UKRAINIAN NATIONALIST ARMY OUN–UPA

 

Inside Strum: How a Subscription Platform Funds Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Azov Brigade

by J.D. Hester | Feb 3, 2026 | 

One of the most persistent myths in Western political thought is the idea that the United States and its European allies are principled opponents of fascism and totalitarianism. This doctrine, which many Washington elites believe at an almost religious level, has served as the basis for the ongoing proxy war in Ukraine. Numerous politicians from both sides of the proverbial aisle have accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of being a Nazi or a fascist. However, when the United States allows Neo-Nazi-linked Ukrainian organizations like the Azov Brigade to receive support, this undermines their narrative.

Now, after American and European taxpayers have already paid billions for Ukraine’s war, the Azov Brigade is attempting to extract more money from Westerners via a subscription service called “Strum.” But before discussing Strum, it is important to examine what the Azov Brigade is and why it requires additional funding in the first place.

The Azov Brigade (formerly known as the Azov Battalion and Azov Regiment) has been mired in controversy since its founding. The organization was founded in 2014 by Andrey Biletskyi, a political activist with ties to Neo-Nazi movements. The Azov Brigade began as an amalgamation of radical movements including the Patriot of Ukraine gang which “espoused xenophobic and neo-Nazi ideas, and was engaged in violent attacks against migrants, foreign students in Kharkiv and those opposing its views.” Following the Maidan Revolution, oligarchs and elements of the Ukrainian government backed the organization which was then incorporated into the National Guard of Ukraine. In 2016, the UN alleged that the Azov regiment violated international law due to its documented mass looting of civilian homes, its targeting of civilian areas, and its treatment of prisoners. During the Siege of Mariupol, the group was heavily involved in the fighting on the Ukrainian side though it eventually surrendered to Russia. In 2023, the Azov Regiment was reorganized into the Azov Brigade.

With resources dwindling and rampant foreign military aid corruption, Azov has increasingly relied on donations from individuals and companies. According to reporting from Svidomi, which included interviews with founders and project managers, a new project, Strum, has become the “driving force” behind the Brigade. The platform operates as a subscription service like Netflix or Spotify, but with some substantial differences and additional features.

Donors choose how much they give per month giving the Azov Brigade a consistent “electric current” of funding for vehicles, drones, fuel, and whatever else the Brigade might need. In return, donors get access to a members-only Telegram channel. Additionally, its referral program incentivises donors to spread the word.

Strum has a rewards program where you can get access to different merchandise and raffles depending on how much you give.

Launched on October 14, 2024, the timing of its founding is not merely an interesting factoid. Indeed, major changes in how the American government views the Azov Brigade occurred mere months prior to its establishment. On June 11, 2024, the US lifted its ban on providing weapons and training to the Azov Brigade. Commentators described this as part of a Western effort to “release the reins” on Ukraine to allow them to attack Russia at maximum capacity.

Strum emerged in the midst of this newly permissible environment, which reduced barriers to Western support. According to Strum’s creator and project manager, Dmytro Horshkov, “The Ukrainian “donation market” is significant but not unlimited. Strum… aims to attract foreign support.” This is why they make use of the Stripe payment platform as it is “very trusted in the West.” Additionally, the company also records some promotional videos in English. However, the project also has significant domestic backers including numerous corporate benefactors.

Strum lists numerous Ukrainian companies of varying sizes and industries as backers. Some companies are more related to the defense industry like Balistika, which is a manufacturer of body armor and military equipment, and Dronarium Academy, which has trained over 16,000 Ukrainian drone pilots and develops drone technology for the Ukrainian government. Other companies like Underwood Brewery or Dodo Socks appear to have little to do with technology or defense. DOU, Djinni, GoIT, Prjctr, and CS Osvita are all related to IT while Obmify is a cryptocurrency exchange platform. A number of supporters are involved in digital or print media including Yakaboo (book publishing), Toronto Television (satirical news), and Taxflix (Ukrainian movie streaming). Together, these companies form part of the larger Strum donor network which helps the Azov Brigade fund its operations while also normalizing itself amongst the business community and the public at large.

The Azov Brigade’s social media strategy to promote Strum is notably savvy, making use of both military and civilian influencers. As Strum’s lead designer Mykyta Malyshev put it, “On social media, it’s a competition for just three seconds of someone’s attention… The subscription also needed a well-communicated message. Many foundations have similar services, and the Brigade itself had something like a subscription, but it didn’t attract many signups. We need to grab attention and then convey importance.”

Most of their military influencers are from the standard Azov Brigade but some are part of the 1st Corps of the Ukrainian National Guard “Azov,” a special forces battalion within the broader Azov organization. Most of the military influencers have small platforms of five thousand or less followers; however, Mykola Kush and Maksym Yemelyanenko both have noteworthy followings at around 66,000 and 24,000 followers respectively.

Some of Kush’s following can be attributed to his release in a prisoner swap facilitated by Turkey. The swap saw 215 Ukrainian soldiers (108 from the Azov Brigade) exchanged for 55 Russian soldiers and Viktor Medvedchuk. Regardless of follower counts, the purpose of each of the military influencers is clear: to make the Azov Brigade seem “cool.” Posts frequently feature the influencers in their military gear brandishing weapons. Nevertheless, as previously mentioned, civilians also make up a significant portion of their influencers.

Much like the Israel Defense Forces who use attractive women as part of their social media propaganda campaigns, the Azov Brigade employs a similar strategy. Out of the six civilian influencers, five are women, all of whom are conventionally attractive, which helps the Brigade garner more attention. Unlike the military influencers, all of the civilian influencers boast follower counts between 10,000 and 55,000. Four out of six of the influencers are artists with the remaining two being journalists.

Unlike his fellow civilian influencers, Corrie Nieto is a male from America. As stated in his bio, he works for Euromaidan Press, which is funded by the George Soros-backed International Renaissance Foundation. Nieto has covered some globally significant topics including Ryan Wesley Routh’s failed assassination of President Donald Trump. Interestingly, Nieto was able to get an interview with an unnamed source who claims to have known Routh during his time in Ukraine,  illustrating the reach and access of some Azov-associated media figures. Nieto is not the only American who has developed an affinity for the Azov Battalion. As previously mentioned, the US government itself appears to view the Azov Battalion as a legitimate force in Ukraine regardless of the organization’s numerous documented human rights abuses.

At the end of the day, Strum represents far more than just a funding source for one military unit. It represents a new model of grassroots militarism which fuses companies, social media influencers, and foreign citizens into a cash cow for armed, extremist groups. Strum successfully blurs the line between consumer culture in the digital age and warfare. By doing this, it shifts responsibility away from governments and towards the individual. This raises an uncomfortable question: if the Azov Brigade is able to turn war into a participatory, monetized, and international experience, how many other groups might use similar tactics?

J.D. Hester is an independent writer born and raised in Arizona. He has previously written for Antiwar.com, Asia Times, The Libertarian Institute, and other websites. You can send him an email at josephdhester@gmail.com. Follow him on X (@JDH3ster).

UKRAINIAN NATIONALIST ARMY OUN–UPA 

AND THE NAZI GENOCIDE

Incarceration As Politics: A Timeline Of Political Prisoners In Independent India

From the Anti-Hindi Agitations to UAPA arrests, India’s history shows how dissent is criminalised across decades and governments

Saher Hiba Khan
23 January 2026

THE OUTLOOK, INDIA

Alipore jail museum Photo: Sandipan chatterjee

Summary of this article


India’s post-independence history shows repeated criminalisation of political dissent across movements and ideologies.


Laws like MISA, TADA, NSA, and UAPA have enabled prolonged incarceration, often targeting activists, academics, and minorities.


Cases from Annadurai to Stan Swamy illustrate a continuity in using incarceration as a tool of political control.

Across countries and political systems, incarceration has always been used as a tool to control the masses. It has been justified through shifting legal terms such as national security, public order, and counter-terrorism.


While the laws change, the logic remains the same. It has time and again proved that dissent against any government will be treated as a threat. ​

India’s post-Independence history reflects this pattern. Movements such as the Anti-Hindi agitations in Tamil Nadu in the 1960s, the emergence of the Naxalite movement in the early 1970s, mass arrests during the Emergency, the 1990s where the governments were made and broke like dominoes and the intensified targeting of minorities, students, activists, and political opponents after 2014 mark different moments of the same trajectory. Each phase has expanded the classification of the “political prisoner”, not reduced it.

This timeline examines political prisoners charged under national security laws, including the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) which was in force from 1971 to 1978, and later replaced by the National Security Act (NSA), and the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), operative between 1985 and 1995, which laid the groundwork for the present-day Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).



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Voices From Prison: When Opinion Becomes A Threat, Says Journalist Kishorchandra Wangkhemcha


These statutes have enabled prolonged detention, making the judicial process vague and giving way to the normalisation and criminalisation of political opposition.

In the 1960s, political imprisonment was shaped by mass movements contesting the idea of cultural and linguistic uniformity. In Tamil Nadu, C.N. Annadurai, the founder of Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), had emerged as a central figure in the anti-Hindi movement, which framed linguistic autonomy as a democratic right.

Periyar E.V. Ramasamy and C.N. Annadurai

At that time, under the Congress government, Annadurai was arrested multiple times. In November 1963, he was jailed along with around 500 DMK members for burning a portion of the Indian Constitution at an anti-Hindi conference, an act meant to symbolise resistance to linguistic centralisation.


He served six months in prison. Again, in January 1965, ahead of mass protests, Annadurai and around 3,000 DMK members were taken into preventive custody. These arrests demonstrated how the state treated mass political mobilisation itself as a law-and-order threat.

Behind this mobilisation stood Periyar E.V. Ramasamy and the Self-Respect Movement, which had long challenged Brahminism, caste hierarchy, and Hindi imposition. Periyar himself had been imprisoned in earlier phases of anti-Hindi agitations, establishing an early pattern in which ideological dissent was criminalised even in the absence of violence.

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By the late 1960s, political imprisonment shifted sharply with the emergence of the Naxalite movement. The Indian state responded with arrests framed as action against “extremism” and “conspiracy.” Kanu Sanyal, one of the founders of the movement, was arrested in 1970 and remained imprisoned until 1977, spanning the years before and during the Emergency. His incarceration occurred under Congress governments at the Centre and in West Bengal. Even after his release, Sanyal was repeatedly jailed for political activism, including arrests as late as 2006, underscoring how radical left leaders were subjected to continuous surveillance and criminalisation.

Other radical left thinkers, including Azizul Haque, spent long years in prison through the 1970s and 1980s, Haque himself spending nearly 18 years incarcerated, often as an undertrial, for their association with the Naxalite–Marxist–Leninist movement that grew out of the 1967 Naxalbari uprising. Many reported torture and prolonged isolation.

Their imprisonment reflected a wider strategy of attrition: exhausting movements not only through encounters and bans, but through slow, grinding incarceration.

This repression reached its most explicit form during the Emergency (1975–77). Declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, the Emergency suspended civil liberties and normalised preventive detention on an unprecedented scale. The JP (Jayaprakash Narayan) movement, which had mobilised students, workers, and opposition parties against authoritarianism, corruption, and price rise, became the central target. Narayan, despite severe illness, was imprisoned. Tens of thousands of opposition leaders and activists were detained under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) and the Defence of India Rules (DIR).


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Leaders who would later dominate post-Emergency politics — Morarji Desai, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, L.K. Advani, George Fernandes, and many socialists — were also jailed without trial. Fernandes was charged in the Baroda Dynamite Case, accused of conspiring to overthrow the state. The Emergency remains the clearest moment when political imprisonment was openly acknowledged as policy rather than denied as necessity.

After the Emergency, the Janata Party government came to power in 1977, formed largely by former political prisoners. Yet while MISA was repealed, the practice of incarcerating dissenters did not disappear. It mutated.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, the state increasingly relied on exceptional laws to suppress regional movements. In Assam, a Paresh Kalita aged only 12 was charged under TADA in 1991 for “inciting trouble against the State,” a charge that illustrated how the law’s broad definitions enabled arrests untethered from acts of violence.

Shabir Shah


In Kashmir, political imprisonment became systemic. Shabir Shah, a separatist leader and human rights activist, was arrested repeatedly throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, often under charges of sedition or alleged links to militancy. He spent a substantial part of his life in jail, frequently without conviction, reflecting how incarceration itself became a method of governing dissent in the region.


In the Northeast, dissent was contained through a different legal architecture. Irom Sharmila Chanu began her hunger strike in November 2000, demanding the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) after civilians were killed by security forces. Instead of engaging politically, the state arrested her repeatedly on charges of “attempted suicide.” She spent years in judicial custody in a hospital, force-fed through a nasal tube. Her incarceration, prolonged and medicalised, became a symbol of how protest itself could be criminalised.

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Dr. Binayak Sen Photo:


The 2000s marked a decisive turn toward counter-insurgency framed as counter-terrorism. This led to Operation Green Hunt, launched around 2009–10 under the UPA government as a massive security offensive against Maoist insurgency across central India. While presented as a military operation, its political consequences were profound. Activists, lawyers, doctors, journalists, and researchers working in tribal areas were increasingly arrested as “Maoist sympathisers.”


Dr. Binayak Sen, a public health specialist and national Vice-President of PUCL, was arrested in May 2007 in Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh, under Congress rule. Charged with sedition and alleged links to jailed Maoist leader Narayan Sanyal, he was booked under UAPA and the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act. His work documenting human rights abuses during anti-Naxalite operations placed him squarely in the crosshairs of a state intolerant of scrutiny during Op. Green Hunt.

Arun Ferreira Photo: Apoorva salkade


Around the same period, Arun Ferreira, a Mumbai-based activist working with marginalised communities, was arrested in 2007 on allegations of handling propaganda for the CPI (Maoist). He spent nearly seven years as an undertrial before being acquitted in 2014, a case that exposed how the process itself became punishment.


Others, such as Gour Chakraborty, a veteran left-wing activist and former spokesperson for the banned CPI (Maoist), were accused of “waging war against the state” under the UAPA. Arrested in June 2009 by Kolkata police, Chakraborty faced charges of membership in a terrorist organisation and abetting anti-state activities. He spent around seven years in jail as an undertrial, including time in Presidency Jail, while the case remained pending. In July 2016, he was acquitted due to insufficient evidence. His long incarceration, like many others, reflected a pattern of prolonged detention under severe laws before eventual exoneration, with lives left deeply affected.


Political imprisonment was not confined to the margins. In October 1990, during the Ram Rath Yatra, L.K. Advani was arrested under the National Security Act (NSA) by Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav to prevent communal violence. Advani’s detention, brief though it was, remains a reminder that preventive detention has been used even against those who later wielded state power.

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The 2010s saw the expansion of UAPA into a primary tool against dissent under the BJP-led NDA government. This period marked a shift from targeting armed movements to criminalising speech, association, and protest.

Following the 2019–20 protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, several student activists and scholars were arrested. Umar Khalid, a former JNU student leader associated with the anti-CAA movement, was arrested in September 2020 under UAPA in connection with the Delhi riots. Despite the absence of direct evidence linking him to violence, he has spent years in prison as an undertrial.

Sharjeel Imam, a doctoral student and public intellectual, was arrested in January 2020 on charges of sedition and later under UAPA, accused of making inflammatory speeches during protests. His incarceration marked a new phase in which political speech itself was framed as conspiracy.

In July 2020, Hany Babu, an associate professor at Delhi University, was arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case under UAPA. A scholar of caste and labour movements, Babu was accused of links to Maoists based largely on electronic evidence. His arrest extended the Bhima Koregaon dragnet beyond activists to academics, reinforcing how intellectual engagement itself was being criminalised.

The most devastating outcome of this phase was the death of Father Stan Swamy, an 84-year-old Jesuit priest and tribal rights activist, arrested in October 2020 under UAPA in the same case. Despite suffering from Parkinson’s disease, he was denied bail and basic medical assistance. He died in judicial custody on July 5, 2021, without ever being convicted.

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From Annadurai being jailed for burning the Constitution, to JP’s imprisonment during the Emergency, to the drawn-out suffering of undertrials under the UAPA, political imprisonment in India has long been a reality. It is not a one-off mistake but a repeated practice, shaped by laws, reinforced over time, and underpinned by the belief that persistent dissent must eventually be contained.

INDIA

A Legacy Of Detention: Weaponisation Of PDA, TADA, NSA And UAPA Laws Since Independence

Since Independence, a number of laws have been enacted that allow preventive detention which have been widely used by all regimes against their political opponents

Snigdhendu Bhattacharya
21 January 2026 
THE OUTLOOK, INDIA

Shilpa Gupta, Untitled (Jailed Poet Drawings) (2018). Commissioned by YARAT Contemporary Art Space. Image courtesy of the artist and Art Jameel. Photography by Pat Verbruggen. Photo: | Courtesy - Ishara art foundation

Summary of this article


Communist leader A. K. Gopalan became one of the first people on whom the Preventive Detention Act, 1950 was used

The PDA was repealed in 1969, but the DIR, UAPA and MISA soon followed.

Almost all political parties that have been in power in states have used these laws, especially the UAPA

Preventive detention, a colonial era practice to crush political protests, smoothly found its way into post-colonial India, among many other legal frameworks limiting personal liberty. Climate activist Sonam Wangchuk, one of its victims, may well blame Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar for his confinement.

In September 2025, Wangchuk, the Ladakh-based activist, was detained under the National Security Act (NSA), 1980, after protests broke out in Ladakh against several policies of the Union government. His confinement continues as we enter the third week of January 2026.

The NSA allows putting someone under preventive detention. It draws its Constitutional validity from Article 22 of the Indian Constitution. Three quarter of a century ago, on September 15, 1949, Constituent Assembly member Mahavir Tyagi had warned Ambedkar, who was chairman of the Constitution Drafting Committee, that the Article which the drafting committee was introducing would “enable the future Governments to detain people and deprive them of their liberty rather than guarantee it”.


September 15, 1949, was a day of heated arguments in the Constituent Assembly. Tyagi, a Congress leader, expressed his “fond wish” that Ambedkar and other members of the Drafting Committee “had had the experience of detention in jails”. Ambedkar responded by saying, “I shall try hereafter to acquire that experience.” To this, Tyagi assured Ambedkar that although the British Government never detained him, “the Constitution he is making with his own hands will give him that privilege in his lifetime.”

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Questioning the relevance of a preventive detention clause in the Constitution, which is meant to guarantee fundamental rights to the citizens, Tyagi argued that he feared the introduction of such a clause would “change the chapter of fundamental rights into a penal code worse than the Defence of India (DoI) Rules of the British government”.

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Just a few days before this, Article 15 (now Article 21) had gone through a modification that triggered widespread criticism. The Article originally read: “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty without due process of law.” However, the phrase “due process of law” was replaced with “procedure established by law”—which was construed as giving too much power to the party in government, as they could regularise every detention simply by bringing in laws the way they deemed fit.



This new article, 15A (which subsequently became Article 22) was formally brought in as “compensation” for the changes. It ended up making Constitutional provisions for preventive detention, as it debarred those “arrested or detained under any law providing for preventive detention” from enjoying some of the guaranteed rights. Besides, it rather loosely worded the duties of the authorities and the rights of the detainees.

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Tyagi alleged that the Article (15A-turned-22) will likely be used freely by future governments against its political opponents. “As soon as another political party comes to power, he (Ambedkar) along with his colleagues will become the victims of the provisions now being made by him,” he cautioned.

Despite such opposition, the Article became a reality in India’s Constitution. The Preventive Detention Act, 1950, (PDA), was enacted soon after. It enabled indefinite detention without disclosing grounds or evidence. Communist leader A. K. Gopalan became one of those it was first used upon. He challenged the PDA.

However, the top court ruled what was already anticipated—Article 21 provides for “procedure established by law” and the PDA is a law enacted by Parliament and it has its own procedures. Besides, Article 22 sets up guidelines for preventive detention, effectively validating the foundation of having preventive detention laws.

Since then, scores of activists, opposition leaders, dissenters and separatists have faced forced confinement within jail cells for challenging—or even questioning—power. There also existed the colonial-legacy-carrying Public Safety Act in different states, for example, Madras and West Bengal.


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BY Ummar Jamal


During the 1960s, socialist leader Ram Manohar Lohia was arrested multiple times under laws based on preventive detention and public order for his anti-Congress activism. In southern India, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leaders were arrested during anti-Hindi agitations of 1965.

The PDA was repealed in 1969, but the government already had another law for detention—Defence of India Rules (DIR), 1962, which enabled indefinite detention without trial. The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, or the UAPA, also came into being in 1967. By 1971, India had a more stringent law, the infamous Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), 1971, which allowed preventive detention without warrants and up to two years without trial.

Activists, opposition leaders AND dissenters have faced confinement within jail cells for challenging—or even questioning—power.

Meanwhile, amidst government high-handedness in contouring the Naxalite armed rebellion, India saw the birth of a series of human rights organisations—Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) in Kolkata in June 1972, the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC) in 1974, Organisation for Protection of Democratic Rights (OPDR) in 1975, the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights (CPDR) in Maharashtra in 1977, and the Association for Democratic Rights in Punjab (AFDR) in 1978. In 1976, Jayaprakash Narayan launched the People’s Union for Civil Liberties and Democratic Rights (PUCLDR), which split in 1980 to become PUCL and PUDR.

The thousands of political opponents and Naxalite activists arrested during Emergency (1975-77) were mostly released after the 1977 election that decimated the Congress. Even though there was no category defined as political prisoners, the newly-elected Left Front government in West Bengal issued a policy guideline the same year, declaring a general amnesty to all political prisoners. Eventually, they were released.

Despite such an atmosphere, new laws kept coming. The NSA came in 1980. It permitted up to 12 months detention without trial for security threats. Five years later, the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), 1985, was enacted. It allowed confessions to police to be considered as evidence and made obtaining bail really difficult.

After TADA lapsed in 1995 following widespread criticism for its abuse, another law was enacted—the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), 2002, which too, faced the charge of rampant abuse. After the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government came to power removing Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, POTA was repealed in 2004. However, the UAPA of 1967 was simultaneously amended and strengthened to make up for the loss of POTA.

The UAPA Amendment Act, 2004, significantly expanded its scope by formally introducing the definition of “terrorist act” and related offences. The UAPA was further strengthened with the subsequent amendments—the 2008 and 2012 amendments brought in by the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government and the 2019 amendment implemented by the BJP’s Narendra Modi-led NDA government.

A common trend during the past 3-4 decades is that opponents in electoral politics are usually jailed in connection with cases involving corruption or money laundering, whereas political activists associated with essentially non-electoral mass movements face charges under special laws, including anti-terror and sedition laws.

In 1996, after the then DMK chief M. Karunanidhi came to power, his government had jailed former chief minister J. Jayalalithaa of All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) on corruption charges. In 2001, after Jayalalithaa returned to power, she took revenge by getting the police to drag the 77-year-old Karunanidhi out of home in a midnight raid in connection with a corruption case.

In a 1988 essay, human rights activist K. Balagopal had drawn the distinction quite carefully—one group of political activists opposes merely the ruling family or the ruling party, while the other group opposes the State. It is for the latter that laws concerning terror and sedition and allowing prolonged incarceration without trial are chiefly used. From Assam’s anti-dam activist Akhil Gogoi and Jharkhand’s priest-cum-human rights defender Stan Swamy to Delhi’s anti-communalism activist Umar Khalid, the list is long.

Balagopal pointed out that the second category of people—who were effectively being treated as political prisoners without any formal recognition—suffer from a prison regime “much more undemocratic than the non-political undertrials suffer”.

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“They can be, and are, being treated as a different category of prisoners to whom even the minimum rights available to ordinary undertrials are not available,” he wrote.

Almost all political parties that have been in power in states have used these laws, especially the UAPA, including the Left government in West Bengal and Kerala, and Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal.

In the Indian history of the post-colonial period, there was only one example of a government formally recognising a category of jail inmates as “political prisoners”, who were entitled to some benefits like the supply of newspapers and reading and writing materials. It was the West Bengal Correctional Services Act of 1992 passed by the Jyoti Basu-led Left-front government.

Its Section 24 said, “Any person arrested or convicted on a charge of having committed or attempting to commit aiding or abetting the commissions of any political offence, whether or not the act constituting such offence comes within the preview of any offence punishable under the Indian Penal Code or any other law for the time being in force, or any person believed to have been prosecuted out of political animosity or grudge, shall be classified as political prisoner.”

Voices From Prison: Of Lives Stolen For Dissent

The Act further explained, “For the purposes of this clause, (a) any offence committed or alleged to have been committed in furtherance of any political or democratic movement or any offence arising out of an act done by an individual with an exclusive political objective free from personal greed or motive shall be a political offence.”

However, after coming to power in 2011 with the promise of releasing political prisoners jailed during the Left rule, the Trinamool Congress Chief Mamata Banerjee did a volte face. In October 2012, after the Calcutta High Court granted political prisoner status to seven persons jailed on charges of being associated with the banned CPI(Maoist), the Congress-led UPA government’s P. Chidambaram-led home ministry advised the state to amend the Correctional Services Act, 1992, to block members of “terrorist organisations” from getting the status of a political prisoner.

The Mamata Banerjee government heeded and the relevant sections were amended on August 27, 2013, to exclude members of banned outfits. In most cases, people arrested for association with banned outfits were the ones who fought for or demanded political prisoner status. Their exclusion ended India’s brief tryst with formal acknowledgement of ‘political prisoners’.

MORE FROM THIS ISSUE

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In The Isolation of the Anda Ward, We Dared To Sing, Writes Gautam Navlakha, Bhima Koregaon Accused

Voices From Prison: Hope Remains A Stubborn Thing Even In Captivity, Says Umar Khalid

Voices From Prison: Life After Jail Is Tough, But Surveillance, Harassment Continue, Says Sudha Bharadwaj


Snigdhendu Bhattacharya is a journalist, author and researcher


This article is part of the Magazine issue titled Thou Shalt Not Dissent dated February 1, 2026, on political prisoners facing long trials and the curbing of their rights under anti-terrorism laws for voicing their dissent.

Red Star, Lode Star: Where Does The Left Stand With The Global Rise Of The Right

The global rise of the Right has made the Left not irrelevant but indispensable


Brinda Karat
17 December 2025

OUTLOOK, INDIA


Flying High: Two Soviet soldiers plant a Soviet flag on top of the Reichstag building on May 2, 1945, symbolising the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany during the Battle of Berlin | Photo: Imago

Summary of this article


Persistent anti-Left rhetoric by Right-wing leaders reflects the enduring appeal of socialist ideas, which continue to resonate with working people.


The rise of neoliberalism after the collapse of the Socialist Bloc led to deregulation and soaring corporate power, deepening inequality and culminating in crises like the 2008 crash.


The global turn to the far-Right has been fuelled by economic insecurity, corporate backing and manufactured social polarisation.


Zohran Mamdani’s victory in New York underscores the continued relevance of egalitarian, despite aggressive attacks from leaders such as Trump.

It is striking that Right-wing leaders across the world continue to use communist and socialist-bashing as a central feature of their politics even while repeatedly declaring Left ideology “dead and buried”. If socialism is supposedly irrelevant, why is it still treated as a threat? The answer is simple: socialist ideas continue to resonate with working people everywhere, especially in times of deep crisis. This is why those in power remain preoccupied with discrediting the Left.

The vicious language used by US President Donald Trump against Zohran Mamdani—the self-declared democratic socialist who won the New York City mayoral election—is a telling example. While Mamdani was campaigning, Trump described him as a “lunatic communist,” a “subversive,” and condemned socialism as “the most noxious idea in human history”. Yet, Mamdani won decisively in the heart of global capitalism. His victory showed that even in metropolitan America, a political programme rooted in equality, public welfare and working-class rights has widespread support.

The collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist bloc in the early 1990s was hailed by capitalist powers as “the end of history”. They celebrated the elimination of a model that had forced Western governments to adopt social security, welfare protections and labour rights. With its collapse, these concessions were treated as dispensable. Neoliberalism—the new template of global capitalism—proclaimed the privatisation of public assets, corporate tax concessions, sweeping deregulation, restrictions on labour rights and massive cuts in public expenditure as the formula for growth.


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Neoliberalism grew out of the demands of finance capital, merging into huge corporations across national borders for unfettered access to markets across the world without national regulations. Deregulation enabled speculative capital to flow across borders, unconstrained by concerns of social welfare or adherence to legal rights for workers, which were dismantled in many countries. The result was the dramatic enrichment of large corporations at the expense of ordinary people. Wages stagnated even as corporate profits and executive bonuses rose sharply. Public health and education systems were starved of funds. Pension guarantees and social security protections were steadily dismantled under the doctrine of “austerity”, while the wealthy enjoyed tax bonanzas. For workers, neoliberalism translated into outsourcing, contractualisation, the destruction of job security, and the weakening of unions. A vast population of precarious workers —with no guarantee of income or social protection—became the new global norm. The 2008 financial crash, which pushed millions into unemployment and poverty, was not an accident but the logical culmination of the neoliberal order.


When Absence Meant War


The absence of the Socialist Bloc of countries was felt throughout the world—by developing countries who lost a key ally against the hegemony of the Western imperialist powers, the working people in capitalist countries, those countries fighting for national sovereignty. It is no coincidence that this was when wars led by the US were waged, particularly on West Asian countries to grab their oil wealth. The US supported the most fundamentalist Islamist forces to overthrow regimes not compliant with US interests. The symbol of such forces, Osama Bin Laden, was a creation of this imperialist policy of the US as was the Taliban against the pro-socialist regime in Afghanistan.

As the social and economic consequences of neoliberalism hardened, discontent spread across the world. It was the betrayal of mainstream social-democratic parties and centrist parties, leading governments, that had earlier embraced neoliberal reforms themselves, unable to provide any alternatives which created the space for the far-Right. It channelled widespread economic insecurity into hatred—much like the Nazis did in 1930s Germany—replacing class anger with hostility towards immigrants, minorities and marginalised groups. In a kind of Right-wing International, these forces developed similar slogans and platforms: that authoritarian nationalism is the true guardian of culture, that corporate dominance represents development, and that attacks on minorities are legitimate expressions of majoritarian identity. The pattern has repeated itself across the US, Italy, Turkey, Hungary, the Philippines, and in India. In almost every case, the political rise of the far-Right has been achieved through the fusion of immense corporate backing with carefully manufactured social polarisation.

socialist ideas continue to resonate with working people everywhere, especially in times of deep crisis. This is why those in power remain preoccupied with discrediting the Left.


The scale of this shift is dramatic. A recent Global Parliament Index (Arden strategies) estimates that Right-wing governments now account for roughly 37 per cent of national leadership worldwide—the highest proportion in decades. Yet, contradictions are mounting. The neoliberal model that these governments championed is in crisis; protectionism is replacing globalisation, tariffs have been weaponised by the US to establish hegemony, and fears of another major financial collapse haunt Western economies. Public approval ratings for several Right-wing incumbents are falling sharply, including those of Trump in the United States.

At the same time, socialist China—which follows a model of state-led planning and public control of key resources—has emerged as a major pole in global politics against which the US is scrambling to build alliances. Whatever internal debates the global Left may have about the nature of Chinese socialism, the fact remains that a country once economically behind India now stands among the world’s most technologically advanced because it refused to submit to neoliberalism and retained what it describes as “Socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The relevance of socialism is proved by the example of China, which refused to bow under the bullying and intimidation of the US in its current tariff war, because it is confident of the strength of its own domestic economy based on socialist principles.

The Impact of the Left


The Left’s impact is often judged narrowly by electoral outcomes. But elections today are far from being democratic. Corporate financing plays an overwhelming role in shaping electoral success. Media houses across the world are owned by business conglomerates that openly champion Right-wing interests. Control of social media platforms enables the systematic spread of misinformation and the character assassination of dissenters. The question to be raised is: in so-called democracies are elections free and fair or is democracy corporate-driven, in which parties of the working classes, devoid of funds, have little chance to win an election?

Moreover, where electoral verdicts deliver a Left-wing victory, the US and its allies often intervene to instal compliant regimes. Look at what is happening in Latin America. The national sovereignty of the people of socialist Cuba, their lives, livelihoods and the very right to life, are under attack daily through the cruel decades-old sanctions imposed by the US and cowardly accepted by most so-called democratic governments. The people of Mexico, Columbia, Venezuela and Brazil defeated the US-backed efforts to impose pliant regimes electing governments committed to a pro-people policy framework influenced by socialist principles. Venezuela is currently being punished through the real threat of war.

Given this, it is misleading to assess the influence of the Left purely through its electoral strength, as though there has been a level playing field. The Left also shapes society through mass struggles, against class exploitation, against racial and caste violence and discrimination for the rights of marginalised communities, against war, ecological destruction. Its struggles have often been successful in defending peoples’ rights. The fightback of the working classes, the farmers, youth, students and women against neoliberal policies and for human dignity against Right-wing hatred, have been led by the Left through various organisations and platforms.

When most “centrist” political parties remained silent in the ongoing US-supported Zionist genocide in Gaza, it was the massive mobilisations of Left and progressive forces across campuses, workplaces and neighbourhoods that forced governments to shift their positions.

The Indian situation is inseparable from this global context. We are witnessing the consolidation of a political regime in which Hindutva ideology and corporate power reinforce each other—a communal corporate regime. The influence and control of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in determining the government agenda is clear. Economic and social policy today is structured simultaneously around neoliberal policies and majoritarian cultural domination marked by open hostility and escalating hate campaigns against minority communities and increasing attacks on all dissent.

The early 2000s showed that this trajectory was not inevitable. The surge in Hindutva mobilisation in the 1990s was checked by the emergence of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government in 2004, dependant on the Left, whose Common Minimum Programme (CMP)—drafted under Left pressure—forced a partial retreat from unrestrained neoliberalism. During this period, landmark legislation in which the Left played a critical role, such as the Forest Rights Act and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MGNREGA) work guarantee were secured. Wherever the Left governed—in Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura—alternative policies took a systematic form. Land reforms; strengthened rights of agricultural workers and tenant farmers; minimum guaranteed wages; protection and advance of Dalits, Adivasis and minorities; defence of the public sector; and prioritisation of universal access to health and education. Kerala’s achievements, including its pioneering household-level micro-planning programme for poverty eradication, remain unmatched.

The Left’s strong stand prevented the hijacking of the political agenda by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) when it was in Opposition. The rupture came when the Congress capitulated to corporate and US pressure to form a strategic alliance with the US, an instrument of which was the Indo-US nuclear deal, in violation of the CMP. Subsequently backed by the corporate media, the Congress spent its energies in attacking the Left even while the Right wing grew. Within five years, the coalition led by the Congress collapsed, leading to the victory of the BJP under Narendra Modi.

Despite the electoral setbacks, the Left has stood firm. In Kerala, confronting deliberate discrimination by the centre and resulting financial stress, the Left-led government has expanded welfare programmes and created new employment avenues. In Bengal, the unholy combination of parties from the extreme Left to the Right succeeded in defeating the Left Front government. Braving state-sponsored repression and murder of hundreds of cadre by the Trinamool Congress, through popular struggles, mobilisations and a rectification of past mistakes, the Left parties are building strong links with the people and are poised for a breakthrough. In Tripura, the party is regaining its strength through a brave resistance against BJP repression. The Left has played an important role in the significant struggles of workers and kisans (farmers), of students and women on their day-to-day issues, which have been an important aspect if not the backbone, of the fight against the current regime. The Left has been uncompromising in its defence of minority rights.

There are some well-wishers who urge the Left—and more specifically the Communist Party of India (Marxist)—to stop being “dogmatic” and “so ideological” and to become more practical. There are many legitimate criticisms of the CPI(M) or Left approaches which should and must be addressed. We have seen the sorry fate of those parties belonging to various hues, who sacrificed ideology for short-term gains. “Soft” Hindutva can never defeat Hindutva. The use of caste for political purposes can never eliminate the caste system. Compromise with policies which are anti-working class and which destroy the lives and livelihood of the rural poor and farmers in the name of development have to be strongly opposed. India needs a robust Left which will never compromise on the fundamental interests of the working people of India. To save those interests is to save and serve India. This is a battle for minds, not just for votes. A strong Left can help to bolster the wider platforms and combinations of secular political forces required to defeat the ongoing RSS-BJP project of a Hindutva rashtra.

The global rise of the Right has made the Left not irrelevant but indispensable. Capitalism is not the end of history. Injustice, inequality, hate and division are not human fate. The Left stands out as the enduring political current offering a coherent alternative based on public control of resources, an end to the exploitation of human labour, equitable access to the benefits of development, equality, secularism, peace and human dignity. This is why the Right cannot stop attacking socialism. It knows that an organised Left is the greatest obstacle to its project of division and exploitation. Socialism as an achievable goal fashioned in each country according to its national specificities, is the hope and the horizon to build a better world.

https://www.outlookindia.com/magazine/

Brinda Karat is a politburo member of the CPI(M)

This article appeared as 'Red Star, Lodestar' in Outlook’s December 21, 2025, issue as 'What's Left of the Left' which explores the challenging crossroads the Left finds itself at and how they need to adapt. And perhaps it will do so.