Down with the Modi-Adani Regime!

October 10 and the wave of protests leading up to it have shattered the illusion of the stability of Modi raj. Two things are now certain: first, there is growing discontent against the mass unemployment, rising prices, attacks against basic democratic rights, Muslims and minorities, the endless rapes, and everything else making life unbearable in the “world’s largest democracy”. Second, the deployment of nearly 43,000 police and military personnel to crush the October 10 protest in Delhi, and the detention of nearly 7,000 protestors, public figures and leaders of many opposition parties, is not a sign of strength, but weakness and insecurity. Free all those detained and arrested!

But what is next? This is the question for revolutionaries. Staying in the streets without a clear plan and without the support of the broad masses will lead to isolation and stagnation. To turn every corner into Jantar Mantar, the movement must mobilise the toilers. This requires a programme which can appeal to their hearts and minds and give them confidence that this is their struggle.

And demanding the resignation of this or that minister or official alone is not enough—the whole BJP-RSS regime is rotten! The protests offer a glimpse into the deep social and economic crisis engulfing India and the impasse of the Modi government which is squeezed between the needs of the masses and the demands of US imperialism. It cannot meet either and its room to manoeuvre is shrinking. The movement must take advantage of this situation! It must not only broaden itself, but also aim its fire at all those running the country into the ground: the Modi government, the Ambanis, Adanis, and the entire gang of crony capitalists. Down with the Modani government! This is not the rallying cry of the movement; revolutionaries must make it one to drive it forward.

What the protests show

The protests have gained this level of momentum because they touched a raw nerve in society. The July protests erupted over the scandal of leaked exams (NEET) and forced the resignation of the Minister of Education, a first in twelve years of BJP rule. A victory, no doubt. But young people know that “fair exams” will not solve their problems: they are competing with millions for a few thousand jobs. The real issue is that there are not enough jobs and youth unemployment is the highest it has been in 40 years. Hundreds of millions of youth, increasingly from middle-class homes, are being denied their future. This is adding to the immense tinder at the base of society.

The current protests are demanding the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar, Chief Election Commissioner, over the deletion of roughly 130 million names from voter lists through the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) process. The purpose of SIR is to consolidate Hindu nationalism through the ballot box. So of course it targets Muslim and minority voters—they are less likely to vote BJP. It is beyond a doubt that SIR played a part in the victories of the BJP in recent state elections, especially West Bengal.

The protests therefore rightly centre on the defence of democracy and the rights of minorities. But how do you protect these, the limited extent to which they have existed in India’s history, when lynch mobs feel entitled to terrorise the oppressed and when some of the highest institutions of the country are run by Hindutva lackeys? The social fabric of the country is rotting like never before; we need to fight for much more than the resignation of Gyanesh Kumar and the repeal of SIR.

Anyone looking at the situation with clear eyes can see that the movement has objectively put on the table the entire status quo of Indian politics and society. NEET and SIR are inseparable from the broader struggle for decent jobs for all, for development, for the defence of democratic rights and all the oppressed. They pose, in embryo, the question of the entire fate of India: will it continue to be run into the ground by Modi and his gang of billionaires, or in the interest of the masses? Revolutionaries must fight to bring this understanding to the fore in the movement.

Where are the toilers?

The protests have been heroic and have no doubt inspired people throughout the country. But the movement as a whole remains small and restricted largely to the major cities and dominated by students and the main opposition parties looking for a makeover after their own betrayals in office. So far, it is missing a crucial component: the toilers.

India is a country of gigantic proportions; protesters in their thousands, even hundreds of thousands, hardly begin to scratch the surface. The BJP and the crony capitalists will be forced to concede when they see hundreds of millions ready to take them on. The movement must therefore urgently link up with the urban and rural masses.

To do so, it must be able to tap into their grievances and aspirations. There is no shortage of these: for decades the Adivasis have been battling the billionaires razing their forests to the ground; poor peasants are still committing suicide and farmers have staged prolonged protests in recent years; Dalits are sick of being treated like dirt, never knowing when they might be lynched or be forced to drink cow piss; women, especially Dalit women, are sick of never-ending rapes and murders; Muslims are sick of being treated as outsiders and suspects; Kashmiris are sick of the decades-long undeclared emergency in their homeland; Manipuris are sick of the ethnic carnage which continues raging on the sidelines of the national story; and common people throughout the country are sick of rising prices of food and energy and waiting for the acche din (good days) which never come.

The list can go on. The point is that the masses, despite their differences, all share a common enemy: the Modi government and the billionaires backing it. The movement must champion their aspirations in order to bring them into the fray and pose a real challenge to those in power.

The liberals containing the movement

This is not the aim or outlook of those leading the movement. So far, it is firmly in the hands of liberals seeking to tinker with the rotting status quo of India; they are fundamentally opposed to challenging its entire foundation.

On the one hand, there are the seasoned, capital-P politicians of the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, with Congress at the head, regional bourgeois parties and the five main communist/left parties. Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi have both had great photo ops standing atop barricades and being manhandled by the police. The same is true for Mamata didi and various opposition leaders—all tried and tested parliamentary cretins with long records of betrayals.

Then there are the youth, led by the much loved, respectable, and untainted sons and daughters at the head of the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP). Abhijeet Dipke & Co have captured the hearts and minds of a lot of youth and parents, but they have plainly confessed to not having a strategy for achieving all the good things they talk about.

Tailing the CJP are five national student federations, all affiliates of the left parties in the I.N.D.I.A. bloc, with Neha Bora of All India Students’ Association/Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation at the head. Her speeches and countless encounters with the police have struck a chord with common people and turned her into a household name.

What unites this grand opposition is their actual unwillingness to challenge the entire Modi regime. Gandhi & Co have every reason to do this; if the government falls tomorrow, Congress and its allies will be the main beneficiaries. So why won’t they expand and channel the movement in this direction now, when things are getting hot?

Because it matters how the government falls: parliamentary manoeuvres, or through the strength of the masses? They are deathly afraid of the latter for the simple reason that they don’t want to let the genie out of the bottle. They are well aware that if the masses enter the fray in their hundreds of millions and start demanding roti, kapda aur makaan (food, clothes and housing), things will get out of their control. A concerted movement of the masses will bring to the fore the question of the entire social order, not just the Modi regime. And Congress has no more answers for the needs of the masses than Modi does for the same reason that it also defends the social order of India.

Thus, Gandhi & Co are building the movement to suit their own aims. By restricting it to this or that issue, they are hoping to stir a prolonged crisis for the government so that they can win the coming state elections and the next general elections…in 2029! Should the masses tolerate their conditions until 2029, only for Congress to then come in and say “well, the BJP really made things quite bad, so it will take us ten more years to deliver growth”? No!

The left parties, for their part, are not playing a left role at all. They have nothing to say that distinguishes them from Congress. And while the parties are in cahoots with Congress, their student federations are doing the same with the CJP in a bid to win the youth. All the while Congress and the CJP are careful to keep their distance from one another: CJP does not want to associate itself too openly with established parties so it can preserve its image, and the Congress sees the CJP as a challenger.

Congress, the left parties, the CJP and the student federations are all pushing the same liberal strategy: get photo ops, worship the Constitution and make general appeals to “citizens” to protest endlessly. They do this because it’s a win-win for them: it’s good optics, and it will not mobilise the most oppressed layers of society, since they are the first to face the boot of state repression. This strategy is designed to be palatable primarily to the radical students and urban liberals, not the broad masses.

The disease of Constitution worship

The Constitution is widely seen as the jewel of the anti-colonial struggle. It expresses the aspirations of the masses for equality, democracy and a secular society. Revolutionaries must defend the Constitution tooth and nail against any attack by the BJP government—the masses cannot afford any more erosion of their democratic rights! However, we must be very clear that the road to genuine democracy does not go through the Constitution.

The Constitution has not ever, and cannot, guarantee these because it enshrines capitalist private property; it defends the social and material basis upon which the Indian ruling class maintains its rule, the very rule which has prevented genuine development for 79 years. No number of words in a book, no matter how authoritative, can guarantee equality and democratic rights for the masses in the context of the immense deprivation which defines India. Material scarcity reproduces divisions based on religion, ethnicity, caste and nationality, pitting different groups against one another. In this competition, those at the top always win out. Have the decades of reservations uplifted the Dalits or women or Adivasis? No. Has making caste discrimination illegal changed the reality for Dalits? No. Did Indian secularism come to the aid of the Sikhs in 1984, or Muslims in Kashmir or Shaheen Bagh? No.

The ideological function of the Constitution is to defend and conceal the fundamental reasons which produce and reproduce these divisions and deprivations. Merely upholding the Constitution breeds the lie that its correct implementation can fix all the evils of Indian society. It cannot. Only with jobs and prosperity for all can we even begin to speak of a truly democratic and secular India. Spreading illusions in the Constitution hampers the struggle against the real culprits: the Indian bourgeoisie and the imperialists.

Break all links to Congress and the liberals!

Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)-Liberation, All India Forward Bloc, and the Revolutionary Socialist Party—these parties have been hanging on the coattails of Congress for years in the name of fighting fascism and defending democracy. With this, they have been training their cadre and base in the spirit of class collaboration and blocking the development of a working-class alternative to the BJP.

Revolutionaries must fight to break the alliance of the left parties with Congress! There can be no defence of democracy nor any progress in an alliance with the liberal representatives of the Indian bourgeoisie. Talking about Dalit or Muslim rights on paper is meaningless when their bloc with Congress prevents them from acting on anything to concretely advance those rights. Such alliances therefore alienate the most oppressed layers.

Workers, students and communists must fight to make the left parties adopt the following demands to show us where their allegiance truly lies: expropriate the billionaires to fund decent public education and housing for the poorest; land to the tiller, cancel the debt of poor farmers; expropriate imperialist assets and nationalise all industry under the democratic control of workers; freedom for Kashmir and all other nations that want it; build religious- and caste-integrated workers’ militias to defend minorities and Dalits from Hindutva terror, Maoists and Adivasis against state terror, and women from rape terror!

These are all things which are urgently needed and which can improve the conditions for the masses now. And each demand poses the alliance of the left parties with Congress. We must agitate amongst the student federations, unions and other organisations of the left parties with these demands in order put pressure on their leaders to adopt them: if they would rather stay with Congress, then expel them and break the link with Congress! To fight for genuine democracy, India needs an independent working-class alternative which fights with working-class methods! Down with Modi sarkaar, no to Gandhi parivaar!

How to go forward

The struggle against Modi is beginning to develop in earnest now. Many are calling this the start of the second freedom struggle of India. Yes, let’s make it that! But for genuine freedom, we must be clear about a key lesson from the first freedom struggle: the communists failed to challenge the leadership of Congress and Gandhi and build an independent working-class alternative. In essence, the same task remains today. Break all links with Congress! Build a revolutionary workers party which fights for a socialist federation of South Asia! Inquilaab zindabad!