Modi Visits RSS HQ: Sangham Sharnam Gacchami?

Ram Puniyani | 03 Apr 2025

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The narrative of minor “differences” aside, BJP has always pushed the Sangh’s agenda, whose shakhas have always helped the party gain electorally and in political agenda-setting.

The recent visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) headquarters in Nagpur and pay homage to RSS founder K.B. Hedgewar and its second sarsanghchalak, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, elicited great interest all around.

The much-advertised trip of the Prime Minister was interpreted by many as a mechanism to strengthen his stature within the RSS combine. The other anticipation was that as this September, Modi will be completing 75 years, as per the norms set by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), he should retire.

There are a couple of other issues due to which it appeared as if the father (RSS)-son (BJP) relations had turned sour. In the wake of 2024 general elections, BJP president J.P. Nadda had stated that now BJP could be totally on its own, so it did not need support from RSS. Earlier, when BJP was less capable, it did need RSS support for electoral mobilisation.

The second issue was the arrogance shown by Modi when he announced that he is “non-biological”, directly sent by God for the work on this land. This was perceived by RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat as a sign of Modi’s “inflated ego”. Bhagwat said some people start believing they are superior (Devs) and then they declare themselves as Gods.

The Lok Sabha elections saw a decline in the strength of BJP. There is a feeling that RSS did not involve itself with full force in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections. It quickly jumped back for the Maharashtra and Haryana Assembly elections. As far as RSS is concerned, barring 1984, when it saw the Khalistani movement as a threat to Indian unity, it has always stood by BJP and ensured its rise in electoral power.

It is RSS which is the core planner. Its multiple organisations, coordinated by its Rashtriya Pratinidhi Sabha (National Representatives Committee) ensure that though they will be pursuing the agenda of their own, they will also spread the RSS ideology to glorify the values of the past (Manusmiriti) among different sections of society. These organisations also spread hatred against Muslims and Christians as they belong to religions of “foreign origin”. At the same time, during elections, they all put in their might to ensure BJP’s victory.

The formation of Bharatiya Jansangh (BJS), with the help of Syama Prasad Mukherjee of Hindu Mahasabha, and then the gradual takeover of BJS by RSS after the demise of Mukherjee, the RSS had a full-fledged political organisation under its belt. The division of labour between RSS, BJP and other progeny of RSS is very clear.

The best example of this was seen in the 1980s when Vishwa Hindu Parishad or VHP began the Ram Temple movement and then BJP took it over to make a national political agenda reaping a rich harvest. The issues raised by RSS are related to past glories and falsified history to promote itself and create misconceptions against the religious minorities and weaker sections of society, particularly Dalits, adivasis and women. Its strength lies in its strong reach in the community through its shakhas (branches) and other communitarian programmes.

Though Indian society made a political transition from feudal to colonial to democratic, the RSS cleverly propagated the principles of caste and gender hierarchy of the times of kingdoms and feudal society through its shakhas. This was supplemented by various other measures, including Ekal Vidylalyas, Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, Seva Bharati, and Rashtra Sevika Samiti, to name a few.

Though RSS infiltration into various portals of civic society and political structure of the society has been an ongoing process, with BJP coming to power in the states and then in Centre, this has been magnified.

Now to add up to shakhas, it is planning community groups for women, children and old people to keep them under their ideological grip. Recently, they organised a picnic in my area. One Muslim woman wanted to join the same; she was bluntly told that she would become uncomfortable by the type of talk and programmes during the picnic. Women going to Rashtra Sevika Samiti’s morning shakhas become apparent as you see them walking with the lathi (baton).

During the past decade, the BJP’s rule has implemented the RSS’s Hindu nationalist agenda of Ram Temple, abolition of Article 370, triple talaq, and National Register of Citizens or NRC. (The Waqf (Amendment) Bill has recently been passed in the Lok Sabha). At a deeper level, there is no question of discord between RSS and BJP. At the most, there may be some differences at the strategy level on achieving their united goal of a Hindu Nation.

At the RSS headquarters in Nagpur, Modi paid tribute to Hedgewar and Golwalkar for the path they had shown. What is this path? One is to keep aloof from values of the Indian nationalist movement striving for inclusive nationalism with the values of ‘Liberty’ Equality and Fraternity’.

Two, while they try to disown the Golwalkar’s ‘Threats to Hindu National Muslims, Christians and Communists’, in practice, their policies follow this to the last dot. The blatant example of this is the recent Eid celebration this year (2025). To begin with one state has shifted it from being a ‘Gazetted Holiday’ to ‘Optional Holiday’, offering namaz on roads is being opposed and namazis were attacked by the police in some places. One was also barred from offering namaz on the terrace of one’s house in Uttar Pradesh. So, what Golwalkar said has been actualised in the last decade of Modi rule.

As far Christians are concerned, there are reports that in Odisha now (there is a BJP government there for the first time) the community cannot bury their dead easily. In Balasore district “threats of village boycott for Adivasi Christians by tribal outfit known as Sarna Majhi with misleading claims that Adivasi Christian has no burial right in their village as per Art 13(3) A of Indian Constitution.” (From the fact-finding report in Balasore).

Prime Minister Modi repeatedly says that India is becoming viksit (developed) on inspiration from RSS’s ideology. As such, if we see the international indices of happiness, religious freedom, press freedom, democracy and hunger, India is witnessing a drastic fall in rankings.

The ‘vikas’, it seems for Modi and his ideology, is the plundering of wealth by the few favourites, who flout most of the laws to flourish here or leave this country with large booty plundered from banks etc.

So, what is the similarity between words and deeds? Modi’s recent Nagpur trip had clear-cut political goals and his utterances were more of a show, for the consumption for electoral purposes. 

The writer is a human rights activist, who taught at IIT Bombay. The views are personal.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Hinduism Is Fascism

Opinion

Welcome to Modi's India, the training ground for Western fascism

Fascism is evolving. Marching under the banner of Islamophobia, Hindu and white nationalists have become increasingly worrying bedfellows, says Ashok Swain.

Ashok Swain
12 Mar, 2025
The New Arab 

Hindu nationalism serves as a model of a non-Western movement that builds a majority-based state while upholding religious and racial hierarchy, writes Ashok Swain [photo credit: Getty Images]


Over the past decade, the global far-right has changed in major ways. In the past, it was mostly focused on white supremacism and European nationalism. But now, it is forming alliances with non-European groups, most notably Hindu nationalists in India.

This growing connection between Hindutva and far-right movements in the US and Europe raises serious questions about how modern fascism adapts beyond racial boundaries.

This connection is not new. The relationship between Hindu nationalism and European fascism dates back to the early 20th century.

At that time, the idea of an "Aryan race" connected German nationalists with privileged caste Hindus, who were seen as having a common ancestry.

Some European thinkers, like Savitri Devi Mukherji, strengthened this connection by combining Hindu mysticism with Nazi racial ideas. She praised both the Hindu caste system and Hitler’s vision of a racial state.

Despite these historical ties, today’s alliance between Hindutva and the Western far-right is more about shared enemies than shared origins. Both movements promote Islamophobia, oppose secularism, and aim for an ethnically or religiously dominant state.

In the US and Europe, far-right populists blame Muslim minorities for social problems and see them as threats. In India, Hindutva groups, led by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have passed policies that target Muslims, Christians, and Dalits.

This shared ideology has led to real-world collaborations. For example, Norwegian mass shooter Anders Behring Breivik praised Hindutva in his manifesto, and Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders defended a BJP politician’s derogatory remarks against Prophet. Other links include Steve Bannon’s admiration of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Hindu nationalist leaders participating in far-right events like the National Conservatism Conference.

One of the most striking aspects of this convergence is the increasing presence of Indian-origin figures in Western far-right politics.

People like Suella Braverman and Priti Patel in the UK, Kash Patel and Vivek Ramaswamy in the US, and Alice Weidel’s partner in Germany (possibly of Tamil origin) show how Hindutva-aligned elites have entered white supremacist spaces. These individuals gain acceptance by supporting nationalist, anti-Muslim, and anti-immigrant policies.
A new multiracial fascism?

This shift reveals the changing nature of far-right politics. Historically, white supremacy excluded non-Europeans from power. But today, the global far-right is strategically expanding.

Hindu nationalism serves as a model of a non-Western movement that builds a majority-based state while upholding religious and racial hierarchy. This approach appeals to Western far-right groups, which also seek to replace liberal democracy with nationalist, ethno-religious states.

The American Sangh (HSS), a network of Hindutva organisations in the U.S., has played a crucial role in strengthening these ties. Groups like the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) and the Republican Hindu Coalition present themselves as defenders of Hindu rights while aligning with conservative and Islamophobic causes. Their influence is seen in efforts to end affirmative action and block caste protections in workplaces.

Far-right collaboration is also visible in publishing and ideology-building. The alt-right publishing house Arktos has helped spread books that mix Hindu mysticism with far-right ideas. Its co-founder, Daniel Friberg, claims to have met with over a hundred influential figures in India, including politicians and religious leaders.

Arktos has ties to far-right parties across Europe, including France’s National Front, Germany’s National Democratic Party, and Italy’s Lega Nord. Figures like Russian nationalist Alexander Dugin, who advocates for an anti-liberal world order, are embraced by both American far-right groups and Hindu nationalists.

One recent example of this ideological connection is the growing link between India’s Hindu nationalist networks and Sweden’s far-right Sweden Democrats. Both groups share anti-Muslim rhetoric, as seen when Sweden Democrat Richard Jomshof shared controversial cartoons from an Indian nationalist site.

However, the growing influence of Hindutva within the far-right does not signify an abandonment of racial hierarchies. Rather, it reflects a conditional arrangement in which Hindu nationalists are accepted as subordinates within the framework of white supremacy.

Their inclusion serves the strategic interests of white supremacists, but only as long as they acknowledge and operate within this hierarchy. The presence of Indian-origin far-right figures does not indicate a dilution of white supremacist ideology; instead, it demonstrates its ability to incorporate useful allies while maintaining racial dominance. Those who conform to this structure remain within the fold, while those who challenge it — such as Vivek Ramaswamy — are quickly discarded.

The liberal response to this growing alliance has been inconsistent at best. While many Western liberals strongly oppose white nationalism, they are often hesitant to criticise Hindu nationalism. This hesitation comes from a view of India as a tolerant and democratic society.

As a result, Hindutva has gained more legitimacy in global politics, despite promoting many of the same extreme policies and even worse as the Western far-right.

Zionists & Hindu nationalists unite for a Trump election win
Arun Kundnani

The growing connection between Hindutva and the Western far-right is a warning sign. Fascism is evolving. It is no longer limited to white supremacism but is forming alliances with non-European movements that share authoritarian and exclusionary goals.

To fight this new far-right, progressives must recognise that white nationalism and Hindu nationalism are linked. Just as anti-fascists resist far-right extremism in the US and Europe, they must also challenge Hindutva’s influence worldwide.

The fight against far-right politics cannot be isolated. Stopping authoritarian nationalism — whether in the form of white supremacy in the West or Hindutva in India — requires global cooperation. Marginalised communities must unite to challenge racial and religious supremacy while defending democracy and pluralism. The rise of a multiracial far-right is a reality that cannot be ignored.




Ashok Swain is a professor of peace and conflict research at Uppsala University, Sweden

Follow him on X: @ashoswai

Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for ARYAN NATIONALISM

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for ARYAN

 INDIA

Dalit, Woman, Rebel: Why Dakshayani Velayudhan still matters

Grasim Soni , Sweety Gautam |

 08 Mar 2025

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This International Women’s Day, we recall the legacy of one of the Constituent Assembly’s only Dalit women, reflecting on her contributions towards the abolition of untouchability and the protection against bonded labour within our constitutional scheme.

Last year, as protests erupted nationwide in response to the heinous rape and murder of a resident doctor in Kolkata’s R.G. Kar hospital, one protest in Mumbai coincided with another tragic incident - the demolition of several homes of Dalit families in the Jai Bhim colony. Women from the colony who requested to join the protests and raise their issues were denied the space by upper-caste women activists who claimed the demolition to be a “different issue.” 

The “Othering” of Dalit women reduces their identity and participation to a tokenistic value within India’s progressive, yet elite spaces. Outrage and appraisal from upper-caste women’s movements in India are known to have been selective. 

Reflecting a broader historical pattern of exclusion, Dalit women are erased  not only as victims but also as achievers within Brahminical hegemonic structures.  This erasure and sanctioned marginalisation of the struggles and accomplishments of Dalit women must compel us to acknowledge, celebrate, and archive the significant contributions of Dakshyani Velayudhan, the only dalit woman and the youngest member in the Indian constituent assembly, this International Women’s Day. 

Navigating her path amidst oppressive caste and gender structures, Velayudhan relentlessly advocated for equality and meaningfully contributed to the making of the Indian Constitution. The caste system prevalent in Indian Society, operates similarly to the theatrical stage in Erving Goffman’s dramaturgy. In his much celebrated work, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959), Goffman paints social interactions as theatrical performance, with individuals playing roles on a stage sculpted by societal expectations. While Goffman was not writing about caste, his body of work eerily captures its essence. Caste is a theatrical play where your birth decides your role, and stepping out of character invites social ostracism and at times violence. For Velayudhan, this meant accepting a script which demanded a life of invisibility, a life at the margins of India’s social hierarchy.

But Velayudhan surely rejected this ‘assignment’. Her very name, “Dakshayani” which is a synonym for Hindu Goddess Durga, traditionally reserved for upper caste families was her family’s first act of resistance. In 1935, she became the first Dalit woman in India to graduate with a Bachelors in Science  in Chemistry. Her journey was marked by challenges. She was barred by a professor from using lab equipment. She had to observe experiments from afar. Velayudhan embodied resilience, rewriting the script of oppression. 

Velayudhan in the Constituent Assembly

At the age of thirty four,, she became one of the members of the Constituent Assembly. She strongly advocated for social justice, communal harmony, economic upliftment, and human dignity, envisioning an Indian society rooted in liberty, equality and fraternity. Velayudhan’s personal trysts with untouchability since her childhood shaped her contributions in the Assembly. In 1948, she powerfully asserted that “we cannot expect a Constitution without a clause relating to untouchability because the Chairman of the Drafting Committee himself belongs to the untouchable community”, referring to Dr B.R. Ambedkar. Velayudhan only emphasized the incorporation of the abolition of untouchability under the constitutional scheme, she also  underscored the state’s accountability in bringing about meaningful change .

Navigating her path amidst oppressive caste and gender structures, Velayudhan relentlessly advocated for equality and meaningfully contributed to the making of the Indian Constitution.

The caste system entrenched bonded labour, and the colonial regime further exacerbated and perpetuated the conditions for the system of ‘begar’. Observing these deeply entrenched societal structures, Velayudhan recognized that economic exploitation, financial burden, double colonization, and slave-like treatment contributed to the misery of the neglected communities. In her view, only holistic freedom could liberate these communities. The right to demand wages and assertion of self-respect played a vital role and would bring about a transformative revolution in their lives. This vision later found its place in Part III of the Indian Constitution. 

Velayudhan was also staunchly critical of absolutism, and the centralization of power. She proposed that India should be a sovereign republic, citing the example of Licchavi republic, where power emitted from the people and the very etymology of power was rooted in the people. She was also critical of the system of separate electorates for which she grounded her opposition in the anticipation of corruption turning democratic representation into a politics of tokenism. Instead, she believed that the amalgamation of different communities and their mutual diversification would result in collective progress. 

75 years after the Constitution’s adoption, atrocities persist

Caste atrocities persist, recurring on a daily basis across rural and urban landscapes, among the elite and non-elite, and within both he private and public sectors. Many experts argue that both the narrow judicial interpretation of 'public view' in Section 3(1)(r) and the shift from stringent to flexible bail provisions within the Prevention of SC/ST Atrocities Act, 1989, have resulted in the dilution of the legislation. This dilution, along with a high rate of withdrawal and a low conviction rate in cases registered under this Act, compel us to examine the criminal justice system through a critical lens.

Observing these deeply entrenched societal structures, Velayudhan recognized that economic exploitation, financial burden, double colonization, and slave-like treatment contributed to the misery of the neglected communities.

The majority of people engaged in manual scavenging belong to Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe, and Other Backward Class communities. Recent data indicates that more than 300 people died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks between 2019 and 2023. Despite the Supreme Court’s recent directions to bolster the implementation of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, the central and state governments continue to ignore its enforcement—costing the lives of innocent people who have fallen prey to systematic killings.

In the given socio-legal-political context, Dakshayani's principles and advocacy, grounded in the reformation of society, can only be realized when the state is accountable for legislating and willing to implement such policies at the ground level. The theater of caste continues to endure. Dalit students still face segregation, Dalits are still denied access to public wells and inter-caste marriages provoke violent “honor” killings. India as a country cannot shy away from this. In this context Dakshayani’s legacy is not a relic of the past but rather it serves as a blueprint for resistance. Her speeches in the Constituent Assembly—calling for social equality and political representation directly confront the systemic inequalities that persist. The marginalisation of Dakshayani’s legacy in the record-keeping of constitutional history is not an accident. 

To Remember Dakshayani today is to confront the unsettling truth that lingers around India’s democracy -that the promise of equality remains unfulfilled. Her life challenges us to look deep inside ourselves and ask us: who gets to occupy the centre stage in history and who is pushed to the backstage? Dakshayani’s defiance guides the way for people like us.

Courtesy: The Leaflet

Year of travel in the US

Anis Shivani 

Published December 26, 2024  

DAWN 

GIVING US HIS BEST KEROUAC LOOK

The writer is the author of many books of fiction, poetry, and criticism.

OVER the last year, I drove 30,000 miles exploring the western half of the US, staying in the extreme wilderness as well as glamorous cities, travelling on secondary roads rather than the interstates. I interacted with people of all classes and emerged physically intact despite occasional danger, even if many preconceptions were shattered. These are my big takeaways, especially in light of recent political developments.

Except for the largest cities, the country is frighteningly homogeneous. Listening to the drumbeat about the penetration of Hispanics everywhere, you would expect to find the hinterlands sparkling with multiracialism. In the presidential debate, we heard that “in Springfield [Ohio], they [Haitian immigrants] are eating the dogs … they’re eating the cats”. Instead, even in places where demographic data and local industry would indicate otherwise, migrants are rarely seen. Xenophobic sentiment is strongest precisely where there are fewest migrants.

Just north of San Francisco, Marin, Sonoma, and Napa counties turn unbearably white. Quaint towns like Petaluma and Sebastopol remain mummified in fifties nostalgia. All along the sublime Oregon coast this summer, I rarely met anyone non-white (except for foreign tourists) until I hiked in a state park an hour west of Portland. I guessed instantly where the young biracial couples were from. Yet Portland itself, despite its bohemian reputation, is insufferably white, both in demographics and norms.

The eastern sides of Oregon and Washington have a justified reputation for historical racism. I plunged anyway into the alleged strongholds of white supremacy in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Hiking, camping, and other outdoor activities remain predominantly white preoccupations, based on their origins as middle-class retreats from urban drudgery. Engaging in ‘white’ activities in unrelentingly white settings made me doubly self-conscious of the artificiality of the escape. The anomaly wasn’t so much white nationalism as rural poverty, which the country has little stomach to confront.


Urban gentrification has managed to reproduce itself in precisely the same manner everywhere.

After 40 years of neoliberal commodification, urban gentrification has managed to reproduce itself in precisely the same manner everywhere. Los Angeles feels the most dystopian, because of its gargantuanism, but all cities gravitate towards its viral anxiety. Los Angeles doesn’t work because it is oversold as a magnet of opportunity. I felt more comfortable among the homeless in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, although a recent supreme court judgement criminalises homeless encampments. I prefer the visibility of poverty.

Road rage, once a rarity, is everywhere, especially in liberal cities. Phoenix is where you suddenly encounter deadly speed if you’re approaching from the east. Its agonisingly elaborate suburban neatness parodies itself. The sprawl in Phoenix or Las Vegas is so stupendous that their long-term survival amidst water and other scarcities seems fanciful. All of this creates anxiety, which cannot be expressed honestly, except in such diversions as “healthy lifestyles.”

Caste consciousness in America has been reduced to a binary. The rigid segregation between what we might call ‘Brahmins’ versus “Dalits” is pervasive. Seattle had the largest concentration of immigrant desi professionals I saw. Wherever such cosmopolites proliferate, there exists the same set of unresolvable paradoxes involving inequality. But you can’t even find healthy food outside the big cities, so I craved the comforts of familiarity, despite the banal gentrification.

The two Americas, red and blue (as the Nov 5 electoral map showed), don’t talk to each other — but it goes beyond that. The tech bros in Silicon Valley speak an identical language of elitism. One former guardian of discourse at Twitter insisted that “the people are stupid” and must be protected from themselves, a sentiment I often heard among the techies.

American rage seems ready to boil over into overt violence at the slightest push. The Brahmins express it with speed and rudeness, while the Dalits show it with rampant conspiracy theory, often called ‘common sense’. The shoplifters, homeless, and illegals must be purged by militarist force, as I saw in Portland, lately the site of the George Floyd occupation.

Some of the rural rage might well emanate from the cultural dystopia, with few signs of spontaneous cultural expression. Not that the cities are different, with such former hotbeds as Haight-Ashbury, Berkeley, and the Sunset Strip mere husks of their former selves.

I could never get away from wondering if this civilisation is fragile or stable, on the verge of collapse or unshakably rooted. Would it take a slight trigger, such as a climate emergency, to topple it, or is it resilient? Perhaps both.

As with everything else, infrastructure is distributed unequally. I explored all four quadrants of New Mexico and Arizona, and the roads were so un-drivable that I swore never to return. The vast majority of towns seem on the way to becoming ghost towns, with little foot traffic, the same Family Dollars without customers, and Walmart and Home Depot as the forced hives of activity. The hustle and bustle ceases even in the reconstructed major downtowns in the evenings.

Taking in the entire western half of the country shocked me about the emptiness of the land; nearly all the people seem to inhabit a minute fraction of territory. Entire countries could be prosperously resettled in the emptiness. Not to have a modern homesteading initiative to give land to the landless seems a travesty.

Unmoored, nomadic, unclaimed, I became increasingly conscious of my forgotten roots in the colonial experience. In order to avoid mishap, calmness is the first priority on such a journey, but in the end, I too succumbed to American rage, disturbed by the uniform vulgarity, narcissism, and inequality of the cities, and the cultural desolation of the countryside.

I began with unbounded optimism and nostalgia, but soon found it difficult to focus on anything but death — not just mine, but of the civilisation around me. When I was stationary, the feeling receded, but when mobile, it returned with a vengeance. It may have something to do with the corrupted forms of modern motion itself, with driving as the only realistic option available. Yet I must resume next year, exploring the eastern United States, setting aside my resentment as unwanted baggage.

Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2024

 

Rethinking India in a Post-Mandal Situation

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd | 20 Dec 2024

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The idea of ‘rethinking India’ needs to deepen among political forces, intellectuals of all castes, who see a danger that our constitutional democracy may crack if RSS-BJP rule for long.

The ideaof ‘Rethinking India’ comes from a series of books published by Samrudha Bharat, a Delhi-based organisation. This organisation gathered several intellectuals from different walks of life to edit 14 volumes to Rethink India, in a situation of the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coming to power for the first time in 2014 with full majority.

The Indian National Congress and the regional parties that were working in alliance with Congress were in shock that the BJP, under the leadership of Narendra Modi, came to power in Delhi in 2014 with an unexpected majority, which the BJP, too, had never imagined.

Samrudha Bharat came into existence in 2017 to evolve an intellectual solution to this crisis by mobilising intellectuals who broadly do not agree with RSS-BJP ideology. The anti-Hindutva ideologues never imagined that the RSS-BJP would come sweep to power in Delhi. They came to power in 2019 for a second time with an improved majority.  Of course, for the third time (2024), with the support of some regional parties, it is now in power.

Such a power shift from Congress as a national party to BJP is because of the shift of the Shudra/OBCs (Other Backward Classes), who were operating around the reservation ideology. The Shudra/OBC category was never seen as an ideological category, unlike the Muslim and Dalit category, by Congress and aligned intellectuals. They, by and large, remained a silent caste in its civilisational role in India.      

The main problem of Congress was the Shudra/OBCs, particularly lower OBCs, such as artisan castes voted for BJP in significant numbers in 2014. Of course, the non-Shudra castes, like Banias in North India, are also part of the OBCs and are fully aligned with BJP.  Unless the Congress and its allies regain OBCs into their fold, they cannot come back to power in Delhi.

 

OLD IDEOLOGY OF CONGRESS

The old ideology of Congress was operating around secularism and pluralism, mainly depending on Muslims, Dalits and upper castes. That combination in a changed situation at the national level, cannot bring the Congress to power on its own, because once the Shudra/OBCs shifted to the BJP, the combination of Muslim, Dalit, upper castes cannot win the national election.

In fact, the upper castes also quite decisively shifted to BJP. The only saving grace for Congress was that in South India the Shudra/OBCs did not move into the BJP’s fold in any significant way. Either they are with the regional parties, such as the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Telugu Desam Party, YSR Congress Party or with the Congress. Otherwise, the Congress would have become a marginal party in Parliament like what Jana Sangh was in pre-1967 electoral politics.

Congress as a ruling party has the baggage of opposing OBC reservations from the times of Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. Hence, it needed to reposition itself and see India as a changed country with competing political forces on the OBC vote base. Congress, till Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Yatra, was not willing to fight for a caste census nor was it willing to mobilise OBCs into its electoral fold.

The Dwija intellectuals aligned with Congress were against OBC reservations at policy level and implementation. The lacklustre implementation of OBC reservations during the Congress-led United progressive Alliance regime is a standing testimony. Leaders and intellectuals, who broadly oppose the RSS-BJP ideologym needed to ‘Rethink India’ in this background.  Samrudha Bharat has suggestively started to work to reposition the intellectual consciousness among such forces.             

 

BOOKS OF SAMRUDDHA BHARAT    

In this background, Samrudha Bharat entered into an agreement with Penguin India to publish 14 volumes on the common theme of ‘Rethinking India’. So far, Samrudha Bharat has published 11 volumes, which can be found on the Samruddha Bharat website.  

However, the idea of ‘Rethinking India’ is not seriously examined, as to what it actually means, by reviewers of these books. The idea of ‘Rethinking India’ in my view is to rethink India from what it was thought to be by Congress, its aligned liberal regional parties and intellectuals.

This rethinking was needed in view of the fact the RSS-BJP combine changed its ideological strategy on the question of caste, reservations and nationalism. Earlier, the RSS-BJP forces never accepted Mahatma Jyotiba Phule and B.R Ambedkar as positive national icons. But, now they are trying to own them, while not leaving out their Brahmanic Sanatana Dharma. Whether this change is genuine or tactical for the sake of pulling votes and power only time will tell.

However, the recent statement of Union Home Minister Amit Shah in Parliament, that people keep saying “Ambedkar, Ambedkar, Ambedkar” several times (he repeated seven times) and instead if they were to take the name God, they would have gone to heaven.” Which heaven is he talking about? The Shudra-Dalit-Adivasis have no place in that heaven at any time. When they do not have equal rights on earth in the spiritual sphere, how will they get equal rights in ‘their’ heaven?         

The RSS-BJP’s opposition to the present Constitution, after it was adopted in 1950, is well known.

Samrudha Bharat has brought together a conglomeration of intellectuals, academicians, including those intellectual liberals who were not keen on accepting Mahatma Phule, Ambedkar and the reservation ideology earlier.  This is a new experiment in the intellectual domain in a post-Mandal situation, and of the RSS-BJP’s adoption of a new strategy to gain power.   

Earlier, the RSS-BJP would mainly talk about cultural nationalism as an antidote to Islamism inside and outside India. As of now, the Islamic countries are unable to sustain democracy. Broadly, it was understood that Hindu nationalism also had characteristics of Islamic nationalism in Pakistan and other West Asian countries.

But after RSS-BJP came to power for the third time, basically with the votes of Shudra/OBCs, their slogan of ‘no reservations for Muslims’ is seen as gain for OBCs.   

Most of the RSS/BJP agendas were defined by anti-Muslim communal politics. Yet, the OBCs were not convinced of supporting BJP in national elections earlier. Though RSS-BJP mobilised forces on several anti-Muslim issues, their pure anti-Muslim politics did not take them to power in Delhi with a majority of their own.  When they started a pro-OBC campaign in 2013 with a view to winning the national elections and made Modi an OBC Prime Minister candidate, the OBCs began to trust them. 

Just before the 2014 elections, RSS-BJP not only brought in Modi, who had a strong support base in Gujarati-Mumbai Bania capitalists—particularly from Gautam Adani and Mukhesh Ambani -- but convinced most capitalists to support him. The election funding power to OBC candidates by the RSS-BJP network has made the number of OBC candidates from BJP much higher than what the Congress camp has in terms of real representation.

At the national level, BJP has grabbed the money market in election season, without any intervention of the state election machinery. This situation is a huge problem for all Opposition parties, including Congress. The regional parties face a real existential threat in this game. Elections in present day India are totally different from what these were before 2014.  There is a visible gain in OBC candidates contesting on BJP tickets, even though, by and large, OBCs are ideology neutral.

The RSS-BJP strategy to mobilise the lower OBC castes, who were waiting for share in regional and national power, had huge implications for Congress. The intellectuals who lived around the old Congress ideology have also realised that they need to ‘rethink India’.

 

POSSIBLE EMERGENCE OF TWO-PARTY SYSTEM  

Today’s India is moving toward a two-party system. The experiment of regional parties may not last long. The emergence of regional parties, starting with DMK in Tamil Nadu, took place by opposing Congress, particularly C. Rajagopalachari, a kind of caste hegemonic Brahmin. After the Nehru government rejected the Kaka Kalelkar report (the Kalelkar Commission prepared a list of 2,399 communities that were treated as socially and educationally backward), the Shudra/OBCs found themselves in shock. In Uttar Pradesh, under the leadership of Charan Singh, a rebellion took place against the Brahmin leadership and their opposition to OBC reservations.

With the Mandal movement (in the 1980s), a nationwide anti-Congress ideology got strengthened among OBCs. Today, Rahul Gandhi seems to have realised the OBC antagonism against Congress, and is leading a crusade for caste census and removal of the 50% cap on reservations imposed by the Supreme Court.

This is certainly part of ‘Rethinking India’. At the same time, regional parties must also rethink because BJP is hell bent on breaking them by owning up the OBC project. Hence, this idea of ‘rethinking India’ has to deepen among political forces, intellectuals of all castes, who see a danger that our constitutional democracy may crack if untrustworthy RSS rules the nation for long.

If Congress wants to come to power, it has to either rope in several regional parties by giving up old antagonisms and allow regional leaders to become national leaders. The party must also move in the direction of unification, as several regional parties are breakaway units of Congress party.

The OBCs of India must also realise that the RSS-BJP forces are talking about supporting OBC reservations because they voted them to power, but are also bringing back the Sanatana Dharma discourse sharply.

The history of Sanatana Dharma shows that its core ideology is based on Varna Dharma and Manu Dharma. Even the OBC Prime Minister is talking about Sanatana Dharma as his own core ideology. They want to use the OBC card to finish the Congress and regional parties and bring back Sanatana Varna Dharma back once the Opposition parties are decimated. This poses a greater danger to all – Shudras, Dalits and Adivasis.                       

The writer is a political theorist, social activist and author. His latest book is 'The Shudra Rebellion'. The views are personal.

 

REVIEW: A Compelling Summary of Marx’s 3 Volumes of 'Capital'

Sumit Dahiya | 15 Dec 2024

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The book, Reading Capital to Smash Capitalism is a good introduction to Marxist economics, especially for those who feel there is something seriously wrong with the world.

A few years ago, David Harvey, one of the world’s foremost Marxist scholars declared that ‘capitalism is too big to fail’. I want to add: capitalism is too disastrous to be continued. Vijay Prashad, E. Ahmet Tonak, Olivia C. Pires, Chris Caruso, and Emiliano Lopez have given a gift to young radicals in the shape of their book, Reading Capital to Smash Capitalism, that offers a compelling summary of Marx’s three volumes of Capital. Daunting as the tomes are, the authors have simplified the concepts and ideas well in 10 neat chapters.

The first chapter ‘Capital and Historical Materialism’ by Prashad provides a snapshot into the historical materialist method. The term was not used by Marx but was popularised by Georgi Plekhanov, a Russian Marxist whom Lenin once referred to as ‘the Pope of Marxism.’ Often derided as an economistic/economic deterministic schema by liberals and conservative intellectuals, historical materialism is a holistic method to observe, and dissect social phenomena.

A historical materialist lens sees the social phenomenon as an ensemble of social relations predicated upon the mode of production existing at a particular moment in history. The level of technique i.e., the forces of production engender their relations of production i.e., classes. So, under feudalism, we will have a class of feudal lords pitched against the serfs, under slavery, we will have masters pitched against the slaves, and under capitalism we will have capitalists pitched against the workers. In all such circumstances, the former will constitute a demographic minority and the latter group represents the major mass of the society. And the machination(s) to pump the surplus out is what constitutes the legal-social-cultural superstructure of the society. 

The impetus for change, Prashad writes, “will come from the struggle between the productive forces which are themselves shaped by human beings, and the organization of society into classes, which are again shaped by human beings” (pg. 19).

The mutability of capitalism arises from this very fact that “it is not a permanent condition”. It is but “one more social formation in a long process of social development which like the preceding ones (slavery and feudalism) could be superseded”.

As a clarificatory addendum, I would want to add that at no time does the advance of capitalistic social relations cleanse society of pre-capitalist forms of bondage. For instance, 19th and early 20th century capitalist America witnessed slavery and a century of reconstruction that was marked by absolute social disability of the Blacks. India, too, is host to forms of oppressive social relations, chiefly the caste system.

What capitalism does is that its “uneven and combined development’ creates unique and mixed social amalgamations that feed capital accumulation. An example of this is a Dalit agricultural labourer who works on capitalist farms for a dismal wage. Indian tea and coffee plantations are the best examples of such oppression. The informal sector, which constitutes 93% of India’s economy has a Dalit workforce of 84% as compared to 54% from the upper/dominant castes. The average daily earnings of Dalits in the informal sector were Rs. 269, for the upper/dominant castes, it was Rs. 357 whilst the national average stood at Rs. 315, according to the government of India’s periodic labour force survey of 2018-19.

E. Ahmet Tonak in his chapter ‘Marx’s Interest in Political Economy’ traces the history and plan of Capital, as envisaged by Marx. Tonak also provides a small survey of Marx’s dialectical method. He shows that to offer a holistic understanding of capitalism, Marx rose from the abstract to the concrete instead of the other way round which is typical of the positivistic/empiricist method. Marx himself pointed to the follies of the latter method when he wrote ‘‘It seems to be correct, to begin with, the real and the concrete, with the real precondition, thus to begin, in economics, with E.g. the population, which is the foundation and the subject of the entire social act of production. However, on closer examination, this proves false. The population is an abstraction if I leave out, for example, the classes of which it is composed. These classes in turn are an empty phrase if I am not familiar with the elements on which they rest. E.g. wage labor, capital, etc. These latter in turn presuppose exchange, division of labor, prices, etc.’’ In Capital Vol-1, Marx starts his probing of capitalism/capitalist wealth, as marked by “an immense accumulation of commodities”. The abstract category of a commodity is deduced from the directly observable and concrete ‘wealth’ (pg. 37).

Olivia Pires’s chapter ‘Commodities and Exchange’ serves as a solid complement to Tonak’s chapter. Pires shows that commodities carry a dual nature, use value and exchange value. Under capitalism, the latter usurps the former. And during this process of exchange in the market, the surplus is pocketed by the seller who is the capitalist, and not the labourer who produced the commodity. This fact was elided by both Smith and Ricardo.

The labour theory of value offered by Ricardo states that the value of a commodity depends on the amount of labour time spent while producing it. Marx added that the source of value under capitalism i.e., labour power, itself becomes a commodity that is bought by the capitalist at a value less than the value the labourer creates for the capitalist.

Pires then notes that the realisation of surplus value/profits happens in the form of money--the universal representative of wealth. The state arrogates itself to the function(s) of managing money in various forms. Private capital increasingly depends on the state to provide credit and expand public debt. This dependence, at its extreme, takes the shape of colonialism and imperialism. The current conjuncture is marked by a phase of imperialism wherein the American dollar dominates the world. The domination makes it impossible for the currencies of the Global South to perform their three functions: means of circulation, unit of measure, and reserve of value (pg 51). For international transactions, they remain dependent on the dollar. The fight against imperialism involves the fight against the global monetary hegemony of the dollar.

In his chapter ‘Money-Capital-Labour Power’, Chris Caruso reiterates Marx’s classic formula of M-C-M. Caruso shows that the general assumption of classical political economists that circulation was an exchange of equivalent values is flawed because they failed to account for that one commodity that enriches the capitalist-labour power. In Chapter 6 of Capital titled ‘The Sale and Purchase of Labour Power’ Marx shows that the capitalist, in the sphere of circulation, finds labour power in the form of commodity ‘whose use-value possesses the peculiar property of being a source of value’ (pg 58). Through a cunning transaction, the capitalist pays only that much for the worker who sells his/her labour power to reproduce himself/herself at work or ‘for the socially necessary labour time it takes to reproduce that labour power’. At the same time, writes Caruso, ‘the capitalists can expect to take maximum advantage of the use-value provided by our labour power by having us work in the production process in order to create more value than it costs them in terms of exchange value’ (pg 60).

Through his two chapters on absolute and relative surplus value, Emiliano Lopez draws our attention toward how surplus is extracted by lengthening the workday of labourer and technical improvements. Absolute surplus value was the hallmark of earlier phases of capitalism wherein due to lack of technique workers made to work hard to the point that it damaged their bodies.

Sven Beckert in his book Empire of Cotton told the story of Ellen Hootton, a 10-year-old girl who was brought to depose before the His Majesty’s Factory Commission in 1833 on the dismal working conditions in cotton factories. Hootton said when she joined the factory at the age of seven, the work day would start at 5:30 a.m and end at 8:00 p.m. The global working class has succeeded, albeit partially, in winning the eight-hour workday. The inauguration of neo-liberalism has turned the clock back. Capital has found new destinations in the Global South wherein most of the work has been shifted and the workers are exploited to the brink.

One of the biggest questions before the mainstream pro-market economists is what could be done to save the world from the depredations of capitalism. To this, they have no formidable answer. Problems of the Global South are much more acute when compared to the Global North. The dominance of financialised neo-liberal capitalism has destroyed a huge mass of petty producers in our lands. Unlike the Global North, we do not have options to migrate to settler colonies. And capitalism does not have an immanent tendency to absorb the bulk of the petty producers that it displaces. The only option left before us then is to de-link from globalisation (on our terms) and challenge the might of neo-liberal capitalism head-on. Such politics of emancipation necessitates the reading of Marx’s Capital.

Reading Capital to Smash Capitalism. Ed. Vijay Prashad et.al. LeftWord. New Delhi. 2024. pp:  134. Paperback: Rs. 250. 

 

The writer is Assistant Professor, Government College for Girls, Gurugram, Haryana. The views are personal.