Indian society, goal of majority fundamentalism - Fascism, and the other side of coin

Ravishanker C N

Basically we can start with a question which nation do you identify yourself with? And why? The immediate answer of anybody would be India. Let us have a closer look on this matter. Historically Indian subcontinent is subjected to numerous changes. Historians could able to trace to at least 6000 BC. it was a space where prehistoric man lived. He fought with nature for facing day to day challenges. He started to live together and formed community which lived on a hunt and gather based. The society was much premature and tended to have non-hierarchical, egalitarian social structures. It was more nomadic society where he travelled from one space to another based on the availability of living factors such as food, water, climate etc. They were often grouped together based on similarity and band (or tribe) membership; slowly community developed in to a state such that there are some limited instances of social rank and prestige came in to picture, later division of labour into social classes came to picture. Then civilizations formed.… South Indian and north India subcontinent inscriptions show evidences of large nature of this kind of development of human from very prehistoric to a civilized state. Indus valley civilization which goes back to 3000 BC was very advanced state of the urban civilization in the subcontinent. Inscriptions shows the development of language, scripts etc in that society. Over the centuries, it has been witnessed to numerous migrations from different categories of people who speak different languages, belong to different ethnic groups, races etc, enriching the content or basis of society. Production of commodity and trading of commodities improved by vast as society grew bigger. This gave birth to new collaboration, relationships among the people. Basis of the society got enriched gradually on the production and trading of commodities… For strengthening the binding among the vast section of people, new set of rules, regulations, laws, morals, culture were evolved/formed. Division of labour into social classes based on property ownership where some people live from the labour of others happened. An effective form of class structure or hierarchy evolved. This is called as CASTEISM – It a structure to ensure the production and production relationship across the generations. Society moved from stage to stage. Migration from the western/ middle east has been happening throughout the history. As said earlier, this enriched the culture and thought streams in the subcontinent. Historians points out at least 64 major thought streams existed in the subcontinent. It varies from Vedanta, Vedas -, charvaka – [a stream who were completely aethists], Budhas, Upanishadeyars, Smrith, Jaina, parsi, Vishishtadvaita , Advaitha, Dwaitha, Semitic religions with Indian characteristics etc. Each one was resultant of the contradictions existed in the society/ system. Each one went through a state when further development of production became impossible resulting in overthrowing or suggested to overthrow or tried to reform the existing ruined or outdated system of production and production relationship by replacing with a better one. Historically subcontinent was opened to n number of rules, regulations, laws or culture strips. This highlights the multiple thought the diverse nature of the subcontinent. It was never a monolithic entity. It is very much diversified which includes people of different genres.

At this juncture, it would be interesting to give a look on Identity that prevails in the society; Social identity is identity one identifies him as part of social creature. It can include the kind of work he is indulged in to and the subsequent relationship he has been built in to…. Man can have multiple identities depending on kind of activities he is indulged in to. Economical, cultural, religion, regional and other streams are possible inputs to his identities. People in subcontinent's identity are diversified in to numerous streams due to various historical, and socio economical reasons - some of them are mentioned earlier. But the anti-colonialist struggle in the early half of 20th gave almost a single identity about the concept of Country to the members of subcontinent. Formulation of the country [countries in subcontinent] was the result of amazing mass struggles by the people of the subcontinent against the nasty ways of the oppression of the British colonialists, expecting the new formulation is a society which will resolve the exploitation and provide them a right for leading a decent life. [But alas, the political setup is revolving around other values. In reality, it does not believe on the above said rights, it believes on the policies of 'kindness to the poor', it believes on doing 'some adjustments' or in other words, the political setup in reality does not believe the equality of people]. The strong identity feeling about the nation has to strengthen by continuous struggle against the oppression and bringing the different kind of people to the mainstream of society. [This is also a process of internationalization]. This can be happened only by continuous and conscious efforts of comparing nation itself and constant improvisation. This process is against the interests of the communalist and fascist groups that are existed from the period of colonialist struggle itself. The class interests of ruling class did not counter these tendencies stronger resulting on weakening the unification of the nation identity. They grew in to a situation to accept passively the fascist divisive line of thought on the question of nation, national identity, nature or character of the Indian society, etc.

The economic agenda of fascism can be identified from the 20th century European experiences. Now fascists in India are the flagship implementers and supporters of the elite economic policies which would destruct this society. Following are the highlighted policies that they are indented to implement.
New neo-liberal policies which is totally avoiding and taking the space of the traditional sectors where 60-70% of citizen are working and forcing them to quit those jobs without any other alternatives; leading them to the depths of poverty and destitution. Liberalization of labor laws and promotion of contractualisation. Privatization of important public corporations; Implementation of new patent laws, Freeing All Controls On Monopolies, Privatisation of Banks and Finance Sector, etc [we can remember fate of customers of lehman, aig, enron & our own exp. Dhabol, more recent GTB, Satyam, etc]. Allowing them to enter in critical sectors like electricity, water, communication, oil etc on the name of efficiency & competency [on current international context, it is laughable]. In short move backward from spending money for people and allocate that money to big corps. Implement tax reformation, Trade liberalization, allowing of FDI in important sectors, deregulation of market. [Effect of these policies is seen in US recently and is gulping the world. This happened in 90s also – at that time Asian tigers became paper tigers]. Removal of subsidies for improving 'efficiency'. [IEA asked govt to remove subsidies on oil few months ago.]. Speculation for important commodities including food items.[remember recent price rice for commodities]. Complete destruction of PDS

Evidently these policies are adversely affecting common man that included millions of people that belong to different religions, caste, race, ethnic groups of this society. This has to be done very heinously. For achieving these economic targets, Fascism put goal to capture the power. For capturing the power it is working overnight on the different faces of society; political, cultural, history, sociological arena etc all are under the continuous onslaught of their agenda. Fascism's preliminary step for achieving this is to replace the multiple identity of the society [which explained earlier] with a singular monolithic face. According to them the sacred land [which starts from Afghan to Chinese border including Nepal, Burma, sri lanka etc] is an entity with a golden past. The space is entirely immune to migrations over centuries and the developed in to a single entity with highly developed 'culture', with a sacred language 'Sanskrit', and civilization; It consciously working on the identity crisis of middle class; identity is very much important for an individual. Everyone would be on the search of identity for placing oneself in this land which provides him a satisfactorily good position. Communalism works on this space - It falsifies the history. It mixes history with Myths. It glorifies the past and put the middle class in a convenient position. It uses various symbols consciously for invading to the minds of masses. It makes citizens more passive and inject thoughts like from a highly civilized society, the country is ruined in to current degraded level due to invasion of Muslims [another monolithic reference], Christians [again] etc. Sanghparivars are ardent follower of Hitler the German Fascist, and they reuses the Nascist methodologies to large extent and doing experiments their own for invading the mind of Indian middle class. Recent Gujrath progrom, attacks against Christian missionaries, demolition of Babri masjid are coming in to this category. They have hidden their agendas in their anti non Hindu policies; according to them the hardships in this society are due to 'non-democratic' priorities given to non Hindus and existence of other religions;

Considering the global scenario, terrorism, imperialism, globalization, capitalism, fascism... all are moving together by supporting each other. As one of my friend told, "It is a vicious cycle. Greater the number of attacks, greater will be the political mileage for the far-right wingers (Republicans in US and Sangh Parivar in India) and greater the influence of these right-wingers on policy making, greater impetus will the terrorist organizations receive, which will again boost to continue the cycle." Majority fundamentalism is giving oxygen to minority fundamentalism and vice versa. It is the fodder for the identity crisis of the middle class and incarnation of the identity politics... Terrorism is getting food from identity crisis also along with many other factors. Ideological countering of both the majority & minority fundamentalism is required for resolving these identity issues.

On close look, both majority& minority community organizations are taking religious fundamentalism consciously for supporting their neo-liberal capitalist socio-economic policies and elite class agenda. The head of terrorists groups' exact interest also needed to be considered. Exact result of their work has to be seen in a macro perspective... They should be part of this very globalization-capitalization process, working for better profits. Terrorism should be just another method for keeping the status-quo.

(K.N Panicker, Romila Thapars works on history, and several other readings gave input for above right up.)