India is arising against the Modi regime but now it needs a conscious leadership for victory
Sunday, December 22, 2019
India
rose in rebellion all over. Not once, not twice, but it’s regularly
waking up to a rebellion. A plethora of political beliefs, a wide
range of dissenting thoughts, a large stockpile of democratic
gunpowder, and people of all walks of life are converging at the
intersection of India’s peculiar political praxis. What nothing
could do, the hubris and absolute hegemonic adamancy of Prime
Minister Narendra Modi’s regime has done — it has united the
common people, the oppressed people of India to a large extent. The
soul of secularism is out on the streets opposing the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) and its agenda to turn millions of people,
especially India’s 200-million-strong Muslim community, the
second-largest in world, into stateless beings, living on the mercy
of the state in concentration camps and working as rightless free
slaves of corporate houses.
The
implementation of the NRC conforms with the long-term plan of the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — the BJP’s parent body —
which has always wanted to turn the Muslims into second-class
citizens in India and exploit their labour and appropriate their
properties. The people’s resentment against the NRC and the CAA
isn’t dying down, it has epidemically spread all over India,
building a rock-solid unity of people from different walks of life
against the Hindutva fascist Modi regime, the RSS and the BJP. There
is no dearth of people’s participation in mass movements despite
extreme brutality exhibited by the state machinery controlled by the
BJP in different states. Rather than being cowed down, the macabre
atrocities are uniting the people, especially the Muslims, against
the regime.
As
the situation is slipping out of Modi’s and his closest
aide-cum-heir apparent Amit Shah’s grip, as a large number of
Muslims are joining the movement throughout the country and their
movement is receiving support from different marginalised quarters,
including the Dalits, the Sikhs, the tribal masses, and even a large
number of Hindus, there is a desperate bid by the RSS leadership to
step in directly to shield the Modi regime from the ignominy. A large
number of RSS cadres, policemen and petty criminals are infiltrating
the movements by impersonating as Muslims. A large number of cadres
are mobilised by the RSS in all states ruled by the BJP to incite
violence. Social unrest and vilification of Muslims are two goals of
the RSS-BJP.
Soon
after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee divulged about an
intelligence report about the RSS-BJP men buying skullcaps to
impersonate as Muslims, six
BJP men were caught by the West Bengal Police when they were
about to pelt stones at trains in Murshidabad district by wearing
lungis and skullcaps, the attire of common Bengali Muslims. In
Delhi’s Seelampur, Jama Masjid agitations, in the agitations across
Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka, these men are stoking tension
and creating a narrative to demonise the Muslims and project the
movement as a communal one so that its optics can be used to spread
xenophobia and justify any future pogroms targeting the Muslims.
In
such a situation, spontaneous movements like these, in which the
Muslims are participating en masse, the movements that aren’t
organised by professional politicians but community members,
students, youth and common people, utilising their own resources, can
be easily hijacked, diverted or vilified as a foe of the nation in
which the RSS and the Modi regime have successfully turned the
Muslims into the isolated “other”, who need to prove their
loyalty in return of a right to life. There is an ardent need to
increase vigil, unite with more friends, isolate the enemies and use
the available communication channels to create and spread the
narrative of the oppressed, voiceless and marginalised people, who
will suffer the most under the NRC and the CAA, if these two are
applied. The biggest need of the hour is to shield the Muslim
community from communal violence, pogroms and conspiracies that aim
at blaming the community. To prevent such things proactive
campaigning is necessary to expose the Modi regime’s conspiracy to
flare up a pogrom using Islamophobic narrative and by blaming the
Muslims for any mishap or violence that take place in the country.
A
BJP minister from Karnataka threatened the Muslims with dire
consequences, citing
the 2002 post-Godhara violence if the protests don’t stop. Army
chief General Bipin Rawat, a certified Modi sycophant, has already
raised the toast to a border skirmish with Pakistan citing
escalating tensions at the Line of Control that divides Indian and
Pakistani-occupied Kashmir valley. Shah’s toady press is publishing
egregious trite of “terrorists
trying to kill Modi”,
concealing the fact that Modi is strongly supported by the
terrorism-exporting states like the US, Wahhabi Saudi Arabia
and Zionist Israel. Modi is organising a counter-rally at Ram
Lila Maidan of Delhi to instigate his hardcore support base and
footsoldiers to unleash violence on the Muslims protesting on the
streets. There is a total silence reigning on the economic front,
which has severely deteriorated in the last few days as the protests
over the NRC and the CAA have taken centre stage. This silence is
allowing Modi to lie about the Indian economy at different forums,
including his infamous claim that he corrected the course of the
economy and recovered it!
It’s
impossible to shield the movements and immunise them from such
attacks, as the state machinery, the ruling classes and the ruling
party have united with a common resolve to suppress the people with
brute force. Therefore, the only way out right now is to organise and
give a conscious format to the plethora of movements, which have
multiple shades and political tonality. It will be a muddle-headed
attempt, an egregious error if one tries to forcefully evangelise
these movements to follow a uniform political tonality, as these
movements are desperate bids by the Muslim community to hold back to
its identity and live with dignity in the country it calls home. A
forceful political conversion can backfire and even strengthen the
hands of the RSS-BJP; the democratic and anti-fascist forces
shouldn’t use any adventurist method to try it.
The
only path, therefore, is to politically educate the people about the
immense danger posed by Hindutva fascism, which goes beyond the CAA
or the NRC. There is also a need to proactively inform the people
about the conspiracies hatched by the Modi regime; from another
version of Pulwama attack, Balakote surgical strike to another
version of 2002 Gujarat, any template can be re-implemented by the
RSS and the BJP. Thus, if the same is propagated proactively as a
possibility, then the attempts can be blunted and the BJP won’t be
in a position to capitalise on jingoism and use the hysteria to
divert attention from the people’s movement.
India
is going through an unprecedented phase after the massive anti-Indira
Gandhi struggle of 1974-77, which forced the tyrant to impose
emergency. At present, there is a far more dangerous phase of an
emergency, which is undeclared and a press that’s unapologetically
servile, stooping before the regime to appease it. In such a
situation, as the common people dare the regime when the opposition
parties have given up the concept of resisting the utmost fascist
policies of the Modi regime, fearing loss of Hindu votes, is itself a
commendable act.
As
mainstream political parties failed to lead the people, it’s the
people’s heroic uprising that the state is facing a severe crisis,
a crisis of which it can’t get out of even by locking all
protesters because there are no prisons or even stadiums that can
lock everyone. Not all protesters can be killed; not all protesters
can be maimed, blinded or tortured brutally. If the Indian state
couldn’t stop seven million Kashmiris in three decades from
protesting and demanding their Azadi (freedom) from India, then how
could the Modi regime could dare to think that it will be able to
stop India’s 700m poor and downtrodden masses from protesting for
their rights that it wants to snatch through the draconian NRC and
the CAA?
There
will be no end to the massive demonstrations, people’s movements
and the protests on the streets, especially by the Muslims, who are
at the verge of an abyss of non-existence, where the Modi regime
wants to push them. In their bid to reclaim their land, their
existence and their identity as equal citizens of a constitutional
republic, the Muslims will stay ahead of all other communities and
despite the Islamophobic rantings, propaganda and vilification, the
community will unapologetically fight for its rights as itself,
raising its own religious slogans, praying to its own God, following
its own culture (or a plethora of them), wearing its own clothes,
etc.
If
the Modi regime’s conspiracies are exposed before the world before
they are executed, if the fascist agenda is repeatedly exposed and
the Muslim community can win friends from the working class, the
peasantry and the toiling people, weaning them over and a massive
people’s struggle, backed by a strong trade union movement, takes
place, then it will become the invincible catalyst that will bring
down the sclerotic Hindutva fascist empire. By remaining vigilant and
by shielding itself from the injuries the Modi regime or the RSS-BJP
can inflict upon them, the Muslim community, along with the working
class, peasantry, the toiling masses, students and youth from all other communities, will be able to defeat the Hindutva fascist state. The
events of the past few days have been inspiring and they must be
rightly protected from all Hindutva fascist aggression and garlanded
to take the movements to the next level.
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