nationalities in disregard of their cultural traditions. In tune with the Hindutva fascist agenda, vicious moves are there to re-write and falsify history through “new history writing”. Democratic and scientific thinking among the younger generation is obstructed through eulogization of Brahmanical, Casteist, Sanatan traditions, obscurantism, superstition and pseudoscience. Rejection of all values of modernity such as rational and critical thinking, worship of heroism and elitism, etc., have become the new normal. Those who question the fascist regime, or say their opinion freely, or express dissent and disagreement, are treated as anti-nationals and traitors and are subjected to draconian laws.

Building up the Broadest Anti-fascist Movement as the Immediate Task

In this horrific situation, it is the solemn task of all democratic forces and peace-loving people to come forward for building up the broadest possible anti-fascist front for resisting and overcoming the horrors of RSS fascism. Obviously, the political-economic basis of 21st century fascism at the global level is far-right, neoliberal-corporatism, the victims of which are the working and oppressed peoples everywhere. However, the ideological basis of Indian fascism led by RSS, whose ultimate aim is the establishment of a majoritarian patriarchal Hindu Rashtra, is Manuvadi caste system together with anti-Muslimness or Islamophobia. Viewed in this perspective, the anti-fascist movement has to evolve as the broadest peoples’ movement against corporate-Hindutva fascism and all its multifaceted political, economic and cultural manifestations. Taking the concrete specificities of linguistic states, and with the orientation of building up a pan-Indian anti-fascist movement, such an initiative has to unite with struggling organisations of workers, peasants, oppressed women, Dalits, and Minorities. While uniting with the most exploited workers, majority of whom being in the unorganised or informal sectors, and oppressed Dalits and Minorities, such an anti-fascist movement has to join with all like-minded organisations fighting for people’s right to livelihood and sustenance, basic democratic rights and freedom of speech and expression.

In this grave situation, along with the indispensable ideological and political struggles and campaigns against Manuvadi Brahmanical casteism, Islamophobia, and patriarchal measures of RSS-BJP, sustained struggles against the far-right, pro-corporate, anti-worker, anti-farmer and anti-federal policies of the fascist regime are indispensable. It is high time on the part of all anti-fascist, progressive and democratic forces, to come together and join with the super-exploited workers and all oppressed, to rise up for an all-embracing offensive against the vicious political, economic and cultural agenda of RSS fascism. To make this initiative effective and successful, it is also indispensable to put forward a common minimum agenda mutually acceptable to all the constituents of such an Anti-fascist Coordination.

P J James
General Secretary
CPI (ML) Red Star

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Mahakal Temple: In the Race to Build Shiva, Mamata Builds a Monkey

Shankar

Before the cement at Digha’s Jagannath Temple even had a chance to dry, Mamata Banerjee announced that the next Mahakal temple would be built in Siliguri. The vote-bound state has become preoccupied with religion. As the BJP’s assertion of Hindutva intensifies, Mamata Banerjee’s competitive embrace of Hindutva is likewise increasing. The Trinamool Congress lacks the capacity to mount an effective political challenge to the BJP; instead, in an effort to defeat BJP, TMC is trying to capture its votes in religious line, the Trinamool has further degraded West Bengal’s political environment. What could be more grotesque than a state, already beset by unemployment and losing millions of working people who migrate to other states in search of jobs, whose share of national output is falling behind and whose debt burden is rising toward the stratosphere, proceeding to build temple after temple? It is difficult to imagine a more ignoble spectacle.

Most important is this paradox: in attempting to contain the BJP, Mamata Banerjee is legitimizing and implementing many of the BJP’s odious policies and trying to surpass the BJP by adopting the same playbook. Whether she and her party understand the implications is doubtful, but the effect is that the BJP benefits politically. If the BJP’s policies continue to become entrenched in this fashion, there will come a moment when voters will prefer the original BJP over ersatz imitations. It is likely that Mamata and her circle do not possess the political insight to foresee this.

The success of a state and its government should be measured by how far they secure for their citizens the fundamentals of livelihood: education, health, housing, safety, and democratic freedoms. It is well known that since coming to power, the Trinamool Congress has neglected these core responsibilities. Unemployment is a pressing problem in the state. From many districts millions of young men have migrated outward. According to 2023 figures, nearly 1.5 million Bengali workers are in Kerala alone. The 2011 census showed about 2.9 million workers from the state employed as migrant laborers in other states; since then hundreds of thousands more join them each year. Altogether, approximately 3.5 million workers from the state currently work in other states—and that number increases daily. Recent incidents in BJP-ruled Odisha and in northern BJP-ruled states—where Bengali workers were labeled as Bangladeshis, arrested, abused, beaten, and in some cases forcibly deported—provoked widespread outrage. In response, the West Bengal chief minister announced that returnees to the state would receive a monthly allowance of five thousand rupees: an initial one-time payment of five thousand rupees, followed by five thousand per month until they find new employment. She gave the scheme a florid name—“Shramshri”—but her government has no coherent policy for creating dignified, sustainable employment. There is no plan. The Trinamool government has now been in office for fourteen years; their continued failure to address these matters is an unforgivable dereliction.

Meanwhile, corruption has reached extreme levels. Public-sector recruitment examinations have become nightmarish. Ministers and leaders accused of corruption spend days in jail. The picture is the same in education and health. The private sector has flourished everywhere while public hospital systems have been progressively degraded under Trinamool rule. Hospitals have become hubs of malpractice. Doctors who have protested corruption have themselves been subjected in hospital settings to rape and even murder. The market in dead bodies, fake medicines, and expired drugs is rampant; innumerable other illicit, shameful trades persist. Private hospitals and nursing homes have exploited and plundered patients. Contractual employment has proliferated nationwide, but in West Bengal it appears to have shattered all previous records. From police forces to healthcare workers, from college and university lecturers to municipal sweepers, contractual recruitment dominates. The extensive corruption and malfeasance in hospitals are repeatedly linked to the treatment of contract employees. Disturbing reports have even emerged of a security guard employed at one public hospital entering another hospital disguised in a doctor’s coat and participating in sexual assaults.

Education, too, has become a site of disorder. Enrollment in government and semi-government schools has declined considerably; the government seems unconcerned. Rather than strengthening public education, authorities have closed clusters of schools. Budgetary allocations to education have shrunk. The Mid-Day Meal program is faltering; in many places substandard food is supplied under the scheme. For months on end universities have had no permanent vice-chancellors. Educational institutions have become arenas for the assertion of power and dominance—an objective that, like the BJP, the Trinamool now appears to pursue. Consequently, the future of the public education system in the state is increasingly insecure under both the BJP and Trinamool.

Amidst all this, yet another temple is to be constructed with state funds. As with the Digha project, public money will be spent. The Digha Jagannath Temple reportedly cost ₹250 crore. The exact budgetary allocation for the proposed Mahakal Temple remains unclear, but it is reasonable to assume that it will not receive less allocation than the Jagannath Temple.

First, West Bengal is a state with acute fiscal constraints. The government must borrow substantial sums each year simply to maintain operations. In 2023–24, the ratio of the state’s total debt to its GSDP was approximately 34.2 percent; it has since risen toward 39 percent. According to the 2023–24 financial-year budget, the state’s total debt stood at roughly ₹5.86 lakh crore; by the close of 2024–25, estimates in the budget presented by the present government project the debt could rise to about ₹6.5 lakh crore. The Fifteenth Finance Commission of India recommended that states keep this ratio under 20 percent. West Bengal is evidently far from that target. Moreover, a significant portion of the debt services old loans and interest. A large share of the state’s revenues—on the order of ₹40,000–50,000 crore per year—goes merely to interest payments on past debt. Consequently, little remains for developmental expenditure on education, health, roads, drainage, and so forth. Although the state government claims GSDP growth in recent years has exceeded the national average (approximately 6–7 percent), allegedly approaching 8–10 percent, the plausibility of these claims is doubtful; even if they were accurate, they would still be insufficient to sustain government expenditures given the debt-to-GSDP ratio. In short, the state’s economy is in decline. It is astonishing that the government can justify spending hundreds of crores on temple construction in such circumstances.

Second, in a secular republic such as India the state should maintain a safe distance from the construction of temples, mosques, and other religious undertakings. There must be no entanglement of religion and state—that is the principle of secularism. Yet since independence this principle has rarely been applied rigorously. Where political expediency permitted, the Congress linked official functions to religious rituals. Inaugurations were sometimes accompanied by Hindu rites; ministers and party leaders were frequently seen at Iftar parties when Muslims broke their fast. Under the BJP these practices have been pursued more openly and assertively, reflecting their programmatic promotion of Hindu religious activities. Two distinctions separate Congress and BJP practices: first, BJP leaders actively perform and sponsor Hindu rites and institutionalize Hindu religious activities; second, the BJP is the only major political force that has taken an explicit theoretical position against secularism. This is a bold departure from previous norms and places the party in a category of overt majoritarian Hindutva—indeed, tendencies that can be characterized as fascistic in their scale and audacity.

Fascist parties do not exist in isolation; there are parties that surrender to fascism’s pressures. In India, among the parties that have capitulated to BJP policies, the Trinamool Congress increasingly presents itself as a leading example. As Modi’s leadership consolidates a form of authoritarian governance across India, the political criminality inherent in adopting, implementing, and attempting to outdo the BJP’s Hindutva agenda is grave. Mamata Banerjee and her colleagues do not seem to perceive this. Should they ever do so, there may be no political refuge left for them.

The Ram Temple in Ayodhya was constructed under a trust structure set up by the BJP rather than through direct state funding. By contrast, the Digha Jagannath Temple was built with direct state funds and under the chief minister’s explicit supervision. The proposed Mahakal Temple will follow that same model. The chief minister’s public declaration—“I will build a Mahakal temple; I will build the largest Shiva idol”—disregards the normative constraints of modern state governance. The situation is so absurd that even BJP leader Sri Shubhendu Adhikari felt compelled to remark that building a temple with personal funds is one thing, but constructing one with government money is not the government’s role. Different observers will judge Adhikari’s remark differently. Mamata may take pride in having placed the BJP in a difficult position over Hindutva competition. But defenders of democratic norms will say that secularist rhetoric from the mouths of fascistic Hindutva proponents is like a pearl necklace on a monkey—and Mamata herself has placed that necklace around the monkey’s neck. The monkey is dressed before the god is sculpted. In this manner, instead of effectively resisting the BJP, Mamata Banerjee and her cohort are paving the way for a future in which a sectarian, Hanuman-centric polity may be established.

(The article was originally published in Nagorik.net in bengali.)

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When Co-perpetrator of Genocide Becomes Peacemaker!

P J James

Trump’s 20-point Gaza Peace Plan that calls for immediate ceasefire and wide-ranging peace process, comes in the context of growing international isolation of Zionist regime. Among other things, the Plan involves demilitarization of Gaza and making it a terror free zone along with disarming and decommissioning of Hamas which has been resolutely resisting Zionism; release of hostages, first by Hamas and then by Israel; creation of a US-led “international stabilization force” with the involvement of Arab States and a Transitional Authority led by Trump and Tony Blair (who, as part of Bush-Blair notorious “evil axis” slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi people in 2003); de-radicalisation of Gazans who are survivors of holocausts through religious dialogue; etc. On the other hand, there is no mention of punishing the war criminals like Netanyahu for the crimes he committed against humanity, disbanding the IDF, GHF and others for the horrors unleashed on civilians including children and pregnant women. A meaningful peace plan should have also included appropriate measures for dealing with US, which, through weaponization and funding, acted as the patron and co-perpetrator of the Zionist crimes. Of course, nothing of the sort can be expected from a peace plan designed by Trump and endorsed by Netanyahu, co-perpetrator and perpetrator of the genocide.

As such, Trump’s peace-deal is totally silent on the core issue of the right of return of Palestinians to Israel from where they were driven out since 1948 Nakba that followed the UK-US superimposition of Zionist state on the Palestinians. In fact, the present Trump-Netanyahu peace plan that is superimposed on the Palestinians without even consulting them is also a tragic repetition of what the US-UK axis together with Zionists did in1948. And, above all, Trump’s peace deal ignores the most fundamental question of self-determination and statehood for Palestinians.

No doubt, this Trumpian exercise in deception, is an ingenious move to save his closest ally Netanyahu, who is declared a “war criminal” by ICC, from the wrath of the global community, and in the process to whitewash the “crimes against humanity” committed by the US-Zionist Nexus. For, after endorsing Trump’s plan that cunningly covers up the accountability of US-Zionist nexus in Gaza genocide, at the White House Press Conference on 29 September, Netanyahu praised Trump, his patron and imperialist master thus: “You’ve proven time and again what I’ve said many times – you are the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House.” Equally despicable is the quick endorsement of the Trump plan by Anglo-Saxon allies of US and Arab lackeys who are all complicit in the ongoing holocaust on Palestinians. As reported, the leaders of Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt have issued a joint statement “welcoming” Trump’s “sincere efforts to end the war in Gaza”, thereby falling into the US-Zionist trap and betraying the Palestinian people. And, in tune with the Zionist-Evangelist-Hindutva unholy nexus, the neo-fascist Indian regime has also upheld the peace plan of imperialist Trump.

If the Trumpian plan comes into force, then Gaza will be taken over by the International Stabilization Force (ISF), a kind of outsourcing of Gaza to an ‘external force’, but linked with the vicious US-Zionist nexus, in tune with standard neocolonial arrangements of US imperialism. As already mentioned, the Transitional Authority and Board of Peace led by Trump-Blair duo will begin overseeing the transition indefinitely, regarding which no time frame is scheduled in the ‘peace plan’. And, while the core issues of the Palestinians including statehood are kept out of the agenda. Hamas will have to leave the scene, even as Zionist regime and troops will continue in Gaza unchallenged, giving them new avenues of infiltration and expansion to West Bank.

In spite of that, far-right and extremely reactionary Zionists in Netanyahu’s cabinet like finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a declared “war criminal” has condemned Trump-Netanyahu plan as a “political failure”. And to appease such elements like him, Netanyahu had also stated that “Israel will retain security responsibility for the foreseeable future” in Gaza. True, while imperialists of all hues, neo-fascists and their apologists alike are eulogizing the Trumpian plan, just hours before, Zionist regime has ordered Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate the city or be considered terrorists. Meanwhile, reports on Israeli navy intercepting vessels that form part of Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) and detaining the activists aboard including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, are also coming in.

Thus, the Zionist regime is again revealing itself as the embodiment of criminality and terrorism. The much trumpeted Trumpian ‘peace project’ is intended for whitewashing this criminal and terrorist character of Netanyahu government and to grant impunity and exonerate it from the crimes that it has committed against humanity, by diverting the attention of world people, thereby hoodwinking them, and for the unabated continuity of Zionist “settler colonialism”. It is becoming more and more evident that an independent, secular, and democratic Palestinian State cannot co-exist with Zionist regime. Hence, it is upto the international community to reject this 20-point (or 21-point) Trumpian Gaza Peace Plan which is an ‘exercise in deception’.
P J James

When Co-perpetrator of Genocide Becomes Peacemaker!

Trump’s 20-point Gaza Peace Plan that calls for immediate ceasefire and wide-ranging peace process, comes in the context of growing international isolation of Zionist regime. Among other things, the Plan involves demilitarization of Gaza and making it a terror free zone along with disarming and decommissioning of Hamas which has been resolutely resisting Zionism; release of hostages, first by Hamas and then by Israel; creation of a US-led “international stabilization force” with the involvement of Arab States and a Transitional Authority led by Trump and Tony Blair (who, as part of Bush-Blair notorious “evil axis” slaughtered hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi people in 2003); de-radicalisation of Gazans who are survivors of holocausts through religious dialogue; etc. On the other hand, there is no mention of punishing the war criminals like Netanyahu for the crimes he committed against humanity, disbanding the IDF, GHF and others for the horrors unleashed on civilians including children and pregnant women. A meaningful peace plan should have also included appropriate measures for dealing with US, which, through weaponization and funding, acted as the patron and co-perpetrator of the Zionist crimes. Of course, nothing of the sort can be expected from a peace plan designed by Trump and endorsed by Netanyahu, co-perpetrator and perpetrator of the genocide.

As such, Trump’s peace-deal is totally silent on the core issue of the right of return of Palestinians to Israel from where they were driven out since 1948 Nakba that followed the UK-US superimposition of Zionist state on the Palestinians. In fact, the present Trump-Netanyahu peace plan that is superimposed on the Palestinians without even consulting them is also a tragic repetition of what the US-UK axis together with Zionists did in1948. And, above all, Trump’s peace deal ignores the most fundamental question of self-determination and statehood for Palestinians.

No doubt, this Trumpian exercise in deception, is an ingenious move to save his closest ally Netanyahu, who is declared a “war criminal” by ICC, from the wrath of the global community, and in the process to whitewash the “crimes against humanity” committed by the US-Zionist Nexus. For, after endorsing Trump’s plan that cunningly covers up the accountability of US-Zionist nexus in Gaza genocide, at the White House Press Conference on 29 September, Netanyahu praised Trump, his patron and imperialist master thus: “You’ve proven time and again what I’ve said many times – you are the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the White House.” Equally despicable is the quick endorsement of the Trump plan by Anglo-Saxon allies of US and Arab lackeys who are all complicit in the ongoing holocaust on Palestinians. As reported, the leaders of Qatar, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt have issued a joint statement “welcoming” Trump’s “sincere efforts to end the war in Gaza”, thereby falling into the US-Zionist trap and betraying the Palestinian people. And, in tune with the Zionist-Evangelist-Hindutva unholy nexus, the neo-fascist Indian regime has also upheld the peace plan of imperialist Trump.

If the Trumpian plan comes into force, then Gaza will be taken over by the International Stabilization Force (ISF), a kind of outsourcing of Gaza to an ‘external force’, but linked with the vicious US-Zionist nexus, in tune with standard neocolonial arrangements of US imperialism. As already mentioned, the Transitional Authority and Board of Peace led by Trump-Blair duo will begin overseeing the transition indefinitely, regarding which no time frame is scheduled in the ‘peace plan’. And, while the core issues of the Palestinians including statehood are kept out of the agenda. Hamas will have to leave the scene, even as Zionist regime and troops will continue in Gaza unchallenged, giving them new avenues of infiltration and expansion to West Bank.

In spite of that, far-right and extremely reactionary Zionists in Netanyahu’s cabinet like finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is also a declared “war criminal” has condemned Trump-Netanyahu plan as a “political failure”. And to appease such elements like him, Netanyahu had also stated that “Israel will retain security responsibility for the foreseeable future” in Gaza. True, while imperialists of all hues, neo-fascists and their apologists alike are eulogizing the Trumpian plan, just hours before, Zionist regime has ordered Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate the city or be considered terrorists. Meanwhile, reports on Israeli navy intercepting vessels that form part of Global Sumud Flotilla (GSF) and detaining the activists aboard including Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg, are also coming in.

Thus, the Zionist regime is again revealing itself as the embodiment of criminality and terrorism. The much trumpeted Trumpian ‘peace project’ is intended for whitewashing this criminal and terrorist character of Netanyahu government and to grant impunity and exonerate it from the crimes that it has committed against humanity, by diverting the attention of world people, thereby hoodwinking them, and for the unabated continuity of Zionist “settler colonialism”. It is becoming more and more evident that an independent, secular, and democratic Palestinian State cannot co-exist with Zionist regime. Hence, it is upto the international community to reject this 20-point (or 21-point) Trumpian Gaza Peace Plan which is an ‘exercise in deception’.

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Trump’s UN Speech Reveals Corporate Neofascism as Biggest Enemy of Nature and Planet Earth!

P J James

During his first term itself, as the staunchest critic of climate science and policies, far-right, neofascist Trump had proved himself the deadly enemy of all efforts towards a pro-nature development paradigm. His withdrawal from Paris Agreement was its telltale example. However, Trump’s tirade against climate science including the total denial of “climate change” at UN General Assembly (UNGA) on 23 September, has surpassed all limits in this regard. As president of USA, his characterization of climate change as the “greatest con job perpetrated on earth”, “carbon footprint a hoax”, etc., exposes him as the biggest enemy of climate politics and biggest facilitator of corporate plunder of nature today. While Trump utters such irresponsible comments, ocean warming and sea-level rising coupled with extreme weather events are becoming increasingly frequent.

Of course, as a reckless real estate developer rather a statesman, Trump is the true spokesperson and champion of the corporate billionaires whose major share of wealth now comes from plunder of nature along with that of labour as usual. His statement also brings to the fore the role of all far-right neofascist regimes who are hands in glove with reactionary corporate billionaires. And, more surprising is so called world leaders’ total silence on Trump’s false, baseless and irresponsible allegations against the climate interventions even by UN. Obviously, while the perpetrators of climate catastrophe are imperialist countries and leading MNCs from them, the brunt of the devastation and destruction from frequent climate changes is borne by world’s most oppressed and exploited people in Afro-Asian-Latin American countries.

Meanwhile, one of the justifications of Trump for withdrawing from Paris Accord was that “America was paying so much more than every country”. But, what Trump covered up was the fact that since 1850, it was the US that contributed 24% of the human-caused carbon dioxide. This is one of the reasons for biggest increases in global temperatures over the past 40 years. On the other hand, the entire African continent with 4 times the population of the US is responsible for only 3% of global carbon emission.

In fact, while Trump questions all climate interventions as “stupid”, at the floor of UNGA, it is an insult to all environmental initiatives undertaken by UN affiliated institutions and arrangements like United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, etc. To be precise, Trump and his project MAGA, together with the coterie of corporate billionaires with him, have now become the biggest enemy, not only of the working and oppressed peoples of the world, but also the very sustenance of nature and planet earth itself.

The post Trump’s UN Speech Reveals Corporate Neofascism as Biggest Enemy of Nature and Planet Earth! – P J James appeared first on CPI(ML) Red Star.

Class, Caste Marxist Theorist – Kolla Venkayya!
(27th Death Anniversary of Kolla Venkayya – September 17, 2025)

Kolla Venkayya was a freedom fighter of distinction and a unique personality in theory, politics, and practice at the national level of the Indian Communist movement.

He was born in 1910 in Pedanandipadu, the center of the tax-resistance movement, into a wealthy landlord family as the eldest son among six children of Kolla Krishnayya and Rattamma. He completed his primary education in Pedanandipadu, high school in Bapatla, and his Intermediate and B.A. at Andhra Christian College, Guntur. Under Baba Apte, he became a Hindi scholar and received the Visharada degree and an honor shawl from Mahatma Gandhi at the South India Hindi Mahasabha in Madras. He participated in the national movement against British imperialism and was imprisoned. In 1928, when Gandhi visited Pedanandipadu, Venkayya played a key role in organizing the event alongside village elders like Lavu Ankamamma, Parvataneni Veeraiah, and Govindulu.

After August 15, 1947, when the national government was formed, he stood at the forefront of the struggles against landlordism and capitalism under communist leadership. Though he began his political life under Gandhi’s peaceful leadership, even as a student in 1931 he campaigned against untouchability and caste discrimination across Bapatla taluk. He attended the 1934 Bombay Congress as a delegate. Initially a Congressman, his life turned towards communism in 1936 while at A.C. College, Guntur, influenced by Pole Peddi Narasimhamurthy, Pulupula Venkata Sivaiah, Makineni Basava Punnayya, and Nanduri Prasad Rao. From then until his death, he never turned back from the struggles for the liberation of the oppressed.

When ITC and other tobacco companies exploited peasants, he mobilized farmers in Guntur and Krishna districts, and as a result, was elected chairman of the Guntur District Tobacco Growers Association (1944–48). During the Telangana armed struggle, the central communist leadership appointed Venkayya as convener, along with Madala Narayanaswamy and Pedavali Sriramulu, to lead anti-landlord struggles in the plains. Over 200 youth joined these struggles under their leadership. He was elected twice to the Central Control Commission of the united Communist Party and held many posts: district secretary, state executive member, state secretariat member, and state peasant front secretary.

He was elected to the Madras Legislative Assembly in 1952 (Ponnur constituency), to the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council in 1957, and to the Lok Sabha in 1962 from Tenali, defeating Acharya N.G. Ranga. He became the first MP to resign (1967) from Parliament on the demand that Visakha steel belongs to Andhra. As splits shook the communist movement, he moved from CPI to CPI(M), and later, with T. Nagi Reddy, D.V. Rao, and Chandra Pulla Reddy, towards the Marxist-Leninist movement. He opposed CPI(M) in the Palakollu Plenum (Andhra) and Bardhaman Plenum (West Bengal). He lived underground (1948–51), faced trial in the Parvathipuram Conspiracy Case (1968), and spent over 10 years in jail, including during the 1975 Emergency. He donated his share of 4.5 acres of land, the proceeds from selling it, and his MP pension to the party.

In over 70 years of political life, he stood out as a spotless leader of peasants, the rural poor, and the oppressed, advocating “land to the tiller,” civil rights, and Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory. He passed away on September 17, 1998. Kolla Venkayya was a national treasure, deeply studied in Marxism-Leninism-Mao thought. His simplicity, integrity, theoretical rigor, ceaseless study, social analysis, and dedication to the oppressed remain an ideal for future generations.

After the Karamchedu Dalit massacre, debates arose within and outside the communist movement on caste in Indian society. Critics argue communists prioritized class analysis and economic struggle while failing to address caste as a structural question. Though communists made immense sacrifices for land struggles of Dalits and Adivasis (Telangana armed struggle, Srikakulam tribal struggles, Godavari valley resistance, Kondamodu, Rompicherla, Indravelli uprisings, etc.), a systematic annihilation of caste was not pursued. But Venkayya had a unique perspective—unlike many others, he emphasized caste in his writings and speeches as early as 60 years ago.

In the 1955 Andhra State Communist Party conference at Revendrapadu, he presented a “note” analyzing landlord caste domination. He argued:
“Landlords are inherently casteist; they exploit backward castes’ weakness for village dominance. Caste has been a foundation stone of feudalism in India. Ignoring caste is a mistake. Majority-caste landlords use caste unity for dominance, while minority/backward castes rally to us as allies. Feudalism in India is deeply entangled with caste; without analyzing caste, we cannot understand which side rich peasants, bourgeois intellectuals, or political actors stand on.” (Collected Works of Kolla Venkayya, Vol. I, pp. 39–40).

He also noted that upper-caste landlords use caste unity for dominance, while weaker castes use it for survival. He saw caste as a special form of division of labor, similar to Marx’s writings on India and Egypt (1848). He criticized early communist errors, e.g., dismissing Dalit tenants’ self-organizing in Maharashtra (1924) as “caste movements.” He insisted that rejecting caste struggles as “divisive” was a grave mistake.

He further cited Engels (1890) clarifying that while economic production/reproduction is ultimately decisive, Marx and Engels never claimed it was the only factor. Social and caste structures also shape history. Venkayya repeatedly emphasized that social and economic struggles must proceed in coordination, not competition.

He was a tireless agitator on people’s issues—leader of the Nallamada anti-submergence movement, founder of the Rural Poor Association in Guntur-Prakasam, and a fighter who went up to the Supreme Court for implementation of 1973 land reforms. His writings include: Indian Languages-Nations-Democratic Solution, Our Basic Theory, Evolution of Indian Society, Caste System: Origins and Development, and Need for Reconsideration in the Communist Movement.

Comrade Kolla Venkayya, a martyr in public service, stands as a model of philosophical depth and pure patriotism for today’s generations.

Revolutionary Salutations,
Mannava Hariprasad,
Politburo Member, CPI(ML) Red Star
82 47 72 82 96
mannavahariprasad@gmail.com

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