Deepening the communal divide by orchestrated genocide of Muslims, using the inhuman killing at Godhra as an excuse, the BJP under the leadership of Narendra Modi has returned to power in Gujarat Assembly elections. BJP secured fairly large electoral successes in the riot hit areas and even in other areas it was helped by the communal divide. The BJP, which has been ruling the state for the past ten years (barring the short period of Shankar Singh Vagehla), succeeded in distracting the attention of the people from the all-round failure of its Govt. and improved its position at the hustings in comparison to the 1998 Assembly elections.

The situation in Gujarat is peculiar in many respects. Since 1991, the BJP has been continually recording big electoral successes here. In the three Assembly elections held since then (including this election) the BJP has secured two-third or almost two-third majority in each and has also been continually successful in the past four Lok Sabha elections from here. After the disintegration of Janata Dal, those social sections that had earlier broken away from Congress in Gujarat, gravitated to the BJP making it the principal party of this state.

Due to its socio-political domination over Gujarat, the RSS adopted it as a laboratory for its ‘Hindutva’. Using organizations like the VHP, Bajran Dal, Hindu Jagaran Manch etc., it launched a propaganda campaign and also organized attacks against the minorities, especially Christians and Muslims. Much before the Godhra incident, the RSS-BJP and their associated organizations had made preparations for genocide of minorities in Gujarat.

Many reports on the Gujarat Violence have exposed the detailed planning by RSS-BJP, the barbarity of it all, and the participation of the police and government machinery in the genocide of Muslims after Godhra, particularly in areas of Central Gujarat. Neither communal division nor the use of communal violence for electoral purposes is new for the parties of the ruling classes of India. The orgy of communal violence has been occurring in the past in several parts of the country. The administrative machinery has been openly and shamelessly indulging in killings of minorities. After the violence ceases, usually judicial inquiries are also conducted and their reports are then given a burial. After 1947, the riots of 1984 in Delhi, Kanpur and other cities of the country, were an attempt at communal polarization by the ruling party of that time by labelling a minority community as anti-national and engineering inhuman killings of its members. The burning alive of people and the open participation of police in killings were widespread in the genocide of Sikhs in 1984. The use of riots in elections prior to this was to increase the communal divide among the masses and to exploit the insecurity of the minorities. In 1984, the ruling party not only asserted the correctness of planned violence on a minority community, but also secured unprecedented success in parliamentary elections on the strength of this violence.

The communal role of the police and communal cruelty also openly came to the fore in the riots in Bombay following the demolition of the Babri Masjid. At that time the Congress was ruling in Maharashtra and scores of Muslims were victims of the riots in the situation of collusion between the rioters of Shiv Sena - BJP and the Congress Govt. In the elections held subsequent to the riots, the Shiv Sena - BJP combine came to power on the strength of the communal divide.

There is a great deal of similarity between the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 and the planned genocide of Muslims in Gujarat. Both genocides were done in order to secure electoral victories for the party in power. In both, the excuse for the violence was sought in a deplorable incident (the killing of Indira Gandhi in 1984 and the Godhra killings in 2002). But in many ways the genocide in Gujarat is much more barbaric and organized than the 1984 riots. The killings of Muslims continued despite countrywide condemnation. Secondly, atrocities against women occurred on a large scale; many were raped and then cut into pieces. Thirdly, whereas the riots of 1984 were confined to the cities, the anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002 encompassed the villages also. The Muslims were chased away from their villages. Fourthly, whereas in 1984 the homes and business establishments of the Sikhs were looted and burnt, in 2002 in Gujarat not only were the homes and business establishments of the Muslims looted and burnt, their homes and lands were usurped. “Crime Against Humanity,” the report of an enquiry team of legal experts has estimated the property losses of the Muslims at around 3800 crore rupees!

Whereas the immediate context of the anti-Muslim riots of Gujarat were the assembly election and the BJP-RSS wanted to stop its series of electoral defeats, but the violence must also be seen in the context of the fascist Hindu Rashtra project of the RSS-BJP. The purpose of the RSS-BJP is not limited to communal polarization for electoral purposes. The real purpose behind the capturing of properties of Muslims, the uprooting of their businesses and the usurping of their lands in the course of the Gujarat violence is to cutaway this minority from the socio- economic life of Gujarat. Whereas since 1947 the Muslims have been living in India as equal in the law but second class citizens in practice, there the Hindu Rashtra of the BJP seeks to make them second class citizens in all respects.

Due to the special features of Gujarat, including that of a virtually absent democratic movement, the RSS-BJP adopted it as the laboratory for its ‘Religious cleansing’, is representing its electoral success as a victory of its ‘Hindutva’ and making plans for polarizing the Hindu majority, using this success, to gain an independent victory for itself in the next elections. The National Executive of the BJP has decided to replicate the ‘success’ of Gujarat in the rest of the country.

The threat of the fascism of BJP-RSS in the country has definitely increased after the Gujarat elections. With the help of communal violence, the RSS-BJP has succeeded in Gujarat in diverting the attention of the people from the anti-people policies of the government. Now they will conspire in this way on a large scale for the conning Assembly elections and Lok Sabha elections. The agenda of the RSS-BJP will be implemented in place of the NDA Agenda in the coming time. The other constituents of the NDA have either become unimportant due to losing in those states where they were in power. Or in their lust for power, they have lost the ability to oppose the RSS-BJP and want only to enjoy power with the help of this combine. Their failure to secure the resignation of Modi even after the genocide of Muslims in Gujarat has made the non-Hindutva constituents of the NDA quite irrelevant. Even otherwise the outlook of the regional parties is centered on the politics of power in their states and for this they are willing to stoop to the lowest depths of opportunism.

To challenge the Hindutva of the RSS-BJP, revisionist parties - CPI and CPM - have reposed their hopes in Sonia led Congress. The Gujarat elections have made crystal clear that the Congress cannot be a helpmate in the struggle for genuine secularism. During the entire Gujarat violence the Congress remained a mute spectator. Despite being a major party in Gujarat it did not oppose this violence anywhere. The lesson should also be taken from the burial of the Sri Krishna Commission’s report by the Congress Govt. in adjacent Maharashtra. In Gujarat, the Congress ran its election propaganda in the role of a ‘Hindu’ party. Presuming the minority votes to be already part of is kitty, the Congress countered the militant Hindutva of BJP - RSS by putting forward its ‘soft Hinduism’. The duplicity of the Congress can be gauged from this small fact that it made the issuing of license to a slaughterhouse into an election issue! Nowhere did the Congress take a position against Hindu communalism, rather it remained sunk in dreams of coming to power on its own strength at the Centre after keeping up its winning spree in the assembly elections. But Panchmahal (Godhra) has given a jolt to its Panchmari dreams!

The threat of RSS-BJP organizing preplanned attacks on minorities to deepen the communal divide in the near future has definitely increased. These fascist forces can go to any extent in order to retain state power. The BJP lead Govt. while wearing the mask of the NDA agenda, has stuffed every establishment with communal forces; education, history and culture are being communalized and public property and govt. treasuries are being plundered. Alongside it is deeming as correct the communal violence being incited by the fascist elements of RSS-BJP-VHP and is giving them government protection. Riots in the country have repeatedly established that the administrative and police machineries are very communal and that they are not spectators in attacks on minorities but participants. The ruling class parties deliberately ignore this aspect of the danger of communalism.

It is clear from the analysis of the increasing threat of fascism and its social base that the opposition ruling class parties do not even have a desire to oppose it. A wide, strong and militant unity of the working class and of the revolutionary and struggling people is necessary to challenge it.

Imperialism and the Threat of Fascism

Ours is a semi feudal semi colonial country where comprador big bourgeoisie big landlords are in power. They subserve the interests of imperialism. Imperialism has a deep-seated hold over the various aspects of the economic, military, social and political life of the country. The big capitalists of the country are compradors of imperialism and the big landlords are dependent on it. Thus there is no ruling class party, which does not serve the interests of imperialism. That the ruling class parties may side with one on other imperialist country or camp in the event of interimperialist conflicts is a different question. In today’s unipolar world where one imperialist superpower leads the imperialist powers and where inter-imperialist contradictions have not reached the point of military conflicts the contradictions of India’s ruling class parties also do not touch those issues which concern the interests of imperialist powers. All sections of the ruling classes – rightists RSS-BJP-Shiv Sena, middle-of-the-roaders Congress and regional parties and ‘leftists’ like CPI, CPM, etc. are all one on WTO, New economic policies and similar issues. Today the central questions in their struggle for power are communalism and casteism, through which they try to cover up their servility towards imperialism. Even when they intervene in the mass movements against pro-imperialist policies, their attempt is to keep this opposition within the confines of the present system.

RSS-BJP is eager to please US imperialism. Its desperation to implement pro-imperialist policies has torn its ‘Swadeshi’ mask to shreds. Removing of quantitative restrictions on imports and privatization of public sector undertakings has unmasked the pro-imperialist ‘Sangh Pariwar’, and they are trying to cover the shredded mantle of their pseudo-patriotism with the curtain of their fascist ‘Hindu Rashtra’ and the imperialist powers also are looking on these attempts of theirs with sympathy.

The danger of fascism can assume dangerous proportions only under the patronage of some imperialist power or camp. Indira Gandhi’s emergency was supported by the then rulers of Soviet Social Imperialism. Today RSS-BJP has the patronage of US imperialism though all parties of the ruling classes are eager to serve the interests of US imperialist superpower. A party opposing the tightening of imperialist tentacles on the country cannot adopt the policy of communal division, as it will be striving to unite all the people of the country.

RSS-BJP are not only eager to do just anything to serve imperialism, especially US imperialism, companies of western countries, especially of US and Britain, are accessing funds to them on a large scale. Foreign companies are giving big sums of money in the name of ‘social service’ to organizations formed by non-resident Indians and this money is coming to the RSS and its sister organizations. The example of their ‘social service’ can be seen in Gujarat quite clearly. It is not as though their activities are not known to those companies – though this is possible in some cases. This money coming from abroad is a big source of income for RSS-BJP. Imperialist countries, particularly US, expect that RSS-BJP will divide the people by communal violence and be more easily able to implement the pro-imperialist policies. The danger of fascism in India is linked in an integral way to the increasing loot of the country by imperialism.

In order to challenge the increasing threat of fascism in the country it is necessary to forge a wide and militant unity of the people. Other ruling class parties neither want to forge such a unity nor can they do it. Such a unity can only be forged by intensifying mass movements and developing better solidarity between them. Seeing the increasing fascist repression in the country and the link between the fascist threat and imperialism, we must continually be vigilant about imperialist agencies and the many machinations they use.

The coming period is no doubt going to be one of grave challenges ad splendid opportunities for the progressive and democratic sections. Today the people of the country are groaning under the burden of increasing exploitation by the pro-imperialist policies and the reactionary forces. The reactionary rulers of the country are launching one attack after another on the people at the dictates of imperialism and its agencies – WB, IMF and WTO. Various sections of the people are coming into struggles against those policies. To establish unity among these struggles and to give it political expression is the immediate task of progressive and democratic forces.

The sycophants and advocates of imperialism and reaction extol ‘lack of an alternative’ and thus try to blunt the struggles of the people. To an extent they have succeeded in spreading despondency among the middle classes. To overcome this it is necessary to intensify those struggles, which show the alternative to this system. In India only the revolutionary peasant movements fill this position. Only by intensifying agrarian revolutionary movement can the forces coming forward in peoples struggles be linked with the struggle to change society and the web of deceit about ‘lack of alternative’ spun by the ruling classes can be swept away.

The unity of the people who have been steeled through revolutionary struggles and peoples movements, can not only halt the fascist campaign of BJP-RSS but can bury the communal conspiracies of the ruling classes. The secularism the people learn out of struggles alone can wipe out the communal poison in the country’s politics and can give the country’s politics a firm base of secularism.

The fascist campaign of the RSS-BJP and conspiracies for communal violence in order to aid it, is a serious challenge before the entire country and is increasing the sense of insecurity and fear among the minorities. The war launched against the world people by imperialism in the name of terrorism and the participation of the Indian ruling classes in this has made the situation even more complex. The revolutionary forces will have to show expected farsightedness and clarity, firmness and flexibility in order to face this difficult situation.