Communalism and the Indian Left – Thoughts at a Critical Juncture
June 5, 2018
This interview of Sumanta Banerjee was conducted by Sanhati.
Sanhati: Question 1
In your EPW article in 1993 (Sangh Parivar and Democratic Rights), you had asked the following question about the Indian State and the Sangh Parivar:
“What is the priority expected from the Indian state which is constitutionally committed to democracy and secularism? To protect its citizens from the onslaught of forces which make no bones about their anti-democratic and anti-constitutional objective of persecuting a particular religious minority and establishing a theocratic state? Or to allow these forces to consolidate their base and power under the benign umbrella of democratic tolerance ? ”
You had answered that the umbrella of democratic tolerance must stop short of the Parivar, which should have been fought using every means possible.
Twenty five years later, do you think your assessment was correct?
Sumanta Banerjee: Answer to Question 1 –
Twenty five years later today in 2018, I think that the assessment and critique that I made of the Indian state’s going soft on Sangh Parivar in 1993 was absolutely correct. I still maintain that the leaders and cadres of the Parivar do not deserve `democratic tolerance.’ Let me quote again Herbert Marcuse, who in his essay ‘Repressive Tolerance’ written way back in 1965 lamented: “Tolerance towards that which is radically evil now appears as good…” and then warned: “ In a democracy with totalitarian organization, objectivity may fulfill a very different function, namely to foster a mental attitude which tends to obliterate the difference between true and false, information and indoctrination, right and wrong.” Isn’t that what’s happening in India today , with a totalitarian organization (RSS-led BJP) running a government under a parliamentary democracy ?
I reiterate that the forces of fascism represented by the Sangh Parivar must be `fought using every means possible’ – ranging from electoral and judicial means to physical resistance on the streets. Sadly enough, the Left-liberal-secular forces failed to launch such a multi-level fight against L.K. Advani’s notorious `ratha jatra’ in 1990, which left a bloody trail of killings of Muslims, and finally led to the Parivar’s goal of the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 – the puss from which continues to flow and contaminate our body politic.
To narrate a personal experience, when Advani was on his `ratha jatra’ in 1990, some of us (journalists and human rights activists in Delhi – including my friend Dilip Simeon) met Vinode Mishra , the then leader of the CPI(M-L) Liberation group, at their party office. A few months ago that year, his party had organized a huge mass rally of his cadres from Bihar (their main base) and other parts of India at Delhi’s Boat Club, on demands of farmers and peasants. We asked him why couldn’t he rally his cadres to organize a human chain to prevent Advani’s ratha-yatra. Vinode Mishra (who’s no more) shame-facedly admitted that while it was easier for his party to rally its cadres on their immediate economic demands, it was difficult to persuade them to give up their religious faith in Ramjanambhumi – which was the trump card of the Sangh Parivar.
I feel sad observing the trends during the last two decades. If we believe in progress, my opinions about the communal forces that I made 25 years ago should have been obsolete by now. Instead, I find that that our worst fears that me and my friends expressed in the early 1990s have turned out to be true. I feel that I am also guilty of our collective failure to resist the march of the Hindutva fascist forces in the early years of 1990s, and to build up a counter-offensive – both in terms of wide-spread ideological campaign among the public, and physical resistance against the goons of the Sangh Parivar.
But in answer to your question, I’d like to extend my response to a more fundamental area – something which Vinode Mishra touched upon during our talks with him in the 1990s. It’s the prevailing popular socio-religious psyche of Indians , rooted in fissures that fragment class alliances – based on narrow caste loyalties, patriarchal customs , devotion to superstitions and prejudices , and selfish ambition of members of these respective groups for upward mobility by hook or by crook through the available avenues , like getting elected to legislatures in the political arena, and getting lucrative jobs in their professional careers.
This common Indian mentality paves the way for the consolidation of a neo-fascist social order in harmony with a neo-liberal economic system in India today. It can be described as the `mass psychology of fascism ‘, the term used by Wilhelm Reich as the title for his book that was published in 1933. It traced the rise of fascism in Europe at that time to a combination of several factors: (i) popular desire for an authoritarian political system, which was encouraged (by the fascist leaders) by appealing to their domestic habit of putting absolute trust in the patriarchal head of the family to maintain peace and solidarity within their domestic space – Hitler and Mussolini being projected as the state replicas of their family heads; (ii) a chauvinist pride in a hegemonic nationalism that inspired the youth towards aggressive self-assertion (directed towards minorities like Jews and dissenters like Communists ) – and (iii) all the above two impulses, bolstered by promises of economic prosperity under a capitalist regime by the fascist leaders.
Don’t we find eerie parallels of these tendencies in the Indian situation today – with the BJP running the majority of state governments in India, by being voted to power by people who trust Modi as `mai-bap,’ (the term which reflects the Indian traditional habit of being obedient to the father of the family – who’s supposed to be both mother and father) ? Don’t we find the Indian descendants of the European fascists of 1930s today in towns and villages of India , asserting a state-patronized Hindu-hegemonist nationalism and killing Muslims, Dalits and rationalists – echoing the happenings in Italy and Germany in the 1930s ?
The challenge for us is how do we detoxify the `mass psychology of fascism’ that is being brewed up under the ruling Sangh Parivar ? As I indicated earlier, it has to be fought at various levels – at the grass roots level by ideological campaign for communal harmony, through judicial and civil society fora, and – not the least – organized physical resistance to the fascist goons of the Sangh Parivar. It is by a combination of these means that we can detoxify the `mass psychology.’ We should understand that part of this psychology had been shaped by the Parivar brainwashing, and part of it had been coerced by the Parivar musclemen (from Bajrang Dal, Vishva Hindu Parishad and other such militant outfits of the Sangh Parivar). The elimination of these goons from the scene could reassure the common people and revive their trust in a secular and democratic administration.
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Sanhati: Question 2
We would like to better understand the relation between the Indian State and communal forces. One critique of your position on the relation between the Indian State and communal forces in the context of Indian capitalism could be that the Indian State is structurally predisposed to slide into communal fascism in the current era, appeals to the Constitution notwithstanding. Do you think this position has any merit?
Continuing this line of thinking, one sees, for example, in the December 2000 issue of Peoples March (Towards Understanding the Indian Variety of ‘Fascism’ – http://www.bannedthought.net/ India/PeoplesMarch/PM1999- 2006/archives/2000/dec2k/ towards.htm), the argument that
“The fact that [Hindutva chauvinism] has now emerged as a strong social force is not merely because Hindutva revivalist propaganda is more effective today but because if finds favour with the material needs of the dominant classes”.
The article identified the economic, political and cultural bases for the revival of this politics in India since the 1990’s. Do you agree with the position that the growing strength of the Parivar can be attributed to fundamental structural forces of the economy and political needs of the dominant classes, first and foremost?
Sumanta Banerjee: Answer to Question 2:
As for the relation between the Indian state and communal forces, it should be traced to the birth and nature of Indian nationalism itself. The concept of Indian nationalism from the beginning – 19th century onwards -was heavily shaped by Hindu religious values (e.g. identification of the nation as the mother goddess through slogans like `Vande Mataram’), and an exclusivist interpretation of history by stereotyping all Muslims as foreign invaders. This Hindu-dominated nationalism , got further sanctioned by Gandhi with his Hindu-oriented slogans (Ram-Rajya, etc.) while giving leadership to the national movement in the pre-Independence period.
Following this tradition, the post-Independence Indian state (born of a communally based Partition) inherited to a large extent , this legacy of Hindu nationalism. Even when fanatic groups like the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS became intolerant of a `sanatani Hindu’ leader from their own community like Gandhi (whom they killed because he refused to go the whole hog with their violent means of eliminating the Muslims) , the then home minister Sardar Patel, after a temporary ban on the RSS, soon lifted it and let off Savarkar who was the brain behind Gandhi’s assassination.
This inaugurated the process of what we describe as `soft Hindutva’, which has been followed by the Indian state, whether under the Congress , or the brief intervals under the Janata or United Front or the two UPA regimes. This process paved the way for what we see today as `aggressive Hindutva’ under the present BJP , both at the Centre and the different states which they rule. Let us remember that it was a Congress prime minister Rajiv Gandhi who permitted the opening of the doors of the Babri Masjid to allow the entry of Hindu pilgrims to worship a Ram image that was installed there. It was again under a Congress prime minister Narsimha Rao’s benevolent regime that the Sangh Parivar goons were allowed to assemble in Ayodhya in 1992 in camps for weeks together, to be trained to demolish the Babri Masjid.
It is not a co-incidence that the inauguration of the neo-liberal economic reforms in 1991 was accompanied by the anti-Muslim agitation on the Ram Janambhumi issue. I therefore agree with the argument made in the December 2000 issue of People’s March, as quoted by you.
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Sanhati: Question 3
Another critique of your position, coming perhaps from an opposite angle compared to Q2 and Q3, is the one articulated by K Balagopal (Democracy and the Fight against Communalism, EPW 1995). According to Balagopal,
“We can on the other hand try to convince the oppressed and exploited classes, castes and other social groups that Hindutva is contrary to their material and cultural interests. We can work for organising such people to resist the forces of Hindutva physically if necessary; and we can try to appeal to the democratic, humanist and antiauthoritarian values that all human societies possess side by side with values of domination and suppression. The first of the three tasks has been attempted on a sizeable (if still inadequate) scale by the left parties, the dalit groups and other democratic organisations. The second is yet to be attempted on a significant scale, as Sumanta Banerjee rightly complains. But the third is a vital task whose necessity is insufficiently understood by progressive forces because it is not adequately comprehended by radical political philosophies, including Marxism which is the most comprehensive of them all.”
Balagopal’s third point – an “appeal to the democratic, humanist” values – can that be the basis of an actual political program? What would such a program look like?
Sumanta Banerjee: Answer to Question 3:
I of course agree with the point made by my friend, the late K. Balagopal (in what he called a `belated response’ to my earlier EPW article) that we (Marxists in particular) should “appeal to the democratic , humanist and anti-authoritarian values that all human societies possess …a vital task whose necessity is insufficiently understood by progressive forces because it is not adequately comprehended by radical political philosophies, including Marxism…”
To put it in historical terms, the “democratic, humanist and anti-authoritarian values that all human societies possess” that Balagopal refers to, have had a long tradition in Indian society, represented by an alternative religious current. Starting from the atheist Charvaka followers of the ancient days to the later day Bhakti movement and Sufi preaching, there had always been a parallel stream of anti-authoritarian challenge to the orthodox clergy of the established religions, of a democratic and humanist urge to overcome caste , communal and gender barriers. It is sad that the Communist parties did not give due recognition to these progressive trends in our socio-religious history – the practitioners of which are still to be found among the folk religious Bauls and Fakirs, and popular Sufi sects. Only a few Marxist scholars like the late Rahul Sankrityan (who researched into the Buddhist radical tradition) and Debiprasad Chattopadhya (who delved into the Charvak tradition and folk religions of India) , tried to discover empathy with this current in our socio-religious life. The Communists should reach out to this living tradition and accommodate its humanist and progressive aspects into their political programme.
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Sanhati: Question 4
In your EPW article from 2003 (Naxalites: Time for Introspection) you had issued the following warning to the radical Left:
“When will the leaders of the PWG, MCC and other similar groups realise that it is [the Sangh Parivar] who pose(s) the real threat to them, since they are steadily hollowing out the potential mass base of these very Naxalite groups?”
Standing in 2018, would you say that the mass base has been further hollowed out? Is the radical Left in a position to counteract this, and what would it entail?
Sumanta Banerjee: Answer to Question 4:
Yes, the mass base of the Naxalites has been further hollowed out during the last 15 years. Except in a few isolated forest areas of Chhattisgarh, Odisha and neighbouring states, where they are trying to mobilize the rural poor against mining by industrial houses which deprive them of their rich mineral resources, the Maoists hardly have any following among the vast majority of the Indian masses. The shrinking of their base is due not only to the Indian state’s aggressive military offensive against them, but also to their own mistaken tactics of indiscriminate killings of common villagers (on the suspicion of their being police spies), and extortion from petty traders and contractors among other similar anti-social practices, which have rendered their guerilla squads to the position of roving bands, trying to survive by petty criminal acts. Many among those who joined the movement from ideological impulses, are repulsed by such acts and are surrendering to the police.
The leadership of the radical Left will have to overcome the sectarian differences among themselves, and evolve a common strategy and set of tactics to oppose and defeat the main enemy – the RSS-led Sangh Parivar. Along with ideological campaign against the divisive and anti-democratic politics of Hindutva, they should divert their armed cadres to protect the dalits , Muslims, rationalists, theatre artistes and writers among others , whenever they are attacked by the goons of the Parivar (like the Bajrang Dal `go-rakshaks,’ or the ABVP student gangsters in the university campus).
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Sanhati: Question 5
Finally, coming to the realm of electoral politics. We read your recent interview in scroll.in about strategies for the Left in the wake of the defeat in Tripura (https://scroll.in/article/ 870701/post-tripura-loss-left- must-ditch-karats-line-to- save-democracy-historian-sumanta-banerjee).
You discuss the need for the electoral Left to forge a united front with the Congress and other regional parties. After the official Emergency in 1975 the JP movement emerged in defense of liberal democracy. Do you see any similarities between 1970 and today? Are we in another moment of defense of liberal democracy?
Given the vicious attacks of the TMC on all political opposition in West Bengal, do you think such a political coalition is feasible?
And finally, one can say that the anxiety with communalism is most evident in the political domain when communal forces have come to power. In 1999 CPM had supported Congress to defeat the Vajpayee Government. Prior to this CPM had supported the Janata Dal government in 1989 which was supported by BJP. This had resulted in the loss of trust in CPM as the electoral face of the Left. Aside from the loss of face what impact do you think this emphasis on electoral alliances away from the mass movement will have on the Left — both for electoral politics and grassroots activism?
Sumanta Banerjee: Answer to Question 5:
As in 1975, today also we face an authoritarian ruling order (heavily oriented in the direction of one single leader worshipped as a dictator) that is imperiling liberal democracy. For the Left today, the primary task therefore is to prioritize the immediate need for saving liberal democracy over the distant goal of a communist society. If we lose the little space that we still enjoy in a liberal democracy, not only the political Left, but the entire community of academics, intellectuals and artists will be totally decimated under an RSS-ruled fascist dictatorship, as happened in Europe and Japan in the 1930-40 period under the Axis powers. Today in India, echoes of such threats are being heard in official instructions by the Modi government, restricting independent research in universities – accompanied by physical assaults on dissident academics and killings of rationalists, by the Sangh Parivar gangsters. In a similar situation in the 1930-40 period, during World War II, the Soviet Union and the international Communist leadership chose to ally with their erstwhile enemies, the Western capitalist powers , in order to defeat a more dangerous enemy, the Nazi-led Axis powers . The issue of class conflict between the workers and their capitalist exploiters was shelved in the back burner during that period – to defeat a more dangerous common enemy.
Similarly, it may sound ironical today that the Left has to come together with the Congress on the same platform to fight the BJP. But that is the need of the hour. The 2019 Lok Sabha elections will be decisive. The national mainstream Opposition parties, as well as the various regional parties, will have to come to an understanding on the national level to avoid triangular contests among themselves as far as possible, and try to put up or support single candidates to defeat the BJP candidates. This pre-poll understanding is necessary to prevent the splitting of anti-BJP votes – that marked the 2014 elections which allowed the BJP to get away with 30% of votes in its support, while ignoring the verdict of the majority.
In this context, the CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury’s insistence on an alliance only after the polls (to form the next government), sounds a bit impractical. One can understand his party’s reluctance to ally with the Trinamul Congress party in West Bengal (which rules the state led by the chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who is as dictatorial as prime minister Narendra Modi, and has unleashed a reign of terror that has almost decimated the CPI-M) . Such conflicts within the Opposition, between mainstream parties like the Congress and the CPI(M) in Kerala, or with regional ruling parties like the Telugu Desam in Andhra Pradesh, or rivalries between Mayavati’s BSP and Akhilesh Jadav’s SP in Uttar Pradesh – are likely to damage the prospect of a united Opposition putting up common candidates in a fight against a more organized BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
I agree that the Left’s shifting loyalties in the past – with one section, CPI supporting Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in 1975, then again in 1989, the CPI(M) willy-nilly joining ranks with the Jana Sangh to keep the Janata Dal government in power, and particularly their shameful record as a government in repressing the Nandigram and Singur peasants’ movements in West Bengal – have totally eroded the CPI(M)’s credibility not only in West Bengal, but elsewhere also.
In such a situation, where the demoralized ranks of the Left fail to resist the armed onslaught of the forces of Hindutva (who dare to come out on the streets with swords on Ramnavami – a demonstration unseen and unheard of in Kolkata), and their Left leaders are not in a position to influence the electoral scene, or even put up winnable candidates in West Bengal, isn’t it better for the CPI(M) to withdraw from the 2019 Lok Sabha electoral battle, and watch from the sidelines a straight contest between the Trinamul Congress and its main rival in West Bengal today, the BJP ? Sad to say, but let’s admit that both the Congress and the CPI(M) are today reduced to political non- entities in what used to be their stronghold – thanks to their record of misdeeds over the decades which have alienated them from the masses. So, instead of setting up candidates in all West Bengal Lok Sabha constituencies, which would lead to split in anti-BJP votes (that would go to the advantage of the BJP), the CPI(M) should put up symbolically a few winnable candidates only in their strongholds (if they still have them !) and leave the rest of the seats to be fought over between the two parties of gangsters , the Trinamul and the BJP. If the Trinamul goons can eliminate the BJP /VHP goons during the election campaign (which is going to be violent ) in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, we’ll have to be thankful to them for doing the dirty job that the Maoists should have carried out.
Let’s be honest. Since the early 2000s – elections, whether parliamentary, or in state assemblies – had never been fought on the swelling tides of mass movements that used to mark the elections of the 1970-80 period. The task of the Left should be to ensure the defeat of BJP candidates in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections (by asking its voters to back non-BJP Opposition candidates), and to concentrate on mass movements in the rural and urban areas (e.g. Left-led recent farmers’ demonstration in Maharashtra which saw a unique demonstration of solidarity with the urban middle class of Mumbai – reminding me of similar demonstrations of farmers-peasants who used to march to Calcutta voicing their demands in the 1950s, when urban middle class people joined them under the banner of the Left (in 1959 such a demonstration was brutally attacked by the police resulting in the death of many). Only such mass movements can resurrect the image of the Indian Left.
June 13th, 2018 at 18:55
Last four years have not only seen communalism rise but also violence of all forms has sharply increased with lynchings of subalterns and the dalits being worst sufferers. The right wing has been allowed to tresspass all constitutional norms with impunity and virtually little opposition from mainstream parties . Even the left has not projected people’s problems and carried awareness programs . Only civil society and human rights activists have tried to point out the glaring weaknesses of the system and the apathy of the rulers. In these turbulent times, proactive mass mobilisation of opposition forces is necessary to stop fascism and bigotry from gaining control