The Fight Against Modi: What Next?

https://iclfi.org/spartacist/en/69/modi

The Indian elections “humbled” Modi. Instead of a supermajority, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) is now in a coalition government and has a slightly weakened mandate for its neoliberal Hindu nationalist (Hindutva) agenda, which brought it to power in 2014. Congress leads the INDIA (Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance) opposition, a grand coalition stretching from the Communist parties on the left to anti-BJP Hindu nationalist parties on the right. Revitalized after a decade of utter impotence, Congress and the left claim a “moral victory” that has rescued Indian democracy from Hindu nationalism.

The first duty of revolutionaries is to tell the truth. And the truth about the elections is that people voted against Modi in spite of the Congress-led bloc. Modi’s party took a hit not out of enthusiasm for Congress but because it has not been able to fulfil India’s huge development needs, centrally the desperate need for jobs. Congress can peddle its wares about saving democracy, but so long as India is defined by generalized poverty, it is impossible to secure democratic and minority rights. At bottom, Congress can provide neither democracy nor development because it operates fundamentally on the same model as the BJP, upholding the interests of the class that stands as an obstacle to development, the Indian bourgeoisie.

Given India’s colossal needs, it has no gradual road to development. The choice is clear: more chauvinist reaction on the capitalist road, or a revolutionary struggle by the masses against the rulers, domestic and foreign alike. To embark on this road requires breaking the alliance with Congress pushed by the Stalinists and others on the left. It is crucial to understand that this dependence does not advance the fight against the BJP but ties the masses to the very class they must confront. We offer this article as a basis to build a revolutionary pole in opposition to the Congress popular front and advance on a new road to uplift the masses.

I. Congress Paves Way for BJP: 1947-2014

To defeat the BJP, we must understand its road to power. How did a Hindu nationalist party at the margins of national political life sweep to power on an absolute majority, decimating Congress, India’s historic ruling party? The answer is that Congress itself paved the way for the BJP. Its failure since independence to provide meaningful development prompted large segments of the population, including the bourgeoisie, to turn to the BJP as an alternative. To understand why, it is necessary to begin with the tasks inherited from two centuries of colonial plunder.

1. Party of the Neocolonial Indian Bourgeoisie

British domination completely impoverished the Indian subcontinent and fomented myriad divisions along lines of religion, caste and nationality in order to maintain its rule. The introduction of capitalist relations in India led to the birth of a wretched colonial bourgeoisie that grew up on the crumbs given to it by British capital, which dominated the economy. Alongside the Indian bourgeoisie, the British fostered parasitic landlords through whom they choked the peasantry in debt. In the words of Stalinist historian R. P. Dutt, colonial India was characterized by:

“Chronic agrarian crisis, famine, debt-slavery, the shackles of caste and of the outcaste, industrial exploitation without limit, contrasts of wealth and poverty more appalling than in any country in the world, social and religious conflict, class conflict, emergent national issues…all these problems reflecting in many respects the backwardness and retarded development of a country subjected for centuries to colonial domination.”

Independent India inherited all the features of the colonial economy—private property, scarce capital, general backwardness, subordination to imperialism—as well as the colonial administrative structure. The reason these features remained intact is that there was no rupture in social relations through an anti-colonial revolution that overthrew imperialist domination. Instead, independence came through a brokered negotiation between Britain and Congress, which included tearing apart the subcontinent and drenching it in blood.

The Indian bourgeoisie took charge, but its ability to develop the country was limited from the outset due to the backward nature of the economy it inherited and which had given birth to it. Owing to its organic ties to the colonial economy, the bourgeoisie could not shake up the structure of society out of fear that this might give rise to an upheaval by the impoverished and land-hungry masses, one that might threaten private property, and thus its own rule, altogether.

Weak and facing colossal tasks, the bourgeoisie had to balance the interests of the lower classes that wanted land and jobs on the one hand and, on the other, gain a degree of autonomy from imperialist finance capital in order to grow as an exploiting class. The presence of the USSR provided it with some room to resist the pressures of world imperialism. Taking advantage of this, it embarked upon state-led industrialization, or Nehruvian “socialism.”

2. The Failure of Nehruvian Planning

Taking inspiration from the Soviet Union, India sought to industrialize through its own regime of Five-Year Plans, but with one important caveat: where planning in the USSR was based on collectivized property and a social revolution, Nehruvian planning was based on the interests of the bourgeoisie, and its aims were dictated by the needs of this class. As Trotsky argued: “In a society where private property prevails, it is impossible for the government to direct economic life according to a ‘plan’” (“On Mexico’s Second Six-Year Plan,” 14 March 1939). Let us illustrate.

The aim of planning was to nurture the weak Indian bourgeoisie through import restrictions and the “license raj,” a restrictive regime governing entry into key sectors. This fostered a burgeoning bureaucratic apparatus to manage the allocation of scarce resources, constituting the basis for rampant corruption that characterizes Indian officialdom. By merely superimposing a regime of planning commissions onto a backward economy without breaking the shackles of private property and archaic traditions, the Nehruvian model was destined to fail.

Focused on heavy industry, this model generated limited employment but gave rise to a small and parasitic monopoly bourgeoisie. Where in the classic capitalist countries monopoly emerges at a later stage in the development of capitalism, signaling its disintegration, in a backward country like India the early emergence of monopoly signals the same disintegration but at the time of the bourgeoisie’s infancy. This defining feature of backward capitalism places fundamental limits on the ability of the bourgeoisies of such countries to accomplish the democratic tasks necessary for modernization.

In the case of Nehruvian planning, this limitation most clearly expressed itself in its failure to resolve the agrarian question. Congress carried out minimal land reforms that abolished zamindari, the landholding system of the colonial economy, but was incapable of going further due to its ties to the landowning classes. They did not break the power of the landlords and nurtured parasitic layers in the countryside that would continue to choke the peasantry, which was stuck on small, unproductive plots of land and subject to tenancy and exploitation by local moneylenders. This DNA of the economy, defined by backwardness, was left largely untouched: inefficient agriculture owing to low productivity and persistence of parasitism.

The result was growing impoverishment in the countryside, combined with the lack of an indigenous consumer base for the limited output of Indian manufacturing. The narrow savings base of the population, due to generalized poverty, ensured that capital remained scarce, limiting the ability of industry to expand and perpetuating India’s dependence on foreign capital. In short, the failure of land reform meant the failure to consolidate an internal market and fuel growth.

The promise of Nehruvian socialism faded by the early 1960s, giving way to bubbling discontent among the masses. Exacerbated by droughts and failed monsoons, low productivity led to repeat famines, to deal with which India depended on the goodwill of the White House. Unwilling to further encroach on the landlords, to address the agrarian problem the Indira Gandhi government ushered in the Green Revolution—a program to increase productivity through advanced agricultural technology from the West. Agricultural output was increased, but at the expense of small farmers who became trapped in debt due to the high cost of cultivation and the absence of cheap credit. This bourgeois method of addressing the agrarian question lies at the heart of the crisis of the Indian countryside today.

Over the decades, Congress dealt with growing poverty through handouts to appease its various vote banks. This exacted a heavy toll on the state’s finances, increasing its debt. Squeezed by the failure of the Nehru model to deliver development, Indira Gandhi would suspend civil liberties, enacting the Emergency in 1975. By the early ’80s, she would begin to liberalize the economy to satisfy the monopolist bourgeoisie shackled by the statist model.

Congress courted foreign capital and began gradually dismantling the license raj, liberalizing credit and slashing taxes on domestic capital, all of which facilitated the expansion of capital into sectors previously under state control. This resulted in temporary growth, as certain industries gained access to foreign technology and the injection of capital. At the same time, to finance the growing debt it had to turn to IMF loans, which it was unable to pay off, precipitating an IMF bailout in 1991.

The neoliberal reforms of 1991 were as much the imposition of the IMF as they were the outgrowth of the internal contradictions of the Nehruvian model, which could meet the demands of neither the masses nor the bourgeoisie: the former still had not seen a qualitative improvement in their conditions, and the latter, while dependent on the state, was simultaneously being constrained by it. Internationally, the collapse of the Soviet Union played a decisive role, weakening the pressures Congress felt from the left. The emergence of the U.S. as the hegemonic power in the post-Soviet period enhanced pressure on India to align with the U.S. and further integrate itself into the world economy through entry into the WTO in 1995. Thus, while the neoliberal turn was precipitated by an unprecedented crisis, it also aligned with the interest of capital to open India to the world.

3. Neo-Liberalizing a Backward Economy

Congress and other coalition governments gradually enacted neoliberal reforms in the 1990s, aiming to make India attractive for investment. The goal was to bust labor, loosen land regulations and privatize public enterprises. This package was sold as the way to usher in a manufacturing boom and provide employment and prosperity. India’s GDP grew, fueled by an explosion of finance and construction-related growth. In less than a year after these reforms were rolled out, India’s stock price index, Sensex, more than tripled. By the 2000s, the economy was booming and India became the back office for the growing IT sector in the imperialist countries. The inflow of foreign capital led to the growth of an educated middle class and a rise in certain development indicators across the board, reducing the proportion of those living in absolute poverty.

However, even the most ardent supporters of neoliberalism cannot escape the reality that it has failed to result in the development they imagined. No matter how much India tried to lure foreign investment and emulate China as a manufacturing hub, the results disappointed. India remained unattractive because of its general backwardness: a) unskilled labor owing to the broad degradation of society; b) appalling infrastructure: factories can’t meet production targets if there isn’t an adequate power supply and can’t transport goods with a poor network of roads; c) the layers of red tape and bureaucracy that made it extremely difficult to enter the market.

In short, the obstacle to spurring a manufacturing boom through finance capital was the very backwardness of the economy, which undermined the appeal of dirt cheap labor. Such obstacles could only be overcome by a complete transformation of society: massive expenditure on basic education, health and housing that would improve the quality of labor and raise the conditions of the masses; a gargantuan program of public works to build urban infrastructure in order to improve the quality of life, spur industry and modernize cities; radical agrarian reform to improve conditions in the countryside and eliminate the basis of economic backwardness.

That these measures were not taken is due not to misdirected policies of the Congress and other governments but to the simple fact that the economy is based on the class interests of the bourgeoisie, which has no interest in development for the many and whose political rule depends on the existing structure of society. When compelled to take measures to grow the economy, it does so in its own way, amalgamating the modern with the archaic: building shiny IT centers only for the fiber-optic cables to be laid amid urban chaos, with bull-carts sharing the road with luxury cars.

The essence of this combination is that modern technology and methods are superimposed on the primitive base of the economy. While neoliberalism prompted political parties to talk about “India Shining,” it devastated the lowest layers of the country. Still saddled with a backward economy, neoliberal India could not compete effectively on the international market, limiting the degree to which the tide of globalization would lift its boat. The result was that, with a growing population, the demand for jobs mushroomed from 35 million people in 1983 to 58 million in 2000. These conditions created fertile ground for the growth of chauvinist frenzy.

At the same time, women exited the workforce in growing numbers and the majority of the population toiled in the countryside, where agriculture continued to suffer due to poor irrigation, small landholdings and general inefficiency. The only hope for survival for many farmers was to turn to Western GMO seeds to raise their output. In the process, they were saddled with crippling debt which, in cruel irony, drove hundreds of thousands to suicide.

Neoliberal India became a spectacle of uneven and combined development: a small minority became even wealthier as modern finance capital flooded an archaic society, but the majority lived in misery. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani, who recently hosted a wedding for his son costing over half a billion U.S. dollars, would build an opulent, 27-story monstrosity of a mansion in Mumbai that soared above the city’s slums. Manual scavenging would persist alongside prospering gated communities. Buffalo would continue to plow the fields even when the seeds embodied advanced technology.

Until 2008, the Indian economy grew, in large part due to favorable international conditions. Low interest rates set by the U.S. meant there was cheap money looking for “emerging markets.” Following the 2008 crisis, the wave of globalization crashed and easy money began flowing out, exacerbating the underlying crisis of the economy. Neoliberalism had integrated India into the world economy, but in doing so made it more dependent on the vagaries of finance capital for its continued growth. As early as 2011, Gideon Rachman of the Financial Times opined:

“Globalisation prospered and took root during a period when all the world’s major powers were experiencing strong economic growth. It is threatened by a new world, in which emerging powers are palpably doing much better than the established economies of the west. The threat to globalisation will grow unless and until there is a co-ordinated global recovery.”

However, as a former CEO from India noted in response to Rachman, “globalisation might pause briefly in 2011, but it cannot be reversed when many billions of Indians and Chinese want it. Any country opting out of this new global game does so at their own risk.” What this confidence betrays is that India and China are simply not in charge; it is not the “billions of Indians” or even the Indian capitalist class which control the course of the world economy but the imperialist powers, centrally the U.S., which has been seeking to shore up its hegemony against a rising China. It is this inherent dependence of India on imperialism that fundamentally determines its tempo of highly uneven development. Regardless of whether it’s Congress or the BJP, this defining feature will plague India’s development as long as the economy is geared to the interests of the bourgeoisie, which is itself tied to world imperialism.

II. Indian Liberalism Fuels Rise of Hindu Nationalism

Generalized scarcity and poverty threatened to explode the myriad divisions of Indian society. The Congress method was to appease different segments of its vote bank, traditionally Muslims, Dalits and lower castes, appealing to their narrow interests as a means of retaining their political support. This method is the mainstay of Indian liberalism, which prides itself as the best defender of minorities. In reality, not only does this maintain the oppression of minorities, but it also fuels the growth of Hindu nationalists who attack liberals for dividing Hindus along caste lines and privileging minorities at the expense of the Hindu majority. At the heart of this reactionary cycle of liberalism and chauvinist reaction is the burning question of the Indian revolution: What is the road forward to unite the working masses? To answer this, we must first understand the nature of the obstacles.

1. Inheritance of the Past

Due to the absence of an anti-colonial revolution that could sweep away the archaic forms of social organization maintained by the British, independent India inherited all the precapitalist relics of the past. Long exoticized for being “unique” and “complex” due to this mighty heritage, India’s divisions plagued the masses, and the ruling class played upon these to secure and maintain their rule. These included divisions based on caste, religion, national and linguistic identity and gender.

At independence, these myriad divisions posed a challenge for the ruling class, whose overriding priority was to achieve political and social stability in order to secure a basis for its class rule. In the struggle against the British, the upper-caste Hindu bourgeoisie, led by Congress, had sought to unify the “nation” through its “tolerance” for non-Hindu religions. Once the British were gone, it continued on this trajectory and granted certain concessions as a means of managing these social contradictions. To quell the thorny question of religion, especially following the communal horrors of partition, it draped itself with a peculiar secularism that upheld the supposed tolerance for all religions, not the separation of religion from the state. Yet “tolerance” in a poor society is largely meaningless, since the majority will be the first to gain advantage due to its dominant status. The result has repeatedly been seen in pogroms motivated purely by religion—e.g., the 1984 massacre of Sikhs in Amritsar and beyond.

To deal with the national and linguistic questions (with at least 14 major linguistic groups and 1,652 mother tongues), India granted a limited federal system, eventually organizing the country along linguistic lines. This was combined with the forced integration of those regions that wanted independence, from Kashmir in the north to the various areas in the northeast and Tamils in the south.

The most “Indian”—and most explosive—of these relics is the hierarchical mode of organizing society through the caste system: an inherited division of people into four rungs (varnas) based on their occupation, whereby one’s social function and rank in society is thought to correspond to the body parts of Hindu god Brahma. Thus, the more “noble” and “pure” occupations, such as priests and intellectuals, were the reserve of brahmans who emerged from the mouth; kshatriyas, or the nobility, from the arms; vaishyas, or traders and agriculturalists, from the thighs; and shudras, or manual workers, the lowest within the caste system, from the feet of Brahma.

Entirely outside the caste system are the outcastes, or Dalits, deemed “untouchable” by Hinduism as a result of their social role as cleaners, scavengers or removers of social and animal waste. To be “untouchable” means to be condemned to a life beyond comprehension. You may not walk in the shadow of a brahman lest you pollute his pure existence. You must live on the outskirts of villages so as not to offend the varnas with your unclean presence. You may not rise above your prescribed existence and dare to look at an upper-caste woman unless you fancy confronting a lynch mob.

According to Perry Anderson, Mahatma Gandhi—proponent of the caste system and venerated leader of the independence struggle—once confided, regarding the difficult but necessary task of co-opting Dalits into the Hindu fold: “Might not Untouchables, accorded separate identity, then gang up with ‘Muslim hooligans and kill caste Hindus?’” (The Indian Ideology [London: Verso, 2013]). Facing such an archaic blotch on its modernizing ambitions, the Nehru government sought to give India a facade of progress. It invited B.R. Ambedkar, leader of Dalits, to draft the Constitution, which declared caste discrimination illegal and granted affirmative action as a means of uplifting Dalits from their miserable and stigmatized existence. But caste is rooted in the social fabric of India; it continues to determine one’s prospects. No matter how much a Dalit might rise economically, it is socially impossible to shed the stigma of being a Dalit.

India’s Constitution, deemed the crown jewel of independence, codifies these rights and is seen as the guardian of a progressive, secular and democratic society. Dalits take pride in the fact that Ambedkar was key in drafting it. Yet the Constitution ultimately defends the social and material basis upon which the Indian ruling class maintains its rule. It is based on protecting private property, i.e., capitalism, which is the central reason for the backwardness of India. Thus it reproduces social divisions and pits different groups against one another as they compete for scarce goods and jobs.

As Marxists, we understand that the root of social problems ultimately lies in the material relations that govern society. Without social development, all the laws declaring discrimination illegal cannot address the reality of social oppression. The material basis of oppression must be destroyed for the oppressed to be liberated. Trotsky explained:

“At the base of society is not religion and morality, but nature and labor. Marx’s method is materialistic, because it proceeds from existence to consciousness, not the other way around. Marx’s method is dialectic, because it regards both nature and society as they evolve, and evolution itself as the constant struggle of conflicting forces.”

The future evolution of Indian society will be determined by the configuration of conflicting forces: will it be Hindus against Muslims, Dalits against Hindus, Kashmiris against the rest of India, or any other such combination? Or will it be the Indian masses, in all their strength, against the upper-caste Indian bourgeoisie and its parties? To advance on the road of annihilating caste and other modes of oppression requires overcoming divisions and uniting the working masses. This can only come through opposing the rule of private property. Barring this, the divisions will be perpetuated by the attempts of Congress liberals or Hindu nationalists to secure their grip on India.

Two moments in recent Indian history suffice to demonstrate this cycle of reaction and the dead end of liberal politics: the Shah Bano episode and the Mandal moment, which coalesced to produce a festival of reaction that led to the demolition of the Babri Masjid (mosque) and propelled the BJP onto the national scene.

2. From Bano to Mandir: Reactionary Nature of Indian Secularism

A flashpoint for religious polarization, the Bano affair was the case of a Muslim woman, Shah Bano, suing her ex-husband for maintenance. In 1985, the Supreme Court ruled in her favor. This provoked the ire of the Muslim ulama (scholars), who deemed the decision a violation of sharia (Islamic law), according to which the care of a divorced woman reverts back to her family. Congress faced mounting pressure from the clergy to contravene the decision or lose the Muslim vote; the All India Muslim Personal Law Board organized mass demonstrations. Congress capitulated, essentially overturning the decision.

Unrest and dissent followed. The greatest challenge came from the Hindu nationalists. The BJP went on the offensive, accusing Congress of “minorityism” that relegated Hindus to second-class citizenship. In the 1980s, the combine of the BJP and RSS (a Hindu-chauvinist paramilitary organization) had revived a mass movement to build a mandir (temple) at the site of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, a Mughal-era mosque they claimed stood atop the birthplace of Hindu god Ram. It now used the Bano affair to fan communal flames and advance its campaign. To counter the growing right-wing challenge, Congress unlocked the gates to the Babri Masjid, which had been shut since 1949 to curb religiously incited violence.

This balancing act by the “secular” Congress facilitated the growth of the movement to destroy the mosque and erect a temple in its stead, worsening religious polarization. “The removal of the lock practically accepted the disputed structure as a temple and consequently the demand to build a proper temple to carry out the functions that were already taking place inside the building gained more strength” (business-standard.com, 28 March 2017). In 1989, Congress lost the elections, in part due to an unrelated scandal, and the BJP went from two seats in 1984 to 85 seats, signaling the expansion of its appeal.

The Bano case was a flash of lightning that revealed the reactionary nature of Indian secularism, a central plank of Indian liberalism. The “secularism” of the Constitution reflects the just aspirations of minorities to live with dignity and exercise their religion. But as the Bano episode shows, the bourgeoisie is compelled to blindly balance among competing forces, worsening divisions in the process. It wields the Constitution as an instrument to divide the masses and maintain its political rule. The Constitution’s true ideological purpose is to conceal the divisions that find fertile ground in the general scarcity prevailing in the country.

Hindu chauvinism is partly a result of the general misery confronting the majority community. As long as conditions for the broad masses remain degraded, the bourgeoisie will be able to whip up reaction against minorities, while also using them against the majority. This shows that the social and economic liberation of both the Hindu working masses and minorities is impossible without their mutual alliance. To forge such an alliance, it is incumbent upon the Hindu majority to champion the rights of minorities, winning their trust and support as part of waging a united struggle against the upper-caste Hindu bourgeoisie.

3. From Mandal to Ayodhya: Liberal Caste Politics Strengthen Hindutva

The Hindu-chauvinist backlash from the Bano affair collided with the 1990 implementation of the Mandal Report—the granting of affirmative action, or reservations, in the public sector to disadvantaged layers of the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), a term that overlapped with the lowest caste grouping and constituted some 52 percent of the population at the time. The report was implemented by a short-lived anti-Congress coalition government backed by both the Communists and the BJP. Combined with existing reservations for Dalits (15 percent) and tribals (7 percent), the new 27 percent for OBCs brought the proportion of reservations in the public sector to 49 percent, leaving the upper and middle castes competing for the rest of the jobs.

This “can of worms,” as Rajiv Gandhi called it, exploded caste antagonisms into the open. Upper-caste students staged mass protests and over a hundred self-immolated as increased reservations threatened their prospects and undermined the social balance of the caste order that favored them. This fear of material insecurity was transformed into inter-caste violence. An RSS magazine wrote that the Mandal Report had instigated a “caste war.” One editorialist wrote: “The havoc the politics of reservation is playing with the social fabric is unimaginable” and “sharpens caste-divide” (cited in Christophe Jaffrelot, Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy [Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2019]).

The upheaval put the BJP in a bind. If it opposed the Mandal Report, not only would the government fall, likely returning Congress to power, but the BJP would also alienate OBC voters and bid goodbye to its hopes for national office. Yet if it did nothing, it would alienate its traditional upper-caste base. To champion Hindu unity and overcome caste divisions, the BJP-RSS merged the discontent from Mandal into its campaign to build a temple in place of the Babri Masjid. In one stroke, the BJP sought to co-opt lower castes into its Brahmanical outlook and signal to the upper castes that with its campaign to “reclaim” the birthplace of Ram from the Muslims, it was the staunchest defender of Hinduism and thus the caste system.

In September 1990, BJP leader L. K. Advani got on a “chariot” and began a 10,000-kilometer journey to Ayodhya. One of the organizers of this effort was Modi, then a promising cadre. Communal riots erupted wherever the chariot went, leading to Advani’s arrest. But the saga was far from over. Two years later, on 6 December 1992, armed Hindu mobs would descend upon Ayodhya to attend a rally by the BJP-RSS family and demolish the mosque through sheer physical force. Weeks of rioting would follow, spreading to Mumbai and even Pakistan and Bangladesh, leaving thousands dead, most of them Muslims.

OBC reservations were eventually accepted by both Congress and the BJP as they were key to conquering the strategic election areas of the Hindi belt stretching from east to west in north-central India. Along with secularism, reservation for lower castes is a cornerstone of liberal-progressive politics in India. The demand for reservations reflects the hopes of oppressed castes to break out of a life of insecurity. The same demand fuels the insecurity of the upper-caste petty bourgeoisie. The ruling class and the politicians use these divisions to maintain their hold on political power and the caste structure of society. As revolutionaries, we must ask: how to overcome the need for reservations and end caste oppression altogether?

The need for reservations stems from the failure of development to raise the material standard of the masses as a whole. When development doesn’t attack the interests of the capitalist class, it comes at the expense of the masses. The low level of growth and development has exacerbated pre-existing caste (and religious) divides on the whole, and despite the upward mobility of a negligible segment of the lower castes, life prospects continue to be defined by caste oppression, including whether one can afford or even be allowed to go to school. This demands the annihilation of caste, not tinkering with the distribution of a meager economic pie. The way to break out of caste oppression is to attack the rule of the Hindu bourgeoisie, which reproduces material scarcity and enshrines the privileges of the upper castes.

The Congress party’s social liberalism is not a threat to the rule of the upper castes. In fact, Congress is the historic party of the upper-caste and landed elites. Today, when it promises Mandal 2.0, it does so in a desperate attempt to return to power so that it can continue serving the interests of the bourgeoisie. As long as India is run in the interests of this class, it is condemned to a state of generalized poverty that will cannibalize its social fabric at the expense of the oppressed. The cynical electoral strategies of Congress, the BJP and their allies add fuel to this tinder. The former pretends to be a friend of the oppressed but upholds the entire social basis of Indian capitalism; the latter wants to unify Hindus through an ethno-nationalist program that seeks to put all castes in their “rightful place” and crush minorities. Both are dangerous dead ends.

The way to combat the murderous Hindutva of the BJP is not to revive Mandal, as many liberals today argue. Instead:

“What is indispensable and urgent is to separate the means of production from their present parasitic owners and to organize society in accordance with a rational plan. Then it would at once be possible really to cure society of its ills. All those able to work would find a job. The work-day would gradually decrease. The wants of all members of society would secure increasing satisfaction.”

The prerequisite to organizing society in such a way is to unite the working masses in opposition to the rule of the bourgeoisie and wage a revolutionary struggle to uproot the entire basis of the Indian capitalist-caste order. This can only come about through championing the rights of all the oppressed—Dalits, Adivasis (tribals), religious minorities and women—with the aim of attacking the material roots of their oppression. Leftist liberals shed tears all day about the horrors suffered by the oppressed and embark on shaking up the status quo through inter-caste and inter-religious marriages. These fine sentiments do nothing to challenge the system responsible for oppression. There will be no gradual improvement in the conditions of the oppressed. Only by uniting the struggles of the oppressed and the workers under the banner of the Indian revolution can the masses overcome the myriad divisions fostered by the upper-caste bourgeoisie and its parties.

III. The BJP Years: Developing India on the “Gujarat Model”

Modi rose to national and global prominence during his rule from 2001 to 2014 in his home state of Gujarat in western India. In that period, he popularized the “Gujarat model” of development. As illustrated by the title of a book by Christophe Jaffrelot, an expert on Hindu nationalist politics, “Gujarat Under Modi” was the “Laboratory of Today’s India.” To understand how and why it catapulted Modi and the BJP to national office, we begin with an overview of the Gujarat model before explaining why this deadly mix of capitalist-Hindu chauvinist reaction is poison for the Indian masses.

1. Gujarat Under Modi: Finance Capital and Pogroms

To sum up the Gujarat model, it is to court capital, both domestic and foreign, and promote anti-Muslim reaction. The BJP’s rise in Gujarat is mirrored to some degree by the national pattern of Congress’ social liberalism paving the way for Hindu nationalism. The 1980s inter-religious and inter-caste riots in Gujarat were triggered by Congress orienting toward KHAMs—the lower-middle caste Kshatriyas, Harijans (more accurately Dalits), Adivasis and Muslims—and fostered a Hindu-chauvinist backlash. Exploiting the fear of middle classes threatened by the potential rise of those at the bottom, the BJP rode to power in 1995.

Modi, an RSS cadre since 1972, became Chief Minister in October 2001 and oversaw at the very outset the infamous Gujarat riots in February 2002—anti-Muslim carnage sparked by the alleged attack by Muslim men on a train carrying kar sevaks (Hindu nationalist volunteers). It is widely accepted that the Modi government organized the killing of Muslims as retribution. This episode got Modi banned from entering the U.S. and invited criticism from the liberal establishment, including the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), voice of Indian capital. That prompted Modi to boycott a CII exhibition, and Gujarati capitalist Gautam Adani to set up a rival chamber of commerce. The CII promptly retracted its criticisms, seeing that they would jeopardize business opportunities in the state. Tarun Das, director general of the CII, personally went to apologize to Modi, telling him, “We were very sorry for all that had happened” (The Times of India, 7 March 2003).

Modi won consecutive elections through a combination of Hindu nationalism and neoliberal development. This model secured a solid social base in the urban petty bourgeoisie—the so-called new middle class—whose appetites had been whetted by the economic liberalization in the preceding decade and who saw this as the best means to achieve prosperity. Indian and foreign capital, lured by attractive subsidies, lax labor laws, tax cuts, cheap loans and speedy clearances—all a result of Modi’s strongman approach to development—flocked to Gujarat. In 2003, Modi inaugurated Vibrant Gujarat, a biennial summit to court capital. Investment pledges jumped from US$13.3 billion in 2005 to $260.4 billion in 2011, and thousands of hectares were set aside for Special Economic Zones. Modi became the darling of capital. As Jaffrelot records in Gujarat Under Modi: Laboratory of Today’s India (London: C. Hurst & Co, 2024):

“In 2007, Mukesh Ambani declared: ‘Narendrabhai is a leader with a grand vision…amazing clarity of purpose with determination…strong ethos with a modern outlook, dynamism and passion.’… The billionaire industrialist K.M. Birla went even further: ‘Gujarat is vibrant because of its political leadership and Modi is a fulltime Chief Minister of the state and genuinely the Chief Executive Officer of Gujarat.’ During the 2013 Vibrant Gujarat meeting, Anil Ambani, who had already projected Modi as the next prime minister of India, likened him to Mahatma Gandhi…and Arjun, the hero of the Mahabharata [Hindu epic], before calling him ‘king of kings’.”

At the same time, Modi’s Hindutva was the answer for millions of “angry young men.” Rejected by the economy, their hopes of “making it” dashed, defense of the Hindu nation and the promise of development became for these layers the only road to improving their social standing and finally belonging in the fold of Hindu society. Lumpenized and declassed, these layers became the perfect recruiting ground for the paramilitary gangs of the RSS.

For all its promise, the Gujarat model was far from vibrant for the working masses. The stellar GDP figures were driven by investment in capital-intensive sectors such as chemicals, petroleum and pharmaceuticals. Behind these figures was little development and growing state debt, going from $5.7 billion in 2001-02 to $17.4 billion in 2011-12, due to concessions to capital. The simple reason for the lack of broad-based development is that this model is based on the interests of the clique of billionaires and foreign capital, both of which favor investments that create few jobs. Indeed, the rate of growth in employment declined as Modi continued in office. Existing jobs were of poor quality, with average daily wage rates for urban casual labor lower only in Uttar Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. Education and health suffered as investment in these sectors remained low, leading to high rates of infant mortality and malnutrition.

The aggressive neoliberalism of the Gujarat model was and remains inseparable from Hindu nationalism, as the idea of a “Hindu nation” serves as a unifying force behind which the interests of the ruling class are advanced. Moreover, Hindutva is able to rally the frustrated Hindu petty bourgeoisie against Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis—the “others” of Hindu society, whose upliftment might threaten its prospects. In a dynamic similar to that of the Mandal-Ayodhya episode, the BJP in Gujarat was able to capture the support of Gujarati OBCs and even layers of Dalits by co-opting them into the “Hindu nation,” giving them a means to enhance their social standing in opposition to non-Hindus. Beginning in 2014, the Modi government would attempt to replicate the fundamental contours of the Gujarat model at the national level.

2. India Under Modi: The Blind Alley of Billionaire-Hindutva Raj

Modi secured a landslide victory in 2014 as the Vikas Purush (Development Man). Though Hindutva and the Gujarat riots constituted a red blot that made some in the establishment uncomfortable, the prospect of a weakening economy was worse: growth figures were in decline since 2011-12; inflation was in double digits; the jobs and agrarian crisis was unchanged; and the IMF warned about India’s “challenging macroeconomic landscape.”

India’s billionaires backed Modi’s Gujarat model, seeing it as a better way to rape the country than Congress’ worn-out ways. The London-based Financial Times, voice of finance capital, gave its stamp of approval: “Part of Mr Modi’s attraction is that, by sheer force of will, he may be able to override some of the checks and balances of Indian democracy and introduce some of the clearheadedness of growth-driven China” (19 March 2014). Some liberals even saw in Modi the answer for the instability of “raucous democracy.” Modi and Hindutva—Moditva—were the answers for “a nation in search of a savior” (Ashoka Mody, India Is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023]).

Yet all his muscular charm and economic strong-manliness would not be able to deliver the development Modi promised. Some data might help put into perspective the alarm bells that are blaring behind India’s amazing growth rates. As it stands in the post-Covid period:

• Over 45 percent of the labor force works in agriculture
• The share of manufacturing in GDP has fallen to 13 percent
• 800 million people need subsidized food
• Over 100 million between the ages of 18 and 35 are neither in school nor actively looking for employment
• Youth unemployment is soaring, at 14 percent for those aged 25 to 29, and nearly 45 percent for those aged 20 to 24

The methods of the Gujarat model—cozying up to the crony capitalists, creating few jobs and squeezing those at the bottom of society, all wrapped in a murderous package of chauvinist frenzy—can only fuel the explosiveness at the heart of India’s economy. But let us be concrete and expose why relying on foreign capital and the billionaires will never be able to develop India, let alone by the government’s stated goal of 2047, the centenary of independence.

Gujarat was able to achieve a certain rate of development in the 2000s due to cheap money sloshing around in the world economy. Since the 2008 financial crisis, however, the world situation has changed. There has been a reversal of the dynamics underpinning globalization, resulting in stagnant world trade as a share of GDP. Bidenomics-like protectionism by the imperialist countries means that India is competing with big fish. Even though many see it as an alternative for investment as U.S.-China relations freeze, India has not received the expected bonanza of capital flight from China. The reason is the same that plagued Congress’ neoliberal model: By all standards, the Indian economy remains a “risky” destination because of its extremely poor infrastructure, low labor productivity and government corruption. The cumulative result is that the Modi government’s much-touted pitch to “Make in India” to kickstart manufacturing and generate jobs has been an abysmal failure. Indeed, the Indian economy employed fewer people in 2018 than it did in 2012.

The billionaire-Hindutva model responsible for infrastructure-driven growth figures is based on cheap loans from the state. Even preceding BJP rule, bad loans had been growing as a portion of total loans. In April 2015, when he was still Reserve Bank of India governor, Raghuram Rajan warned that well-connected Indian businessmen were scamming government banks. He was not asked to continue at his post, and under Modi bad loans increased from 4 percent in late 2014 to 9 percent in 2017. As a result, state-owned banks slowed lending to industry overall, choking growth. Meanwhile, rising public debt makes India more vulnerable to financial shocks from the world economy, jeopardizing the savings of millions.

Modi’s billionaire friends, who rank among the richest on the planet, project the image of an India that has arrived on the world stage—an economic superpower—and present themselves as national champions. But these crooks are completely integrated with imperialist capital and develop India according to the interests of finance capital, i.e., through measures that boost stock valuations. When New York-based short-seller Hindenburg Research exposed the stock manipulations and accounting fraud behind Adani’s fortune, the Adani Group lost over $150 billion, and he fell from the third-richest man in the world to 30th. The Hindenburg episode is the most blatant proof that at the end of the day, it is the imperialists and Wall Street that call the shots.

In rebuttal to Hindenburg, Adani’s company published a 413-page report accusing the short-seller of “a calculated attack on India, the independence, integrity and quality of Indian institutions, and the growth story and ambition of India” (Guardian, 30 January 2023). This appeal to the nation is a cynical attempt to continue robbing the country. We say to Mr. Adani, if the nation is so dear, give Adani Group to the nation and let the people be in charge—let the Adani Group be nationalized.

The Modi government’s attempts at modernizing the economy to enhance the “ease of doing business” have tended to crush the masses and small businesses. Demonetization, pitched as a measure to combat pervasive corruption and sanitize the country’s global image, abruptly removed from circulation existing 500- and 1,000-rupee bills. In doing so, it devastated the informal sector, largely made up of small businesses and farmers, which employs nearly 90 percent of India’s workers. Typical of capitalist modernization, the integration of the population into the formal banking sector—an objectively good and necessary thing—was carried out at the expense of the lower classes.

Measures like these are balanced by Modi’s signature pro-poor populism, such as installing toilets to end open defecation, which is still practiced by millions owing to poor infrastructure, curbing the use of wood-burning stoves by supplying gas cylinders, or just handing out cash—Rs 6,000 (roughly $70) is given to roughly 110 million farmers every year. The official statistics that come with these measures make the Modi government look as if it is finally tackling the problems afflicting India’s worst-off. But it is not difficult to see that these are just feeble attempts at playing a balancing act. The makeshift toilets are not connected to plumbing systems and so are still emptied manually, often falling into disrepair owing to their poor quality. And once the gas cylinders are empty, people simply can’t afford to refill them and so revert to the old ways.

One of the most controversial aspects of Modi-rule has been the failed attempt to implement farm laws aimed at repealing the regime of minimum support prices (MSPs), a longstanding part of a policy to prop up farmers by guaranteeing prices for certain crops. In reality, the MSP benefits a small layer of rich farmers who have large enough landholdings and generate a profit. For the majority of farmers, roughly 85 percent of whom own less than two acres of land, the MSP is at best a means of staving off disaster. This is because the MSP barely covers the high cost of inputs—from buying seed and fertilizers to accessing credit through local moneylenders and paying commissions to middlemen in state-regulated markets.

Although the MSP does not benefit the mass of farmers, its removal would force them to sell their produce directly to a handful of big agribusiness outfits that would dictate the terms of trade, essentially destroying small farmers. The laws attacking MSPs generated mass protests in 2020, forcing the government to back down. In large part, those leading the protests were the voices of the rich farmers and the parasitic middlemen who would stand to lose the most from repealing the MSP. But poor farmers also saw their own interests reflected in the movement.

Nevertheless, the MSP regime is not the answer for the poor peasantry, since it does not actually address the crisis of farming. The base of India’s economy is agricultural backwardness, the solution to which demands a democratic agrarian revolution that Congress and all parties have blocked. The obstacle to this—and every other means of improving the lives of the toilers—is not merely Modi but also the anti-Modi brigade of the INDIA alliance, to which we turn next.

IV. INDIA Popular Front Raises Specter of Fascism

The rallying cry of the INDIA alliance is saving democracy from Hindu fascism. Rahul Gandhi, fourth generation of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, leads the alliance. The Indian Stalinists—Communist Party of India (CPI), CPI (Marxist) or CPI(M), and CPI Marxist-Leninist Liberation—are all banded together in INDIA…along with a wing of the fascistic Shiv Sena, an openly Hindu-chauvinist party.

The INDIA coalition is jubilant that it undermined Modi’s supermajority. Behind the vagaries of the electoral system, the reality is that the BJP’s share declined marginally from 37.3 percent in 2019 to 36.5 percent in 2024. While it took a hit in the Hindi-speaking belt, it expanded its reach into the non-Hindi south, going from 18 to 24 percent. Congress’ overall share only rose from 19.4 percent to 21 percent in the same period. More than just an ineffective electoral strategy, INDIA constitutes the central obstacle to the fight against Modi.

The reason stems from the ABC of Marxism: every measure to defeat reaction must confront the entire bourgeoisie. Since the fascist scourge comes from the putrid bowels of a bourgeois society in decay, the fight against it must be completely independent of all bourgeois forces and must instead base itself on the independent mobilization of the working masses, the only force capable of overthrowing capitalism. An alliance with Congress paralyzes attempts at such a mobilization—a burning necessity today—and diverts the masses’ energy into legal and bureaucratic channels of a state based on Hindu supremacy.

Let us make this simpler. Consider what is needed to combat armed gangs of the Bajrang Dal, or any other such outfit. A suspected beef eater or trader or an inter-religious couple face a gang of these thugs armed with swords and guns—an immediate threat to their lives. The only method by which such fascist scum can be warded off and those under attack genuinely defended (i.e., not be killed or raped!) is armed mobilizations of workers and the oppressed—Muslims, Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, women—ready to take a stand. Force can only be combated with force.

How would this fare with the leaders of the INDIA bloc? Would Rahul Gandhi or Shiv Sena’s Uddhav Thackeray be happy to arm workers? Absolutely not, because they are aware that this can easily turn against them. Instead, they breed the illusion that minorities will be defended by the state, which is itself based on Hindu supremacy—consider the plight of any Dalit or Muslim who tries to register a complaint at a police station. When the leaders of Communist parties bloc with the likes of Gandhi and Thackeray, they stand as an immense obstacle to advancing the immediate defense of the oppressed. We repeat: Any alliance with the bourgeoisie can only paralyze the struggle against Hindutva mobs! And as we have shown, Congress has no solution for the general decay of Indian society. Aligning with it can only condemn the masses to a life of misery and attacks on democratic rights.

The complete and utter lackey character of the Stalinists is on full display with their open endorsement of Congress; their claim to the banner of communism in India ties the masses to the ruling class. But there are a handful of non-Stalinists, dare we say Trotskyists, in India who made some principled polemics against Congress…only to endorse a vote to the left parties within the Congress-led popular front! In the lead-up to the elections, Radical Socialist, which is associated with the Mandelite Fourth International, wrote:

“We call for a vote to the left, to independent civil society candidates, to Dalit, Adivasi, regional minority voices when not in alignment with BJP…. But we warn all working people, all oppressed masses, that all calls to vote anyone but BJP tends to set up for a repeat of the tragedies of the past…. The longer term struggle to permanently defeat the forces of Hindutva requires struggle much more on the extra-electoral fronts of various kinds. Here the reconstruction of a much more internally democratic and non-sectarian Left that has shed Stalinism and Maoism is necessary…. The slightest reliance on bourgeois liberals weakens the independent struggles of the masses.”

This political gymnastics has a singular message: vote left, which incidentally happens to be in the big tent of the INDIA bloc built on the logic of “anyone but the BJP.” In classic centrist fashion, this amounts to backhanded support to INDIA. But wait, there is a warning: If you vote left (i.e., for the Stalinists), then it will result in tragedies! What is a worker supposed to do with this mess? But our academics rest content that they have ticked the main boxes: Congress bad, Stalinists bad, struggle good…only to undermine themselves by supporting the left, placing themselves on the left wing of the popular front. This completely maligns the name of Trotskyism in India.

The task of Trotskyists is to combat the hegemony of Stalinism on the Indian left. That will come through exposing their treacheries and exploiting the contradiction between their rotten program and the millions who (still!) look to the hammer and sickle as a symbol of their liberation. The requirement is to offer an independent road of struggle against Modi and Hindutva. Despite all talk by Radical Socialist about the need for the left to “shed Stalinism and Maoism,” their backhanded support to the popular front can only reinforce the influence of the Stalinists!

V. Program of Action for India

India stands at a crossroads, facing two dead ends: strongman Modi wants to turn India into a superpower through his genocidal model; Gandhi crawls to the imperialists and asks for their intervention to save Indian democracy. The situation for the masses cannot be improved without what Trotsky called “a revolutionary invasion of the right of capitalist property.” Only this can overcome the contradictions of India; any program falling short is bound to fuel chauvinism in a society defined by poverty.

We offer the road of revolutionary internationalism against imperialism and its lackey, the Indian national bourgeoisie, as the means to unite the masses against their oppressors. This requires a political break with Congress, INDIA and all wings of the Indian bourgeoisie.

1. For a workers’ militia to fight Hindutva mobs. An immediate measure to beat back the threat of the vigilante lynch mobs of the RSS is to arm the proletariat, raising an integrated militia to defend minorities. Dalit, Adivasi, Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Christian: unite against fascist scum!

2. Unionize the toilers. Unions are the elementary defense organizations of the proletariat, urban and agricultural. Most toilers work in farming and the informal economy and have no protections. We call for mass unionization drives to organize all labor!

3. Agrarian revolution. The entire economy is based on the failure of land reform, continuing to slowly choke the poor peasantry and hold back the development of the country. India cannot go forward without an agrarian revolution, which demands the complete liquidation of landlordism and all parasites impoverishing the countryside. We say: land to the tiller, cancel the debt, collectivize the large industrial farms! Break the imperialists’ seed monopoly!

4. Planned economy. To improve conditions for the masses requires hundreds of millions of jobs, houses, adequate food provision, universal and quality education and health care, provided to everyone without discrimination on the basis of caste, religion or gender. To deliver this, what is needed is a huge development of the productive forces—advanced factories with modern technology and tools, millions of schools to produce skilled workers, roads, bridges, sewers, electricity and more. But the economy is under the control of the upper-caste billionaires, who are themselves tied to the imperialist robbers. Liquidate the billionaires; nationalize all industry under the democratic control of the unions!

5. Revolutionary internationalism. India’s development is choked by its subordination to world imperialism, freedom from which cannot be achieved as long as the country remains divided internally. It is imperialism that engineered the myriad divisions, forcing peoples and nations inside arbitrary borders; for their liberation, the South Asian masses must unite against imperialism and their own parasitic rulers. For the right of self-determination for Kashmir and all other nations that want it! Workers of the world unite!