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(Today, Hindu-supremacist fascists are in power in India, and are busy trying to write themselves into the history of India’s freedom movement; while distorting the role of the movement’s actual key actors. In this feature we examine the trajectory of the two foremost Hindu-supremacist organisations, the Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, from their birth until India’s freedom and soon after.

The Punjab Hindu Mahasabha was formed in 1909, and the Hindu Mahasabha was formed in 1915. The RSS was formed in 1925. What did these respective formations and their leaders do, when India fought for freedom; when freedom fighters spent long years in prison and sacrificed their lives?

The leaders of the HM and RSS stated their aims quite clearly. So we will rely on their own writings, as well as the assessments of these outfits by other participants in the freedom struggle. - ed/-)

Did Hindu Mahasabha and RSS Ever Support The Fight Against The British Raj?

Leaders of the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha repeatedly displayed their contempt for the anti-British freedom movement.

Golwalkar Condemning The Freedom Struggle As “Disastrous”

“Anti-Britishism was equated with patriotism and nationalism. This reactionary view has had disastrous effects upon the entire course of the freedom movement, its leaders and the common people”.

- M. S. Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts,1996, p. 138

“There are bad results of struggle. The boys became militant after the 1920-21 movement…After 1942, people often started thinking that there was no need to think of the law…”

- Golwalkar on the impact of the Non Co-operation Movement of 1920-21 and Quit India Movement of 1942, Shri Guruji Samagra Darshan, (S.G.S.D.), Vol. IV, p.41

“In 1942 also there was a strong sentiment in the hearts of many. At that time too the routine work of Sangh continued. Sangh decided not to do anything directly.”

- Golwalkar on the Quit India Movement of 1942,
S.G.S.D.,Vol. IV, p.40

Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Helped The British Crush Quit India Movement

Mookerjee refused to resign from the Ministry in Bengal during the Quit India Movement. Not only that, as a Minister in the Bengal Government in 1942, he actively offered help and advice to the British administrators to crush the Quit India Movement. In 1942, he wrote:

“The question is how to combat this movement in Bengal? The administration of the province should be carried out in such a manner that in spite of the best efforts ... this movement will fail to take root in the province.”

“As regards India’s attitude towards England, the struggle between them, if any, should not take place at this juncture. ...Anybody who plans to stir up mass feelings resulting in internal disturbances or insecurity, must be resisted by any Government...” (Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, OUP, 1993, pp 175-190)

Golwalkar wrote that the martyrs were “failures” and asked us to question “whether complete national interest is accomplished by that (martyrdom)?” (Bunch of Thoughts, p. 61-62)

Golwalkar wrote: “there is no doubt that such man who embrace martyrdom are great heroes ...All the same, such persons are not held up as ideals in our society. We have not looked upon their martyrdom as the highest point of greatness to which men should aspire. For, after all, they failed in achieving their ideal, and failure implies some fatal flaw in them…” (Bunch of Thoughts, p. 283.)

What About Savarkar? Did He Write Mercy Petitions?

VD Savarkar resisted the British long before he joined the Hindu Mahasabha and before was imprisoned. Soon after his re-arrest and trial, when he was taken to the Andamans in 1911, he began pledging loyalty to the British and begging for release in a series of “mercy petitions”. He has the shameful record of writing no less than seven mercy petitions promising to serve the British loyally in exchange for his release.

In a letter dated November 24, 1913, he repeated this petition pleading for release, promising to mend his ways, and become “the staunchest advocate … of loyalty to the Government … where else can the prodigal son return but to the parental doors of the Government?”

To obtain his release in January 1924, Savarkar accepted without any compunction the conditions set out in his release order “that he will not engage publicly or privately in any manner of political activities without the consent of Government.”

But Rajnath Singh Says Gandhi Advised Savarkar To Seek Mercy?

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said that Savarkar wrote his mercy petitions only because Gandhi advised him to do so. Is this true?

The facts are as follows:

Savarkar submitted seven mercy petitions, the first one in 1911. At the time Gandhi was in South Africa. Gandhi returned to India only in 1915. So he had no contact with Savarkar when the latter wrote his mercy petitions.

In 1920, Gandhiji responded to Savarkar’s younger brother Narayan Rao who had asked for his advice. Gandhiji wrote a letter saying, “It is difficult to advise you. I suggest, however, framing a brief petition setting forth facts of the case, bringing out in clear relief that the fact that the offence committed by your brother was purely political.” ('Absurd to Claim Gandhi Advised Savarkar to Plead for Mercy': Rajmohan Gandhi, Interview with Karan Thapar, The Wire, 19 October 2021) So Gandhiji advised Savarkar to accept his offence but point out that its motive was political rather than criminal. He did not advise Savarkar to beg for mercy!

Historian Rajmohan Gandhi, who is also Gandhiji’s grandson, says, “Rajnath Singh is asking us to believe that a letter that Gandhi writes in January 1920 to a request from the Savarkar brothers should be interpreted as advice given by Gandhi nine years earlier that Savarkar should send a mercy petition. The suggestion is absurd beyond description. It is laughable.” (ibid)

Gandhiji did write in Young India in May 1920 seeking the release of the Savarkar brothers as well as the Ali brothers – Maulana Shaukat Ali and Maulana Mohammed Ali. But he is not “begging for mercy” for them – he is demanding the release of all political prisoners including those with whose ideas and methods he disagreed.

Maybe Savarkar Just Asked For Mercy Tactically? Did He Not Fight The British After He Was Free?

Here, let us consider what opinion two freedom fighters - Gandhiji and Subhash Bose – had about Savarkar and the Hindu Mahasabha.

In his May 1920 Young India piece, Gandhiji made it clear that while he felt the Savarkar brothers’ imprisonment was unjust, they were not freedom fighters. He wrote, “The Savarkar brothers state unequivocally that they do not desire independence from the British connection. On the contrary, they feel that India’s destiny can be best worked out in association with the British.”

Subhash Bose met Savarkar in June 1940. He wrote about the meeting: “Mr Savarkar seemed to be oblivious of the international situation and was only thinking how Hindus could ...secure military training by entering Britain’s army in India.” He also found that neither Jinnah and Savarkar were interested in the freedom struggle, writing “nothing could be expected either from either the Muslim League or the Hindu Mahasabha.” (Netaji Collected Works, Vol 2, The Indian Struggle)

Syama Prasad Mookerjee, writing in his diary, noted that Subhash Bose told him that if the Hindu Mahasabha tried to build itself as a political body in Bengal, “He [Bose] would see to it, by force if need be, that it was broken before it was really born.” (Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, OUP, 1993)

But Vikram Sampath Claims That Bose Praised Savarkar?

Journalist Ayush Tiwari tried to verify a quote attributed by Savarkar’s latest biographer Vikram Sampath to Subhash Bose, containing fulsome praise for Savarkar. He traced the quote to Dhananjay Keer’s biography of Savarkar – but Keer provides no source for his quote. As Tiwari adds, “In fact, there is no primary source than can be attributed to this quote.” So Sampath uses an unsourced quote from Keer’s hagiographic account without making any attempt to verify it! As we saw above, Netaji’s own writings carry a very negative assessment of Savarkar and of the Hindu Mahasabha.

Tiwari adds that “It has been a quite old trend to credit Netaji’s struggle to Savarkar. In fact the trend was started by Savarkar himself as he wrote in his ‘Tajasvi Tare’ book, published after independence.” (Ayush Tiwari on Twitter https://twitter.com/sighyush/status/1185427762728718337?s=20&t=hLXS6rSbMxqvQrkAjS1o1A)

Did Rajaji Author The 1926 Biography of Savarkar, As Sampath Claims?

Journalist Ashutosh Bharadwaj did a fact check on a sensational quote attributed by Sampath to C Rajagopalachari (Rajaji), claiming to have “penned” Savarkar’s 1926 “biography” which had been published under the pseudonym “Chitragupta.” (Ashutosh Bharadwaj, Twitter, https://twitter.com/ashubh/status/ 1449966103992537096?s=20&t=IDP4BnPBVbOdDZzNjd0fpQ)

But this quote was nowhere to be found in Rajaji’s collected works. Bharadwaj finds that Sampath’s “source” for this quote is Hindu Mahabhasha Parva, a book by Savarkar’s brother Babarao Savarkar. There is no primary source for that quote either.

Note that the 1986 reprint of the 1926 biography, published by Veer Savarkar Prakashan, has a preface that clearly states, “Chitragupta is none other than Veer Savarkar.”

Why These Attempts To Claim Gandhi or Bose or Rajaji Endorsed Savarkar?

Vikram Sampath and Rajnath Singh now seek to somehow manufacture credibility for Savarkar, tainted by his multiple mercy petitions and his communal, pro-British politics. So they claim Gandhi advised him to beg for mercy; that Bose praised him and Rajaji wrote his biography. But the quotes or sentiments attributed to these leaders seem to be fake news produced by Savarkar himself or his brother!

What Did Savarkar Do After Being Freed From Andaman Jail?

From the time he was freed from prison to the end of his life, it is clear that Savarkar kept the promises he made to the British in his mercy petitions. He never participated in the freedom struggle in any capacity. He wrote his hateful Hindu-supremacist manifesto Hindutva in 1923, and spent his life working solely for Hindu-supremacist politics.

As Bose noted, Savarkar was not interested in supporting the Quit India movement or building any armed resistance to the British (Netaji Collected Works). He was obsessed only with how Hindus could get into the British Army and get training that would help in fighting Muslims!

And can we forget that Savarkar was the mastermind behind the assassination of Gandhi?

But Savarkar Was Never Punished For Gandhi’s Assassination?

While Nathuram Godse was hanged for killing Gandhiji and his brother was jailed for his part in the conspiracy, the mastermind Savarkar escaped punishment, even though a Hindu Mahasabha member Badge turned informer and testified that Apte and Godse met Savarkar, came away with weapons, and that Savarkar blessed the duo telling them “Yashasvi houn ya” (May you be successful and return). Badge added that Apte told him that Savarkar was sure that “Gandhi’s 100 years are up” and so the assassination attempt would be successful. But in the absence of independent corroboration, Savarkar got the benefit of doubt and escaped punishment.

However, Home Minister Sardar Patel was sure of Savarkar’s guilt. In a letter to PM Nehru, dated 27 February 1948, Patel wrote, “It was a fanatical wing of the Hindu Mahasabha directly under Savarkar that [hatched] the conspiracy and saw it through.”

After Savarkar’s death, the Justice Kapur Commission enquiry found additional proof corroborating Badge’s account and confirming that Savarkar was the kingpin of the assassination conspiracy. In its 1969 report the Kapur Commission concluded that “people who were subsequently involved in the murder of Mahatma Gandhi were all congregating sometime or the other at Savarkar Sadan and sometimes had long interviews with Savarkar….All these facts taken together were destructive of any theory other than the conspiracy to murder by Savarkar and his group.”

Patel Held The RSS To Be A Danger to India

In a letter to Hindu Mahasabha leader Syama Prasad Mookerjee on July 18, 1948, Patel wrote:

“There is no doubt in my mind that the extreme section of the Hindu Mahasabha was involved in the conspiracy [to kill Gandhi]. The activities of the RSS constituted a clear threat to the existence of Government and the State. Our reports show that those activities, despite the ban, have not died down. Indeed, as time has marched on, the RSS circles are becoming more defiant and are indulging in their subversive activities in an increasing measure.” (Letter 64 in Sardar Patel: Select Correspondence1945-1950, volume 2, Navjivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, 1977, pp. 276-77)

In a letter to Golwalkar in September 1948, Patel reiterated the reason for his decision to ban the RSS:

“All their speeches were full of communal poison. ...As a final result of the poison, the country had to suffer the sacrifice of the invaluable life of Gandhiji. Even an iota of the sympathy of the Government, or of the people, no more remained for the RSS. ...Opposition turned more severe, when the RSS men expressed joy and distributed sweets after Gandhiji’s death.”

Conclusion

The RSS and BJP venerate Savarkar while their top leaders maintain “physical distance” from Godse. However that distance is narrowing, as the BJP gets more and more brazen and confident. Modi’s decision to field Pragya Thakur as an MP from Bhopal, declaring that “No Hindu can ever be a terrorist” is a case in point. Pragya Thakur was part of the terrorist plots by the Abhinav Bharat (run by Savarkar’s descendants). She openly and repeatedly declares that Godse – the terrorist who assassinated Gandhiji - was a patriot! And while Savarkar may have claimed that he did not bless Godse’s assassination attempt, today the Hindu Mahasabha declares its intention to build Godse temples!

It is clear enough, though, that the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha collaborated with the British and had nothing to do with the Indian freedom struggle. Instead they were involved in communal and terrorist conspiracies – the worst being the assassination of Gandhiji. And today, the same forces collaborate with imperialism and are involved in communal violence and conspiracies to assassinate people like Dabholkar, Pansare, Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh.

What India Must Learn From These Experiences

The RSS and the entire Hindu-supremacist faction in India remained aloof from India’s freedom struggle, instead choosing to collaborate with the colonial British rule’s “Divide and Rule” mission by breaking the unity of the people on Hindu-Muslim lines.

That Divide and Rule policy resulted in the bloody partition and the creation of India and Pakistan. Bangladesh broke from Pakistan later.

Now the Modi regime – implementing an RSS agenda – has announced that 14 August (Pakistan Independence Day) will be observed in India as “Partition Horrors Remembrance Day”. This is a move intended to perpetuate the divisive tragedy of partition inside India and between India and Pakistan.

Why does the Modi regime wish to reduce 74 years of India’s freedom to the blood-soaked chapter of Partition (in which on both sides of the border, Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs participated in mass killings and rapes)? How is it seeking to rewrite the history India’s freedom struggle, inserting the RSS and Hindu-supremacists into the story where they never had a part?

RSS’ is a Hindu-supremacist ideology and project, which dreams of turning India into a nation free of Opposition politics, where the RSS rules in the name of Hindus, and non-Hindus have to live as second-class citizens or as non-citizens. This vision of India goes against the entire spirit of the freedom struggle. Indians of all communities fought and sacrificed equally for freedom, and so all communities have an equal claim over India.

Is Indian Nationalism distinct from the European model of nationalism because it is “cultural” rather than “economic”?

This self-serving claim by RSS leaders could not be more false.

The nation state emerged in Europe as an “imagined” identity with the emergence of capitalism to fulfil capitalism’s historical needs – for creating a unified home market for capitalism, and as a binding force for new form of governance by replacing the ‘loyalty’ to a monarch by ‘loyalty’ to a ‘nation-state’. Language, religion were among the factors invoked as bases for nationalism. So the economic and political aspirations of emergent capitalism constituted the essence of nationalism in this first phase in the 16th-18th centuries.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, a new phase of nationalism emerged: as a battle cry that united diverse people in colonised countries for liberation from the colonial subjugation of first generation of capitalist nations. So, anti-imperialism and the quest for sovereignty are the essence of nationalism in colonised countries this phase. Indian nationalism was not based on a unifying sense of shared religious beliefs, but a shared purpose of fighting the colonial oppressor.

Indian nationalism: Born Fighting Company Raj, Not Mughal Raj

India’s first war of independence in 1857 against Company Raj (the rule of the British East India Company) marks the first expressions of anti-colonial nationalism and a sense of belonging to one country. Following close on the heels of the great santhal hool led by Sido and Kanhu, the ‘peasants in uniform’ rose above religious narrow-mindedness and challenged the British Raj as Indians, as ‘Hindostanis’ in the sense of being legitimate owners of Hindostan: “Ham hain iske malik, Hindostan hamara” (We are its owner, Hindustan is ours)— in the words of the 1857 Anthem penned by Azimullah Khan. 1857 – with its diverse set of fighters hailing not only from princely feudal backgrounds, but also from the oppressed castes and women, thus announced the birth of popular, militant anti-imperialism some thirty years ahead of the birth of the Indian National Congress.

Prior to 1857 there had been a host of peasant and tribal uprisings against British rule. 1857 was the first such uprising that began to speak the language of belonging to one country – Hindustan – and defending it from the “firangi” (foreigner) who came to plunder it.   

The British were frustrated at the firm unity among diverse communities displayed in the 1857 uprising: a senior British officer Thomas Lowe observed: “the cow-killer and the cow-worshipper, the pig-hater and the pig-eater, the cries of Allah is God and Mohammad his prophet and the mumbler of the mysteries of Brahma, they are all joined together in the cause.” (Quoted by William Russell, in his diary for The Times, London, March 2, 1858, cited by Shamsul Islam, Indian Express, May 12, 2020)

The command of the revolutionary army was in the hands of Bakht Khan, Sirdhari Lal, Ghaus Mohammed and Heera Singh – Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs all together. The artillery commander in Rani Lakshmi Bai’s army was Ghulam Ghaus Khan, and her infantry commander, Khuda Bakhsh. Her personal security officer who fought and died alongside her was Mundar – a Muslim woman.

There are any number of examples of Hindu-Muslim unity and sacrifice from 1857. After the brutal suppression of the uprising, the British formulated their “Divide and Rule” policy, which was especially venomous against the Muslim community.

Battle Between Rulers – Or Religions?

The RSS narrative claims that Mughal rule was “foreign” to India and resented and resisted by Hindus. So Indian nationalism, they claim, was Hindu in character since primordial times and must remain so now. RSS ideologue Golwalkar was keen to supplant anti-colonial nationalism with a Hindu “nationalism” that was hateful towards Muslims. He had written: “Anti-Britishism was equated with patriotism and nationalism. This reactionary view has had disastrous effects upon the entire course of the freedom struggle, its leaders and the common people.” (Golwalkar, Bunch of Thoughts)

And no wonder that this RSS narrative is as “Britishist” as it can get.  It was James Mill who periodised Indian history into “Hindu Period, Muslim Period and British period” (Our Pasts-III, NCERT, 2022-23). When Yogi Adityanath, the CM of Uttar Pradesh says that “remembering Mughals is a symbol of slave mentality” he is actually echoing a colonial lie.

Even the historian RC Majumdar who follows Mill’s classification and shares a Hindu-nationalist ideology with the RSS, admits that an idea of “India” or Bharat as a nation “had no application to actual politics till the sixties or the seventies of the nineteenth century.” So the “Hindu” rulers and soldiers were not champions of “India”, and Muslim rulers and soldiers were not “invaders” or “occupiers”. (RC Majumdar, Three Phases of India’s Struggle for Freedom, p 5, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 196)

The facts show us that battles of the Mughal period were battles between rulers not religions; between kings not communities.

Take a few examples.

At the Battle of Haldighati in 1576, Akbar’s forces were led by his commander-in-chief, Man Singh I of Amber – a Hindu. They clashed with Maharana Pratap’s army which was led by a Muslim named Hakim Khan Sur.

What about Shivaji’s defeat of Afzal Khan? We hear the story that Shivaji was going to meet Khan without any weapons, but his bodyguard persuaded him to carry the famous ‘iron claws’ which he used to kill Khan when the latter attacked. Who was the bodyguard? Rustam Zawan – a Muslim. After Shivaji killed Khan, Khan’s assistant, Krishnaji Bhaskar Kulkarni, a Hindu, tried to kill Shivaji to avenge his master’s death.

The third example is that of Tipu Sultan the ruler of Mysore in the 1700s against the Maratha Army that the British had recruited against Tipu. After the ‘Hindu’ Maratha army ransacked the Sringeri monastery in Mysore at the behest of the British, Tipu Sultan offered his resources for the consecration of the Goddess, and sent gifts for the idol. A Hindu army destroyed a temple, and a Muslim ruler sent money and resources to rebuild it.
Indian nationalism was born against colonial oppression and plunder – against Company Raj not Mughal Raj, and was defined by the unity of diverse religious and caste communities.

Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose’s assessment of Mughal rule is worth remembering for its accuracy: “With the advent of the Mohammedans, a new synthesis was gradually worked out. Though they did not accept the religion of the Hindus, they made India their home and shared in the common social life of the people – their joys and their sorrows. Through mutual co-operation, a new art and a new culture was (sic) evolved ….” (Subhas Chandra Bose, An Indian Pilgrim: An Unfinished Autobiography, ed. Sisir K Bose, Sugata Bose, Oxford India, 1997, p 15.)

Bhagat Singh vs Savarkar; Sacrifice vs Surrender

The RSS ideologue Golwalkar in a chapter titled ‘Martyr, Great But Not Ideal’ in his book Bunch Of Thoughts, expressed contempt for the martyrs of India’s freedom struggle, calling them “failures”. He wrote that “such persons are not held up as ideals in our society. We have not looked upon their martyrdom as the highest point of greatness to which men should aspire. For, after all, they failed in achieving their ideal, and failure implies some fatal flaw in them.” And he advised Indians that the willingness to sacrifice one’s life for the cause of the country’s freedom was not in the “complete national interest.”

Nor was Golwalkar’s attitude towards freedom fighters and martyrs an aberration – it was the norm among the Hindu-supremacist ideologues. The attitude of Hindutva ideologue Savarkar in the face of a life sentence contrasted with that of the revolutionary Bhagat Singh in the face of a death sentence tells us a lot.

Savarkar, imprisoned in the Cellular Jail in the Andamans in 1911, first petitioned the British for early release within months of beginning his 50 year sentence. Then again in 1913 and several times till he was finally transferred to a mainland prison in 1921 before his final release in 1924. His petitions begged the British rulers to let him go in exchange for his loyalty. He promised not only to give up the fight for independence but to work to persuade “misled” young freedom fighters back towards loyalty to the British. While inside jail he also complained that he was not given “better food” and “special treatment” compared to “ordinary prisoners” even though he was categorised as a “D” category prisoner. He declared, “I for one cannot but be the staunchest advocate of constitutional progress and loyalty to the English government which is the foremost condition of that progress.” (AG Noorani, ‘Savarkar’s Mercy Petition, Frontline, April 08, 2005)

In contrast, Bhagat Singh and his comrades on death row for “waging war” on the colonial state, declared boldly “Let us declare that the state of war does exist and shall exist so long as the Indian toiling masses and the natural resources are being exploited by a handful of parasites.” Moreover they demanded that as they were war prisoners, they must be treated as “war prisoners” and thus “we claim to be shot dead instead of to be hanged.” They concluded, “We request and hope that you will very kindly order the military department to send its detachment to perform our execution.” (Bhagat Singh, Lahore Jail, 1931, www.shahidbhagatsingh.org)

Pro-British RSS vs Ideologically Diverse Freedom Fighters

It is widely documented that RSS and Hindu Mahasabha did not participate in the freedom struggle and actively collaborated with the British. The RSS and BJP leaders now attempt to slyly “insert” RSS into the freedom struggle canvas.

One such attempt is a recent piece by RSS representative Rakesh Sinha. In his article 'The many socio-cultural and political processes that led to India’s freedom’ published in Indian Express, August 14, 2021, he starts, strangely, with a warning against “the exaggerated glorification of the icons and incidents from the freedom struggle” during the celebrations of the 75th year of Indian independence. Who in fact are these icons and incidents whose “exaggerated glorification” Sinha resents? Knowing the Sangh’s record, including its past hatred for Gandhi and current hatred for Nehru, one can easily guess.

Rakesh Sinha argues that there were many differences among freedom fighters – about violent and non-violent tactics or the use of religious symbolism and imagery in the movement. That is a point many have made before him.

India’s March To Freedom: The Other Dimension, authored Dipankar Bhattacharya and published by the CPIML in July 1997, for instance, observes that “If the ordinary people, workers and peasants, figure in this story of how India won her freedom, they do so only as numbers. Faceless, nameless numbers. ...But they are never shown in action as men and women fighting their own battle with their own vision, dynamism and initiative and trying to become arbiters of their own collective destiny. The working people are thus not only denied their due in the present. They are also denied their role in the past.”

But Rakesh Sinha’s claim that the RSS too was some kind of contrarian stream within the freedom movement, which has been hitherto neglected, is bogus. He writes that “forces like the Forward Bloc and the Indian National Army (INA), both formed by Subhas Chandra Bose, and the RSS, along with the revolutionaries, despite their differences in socio-economic perspectives, campaigned and acted to dethrone the British regime and made violence moral. At the same time, there was counter indoctrination of the masses against their ideology and programmes by the mainstream leadership.” So Sinha tries to slip RSS past our eyes, quietly and without any citations, in the company of those forces like Bose’ INA and Forward Bloc, and Bhagat Singh’s HSRA, as proponents of “violence” as opposed to the mainstream ideology of “non-violence.” This is thoroughly laughable, since the RSS’ only displays of violence were against the Muslims, never against the British! Never did an RSS leader advocate dethroning the British; instead they dissed “anti-Britishism” and advocated anti-Muslim hate and violence instead. And Bose and Bhagat Singh were one with Gandhi and Nehru and Azad on one thing – the absolute, forthright, unequivocal rejection of Hindu-supremacist nationalism and communal politics.

Violence/Non-Violence is in fact a jaded and outdated way of classifying the diverse actors of the freedom struggle. Studying their specific ideological inspirations and their strategies makes more sense than this lazy labelling. And the fault line that matters is not whether they advocated “violence” or “non-violence” – it is whether or not they rejected communal, Hindu-supremacist “nationalism”, and to what extent. There, Bose and Bhagat Singh stand alongside Gandhi and Nehru and Maulana Azad, uncompromisingly secular, with the likes of Tilak and Lajpat Rai flirting with Hindu supremacist ideologies without however giving up their determination to resist British rule. The RSS is quite distinct in its collaboration with the British and its never-flinching anti-Muslim hatred. That is why RSS is the proverbial stone in the lentils – it may hide but even if your eyes miss it, your teeth cannot let you swallow it unnoticed. It is quite indigestible.

Communists In The Freedom Struggle

In the 1921 Ahmedabad Session of Congress, Maulana Hasrat Mohani was the first to introduce a resolution for Purna Swaraj – complete independence. Gandhi and the Congress as a whole did not come to endorse this demand till 1929.

What other significant developments happened in the decade of the 1920s? The Communist Party of India and the RSS both came into being in 1925.

The CPI came into being on the heels of a spurt of working class struggles and emergence of four early communist groups in 1922-23. The enormous galvanising impact of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, and the immediate factor of Gandhi’s controversial decision to call back the Non Cooperation movement in the wake of the Chauri Chaura incident, together formed the backdrop to the rise of the communist movement.

To quote Arindam Sen from ‘Indian Communists in Freedom Movement: Yesterday and Today’, Arindam Sen, Liberation, October 2005, a popular primer on the role of communists in the freedom struggle:

That the British rulers recognised communists as their most dangerous enemies was evident from a series of conspiracy cases - Peshawar , Kanpur , Meerut and others - hatched against them during 1920s and early 1930s. The most famous was the last named. Panicked at the high tide in workers’ struggles, rapid spread of WPPs, (see below) the revival of mass anti- imperialist movement provoked by the Simon Commission, the revolutionary activities of Bhagat Singh and his comrades, and the coming closer of communists and a section of the nationalist leadership, the government struck back in 1929 with a chain of repressive measures. Most important among these were: the Meerut conspiracy case, the Public Safety Bill and Trade Disputes Bill, and the prosecution of and death sentences to Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru. In March 1929, 31 labour leaders (including 3 Englishmen) from Calcutta , Bombay , and other parts of the country were rounded up. They were brought to Meerut for the conspiracy case. The accused communists made very good use of the courtroom for the spread of their ideology, aims and objectives. The British move to drive a wedge between communists and nationalist leaders also proved futile. Nehru, Gandhi and many others visited the Meerut jail while the accused communists also sent messages to the satyagrahis in different jails supporting their just struggles for political status. From the dock communists vigorously exposed the bankruptcy and hypocrisy of British rule in India and their ‘civilised’ legal system. Not only did workers all over the world launch agitations against the trial and conviction, even men like Romain Rolland and Prof. Albert Einstein raised their voices in protest against the trial.

In contrast to those within Congress pushing for Purna Swaraj, and the communists and other revolutionaries pushing for liberation  from colonial rule as well as socio-economic transformation, the RSS has nothing whatsoever to show in terms of participation in the freedom struggle.

Ashfaqullah’s Warning

The Kakori Martyrs – Ramprasad Bismil, Ashfaqullah Khan, Rajender Lahiri and Roshan Singh – were deeply distressed while on death row by the attempts to spread communal poison by the “Shuddhi” movement run by Hindus to “purify” Muslims and reconvert them to Hinduism, and the “Tableegh” movement to propagate Islam in competition with Shuddhi. Three days prior to his hanging on December 19, 1927, Ashfaq’s last letter was smuggled out of Faizabad prison. In that letter, he appealed to Hindus and Muslims, “Live harmoniously and be united. Otherwise, you will be responsible for the plight of the country and you will be held responsible for the slavery of India.” He penned a couplet: “Yeh jhagre aur bakhere metkar aa-pass mein mil jaao/Abas tafreeq hai tum-me ye Hindu aur Musalman ki” – Leave these quarrels behind, close your ranks/Strange are your distinctions of Hindu and Muslim”. (Source: http://revolutionarybhagatsingh.blogspot.com)

Netaji Set Up Armed Resistance While Hindu Mahasabha Recruited for British Army

It is well known that Netaji Bose set up the Azad Hind Fauj to offer an armed challenge to the British colonial rule. While Bose can be criticised for allying with Japan and fascist Germany, it is undeniable that he was secular and against Hindu-supremacist politics.

In a speech he gave as Congress president on 14 June, 1938, Bose specifically opposed the idea of turning India into a “Hindu Raj”: “We hear voices of Hindu Raj, these are useless thoughts. Do the communal organisations solve any of the problems confronted by the working class? Do any such organisations have any answer to unemployment and poverty?” (Sugata Bose in interview with Karan Thapar, ‘‘If Netaji Had Been Alive No One Would Have Dared to Issue Calls for Genocide’, The Wire)

In his essay ‘Free India and Her Problems’ (August 1942), Bose wrote that it was the British who had set Hindus against Muslims, and that communal tension would go when the British went. He envisioned a state where “religious and cultural freedom for individuals and groups” should be guaranteed and no “state-religion” would be adopted.

The trial of the Azad Hind Fauj leaders Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Sahgal and Gurubaksh Singh Dhillon, Abdul Rashid, Shinghara Singh, Fateh Khan and Captain Malik Munawar Khan Awan (Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs who led the resistance army together) itself proved to be a great inspiration for anti-colonial unity and a rebuff to communal politics.

In contrast, Savarkar as Hindu Mahasabha President recruited for the British Army during World War II:

“So far as India’s defence is concerned, Hindudom must ally unhesitatingly, in a spirit of responsive co-operation, with the war effort of the Indian government in so far as it is consistent with the Hindu interests, by joining the Army, Navy and the Aerial forces in as large a number as possible and by securing an entry into all ordnance, ammunition and war craft factories…Hindu Mahasabhaites must, therefore, rouse Hindus especially in the provinces of Bengal and Assam as effectively as possible to enter the military forces of all arms without losing a single minute.” (V.D. Savarkar, Samagra Savarkar Wangmaya: Hindu Rashtra Darshan, vol. 6, Maharashtra Prantik Hindusabha, Poona, 1963, p. 460.)

Another Hindu Mahasabha bigot and current Sangh hero Syama Prasad Mookerjee was the Finance Minister of Bengal and the second most senior minister in the government after Bengal’s Prime Minister, Fazlul Haq from the Muslim League. Both the League and Mahasabha – fierce rivals playing communal politics – participated in the British war effort. When Congress elected representatives resigned in support of the Quit India movement, representatives from Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League refused to resign. Mookerjee on July 26, 1942, wrote to the British governor of Bengal, John Herbert, promised to act sternly against “Anybody who, during the war, plans to stir up mass feelings, resulting in internal disturbances or insecurity, must be resisted by any government that may function for the time being.” (Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Dairy, Oxford University Press, p. 179)

RSS Denigrated The Indian Tricolour On The Same Day A Muslim Couple Designed The National Flag

On 14 August 1947, the RSS English organ Organiser denigrated the national tricolour in the following words: “The people who have come to power by the kick of fate may give in our hands the Tricolour but it will never be respected and owned by Hindus. The word three is in itself an evil, and a flag having three colours will certainly produce a very bad psychological effect and is injurious to a country.”

An extremely interesting story lies behind the designing of the national tricolour on the same day, the eve of independence, by 28-year-old Surayya Tyabji and her husband Badruddin Tyabji.

Their daughter Laila Tyabji writes that a couple of months before independence, at Nehru’s request, her father Badruddin Tyabji “set up a Flag Committee headed by Rajendra Prasad, and sent letters to all the art schools asking them to prepare designs. Hundreds came in, all quite ghastly. Most of them heavily influenced by the British national emblem, except that elephants and tigers, or deer and swans replaced the lion and unicorn on either side of the British crown. The crown itself was replaced by a lotus or kalash or something similar.” As Nehru and everyone for desperate and time flew by, her “parents had this brainwave of the lions and chakra on top of the Ashoka column. (They both loved the sculpture and ethos of that period). So, my mother drew a graphic version and the printing press at the Viceregal Lodge (now Rashtrapati Niwas) made some impressions and everyone loved it. Of course, the four lions (Lion Capital of Ashoka) have been our emblem ever since.” (‘How the Tricolour and Lion Emblem Really Came to Be: A first-hand account of how the national emblem was designed’, Laila Tyabji, The Wire) Now, sadly, the Modi regime has chosen to adorn the new Parliament building with a version of the emblem that replaces Ashoka’s majestic and peaceful lions with snarling lions with bared fangs.  

Soon after they designed the national emblem, Surayya and Badruddin together came up with the design for what is today India’s flag: modifying Pingali Venkayya’s design of the Congress tricolour flag, replacing the charkha with the same Ashoka chakra.  

Laila writes, “My father watched that first flag – sewn under my mother’s supervision by Edde Tailors & Drapers in Connaught Place – go up over Raisina Hill.” This loving personal involvement and attention to detail is what makes the national tricolour special. In Laila’s words, “Despite the scars of Partition, there was a unity and sharing. The struggle for freedom had bound very diverse people together. People connected then to a broader identity – Indianness rather than caste or community.”

Who Broached Partition, and Who Resisted It?

Modi had declared 14 August as Partition Horrors Remembrance Day in a blatant attempt to blame Pakistan and Muslim for “partition horrors” and incite a hateful urge amongst Hindus to reenact those horrors on Muslims today. Evidence of these hateful preparations can be seen in the manner in which large rallies are being allowed in Haryana and Delhi unchecked, in which leaders of BJP and allied radical Hindu-supremacist outfits call for genocide of Muslims; and Hindu-supremacist online gangs “auction” Muslim women journalists online.

In the wake of partition and independence, the RSS and Hindu Mahasabha stoked hatred towards Gandhi, blaming him for partition – it is this hatred that radicalised Godse and led him to shoot Gandhi dead. Now under Modi, Gandhi is reduced to an icon for “Swacch” toilets, and it is Nehru who is hated and vilified for partition, falsely claiming that Patel was not in favour of partition. In fact, it was Patel who first agreed to Mountbatten’s proposal of Partition.

Savarkar Mooted Two Nation Theory Before Jinnah Did

In his presidential address at the All India Hindu Mahasabha convention in Karnavati (Ahmedabad) in 1937, Savarkar declared, “India cannot be assumed today to be a unitarian and homogeneous nation, but on the contrary there are two nations in the main; the Hindus and the Moslems, in India.” (Samagra Savarkar Vangmay- Volume 6, Maharashtra Prantik Hindusabha Publication, 1963-65, Page 296)

Jinnah mooted Pakistan and the Two-Nation Theory only in 1940.

Syama Prasad Mookerjee Campaigned For Partition

In a secret letter to Viceroy Mountbatten, Mookerjee wrote demanding the partition of Bengal on Hindu-Muslim lines, arguing that “the same logic and arguments applicable to Pakistan apply also to the partition of Bengal.” (Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, S. P. Mookerjee Papers, Subject File No. 139, Mookerjee to Mountbatten, 2 May 1947)

Muslims Against Partition

While the Hindu Mahasabha and Muslim League drove a wedge between Hindu and Muslim communities, there were many prominent progressive Muslims who passionately campaigned against the Partition proposal.

Foremost among them was Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who tried in vain to persuade Patel not to accept the proposal. In India Wins Freedom Azad wrote, “I was also convinced that if the Constitution for free India was framed on this basis and worked honestly for some time, communal doubts and misgivings would soon disappear. The real problems of the country were economic, not communal. The differences related to classes, not to groups. Once the country became free, Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs would all realise the real nature of the problems that faced them and communal differences would be resolved. found that Patel was so much in favour of partition that he was hardly prepared even to listen to any other point of view. For over two hours I argued with him. I pointed out that if we accepted partition, we could create a permanent problem for India. Partition would not solve the communal problem but would make it a permanent feature of the country.”

How prescient Maulana Azad was – the RSS, BJP and Modi regime now do indeed seek to make Partition a permanent wound. The foreboding expressed by Azad on July 17 1946 is today dangerously close to coming true: “Muslims would awaken overnight and discover that they have become aliens and foreigners, backward industrially, educationally and economically; they will be left to the mercies of what would become an unadulterated Hindu Raj.”

“Put Communalists In A Cage”

At the historic All India Independent (Azad) Muslims Conference which began on April 27 1940 in Delhi, newspapers recorded a gathering of not less than 75000 Muslims. Allah Baksh, a prominent leader from Sind, inspired the gathering to reject the Muslim League proposal of Partition. He told a reporter that day, “It is better to put the communalists in a cage so that they may not spread the hymn of hatred between the Hindus and the Muslims.”  (Shamsul Islam, Muslims Against Partition, Pharos Media and Publishing Ltd, 2015)

Communalists “Only Say Nice Things To Our Rulers”

The great Shibli Nomani, founder of the Shibli College at Azamgarh, was a dedicated campaigner for a united India, exposing the politics of the Muslim League. In a poem titled ‘Muslim League’, he satirised the party thus:

It is patronised by the government and popular with the rich
It is the patron of the community - and subservient to the rulers
I asked the League to tell the rulers of our plight
About police high-handedness and court cases
About the sorrow-filled life of the peasants
After listening, League said -
It is my nature to say only nice things to the rulers.  

The selfsame could well have been said of the Hindu Mahasabha and RSS!

Urdu Poetry Against Partition

A host of poems were written in Urdu by Muslims, appealing to Hindus and Muslims against Partition. Shamim Karhani’s ‘To those who want Pakistan’ asked, “Tell me what does ‘Pakistan’ (land of the holy) mean? Is this land, where we Muslims are, unholy?”

Karhani’s ‘Indian Warriors’ called for a war against communal hatred: “Let the fights over cow and loudspeaker go to hell”. In “hamara Hindostan” Karhani declared “If someone asks the traveler where I’m from; I will proudly say it is Hindostan.” Several of these poems have been collected by Shamsul Islam in his book Muslims Against Partition.

In the 75th year of India’s independence, it is important to collect the writings and documents from both sides of the border, which expressed the pain and anguish and guilt of Partition, so that the people of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh can vow to learn from Partition never to allow communal violence and discrimination and war-mongering to sully the subcontinent again. 

The Modi government has turned the seventy fifth anniversary of India’s independence into a massive exercise of rewriting and hijacking India’s history. The ideological and organisational predecessors of today’s BJP hardly played any role in India’s anti-colonial national awakening, busy as they were collaborating with the colonial rulers and assisting them in executing their ‘divide and rule’ strategy by dividing and derailing secular Indian nationalism with their politics of Hindutva or Hindu supremacist communal nationalism. Today, their successors are busy rewriting history and redefining India on those disastrous lines.

The Modi government is celebrating the 75th anniversary as Amrit Mahotsav of India’s independence, poisoning the air with lies and hate in the name of Amrit or nectar. The declared focus seems to be on celebrating unsung heroes of India’s freedom movement. There can be little objection to this stated objective except that the greatest unsung hero in the BJP’s history of freedom movement is VD Savarkar, the first theorist of Hindutva who had laid the ideological foundation of India’s eventual partition apart from tarnishing the glorious tradition of India’s freedom fighters with his repeated petitions seeking mercy for the ‘prodigal son’ and promising to serve the interests of the colonial masters. Many in the Sangh Parivar also openly celebrate the ‘legacy’ of Nathuram Godse, the Hindutva terrorist who had killed Gandhi soon after independence.

Apart from rehabilitating Sangh Parivar icons as ‘unsung heroes’ and projecting the Parivar itself as an ‘unsung stream’ of freedom movement, and distorting and misappropriating various episodes and icons of struggle, the BJP’s war on history seeks to devalue and discredit the goals and gains of the freedom movement, virtually reducing freedom to the ‘horrors of Partition’. Significantly enough, the government has now proclaimed August 14, the day of formation of Pakistan as ‘horrors of Partition remembrance day’. Muslims as a community are demonised as villains who walked away with parts of India as their own land while Hindus are projected as victims who suffered the trauma of Partition – denying the shared trauma across communities which characterised Partition.

While celebrating the seventy fifth anniversary of India’s independence we must therefore not just revisit the major events and turning points in the history of freedom movement and the heroic struggles and sacrifices by countless freedom fighters, but also grasp the ideological battle and conceptual evolution that marked the freedom movement and constitutes its radical legacy that resonates even today after more than seven decades of freedom. As the Modi government tramples upon the constitutional democratic framework of our republic and rules like the descendants of the erstwhile colonial rulers, the ‘bhure Angrez’ or brown sahibs Bhagat Singh had warned us about, we must invoke the radical legacy of our freedom movement to wage our ongoing battle for freedom from fascism.

During the colonial era, freedom was first of all freedom from colonial subjugation. It was our national liberation struggle, and this vision of national liberation was anchored around the people of India as the arbiters of the nation. Much before the Indian National Congress formally adopted the Purna Swaraj resolution, anti-colonial fighters in India had begun to articulate the notion of freedom and popular sovereignty. The 1857 anthem declared the people of India as the owners of the country: ‘hum hain iske malik, Hindostan hamara’ (we are the owners of this land, Hindostan/India belongs to us). The Ulgulan of Birsa Munda issued the clarion call “Abua Dishum, Abua Raj” (our state, our rule). This spirit of popular sovereignty or power to the people found its constitutional recognition in the preamble to the Constitution with “We, the people of India” solemnly resolving to constitute India into a sovereign republic. The people are thus central to the idea of India and Indian nationalism.

The people of India have always been a diverse lot. Diversity – ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious – is the foundational principle of India’s unity. Improved communication and increased migration certainly led to closer bonding and greater national unification in the course of the freedom movement, but this unity must not be mistaken for a quest for uniformity or homogeneity. Attempts to bring about uniformity or homogeneity have always weakened unity and been strongly rebuffed by adversely affected regions or communities. The unfortunate eventual partition did diminish diversity to an extent, but even post-partition India is by far the world’s most diverse country. The freedom movement developed a healthy understanding and mutual respect and recognition for India’s diversity which alone can explain the resilience of India’s national unity and the quick integration of hundreds of princely states (under Hindu and Muslim rulers) with the Indian nation-state.

The Constitution gave us a commitment to non-discriminatory and equal citizenship, it kept the state relatively free from religion and even though it did not recognise India as an explicitly federal country, the states had a degree of autonomy on many subjects. The need was to carry forward the process of secularisation, federal restructuring and greater recognition for India’s essential diversity and pluralism. The BJP government under Modi is moving rapidly in the opposite direction – CAA has introduced discrimination among citizens, and immigrants applying for citizenship, on the basis of religion; the state is increasingly behaving like a Hindu state; the centre is arrogating all powers to itself reducing states virtually to the status of glorified municipalities; and plurality is being increasingly  demonised and subordinated to uniformity.

Apart from Azaadi or freedom, the other keyword of our freedom movement was inquilab or revolution, immortalised in the slogan ‘inquilab zindabad’ or ‘long live the revolution’. Coined by the Urdu poet and freedom fighter Maulana Hasrat Mohani and immortalised by Bhagat Singh and his comrades, this slogan drew our attention to the revolutionary significance of freedom and to the centrality of continued struggle and eternal vigilance for progressive changes and rights. And this revolution saw itself as part of an international anti-imperialist mass awakening.

Indeed, the other slogan which Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutta raised in the Central Assembly was ‘down with imperialism’. India’s freedom movement was not an isolated and exclusive fight against British colonialism, it grew as an integral part of international anti-imperialist resistance. And after the 1917 Russian revolution when Europe witnessed the rise of fascist reaction, the progressive stream of India’s freedom movement supported the anti-fascist resistance in Europe. Six Indians – writer Mulk Raj Anand, journalist Gopal Mukund Huddar, doctors Atal Menhanlal, Ayub Ahmed Khan Naqshbandi and Manuel Pinto, and student Ramasamy Veerapan – had joined the International Brigade to fight against the fascist troops led by General Franco. Indians based in London raised funds and Jawaharlal Nehru paid a solidarity visit to Spain in 1938. While the RSS in India drew inspiration from Mussolini and Hitler, India’s progressive freedom fighters joined forces with the anti-fascist resistance in Europe.

The freedom movement was not just about ending the British rule in India, it was about building a modern democratic progressive India. Adivasis and other peasant communities who constituted the biggest mass base of the freedom movement were fighting relentlessly for freedom from landlords and money-lenders. After the Adivasi revolts and the 1857 war of independence, British colonial rule consolidated itself not just through military control and repressive laws, but also by the strengthening of feudal power exercised by the class of landlords created through ‘permanent settlement’ and other revenue systems, perpetuation of the power of princely states and vigorous application of divide and rule between Hindus and Muslims. In the revealing words of a senior British military official of that period, “Our endeavour should be to uphold in full force the (for us fortunate) separation which exists between the different religions and races...Divide et impera should be the principle of Indian government’ (Lt. Col. Coker, Commandant of Moradabad, cited by Rajani Palme Dutt in India Today, 1940). The landlords and the puppet rulers of  princely states, with a few honourable exceptions, constituted the social foundation of colonial rule and hence the anti-colonial struggle drew its strength from peasant struggles against landlords and money-lenders.

Abolition of landlordism and usury emerged as the central slogan of the peasant movement in colonial India. With the Gandhian satyagraha movement not according due emphasis on this core agenda and moving away from all signs of peasant militancy, the peasant movement founded its own militant platform in the shape of All India Kisan Sabha. The All India Kisan Sabha was formed in April 1936 with Swami Sahajanand Saraswati as its first President and it released a Kisan Manifesto in August 1936 demanding abolition of the zamindari system and cancellation of rural debts. Powerful peasant struggles not only weakened feudal-colonial power in rural India but also created a powerful narrative and countervailing force against communal polarisation and violence. After independence, the old form of landlordism was legally abolished, but beyond that land reforms remained largely unaccomplished and of late we are seeing a reversal of land reforms. Replace colonial with corporate and we will see the peasant movement grappling with the new threat of corporate landlordism and debt crisis.

The battle for working class rights including the right to organise and fight for better working and living conditions constitutes another important part of the radical legacy of India’s freedom movement. These struggles led to the passage of several legislations concerning workers’ rights during the colonial period itself. From the Factories Act and Trade Unions Act 1926 to Payment of Wages Act and Minimum Wages Act, many of India’s core labour laws were passed before Independence. Apart from the All India Trade Union Congress founded in 1920 and the organised Communist movement since the 1920s, the Independent Labour Party formed by Dr. Ambedkar in 1936 also made major contributions to the securing of working class rights in colonial India. The ILP which identified both Brahminism and capitalism as enemies of the working class emerged as a significant trend in Bombay Presidency, secured major electoral victories and played a key role in the legislative arena as well as broader worker-peasant struggles.

1936 was indeed a year that gave rise to two radical calls. While the Kisan Sabha called for abolition of landlordism, Ambedkar came out with his clarion call for annihilation of caste. The call for annihilation of caste effectively raised the agenda of social justice to the higher plane of social transformation. Departing from the limited Gandhian theme of abolition of untouchability, Ambedkar drew India’s attention to the need for doing away with the entire caste system. Rebutting the attempts to justify caste in the name of division of labour, Ambedkar exposed caste as division of labourers. The answer would clearly lie in unification of labourers on an anti-caste basis whereby caste would dissolve into class. A convergence of these radical ideas – abolition of landlordism, annihilation of caste and unification of labourers – had the potential of taking class unity and class struggle to a much bigger scale and higher level, but unfortunately this potential could not be realised at that juncture. This is precisely where we need to explore this unfulfilled potential and legacy of the freedom movement in today’s India.

The freedom movement also meant increasing participation of women in public protests which in turn led to widespread questioning of patriarchal practices and controls and strengthening of the battle for equal rights and dignity and freedom for women. The participation of women was not limited to a few specific forms of struggle – from the Santhal Hul and 1857 war of independence to Chattagram armoury raid and militant peasant uprisings like Tebhaga and Telangana, women were in the forefront of almost all major phases and forms of struggle. There were struggles where women played the leading role as in the less well-known Nupi Lan struggles of Manipur (1904 and 1939). Nupi Lan in Manipuri literally means ‘women’s war’ and the Nupi Lan waged by Manipur’s women against the local king and rich traders as well as the colonial power was fought in defence of women’s relatively high status in Manipur which patriarchal colonial forces sought to undermine, but also secured freedom for Manipur’s male workers from bondage and oppression. It was truly the forerunner of today’s Shaheen Bagh protests against the discriminatory and divisive CAA or the powerful protests against AFSPA and state repression and terror by women in Manipur and Kashmir valley.

For the BJP, nationalism means Hindutva, and celebration of the Amrit Mahotsav of Azaadi is an exercise in hijacking of history to serve the Sangh brigade’s unfinished project of transforming secular democratic India into a fascist Hindu Rashtra. For us, the legacy of the freedom movement remains a powerful warning against the perils of communal polarisation and colonial survivals, and a lasting inspiration to harness the untapped potentials and fulfil the unrealised promises of the journey of “we, the people of India” towards the goal of modern India as a sovereign socialist secular democratic republic. The people of India defeated the fascist conspiracy in the course of the freedom movement, they will defeat it again after seven decades of independence.

India’s anti-colonial struggle or, freedom movement, is a prolonged and diverse chapter in the history of India. It is a rich tapestry woven by myriad struggles that deepened and enriched the quest for a modern India. Immediate issues and contexts varied in different periods and different regions – struggles against landlordism and usury, against local kings, against caste and gender oppression and injustice, and for linguistic rights and cultural diversity, all added to the momentum and canvas of the freedom movement. Multiple modes of mobilisation and methods of struggle guided by a broad spectrum of ideologies from Gandhian and Ambedkarite to communist and socialist of various shades – all should be recognised as diverse strands of the grand narrative of India’s freedom movement. Ironically, the one stream which was conspicuously absent in the freedom movement and busy with its own project of defining Indian nationalism on the basis of Hindu supremacy now rules India as India observes the seventy-fifth anniversary of independence.

The rise and domination of British colonial power over India itself had a history of more than three centuries – first in the form of the expanding commercial operation and network of the East India Company from the early seventeenth century to the Battle of Palashi (1757), followed by the rule of the Company for a period of hundred years (1757-1858) and the final leg of direct rule of the British Crown from 1858 to 1947. From cruel loot and plunder to an institutional reign of repression and manipulation, this trajectory of colonial rule evoked continuous resistance and periodic revolts since the first recorded Adivasi revolt led by Tilka Manjhi in 1784. This entire history of resistance should be recognised as the history of India’s freedom movement.

The battle of Palashi in 1757 and the battle of Buxar in 1764 led to a major consolidation of the Company rule in north India and the rulers sought to reinforce it by creating a class of loyal landlords through what came to be known as the Permanent Settlement or the Cornwallis Code. But this coercive colonialism and landlordism, and the allied element of cruel usury, was deeply resented by the overwhelming majority of rural population, the peasants and Adivasis in particular. Revolts kept breaking out and reached a new high with the Santhal Hool of 1855 and the great rebellion of 1857, following which the British crown not only established its direct rule but also brought about considerable change in its strategy.

The rebellion of 1857 had highlighted two major threats to the British rulers. Contrary to the British expectations of a Hindu-Muslim divide and a fragmented Indian polity, 1857 showcased the great potential of a national awakening where Hindu and Muslim soldiers, farmers, traders and even aristocracies joined hands against the foreign rulers. Post 1857, the British rulers therefore adopted ‘divide and rule’ as their declared blueprint and cultivated the princely states as their trusted allies. The freedom movement of course tried to evolve a policy of ‘unite and resist’ to counter the ‘divide and rule’ strategy, but could not stop the eventual denouement of a traumatic Partition accompanied by a massive bloodbath, forced migration, destruction and loss. The ‘divide and rule’ strategy culminated in ‘partition and quit’.

The RSS which now rules India through the BJP and is desperately trying to impose its own ideology and outlook as the ruling ideology seeks to reduce the history of India’s freedom movement to the trauma of Partition even as the Modi regime is busy appropriating a whole range of leaders of the freedom movement while distorting and denigrating a few others. This is a clever ploy to cover up the sordid reality of the actual role played by the RSS and other Hindutva protagonists during the freedom movement. The Hindutva lobby stood away from the freedom movement, its biggest icon Savarkar is now best remembered for his half a dozen mercy petitions to the British rulers, while the RSS was in awe of Mussolini and Hitler. Golwalkar wrote about how India should profit by emulating Hitler’s Nazi Germany model based on ‘race purity and pride’ while Savarkar posited the model of a Hindu India where Hindus, defined broadly as people who are born in India and who also follow a religion born in India, will wield all political and military power.

The RSS answer to India’s partition is the reconstruction of an Akhand Bharat which will include not just India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the three countries that have been formed in the wake of 1947, but also Afghanistan in the North-West, Myanmar in the North-East, Sri Lanka in the South and Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet in the North. This is not to be confused with a desire for reunification (like the reunification of Germany or the desire for reunification of Korea), it is clearly an expansionist imperial dream (like Putin’s talk of a Greater Russia that will be at the heart of a Eurasian empire). The Akhand Bharat advocated by the RSS had no historical existence, it is the projection of an imaginary past of mythical glory that is being peddled as a toxic dream to divert the attention of the people from the problems and miseries of the present.

India and Pakistan have been existing as separate countries for seventy-five years, Bangladesh has been in existence for more than fifty years. Keeping in view the shared past and common interests of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the three countries can of course contemplate a confederation and a more vibrant and energetic framework of cooperation in South Asia than the currently dormant and nearly defunct SAARC, but the RSS vision of an Akhand Bharat can only be a prescription for a state of permanent conflict in South Asia and greater alienation of India from all its neighbours. Forget about restoring the old undivided India, any attempt to define Indian nationalism on the basis of a homogenised and regimented political Hinduism will only jeopardise India’s current national unity.

Even though the constitution fell short in terms of securing the extent of rights, depth of democracy and consistency of liberty, equality, fraternity and comprehensive justice it promised, the preamble proclaimed the basic spirit of a modern democratic republic.

In the wake of the First World War and the victorious Russian Revolution and more organically during the Second World War and its aftermath, India’s freedom movement had become part of the international anti-colonial anti-fascist awakening. The exit of British colonialism from India in 1947 and the rise of new China in 1949 dramatically changed the global political landscape in the second half of the twentieth century. Modern India’s journey as a democratic republic had begun against this changed international backdrop.

Today, seventy-five years after that historic ‘tryst with destiny’ the Indian journey is headed in a totally different and retrograde direction. It is now quite clear that the ascendance of Narendra Modi to power in 2014 and his renewed victory in 2019 have emboldened the Sangh-BJP establishment to rewrite the fundamentals of India’s statecraft where the executive now brazenly dominates the legislature and the judiciary and the tenets of the Constitution are being openly flouted. The separation of the state and citizenship from religion is being discarded, and with a new parliament building, democracy is being pushed into a new era of regimentation where basic expressions of criticism and opposition are being declared ‘unparliamentary’. If the Emergency was India’s previous recorded experience with suppression and suspension of democracy, we now find ourselves in a state of permanent emergency. The old Emergency only had a repressive state, its new avatar comes with a cheerleading media and killer squads revelling in street violence.

For the Modi regime, the seventy-fifth anniversary of India’s independence is an opportunity to distort and rewrite history in the service of its own agenda. We the people of India must revisit the history of the freedom movement to reignite the dreams of liberty and equality so we can rebuff the growing fascist offensive.

India was born in the course of the birth pangs of the anti-colonial freedom movement. In the 75th year of the independence won by that freedom struggle, there are enormous challenges for us as we try to honour the memory of the freedom struggle and reflect on its lessons.

One important aspect of this challenge is the immense diversity of the individuals and groups that participated in the freedom struggle – a diversity that makes a one-dimensional or linear history of this struggle impossible. To get a complete picture of the freedom movement, we need to pay attention to all sections of its constituents.

But the foremost hurdle in remembering and honouring the freedom struggle today is posed by the current government and ruling party. The BJP’s parent organisation the RSS stayed aloof from the entirety of the freedom struggle: a fact the BJP seeks to hide. The diversity of the freedom struggle’s participants poses a problem to the RSS and BJP which seeks to define India based on religion. And so we find the BJP and RSS trying to distort the very meaning of “country” and “freedom”.

The history of India’s freedom struggle has a direct bearing on India’s present and its future. Remembering the glorious legacy of this struggle equips us to better take on the challenges we face today, of defending India’s diversity and democracy.

This booklet includes articles written by Comrades Dipankar Bhattacharya (CPIML General Secretary), and Kavita Krishnan (Politbureau member), all but one of which which were published by the CPIML in the course of a year-long ‘Freedom 75’ campaign between August 2021 and August 2022. In this booklet we bring these articles together in this publication, along with excerpts from India's March to Freedom: The Other Dimension by Dipankar Bhattacharya, published by Liberation Publications in 1997 to mark the 50th anniversary of Indian independence, in the hope that they can offer readers resources to understand the significance of India’s freedom struggle, and generate an interest in its less well-known dimensions.

1 August 2022

India's Freedom Movement:
Legacy and Lessons

 

First published : August 2022

 

Editors:
Dipankar Bhattacharya and Kavita Krishnan

 

Published by
Liberation Publications

 

 

Charu Bhawan, U-90 Shakarpur,
Delhi – 110092
Phone: 91-11-42785864
liberation@cpiml.org
www.liberation.org.in
www.cpiml.net

 

Contents:

Fascism in India: Key Characteristics

In the formative years of the RSS, M S Golwalkar upheld Hitler as a role model, which was no longer possible after the holocaust and the Second World War. Today Narendra Modi, ably aided by the entire Sangh network, has taken upon himself the task of reviving and carrying forward that tradition in ideas and actions. First as Gujarat CM he got Hitler eulogized as a great nationalist leader in school textbooks (Harit Mehta, In Modi’s Gujarat, Hitler is a Textbook Hero, Times of India, 30 September, 2004) and developed the ‘Gujarat Model’ as a pilot project of fascism in India. Now as PM he is rushing full throttle towards the cherished goal of a tyrannical Hindu Rashtra marked by unprecedented levels of corporate domination and closely aligned with Trump’s America.

To give the readers a sense of our assessment of this adaptation of fascism in our peculiar national setting, we reproduce here excerpts from the Resolution on The National Situation adopted at the Tenth All-India Congress of CPI (ML) Liberation. The Congress was held at Mansa, Punjab, from March 23 to 28, 2018 with the central slogan “Defeat Fascism! Fight for a People’s India!”

The resolution contains thirteen sections, each with a few paragraphs. We start from the first section, reproduce the parts we consider most relevant in the context of this booklet, and indicate the gaps with ellipses. The Resolution can be read in full at http://www.cpiml.net/documents/10th-party-congress/resolution-on-the-national-situation.

“Aggressive Fascist Agenda

“India has witnessed a massive political shift in the last four years with the BJP decisively replacing the Congress as the dominant political representative of the ruling classes. …The rise of the BJP as the predominant ruling party of India at both central and provincial levels has enabled the entire Sangh Parivar to unleash its fascist agenda with unprecedented speed and aggression. …

“The BJP ran the 2014 parliamentary election campaign like the Presidential campaign in the US, creating a veritable mythology around Modi and his so-called Gujarat model. The slogans issued by Modi like ‘Congress-mukt Bharat’ and the name of his rallies as ‘Bharat Vijay’ (the conquest of India) conveyed this aggression in no uncertain terms. Ever since, the BJP is treating its 2014 electoral victory (won with a vote share of only 31%) as though it has indeed conquered India and acquired a veritable licence to reshape everything according to the Sangh-BJP ideology and agenda. The BJP has unleashed an open assault on the Constitution and Modi ministers like Anant Hegde have openly emphasised the BJP’s mission to change the Constitution.

“The fascist offensive in India is being unleashed both by the State as well as a whole range of non-State actors, both often working in tandem … . The State has become increasingly authoritarian and intrusive, even as it overtly or covertly patronises the Sangh brigade in enforcing the communal casteist-patriarchal code through mob lynchings, targeted killings of dissenting intellectuals and activists, and a relentless campaign of virulent hate-mongering. From the terms of citizenship to the nature of the republic, the Modi government is trying to subvert the very foundation of constitutional democracy in India.

“Undermining Parliamentary Democracy

“In utter violation of the cabinet system of functioning in a parliamentary democratic system, Modi has been running his government on the American presidential pattern. …the Modi government is all about absolute concentration of power and the unabashed promotion of an unmitigated personality cult.

“Since day one, the Modi government has been systematically bypassing and undermining parliamentary institutions, procedures and conventions. The abolition of the Planning Commission and its replacement by a dubious NITI Aayog which does not even bother to pay lipservice to concerns for people’s welfare while pushing for digitisation of the economy and even advising the Election Commission on simultaneous holding of Lok Sabha and Assembly elections and the fraudulent passage of the Aadhaar and a host of other controversial measures in the guise of Money Bill are just a couple of glaring examples.

“The growing BJP clamour for ‘one nation, one election’ is an attempt to undermine the principles of federalism and political diversity, and use simultaneous elections to enforce greater political homogeneity by restricting the political choices of the people and subordinating the political discourse on every level to the narrative scripted by the ruling party and the big media. …

“The office of the Governor, which is constitutionally designed to give an upper hand to the Centre over the states, is now being brazenly misused by the BJP to promote its partisan interest of power grabbing and turn India into a completely unitary polity by undermining the rights of the states and every aspect of federal balance in our constitutional framework.”

Hereafter the resolution discusses the worst maladies the country is suffering under the Modi-Shah Raj in two sections: “Crony Capitalism, Corruption, Economic Devastation” and “Deepening Agrarian Crisis, Massive Unemployment and Rising Inequality”. The remaining six sections are excerpted below.

“Attacks on Minorities, Dalits and All Forms of Dissent

“Accompanying this aggressive pursuit of pro-corporate economic agenda is a shrill rhetoric of hypernationalism. Every dissenting voice, every inconvenient question is sought to be silenced by dubbing it anti-national and pitting it against the sacrifices made by the soldiers guarding the borders of the country. And this hyper-nationalism is just a thin veil for virulent anti-Muslim hate and violence. From consumption of beef and cattle-trade to inter-community marriage termed ‘love jihad’ by the Sangh Parivar, any rumour or wild allegation can trigger lynching of Muslims anywhere anytime. … Even the Supreme Court judgement invalidating the arbitrary practice of instant triple talaq, which came about in the wake of a protracted social and legal battle waged by Muslim women’s organisations themselves, is now being sought to be transformed into a tool of vilification and persecution of Muslim men.

“…The rise of the Sangh brigade to various positions and institutions of power has quite characteristically resulted in a widespread intensification of oppression on Dalits. The intimate links of the Sangh Parivar with the private armies of the landed gentry in Bihar, especially with the most notorious Ranveer Sena which perpetrated serial massacres during the late 1990s and early 2000s, have been well known, and now we see a generalised campaign of violence against Dalits in various spheres from remote rural areas to university campuses in metropolitan cities. …The communal and the casteist are indeed two sides of the same coin in the RSS ideology even as the Sangh brigade is desperate to recruit Dalits as foot soldiers in the campaign of communal aggression against religious minorities, whether Muslims or Christians.

“The intensification of communal and casteist aggression has meant heightened regimentation, moral policing and violence faced by women enforced not just by traditional khap panchayats but also by newly formed vigilante groups who roam the streets as selfstyled anti-Romeo squads with the tacit approval or even open patronage of the law and order machinery. …this misogynistic culture is rooted in the tenets and tradition of Manusmriti, that manual of caste oppression and patriarchal domination which the RSS holds as the ultimate and original constitution of India.

“The hate and violence directed against Muslims, Dalits (and sections of Adivasis targeted as alleged Maoists or as Christians) and women, also extends in the Sangh ideological framework to the communists and the entire range of Left/Liberal intelligentsia or activists. From perpetration and celebration of the serial killings of rationalists and social justice campaigners like Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, MM Kalburgi and Gauri Lankesh to the slapping of sedition charges or National Security Act on student leaders or youth activists, hounding out of journalists seeking to expose the truth and ask inconvenient questions of accountability and the veritable raising of a troll army to abuse and intimidate every dissenting voice on the social media as well as mainstream electronic and print media and increasing attacks on offices, activists and icons/symbols of the communist movement in different parts of the country – examples of cases of brutal suppression of dissent through systematic propagation of hateful lies and a combination of state repression and state-sanctioned privatised violence are galore in every corner of Modi’s India.

“And in a state like Kashmir, where the people are fighting a long-running battle for their right to self-determination in the face of acute state repression, the BJP, now also sharing power right in Srinagar, has shed all pretence of constitutional governance, treating common Kashmiris as virtual prisoners of war.…The BJP Governments in the Centre as well as in J&K, abandoning even a pretence of attempting to address or resolve the issue, instead uses Kashmir to fuel its Islamophobic and hyper-nationalist agenda all over India.

“Core Features of Modi Regime: Unmistakable Rise of Fascism

It is this combination of heightened corporate plunder, unmitigated communal aggression and caste oppression, systematic suppression of dissent and communist-bashing that has emerged as the defining core of the Modi regime. Much of the mainstream Indian media, sections of which are functioning virtually as a propaganda machinery of the Sangh-BJP establishment or spokespersons of the Modi regime, worked overtime to market Modi as a dynamic leader, as a development man and no-nonsense administrator, consigning the memories of Gujarat 2002 to the oblivion. Victory in the 2014 elections was seen as a vindication of this new development avatar of Modi. But after keeping India initially busy with the rhetoric of achchhe din, repatriation of black money and Swachh Bharat, the Modi rule has now effectively exposed its true colours for the whole world to see.

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“The enemies of liberty, equality and fraternity want to overturn the constitution of India and reshape the country to fit their Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan framework. The collaborators of British colonialism who betrayed India’s struggle for freedom now want to hijack and rewrite history by inflicting Savarkar over Bhagat Singh, Golwalkar over Ambedkar and Godse over Gandhi.

This design must be defeated. This disaster must be prevented. And it is to this most pressing challenge and urgent task of the hour that we are dedicating this Tenth Congress of the CPI(ML).”

- Dipankar Bhattacharya,
Inaugural Address At the 10th Congress of CPI(ML)

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“…The election campaigns of the BJP spearheaded by Modi himself as witnessed in crucial states like Bihar, UP and Gujarat have time and again exposed the absolute centrality of the politics of majoritarian communalism to Brand Modi. While Modi and his senior colleagues from the BJP and RSS maintain a deafening silence in the face of ghastly crimes committed and instigated by the Sangh brigade, others extend open justification and even indulge in gleeful celebration as witnessed after the murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh and most recently in the videographed hacking of Mohammad Afrazul ….

“Considering these essential features of the current regime in conjunction with the core ideology and history of the RSS, what we are experiencing in India today is an undeniable rise of fascism. …The Emergency revolved primarily around a repressive state, whereas the Modi regime is all about the convergence of a state-led corporate assault and the campaign of majoritarian tyranny of the Hindu supremacist RSS. The Sangh brigade getting a free hand to unleash its fascist agenda, often with recourse to frenzied mass violence, is what essentially distinguishes the Modi model of autocratic rule from the Emergency era experience of authoritarianism.”

“Communalisation of State Machinery, Regimentation of Education and Thought

“…What distinguishes fascism from authoritarianism is its ability to legitimise state repression and mobilise a section of society in violence against minorities. Mohan Bhagwat’s by now infamous comparison of the RSS with the Indian Army reveals the RSS agenda of militarising Hindu society and communalising/politicizing the Indian Army. This agenda has been underway for a long time: the Bhonsala Military Academy set up in Nagpur in 1937 by Hindu Mahasabha leader BS Moonje (who met and was inspired by Italian fascist leader Mussolini) serves both aspects of the agenda. Bhagwat himself said in 2012 that the Bhonsala Academy serves as a ‘feeder institute to fulfill backlog of military officials’; a serving Army officer accused in the Malegaon blasts also received coaching at the Academy; retired and serving army officers and retired senior IB officers have served as trainers at the Academy, and the Academy also gives arms training to Bajrang Dal cadre, who indulge in organised communal violence against Muslims. The Sangh project of militarizing Hindu youth designates Muslims as ‘Pakistanis’ so as to disguise communal violence as ‘nationalism’ against an ‘internal enemy.’

“Another fascist feature of governance in BJP states is the celebration of staged ‘encounters’ and war crimes as state policy – the open celebration by the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Chauhan of the Bhopal staged encounter of 8 Muslim men and the spate of staged encounters being brazenly defended by UP CM Yogi Adityanath, the Government’s approval for the Army Major who paraded a Kashmiri man tied to a jeep, and the Hindu Ekta Manch rally in defence of Special Police Operations personnel men arrested for rape and murder of an 8-yearold Gujjar Muslim girl in Jammu are prominent instances.

“Such crimes happened in non-BJP regimes as well, but the official policy would usually be to deny rather than openly celebrate the crimes by men in uniform.

“The agenda of subversion and saffronisation of education is also a key part of the Sangh’s fascist project facilitated by BJP Governments. Schools in BJP-run states are saffronising curricula, rewriting history books, and even making Sangh-run camps compulsory for schoolchildren, in a bid to poison the minds of the young. At the same time, institutions of higher education are also in their line of fire – with BJP-appointed heads of such institutions wreaking wholesale destruction on free speech, campus democracy, social justice, and research, and ABVP acting as Sangh storm-troopers to attack all dissenting and progressive voices.

“Fascist Ideology and the Rise of RSS

“… since its inception in the 1920s, the RSS has historically sought to model itself on the ideology of militarist masculinist hypernationalism epitomised by Mussolini and Hitler. The centrality of hate and violence against the internal enemy (Jews and other minorities and communists in Nazi Germany, Muslims, Dalits and all shades of ideological opponents in Modi’s India), cynical exploitation of mass sentiment to promote a personality cult around a supreme leader, constant propaganda of falsehood and rumour – the similarities between Nazi Germany and today’s BJP-ruled India are all too striking and real. …

“…Fascism in 21st century India will obviously have its own distinct characteristics as compared to early 20th century Europe, but that does not make the threat of fascism any less real and its devastating potential any less lethal. The international economic and socio-political climate today is once again proving conducive to the rise of fascist tendencies as we can see in large parts of the world. The sustained economic depression, growing unemployment and economic insecurity, Islamophobia and anti-immigrant hysteria are all providing a fertile ground for the resurgence of fascist and racist politics in the US and many European countries. India’s growing integration with this crisis-ridden global capitalist order and especially the increasingly close strategic ties with US imperialism and Israel only reinforce the fascist trend in India.

“Communalism is a key factor in the rise and development of fascism in India. In this context, we must note that just as the rise of communal politics during India’s freedom movement, which eventually led to the partition of India amidst massive bloodbath and human migration, was very much aided by British colonialism, today the attempted transformation of India’s national identity from a secular pluralist framework to a Hindu supremacist majoritarian monolith is perfectly in sync with the American imperialist thesis of clash of civilizations wherein Hindu India is treated as a key ally in the US-led West’s battle with the Islamic Arab world and Confucian China!

“Caste as a marker of graded social inequality and a tool of exclusion and oppression is equally central to the fascist project in India. And more often than not, it is women who have to bear the brunt of this casteist order. …Indian fascism draws on, reinforces and extends the injustice and violence embedded in Indian society, with the RSS today epitomising all that is anti-democratic in Indian history and traditions.

“The fascist ideology of RSS had few takers during the first fifty years of its existence. It remained isolated from the freedom struggle and even advocated a general policy of collaboration with British colonialism in various spheres, especially to weaken the stature of Muslims as a major community in modern India. Following the assassination of Gandhi, the RSS not only suffered a legal ban but became thoroughly discredited in the eyes of the common people. The vacillation of the Congress on the question of communalism and its betrayal on the promises and aspirations of the freedom movement however enabled the RSS to regroup and accumulate strength and legitimacy. Most notably, the RSS was rehabilitated in the early 1960s as jingoistic nationalism gained currency during India’s decade of successive wars, first with China in 1962 and then with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971. The proclamation of the Emergency gave it the opportunity to further expand its network and influence through the popular movement for restoration of democracy. With the adoption of the policies of economic liberalisation and the shift towards pro-US foreign policy, as the Congress decisively moved away from the legacy of the freedom movement, the ideological and policy differences between the BJP and the Congress started getting blurred and the BJP did not find it difficult to expand its reach by making little pragmatic adjustments here and there to find new allies from various regions and social groups.

“…The crisis caused by the aggressive pursuit of the policies of liberalization, privatization and globalization has coincided in India with a major political vacuum resulting from the discrediting of the Congress and a whole range of other regional ruling parties. While the BJP is aggressively seeking to capture this political vacuum, the RSS is seeking to use this juncture to replace India’s historic and political imagination with its own. …In the process, they try to vilify Nehru, cleanse Gandhi, distort Ambedkar and Bhagat Singh, and demonise all Muslim figures and monuments in history including Akbar and the Taj Mahal as ‘anti-national’, and project caste and gender hierarchies, obscurantist and abhorrent social practices, and communal prejudices as the ‘essence of Indian culture’!

“An important aspect of anti-fascist resistance must be to resist this process of appropriation and rewriting of history. While being historically isolated from, and even opposed to, the anti-colonial awakening of the Indian people and the actual struggles for freedom from British rule, the RSS has always created its own fictional narrative of what it calls civilizational or cultural nationalism. It indulges in constant invocation of mythology, even passing it off as history, and falsification and misappropriation of actual history to suit its false narrative of communal nationalism. History has thus emerged as an important arena of the ongoing struggle to define and develop India.

“ … While resisting the RSS attempt to distort, falsify and hijack history we must uphold the people’s history of India, the great historical legacy of the battle for democracy, social justice and human emancipation. All that is progressive and emancipatory in our historical traditions must be upheld, nurtured and harnessed to energise and strengthen the battle for a great democratic and socialist future for our country.

“Economic and Foreign Policy Aspects

“The direction of the economic and foreign policies of the Modi government is more or less the same as the policy paradigm introduced by the Congress in the early 1990s. But the accelerated speed and the aggressive and arbitrary manner with which the present regime is proceeding in this direction sets it apart from the previous governments including the NDA governments headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee. The focus on foreign investment, financial integration and digitisation, privatisation and regimentation of labour laws has never been as sharp and strong under the previous governments. The abdication of the welfare responsibilities of the government has never been as complete and unabashed what with the abolition of the planning commission, systematic violation of food security and rural employment guarantee legislations, the shift from the public health system to insurance-based private healthcare and trivialisation of the agenda of employment by shifting the focus to selfemployment and now the projection of pakoda-selling, a symbol of precarious livelihood, as an example of gainful employment.

“In the arena of foreign policy, the Modi government has taken the policy of strategic subservience to the US to a new level, … to the point of keeping quiet on the growing incidence of attacks on Indian immigrants in the US. Hindutva organisations in the US are openly endorsing the White supremacist agenda of Trump. … But nearer home, Modi’s big brother attitude has isolated India from all her immediate neighbours.

“ … The Modi Government is also seeking to amend the definition of Indian citizenship with its Citizenship Amendment Bill, which proposes that Hindus from Bangladesh, Pakistan, or Afghanistan can be granted Indian citizenship. This proposal, by discriminating between persecuted minorities from neighbouring countries on religious grounds and privileging non-Muslim citizenship-seekers, tacitly tries to project India as a Hindu nation much on the model of Israel as a “Jewish Homeland”. This move has also created unrest and protest in Assam, which anticipates an attempt by the BJP to use this amendment to negate the Assam Accord which would render the cutoff date of 24 March 1971 superfluous.

Meanwhile there are concerns being voiced in Assam about the ongoing process of preparing a National Register of Citizens under the supervision of the Supreme Court. Statements by the Assam Government’s leaders suggesting a mass deportation of lakhs of people who are excluded from the NRC, if implemented, would result in a massive humanitarian crisis. In order to avert this crisis, the Central Government must explore an agreement with the Bangladesh Government as well as the possibility of work permits for those whose names are excluded by the NRC.

“Key Factors Propelling the Sangh-BJP Offensive

“What has enabled the Sangh-BJP establishment to grab power and systematically unleash its total agenda?

“Four factors that have clearly worked in its favour in the present juncture merit close attention. In 2014 the BJP did not just win an election, it exploited a veritable political vacuum to the hilt. While the Congress was clearly reeling under its worst crisis of credibility and leadership, almost all non-BJP political currents – the regional parties, the so-called ‘social justice’ camp and the Left – also appeared to have simultaneously hit their lowest points in terms of electoral strength. With the emphatic 2014 victory of Modi, the political balance began to tilt increasingly in favour of the BJP …

“Secondly, over the last three decades we have seen a veritable consensus emerge among almost all the ruling class parties on issues of economic policy and domestic governance as well as foreign policy. In the face of lack of policy differences, the BJP manages to present itself as the most aggressive and determined champion of these policies.

“Third, around this policy consensus we can also see the manufacturing of a common sense reinforced daily by the mainstream corporate media that sees mass eviction as a necessary price for development, human rights as eminently dispensable and draconian laws as urgently necessary for national unity, privatisation as the panacea for economic efficiency and so on and so forth.

“Finally, along with this armoury of policy consensus and manufactured common sense, the BJP has the secretive organisation of RSS with its own ammunition of hate, lies and rumour and network of privatised terror.”

The three concluding sections – “People’s Resistance Against Fascist Onslaught”, “Left Unity and Cooperation Among All Fighting Forces” and “Defeat Fascism! Onward to a People’s India!” -- deal with various aspects and tasks of resistance against Fascism. Here we reproduce the last two sections almost in full.

“Left Unity and Cooperation among All Fighting Forces

“From Gujarat to Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra to Bihar, we have seen inspiring instances of Dalit resistance and new potential of radical political mobilisation on the basic issues of land, education, jobs and dignity. In the face of the intensified RSS-backed offensive against Dalits, a new generation of Dalit movements led by young Dalit leaders has emerged. A welcome feature has been the determination of the Dalit movement to stand firm by the vulnerable Muslim community as well as resist attempts to co-opt Dalits to commit communal violence. The Dalit movement in the wake of Rohith Vemula’s institutional murder and the Una atrocity has started breaking the ‘Chinese wall’ between struggles for economic/material rights and struggles for dignity. The Una movement has not only offered a powerful Dalit challenge to the Sangh symbolism of ‘cow as mother’, but also championed Dalits’ struggles against demeaning and exploitative forms of labour and for allotment of land and a guarantee of dignified jobs. Such struggles have opened up welcome avenues for unity between Ambedkarite-led and Left-led struggles for the dignity and rights of Dalits and other oppressed sections around the core agenda of annihilation of caste and transformation of the society. Strengthening of each of these basic struggles and forging of closer links of unity, cooperation and solidarity among these diverse points of resistance holds the key to building a vibrant anti-fascist front of popular resistance. …

“The Constitution and the vote clearly remain two potent weapons in the hands of the people to resist and defeat the fascist forces. We can therefore see the desperate ongoing attempts to subvert these two weapons. During the Vajpayee era itself, the BJP had set up a committee to review the Constitution, today we often hear BJP ministers talking about changing the Constitution and the government contemplating several legislative measures that would fundamentally redefine and reshape the Constitution. The proposed amendment to the Citizenship Act smuggles in religion as a discriminatory criterion in determining Indian citizenship and deciding India’s official treatment of refugees. In the name of rationalisation of laws democratic rights are being sought to be heavily restricted and curtailed on all fronts especially in the arena of trade union rights, collective bargaining and workplace democracy. The federal framework is also being systematically overruled and subverted to subordinate the pluralism and diversity that is central to the unity of India to the Hindi-Hindu-Hindustan paradigm of the RSS.

“The electoral arena is also witnessing constant attempts to redefine the rules of the game. From the changing rules of electoral funding meant to promote anonymous corporate funding of big parties to the growing BJP clamour for simultaneous holding of Lok Sabha and Assembly elections so decentralised regional or social priorities and perspectives could be subordinated to the dominant central political narrative of the day thus compressing a diverse multi-party democracy into an increasingly bipolar framework, the conditions of electoral competition are being relentlessly sought to be redefined.

“Growing complaints of EVM malfunctioning and anomalies in booth-level vote counts have raised serious doubts about the transparency and credibility of the election process itself. …

“Indeed, the Gujarat elections have exposed the vulnerability of the Modi regime right in its own bastion. Even without the presence of a powerful opposition within the state, a series of successive agitations of various sections of the people created an environment that almost managed to vote the BJP out of power. … While strengthening the unity and assertion of the Left and other fighting forces, revolutionary communists must devise a strategy of effective intervention in the electoral arena to challenge and defeat the fascist forces. Without in any way compromising the political independence of the communist movement, wherever necessary we must remain open to the idea of joining hands with forces of the non-Left opposition against the fascist BJP and its allies.

“Defeat Fascism! Onward to a People’s India!

“The challenge of defeating fascism cannot and must not however be reduced to an electoral challenge.

“The experience of Bihar shows the inherent fragility and hollowness of the so-called grand alliance which had managed to hand over a decisive defeat to the BJP only to subsequently crumble and let the BJP in through the backdoor. In Gujarat, a weak Congress came so close to defeating the BJP by attracting broader social and political support from various movements, but we already see the Congress trying to compete with the BJP on religio-cultural terms dictated by the latter. Recent history in India is replete with instances where the Congress attempt to take the wind out of the BJP’s Hindutva sail through competitive invocation of the BJP’s slogans and icons has only played into the BJP’s hand, strengthening and legitimising its aggressive majoritarianism. To take another example, the TMC in West Bengal, may appear to be offering a powerful opposition to the BJP but its reign of terror, corruption, and outright assault on democracy is actually helping the BJP grow in the state. We must therefore never lose sight of the basic task of building a powerful ideological-political counterpoint against fascism.

“While addressing the basic issues of the people, it is important to not let the fascists get away with their twin weapons of hate propaganda and hate crimes.

“Experience shows that potential communal violence can often be neutralised if local organisations of the people can stay alert and dare to take the fascist bull by its horns.

“Neighbourhood-based militant solidarity among the fighting people can nip many a fascist conspiracy in the bud. Alertness and preparedness to prevent communal/caste violence and prompt and bold resistance from local activists and community elders in the event of any such violent outbreak have been of proven value in many such cases. It is also equally important to expose and challenge the hate propaganda of the communal fascists by arming people with real facts and rational analysis. …

“We must actively support and champion people’s resistance of all vulnerable sections – workers; peasants; women; Dalits; adivasis; students and youth; LGBTQ people; inter-faith, inter-caste and same sex couples; Kashmiris – against anti-people economic and environmental policies, as well as attacks on their Constitutional rights, dignity, and lives. We must be especially alert to any attempt to use ‘nationalist’ slogans and symbols to disguise and cover-up communal bullying and violence. We must make every effort to rally people to understand and defend Constitutional, democratic and progressive values, as well as to intensify struggles to achieve a better, more egalitarian and democratic India.

“The vacuum that has enabled the fascist forces to present themselves as the ‘saviour’ in a chaotic and crisis-ridden present needs to be filled with the vision and struggle for a better tomorrow, a vision of a prosperous, pluralist and egalitarian India that can guarantee a better life and broader rights to the Indian people. If the momentum generated during the freedom movement and the formative years of post-Independence nationbuilding has worn itself out, we need the energy of a second freedom movement that can bolster our political independence by guaranteeing full social and economic freedom to the people. If growing social and economic inequality is making a mockery of the notion of political equality of ‘one person one vote’ then we need a social transformation to overcome the structures of inequality. If the undemocratic Indian soil is constantly undermining the top dressing of democracy, and fascism is threatening to completely subordinate our constitutional democracy to the undemocratic soil, we need to democratise that soil to achieve real power in the hands of the people. Fascism shall not be allowed to pass and crush the people. The people united will overcome the fascist offensive and secure a stronger and deeper democracy for themselves.”

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“We know we in the Left have lost a few crucial electoral battles, but these electoral setbacks are not going to decide the outcome of the ongoing war between fascism and democracy. The communists have always drawn their strength from the courage and determination of the people as they have fought heroically for their freedom and rights. Today as India once again witnesses a very powerful and inspiring wave of people’s resistance spearheaded by the workers and peasants, Dalits and Adivasis, students, youth and women, this growing resistance will only further galvanise the Left against the onslaught of fascism. Growing unity in action among various sections of the Left and dialogue and cooperation with every broader stream of resistance will enable us to halt the marauding march of the fascist forces. The unity of the people in struggles for livelihood, dignity and democracy will prevail over the polarising frenzy of communal hate.”

- Dipankar Bhattacharya,
Inaugural Address At the 10th Congress of CPI(ML)

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First They Came for the Jews

by Martin Niemöller

First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
and there was no one left
to speak out for me.

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First They Came for the Muslims

by Michael R. Burch

First they came for the Muslims
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Muslim.
Then they came for the homosexuals
and I did not speak out
because I was not a homosexual.
Then they came for the feminists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a feminist.
Now when will they come for me
because I was too busy and too apathetic
to defend my sisters and brothers?

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Fascism

[Excerpts from Clara Zetkin’s article published in Labour Monthly, August 1923]

“Fascism is the concentrated expression of the general offensive undertaken by the world bourgeoisie against the proletariat. Its overthrow is therefore an absolute necessity… It will be much easier for us to defeat Fascism if we clearly and distinctly study its nature. Fascism, … viewed objectively, is not the revenge of the bourgeoisie in retaliation for proletarian aggression against the bourgeoisie, but it is a punishment of the proletariat for failing to carry on the revolution begun in Russia. The Fascist leaders are not a small and exclusive caste; they extend deeply into wide elements of the population….

We have to overcome Fascism not only militarily, but also politically and ideologically. … Fascism, with all its forcefulness in the prosecution of its violent deeds, is indeed nothing else but the expression of the disintegration and decay of capitalist economy, and the symptom of the dissolution of the bourgeois State. This is one of its roots. … The second root of Fascism lies in the retarding of the world revolution by the treacherous attitude of the reformist leaders. Large numbers of the petty bourgeoisie, including even the middle classes, had discarded their war-time psychology for a certain sympathy with reformist socialism, hoping that the latter would bring about a reformation of society along democratic lines. They were disappointed in their hopes. They can now see that the reformist leaders are in benevolent accord with the bourgeoisie, and the worst of it is that these masses have now lost their faith not only in the reformist leaders, but in socialism as a whole. These masses of disappointed socialist sympathisers are joined by large circles of the proletariat, of workers who have given up their faith not only in socialism, but also in their own class. Fascism has become a sort of refuge for the politically shelterless. In fairness it ought to be said that the Communists, too – except the Russians – bear part of the blame for the desertion of these elements to the Fascist ranks, because our actions at times failed to stir the masses profoundly enough. …

Fascism has diverse characteristics in different countries. Nevertheless it has two distinguishing features in all countries, namely, the pretence of a revolutionary programme, which is cleverly adapted to the interests and demands of the large masses, and, on the other hand, the application of the most brutal violence. …

After Italy, Fascism is strongest in Germany. As a consequence of the result of the war and of the failure of the revolution, the capitalist economy of Germany is weak, and in no other country is the contrast between the objective ripeness for revolution and the subjective unpreparedness of the working class as great as just now in Germany. In no other country have the reformists^[1] so ignominiously failed as in Germany. Their failure is more criminal than the failure of any other party in the old International, because it is they who should have conducted the struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat with utterly different means in the country where the working-class organisations are older and better amiliari than anywhere else.

… The Communist Parties must not only be the vanguard of the proletarian manual workers, but also the energetic defenders of the interests of the brain workers. They must be the leaders of all sections of society which are driven into opposition to bourgeois domination because of their interests and their expectations of the future. … We must realise that Fascism is a movement of the disappointed and of those whose existence is ruined. Therefore, we must endeavour either to win over or to amiliariz those wide masses who are still in the Fascist camp. I wish to emphasise the importance of our amiliari that we must struggle ideologically for the possession of the soul of these masses. We must realise that they are not only trying to escape from their present tribulations, but that they are longing for a new philosophy. … We must not limit ourselves merely to carrying on a struggle for our political and economic programme. We must at the same time amiliarize the masses with the ideals of Communism as a philosophy. …

We must adapt our methods of work to our new tasks. We must speak to the masses in a language which they can understand, without doing prejudice to our ideas. Thus, the struggle against Fascism brings forward a number of new tasks.”

The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International

[Excerpts from Report delivered by Georgi Dimitrov, General Secretary, Communist International at the Seventh World Congress, August 2, 1935]

“Comrades, as early as its Sixth Congress, [1928] the Communist International warned the world proletariat that a new fascist offensive was in preparation and called for a struggle against it. The Congress pointed out that “in a more or less developed form, fascist tendencies and the germs of a fascist movement are to be found almost everywhere.…

“… fascism in power was correctly described by the Thirteenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International as the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital. …

“The development of fascism, and the fascist dictatorship itself, assume different forms in different countries, according to historical, social and economic conditions and to the national peculiarities and the international position of the given country. In certain countries, principally those in which fascism has no extensive mass basis and in which the struggle of the various groups within the camp of the fascist bourgeoisie itself is fairly acute, fascism does not immediately venture to abolish parliament, but allows the other bourgeois parties, as well as the Social-Democratic Parties, to retain a certain degree of legality. In other countries, where the ruling bourgeoisie fears an early outbreak of revolution, fascism establishes its unrestricted political monopoly, either immediately or by intensifying its reign of terror against and persecution of all competing parties and groups. This does not prevent fascism, when its position becomes particularly acute, from trying to extend its basis and, without altering its class nature, trying to combine open terrorist dictatorship with a crude sham of parliamentarism.

“The accession to power of fascism is not an ordinary succession of one bourgeois government by another, but a substitution of one state form of class domination of the bourgeoisie -- bourgeois democracy -- by another form -- open terrorist dictatorship. It would be a serious mistake to ignore this distinction, a mistake which would prevent the revolutionary proletariat from mobilizing the widest strata of the working people of town and country for the struggle against the menace of the seizure of power by the fascists, and from taking advantage of the contradictions which exist in the camp of the bourgeoisie itself…. fascism usually comes to power in the course of a mutual, and at times severe, struggle against the old bourgeois parties, or a definite section of these parties, in the course of a struggle even within the fascist camp itself…

“… before the establishment of a fascist dictatorship, bourgeois governments usually pass through a number of preliminary stages and adopt a number of reactionary measures which directly facilitate the accession to power of fascism. Whoever does not fight the reactionary measures of the bourgeoisie and the growth of fascism at these preparatory stages is not in a position to prevent the victory of fascism, but, on the contrary, facilitates that victory. …

“What is the source of the influence of fascism over the masses? Fascism is able to attract the masses because it demagogically appeals to their most urgent needs and demands. Fascism not only inflames prejudices that are deeply ingrained in the masses, but also plays on the better sentiments of the masses, on their sense of justice, and sometimes even on their revolutionary traditions. Why do the German fascists, those lackeys of the big bourgeoisie and mortal enemies of socialism, represent themselves to the masses as “Socialists,” and depict their accession to power as a “revolution”? Because they try to exploit the faith in revolution and urge toward socialism that lives in the hearts of the mass of working people in Germany. …

“Fascism comes before them with the demand for “an honest and incorruptible government.” Speculating on the profound disillusionment of the masses in bourgeois-democratic governments, fascism hypocritically denounces corruption…

“It is in the interests of the most reactionary circles of the bourgeoisie that fascism intercepts the disappointed masses who desert the old bourgeois parties. But it impresses these masses by the severity of its attacks on the bourgeois governments and its irreconcilable attitude to the old bourgeois parties.

“Surpassing in its cynicism and hypocrisy all other varieties of bourgeois reaction, fascism adapts its demagogy to the national peculiarities of each country, and even to the peculiarities of the various social strata in one and the same country. And the mass of the petty-bourgeoisie and even a section of the workers, reduced to despair by want, unemployment and the insecurity of their existence, fall victim to the social and chauvinist demagogy of fascism. …”.

Note:

1. The reference is to the SDP

 Towards a Contemporary Understanding of Fascism

Highly instructive as it is, the story of Hitler obviously does not tell us all that we need to know about fascism. So here are some essential supplementary points.

Briefly on the Rise of Fascism in Italy

At the close of World War I, Italy was still a young nation state. The Kingdom of Italy had been formed only in 1861 – and that without Rome and Venice, which were acceded a few years later – in the wake of Camillo Cavour’s work for unification of a fragmented Italy and the military campaigns of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Economic development was extremely uneven, literacy rate was the lowest in Western Europe, and hunger, unemployment and inflation made life miserable. There was widespread national disgruntlement over the perception that, under the Treaty of Versailles, Italy as one of the victorious allied powers had not been given the same favourable settlement as Britain, France and USA. The old political parties came to be considered absolutely worthless and people felt that a major change was needed to save the country. Inspired by the Russian Revolution, peasants in many places seized land while workers went on strike and even took over factories. Left parties were gaining in membership and influence.

Benito Mussolini was born in 1883, the son of a blacksmith, who was an ardent socialist. Benito himself was a socialist with great oratorical skills. From December 1912, he worked as the editor of the Italian Socialist newspaper, Avanti! When World War I broke out, he supported the Italian government’s neutral stance but very soon he reversed his stand, writing in favour of Italy’s entry into the war. In November 1914 he was formally expelled from the socialist party and became a committed nationalist and anti-socialist.

After the war, when a wave of nationalism was sweeping across the war-ravaged country and small nationalist groups were sprouting everywhere, Mussolini assembled these groups into a single national organization in March 1919, calling it Fasci di Combattimento or the Fascist Party. The name Fasci (Fascist) was taken from an ancient Roman symbol that contained a bundle of wooden rods around an axe, with its blade popping out.

The fascists in uniforms held parades and rallies with the slogan “Believe! Obey! Fight!” They claimed that modern Italy is heir to ancient Rome and its legacy and spawned the dream of an Italian Empire that would provide “living space” for colonization by Italian settlers and establish control over the Mediterranean Sea. Slowly but steadily, they gained popular support with an aggressive nationalist platform, winning 35 seats in the 1921 elections. In October 1922, amidst fears of a communist-led revolution, Mussolini gathered his followers and foot soldiers (the 'Blackshirts' composed of marginalized ex-servicemen) and staged a so-called “March on Rome”. King Victor Emanuel III refused to allow the army to stop the marchers and thereby allowed the Fascist seize power without firing a shot.

The Italian cabinet led by Luigi Facta resigned in protest and, asked by the King, Mussolini formed a new cabinet as Prime Minister on 31 October. The latter got the electoral law drastically modified so his party could win a highly controversial election in April 1924. By 1925 he concentrated all power in his own hands and declared himself dictator of Italy under the title Il Duce or 'The Leader', suspending the free press and disbanding individual rights as well as rival political parties.

In October 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia. In 1938, following in the footsteps of Hitler, Mussolini   passed the “Manifesto of Race”, which stripped Jews of their Italian citizenship and imposed all kinds of restriction and ostracisation. In May 1939 Italy entered into the “Pact of Steel” with Germany and on September 1 the Second World War began.

In the aftermath of a series of defeat Italy suffered under his leadership, on 25 July 1943 the Grand Council of Fascism passed a motion of no confidence for Mussolini. The King dismissed him as head of government and had him arrested. On 12 September 1943, he was rescued from captivity by German paratroopers and Hitler put him at the head of a puppet regime in northern Italy – the Italian Social Republic – informally called the Salò Republic. In late April 1945, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci attempted to flee from Italy but both were captured by Italian communists and summarily executed by a firing squad on 28 April 1945 near Lake Como. Only two days later, Hitler would commit suicide to save himself from the advancing columns of Russian Red Army.

Interplay of Economic and Socio-Political Factors In the emergence of Fascism

Since the classic models of fascism arose in Italy and Germany in the post-war situation of severe economic crisis, many see that as the single most important source of fascism, both as a movement and a state form. But then, why did not war-ravaged imperialist countries other than Italy and Germany – say France and Britain – witness a comparable development of the fascist current culminating in fascist takeover of the state?

The question arises because both these countries suffered economic devastation thanks to World War I. France bore the brunt of German onslaught: according to official estimates, 712,000 buildings, 20,000 industrial compounds, 2.5 million hectares of agricultural land, 20,000 kilometers of canals, 2000 buildings, 62,000 km of roads and more than 5000 km of railroads were destroyed. The total estimated damage was 34,000,000,000 Francs. Britain lost its position as the number one global economic power to the US in the aftermath of the war. Both countries experienced harsh consequences like double-digit unemployment, falling incomes and the like, slowly maturing into the Great Depression. Despite all this, and despite the fact that anti-Semitism was rampant throughout Europe including France and Britain, the fascist groups in these two countries never came anywhere near taking power. Similar is the case of the US too, which experienced the great crash of 1929 and slipped into the Great Depression. The divergence between Italy and Germany on one hand and France and Britain on the other is explained not so much by the degree of economic crisis as by the very different political conditions.

In the first group of countries, fascists came to power taking advantage of intense socio-economic crisis and political instability. In Italy, five governments were formed under various coalitions between 1919 and 1922. In Germany too, frequent changes in government was the norm from day one of the Weimer Republic: between 1919 and 1932 the country saw as many as fourteen chancellors. In both countries, the overbearing authority of the King/Reich president in appointing and dismissing heads of government as well as in sanctioning/rejecting decrees and legislations only added to the political chaos and thoroughly undermined the authority of the parliament. In fact parliamentary democracy as the best and most stable (because camouflaged) form of bourgeois rule was overthrown and substituted by the fascist state before it could consolidate itself and secure the support of broad sections of the working people and the ruling classes. In Germany for instance, the broad consensus among the ruling elite was to overthrow the 'Weimer nuisance' (as they perceived it) and revert to the monarchial form of their rule. By contrast, the parliamentary system in France and Britain was already firmly established, leaving very limited political space for fascists to grow steadily and attain power.

The overall experience of 19th-century fascism thus refutes the economic deterministic, pseudo-Marxist notion that views fascism simply as a product of severe economic crisis.^[1] As our case study on Nazism demonstrates, political factors can very well play an even more important role in the advent of fascism. Kurt Gossweiler puts this cogently at the end of his aforementioned article Economy and Politics in the Destruction of the Weimer Republic:

"In sum, the motives of the ruling class for the destruction of the Weimer Republic and the establishment of the fascist dictatorship were, in the final analysis, economically substantiated but by no means economically determined. The decision to exclude the subjugated classes from a share in state power and concentrate this very state power in the hands of the executive, in effect handing over power to the fascists, was a political decision – indeed, an expression of the primacy of politics."

The primacy of politics also explains why the process and pace of growth as well as the peculiar forms and features of fascism vary so widely across countries and historical periods. Mussolini rose to power much earlier and more rapidly than Hitler not because economic disruption was more severe in Italy than in Germany, nor because the IL Duce was more capable or ruthless than the Fuhrer. He achieved easy and quick success because (a) the political vacuum was more profound in his country: after all, Italy did not even have anything like the Weimer Republic and (b) the King himself handed over power to Mussolini on a platter even when he had no popular mandate, while president Hindenburg refused to oblige Hitler even after the Nazis became the largest political party in Parliament following the Reichstag elections of end July 1932.

The trajectory of fascism in Spain was altogether different. Gramsci in his 1921 article On Fascism gives us the following picture of Spain circa 1916:

"The revolutionary movement surged forward; the unions organised almost the entirety of the industrial masses; strikes, lockouts, states of emergency, the dissolution of Chambers of Labour and peasant associations, massacres, street shootings, became the everyday stuff of political life. Anti-Bolshevik fasces were formed. Initially, as in Italy, they were made up of military personnel, taken from the officers' clubs (juntas), but they swiftly enlarged their base until in Barcelona, for example, they had recruited 40,000 armed men. They followed the same tactics as the fascists in Italy: attacks on trade union leaders, violent opposition to strikes, terrorism against the masses; opposition to all forms of organisation, help for the regular police in repressive activity and arrests, help for blacklegs in agitations involving strikes or lockouts. For the past three years Spain has floundered in this crisis: public freedom is suspended every fortnight, personal freedom has become a myth, the workers' unions to a great extent function clandestinely, the mass of workers is hungry and angry, the great mass of the people has been reduced to indescribable conditions of savagery and barbarism."

Even in such a situation, the fascist groups such as the Falange had very little mass suppport and no presence in the Parliament; in fact there was no question of their coming to power on their own in the face of  the brave resistance put up by the Left. In the electoral arena too, the Popular Front -- a socialist-communist coalition which also included some other progressive forces -- defeated the right-wing coalition called National Front (the fascists did not join it but supported its policies) in 1936. When the PF government went ahead with progressive economic and political reforms, there was a military revolt led by General Francisco Franco. Members of the Falange joined the revolt and allowed themselves to be subsumed first into the Falange Española Tradicionalista – a new conglomeration of right wing forces cobbled up by the General -- and, following victory in the civil war, into the military dictatorship of Franco.

In the process the fascists gave up much of their original credo. Franco on his part did share certain fascist attributes such as extreme right-wing nationalism, communist--bashing, assault on all democratic forces, remorseless torture and genocide including in concentration camps and he did join forces with Mussolini and Hitler before and during World War II while feigning neutrality. But he did not build up, or come to power on the strength of, a fascist movement. Fascism’s ability to mobilise one section of society against another, to fan up frenzied mass violence and legitimize state repression – the unique features that set it apart from other forms of authoritarianism – was no part of his political arsenal.

When the dictatorial regime ended with his death in 1975, political parties were legalized (some relaxation had started earlier), elections were held in June 1977 and the country slowly limped back to normal parliamentary democracy. The rise and fall of fascism in Spain was thus a different story altogether, even though socio-economic conditions were largely similar to those in Italy and Germany.  

Fascism of Our Times: Trump’s America

Alongside the unprecedented waves of protest^[2] that greeted the election of Donald Trump as the President of America, an animated discussion flooded the print and electronic media: did this obnoxious right-wing politician represent the advent of fascism in the US?

On one side of the argumentative discourse^[3], which continues unabated to this day, are those who hold that characterisation of Trump as a fascist is theoretically untenable because some of the essential attributes of fascism or fascist rule are absent here. For them, ‘right-wing populist demagogue’ works fine as a description of the incumbent president. A growing number of commentators and activists, however, don't agree. They argue that it is the nature or function of the government, not the form, that counts. Hence the “concept of functional fascism: under the Trumpite Republicans, a 21st century form of fascism is being developed functionally” (Steven Jonas in 21st Century Fascism: Trump Style – Part I (OpEdNews, 1 April, 2018) without recourse to abolition of parliament and Hitler/Mussolini-type dictatorship.

Defining Features

Commentators who see the Trump Administration as a fascist one seem to base themselves on this approach. Early on, when Trump was campaigning to be nominated as the official candidate of the Republican Party, Andrew J. Wood in The Rise of Fascism in the United States came up with an “abbreviated list of groups or ideas attacked, labeled, and stereotyped by Trumpism”:

“Women, Islam, Immigrants, Black Lives Matter, The Media (except for those few that laud—or employ—Trump himself), Welfare recipients and the poor more broadly, China [and certain other countries], any and all political and ideological opponents, the “establishment,” (except, it seems, the established military, police forces, prison system, institutions of capital, and so on)”.

Other commentators drew attention to several conspicuous symptoms of a fascist regime: the President’s ugly war on the media and the intelligentsia; his demagoguery, threats to imprison Hillary Clinton, scathing personal attacks on judges and courts that make decisions which he does not like; appointment of Federal Court judges known for their right-wing views;  plans to repatriate millions of migrants; “the unceasing stream of hate, bigotry, lies and militarism” emanating from the President and his cabal (Henry A. Giroux in The Ghost of Fascism in The Age of Trump, Truthdig, 15 February 2018); and so on.

America today stands witness to the fact that fascist ideas and practices are a poison that inevitably spreads beyond the organised fascist groups or parties and infects large segments of civil society. In our country we have seen how the installation of the Modi government brought in its trail a spike in mob lynching and other hate crimes against Dalits and Muslims all over India and also against African students and even people from India's North East in the national capital. The Trump Presidency has similarly emboldened white supremacist forces and led to a manifold increase in sporadic racist attacks on black people and immigrants, even as fascist groups scale up their organised violence. There is hardly any effort to stem the tide: even after the terror unleashed by neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in August 2017, the President refused to unequivocally denounce the terrorists or take action against responsible officials. At the same time, concerted hate campaigns on the social media are rapidly rising. A recent study by George Washington University shows that over the last five years white nationalist and neo-fascist movements in the US have grown by 600% on Twitter, outperforming Isis, exactly as the Sanghi troll army in our country is wreaking havoc on social media. The mainstream media is also not free from such racist and misogynist attacks. As Youssef El-Gingihy wrote in The Age of Trump And 21st Century Fascism:

“The representation of Muslims and refugees in mainstream discourse as variously stray dogs, swarms and cockroaches is disturbing. This dehumanisation has very dangerous historical precedents^[4] in that it legitimises the perpetration of violence against the other. The moment that one denotes others as non-human then it follows that they can be treated as such.” (The Independent Online, 5 March, 2017)

Another core component of fascism, as we have seen in the case of Hitler Germany, is populist demagoguery. Right from day one of his campaign, Trump has been high on it. In some cases he really means it – a good example would be his reactionary, isolationist central slogan "America First" and its derivative "Buy American – Hire American". In many other cases, however, nobody takes his populist soundbites very seriously. To cite just one among many available examples, soon after assuming office – on 3 January 2017 to be precise – he tweeted, specifically mentioning general Motors by name, "Make in US or pay a big border tax!" This was of course not followed up with any appropriate executive order but the tweet certainly made his followers happy.

So we see in the world's most powerful state unmistakable signs of the rise of a fascist regime, having as its foundation the modern surveillance state with more insidious means of control  and repression than the gestapo and the  jackboots, where the Guantanamo Bay^[5]  and the expanding network of private prisons filled with immigrants and people of colour take the place of concentration camps even as Islamophobia, xenophobia and white supremacy substitute for anti-Semitism, where and a symbiotic blend of official demagoguery with racist terror unleashed by state and non-state actors increasingly emerge as defining features of Trump’s America.

Genesis and Trajectory

In The Origins of American Fascism Michael Joseph Roberto (Monthly Review Online, Volume 69, Issue 02, June 2017) reflects upon a unique feature of fascism in the US as distinct from fascism in Italy and Germany. We reproduce here a small part of his observation:

“As the economic crisis worsened in 1931–32, the Nazis were positioned for a surge in the polls from their lower-middle class, Protestant base. Whatever reservations they had about Hitler’s ultra-nationalist rhetoric, Germany’s ruling classes eventually decided that he was their only hope against the threat of political collapse and socialist revolution. When the general crisis became a crisis of class rule in January 1933, capitalists were compelled to line up, step by step, with Hitler.

“In the U.S. capitalist epicenter, the driving force of fascism came from the capitalist class itself, intent on extending and protecting the wealth and power it had gained during the boom years of the 1920s. In Germany, by contrast, fascism found its natural base in a disaffected lower middle class moved by rising nationalist anger over the punitive accords of Versailles. In Germany, terrorist ultra-nationalism brought Hitler and his party to power. In the United States, capitalists with the assistance of the State smashed labor during the Red Scare and shared common ground with reactionary terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan in promoting the doctrine of “100 percent Americanism.”

---

“It is a peculiarity of the development of American fascism that at the present stage this fascism comes forward principally in the guise of an opposition to fascism, which it accuses of being an ‘un-American’ tendency imported from abroad. In contradistinction to German fascism, which acts under anti-constitutional slogans, American fascism tries to portray itself as the custodian of the Constitution and ‘American Democracy’. It does not yet represent a directly menacing force. But if it succeeds in penetrating to the wide masses who have become disillusioned with the old bourgeois parties it may become a serious menace in the near future.”

Georgi Dimitrov, Political Report to the Seventh Congress of the Comintern (July-August 1935)

---

El-Gingihy continues,

“Already in the 1930s, the most astute American observers traced fascism’s origins to big business and financial capital. … Perhaps the most intriguing of these forgotten works is Carmen Haider’s Do We Want Fascism? (New York: John Day, 1934). A Columbia-educated historian, Haider traveled to Italy in the 1920s to study the structure of Mussolini’s corporatist state, documenting her findings in one of the earliest academic studies of European fascism. On returning to the United States, she conducted a similarly rigorous investigation of the nascent fascist movement in her own country. In Do We Want Fascism? she argued that the rise of American fascism would not require a distinct party, as in Italy and Germany. Rather, fascism could penetrate the two-party system and lead to a fascist state, which Haider defined as ‘a dictatorial form of government exercised in the interests of capitalists.’”

However, for this to actually happen, certain conditions were necessary. While fascist/semi-fascist and kindred groups existed in the fringes of US society since – or even before – the 1930s, in the period following WW II the socio-economic and political conditions^[6] conducive to the growth of fascism on a broader scale have been maturing steadily, especially since the advent of neoliberalism in the 1980s. With the passage of time the ever-growing inequality of wealth and income, the continuing erosion in real income and employment opportunities, decades of costly privatisation in education and health care that pushed ordinary Americans under mountains of debt, the menace of terrorism, and more recently, the home mortgage foreclosures^[7] that rendered thousands homeless overnight coupled with the financial crisis that the greedy financial elite brought upon the country – all these added up to create a tremendous overload of  frustration, anger, sense of deprivation and insecurity. Particularly since 9/11, this atmosphere was utilized by both the ruling parties to chisel out a surveillance state or national security state and now we have the Trump Presidency as a natural culmination of the process. As Youssef El-Gingihy points out,

“Fascism is generally preceded by the decay of democracy and the rule of law. In other words, it does not happen overnight. Post 9/11, the war on terror brought about the erosion of civil liberties with indefinite detention, torture, the extraordinary rendition programme with a global network of “black-site” prisons into which enemy combatants were disappeared, blanket NSA surveillance and extra-judicial bugsplat^[8] drone assassination of targets including US citizens…. Such powers, disproportionate to the threat of terrorism, inevitably begs the question: who are the real enemies of the state? Is this apparatus increasingly going to be deployed against citizens by authoritarian states? A customary mistake has been to focus on the individual figurehead of Trump when it is the national security state that has evolved into a proto-fascist entity. As Edward Snowden presciently warned, all it will now take is for a leader to come in and flick the switch into a totalitarian nightmare. The Trump victory may well herald this transition.” (ibid)

In his election campaign Trump took great pains to deflect the blame for the 2007-08 crash from the guilty financial elite on to those at the bottom – the immigrants and non-whites – and his political opponents; once in office, he adopted the most inhuman measures, as we saw in the case of Mexican immigrants. In justifying his conduct, the US President stooped so low as to say that Mexico was deliberately sending murderers and rapists into the US. As for his other major plank of right-wing populism – Muslim-bashing – the conflation of Muslims and terror has been the most convenient tool for whipping up Islamophobia since long, but Trump carried it to new heights with his travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries^[9]. It is hardly surprising that, as a Pew Research Center analysis points out, by November 2017 anti-Muslim assaults surpassed by far the post-9/11 levels.

But one should take into consideration another dimension of the whole development. In addition to the sense of deprivation and insecurity, there was also a great popular urge for change. This yearning expressed itself in mammoth mobilisations against capitalist globalization in general and WTO/World Economic Forum in particular, and more recently in the powerful occupy movement; but none of these ushered in any perceptible positive change. It was in this backdrop that the Republican Party nominee for the 2015 presidential election, who combined in himself the business acumen of a millionaire real estate developer and the mass communication skills of a reality TV star, won the race "by consolidating a 'whitelash' – white supremacist assertion amongst the prosperous elite – while channeling the anger and insecurity felt by America's unemployed white working class in a racist and xenophobic direction.”^[10]

Thus it was that a distinct change – reactionary, regressive, but appealing to many in its aggressive nationalism – took place in the style or method of governance and top administrative personnel, but without any alteration in the state form.

Can the present dispensation carry on without a systemic/constitutional change – without recourse to a formal fascist takeover of the state? Michael Joseph Roberto poses this question in a particular way:

“The question now is whether Trump and his circle of ultra-nationalist fanatics, Wall Street barons, generals, and assorted political hacks can engineer an American-style Gleichschaltung[^11], “bringing into line” the rest of the executive, the judiciary, the military, and the media behind Trump’s agenda “To Make America Great Again.”

And his answer is:
“…On the basis of its particular development in the United States, the American Gleichschaltung seems more likely to be a collaboration than a dictatorship—a collective undertaking by those who administer Republican control at all levels of government. Though many of the leading figures of financial capital backed Hillary Clinton, these same members of the 1 percent now stand to benefit from the new administration’s attacks on all forms of economic regulation and intervention …” (ibid).

This, of course, is but one of many possibilities, what with the spurt in various forms of populist authoritarianism – not just in America but in all parts of the world -- as the emerging new normal in this era of decaying capitalism. There are other prospects too, including that of mass disillusionment setting in sooner rather than later, and sounding the death knell of the increasingly draconian rule. It is important to note, as the CPI (ML) Resolution referred above points out, “Trump's ascendance has galvanised progressive forces into anti-fascist unity and resistance. The Black Lives Matter movement, that began during Obama's second term, taking on the killings of Black men and assaults on Black people by police, has emerged as a mainstay of the resistance. Feminists, Latino workers, Black people have joined hands in massive mobilisations right from the first day of Trump's Presidency.” And this trend was reflected in results of the recent midterm elections too, when a good number of women, African-Americans, Native Americans, Muslims and LGBT minority candidates from both the Democratic and the Republican parties – some of them avowed socialists –  became elected to the Congress.

Barbarism or Socialism?

The first big wave of fascism appeared nearly 100 years ago when in the wake of the first imperialist World War the old economic model of laissez-faire was facing a deep structural crisis and crying out for a thorough structural solution. Three models of reform or transformation then appeared on the global horizon. The first was the most radical and comprehensive: the socialist revolution accomplished in Russia. The second offered a partial yet substantial reform: the Keynesian breakthrough in bourgeois economic theory, the New Deal in the US, and the welfare state policy in post-war Europe. While the first was envisioned and executed by the revolutionary proletariat and the second by the most farsighted and in that sense historically progressive sections of the bourgeoisie, the third one – fascism – was initially dished out by sections of the petty bourgeoisie and very soon adopted by the most powerful, racist/national chauvinist and expansionist sections of finance capital.

All three models have since been rolled back, and neoliberalism has emerged as the dominant global order. Today that order, once hailed as heralding the end of history, is in a deep crisis that has engulfed everything from the economy to the environment, bringing human civilization to another historic crossroads: forward to socialism, or backward to barbarism, one of the modern forms of which is fascism.

Yes, with the middle path of non-neoliberal, pro-people, progressive regimes in Latin America failing to deliver on a sustainable basis – much like the short-lived New Deal or welfare state models of the past century – these two are the only real options today.

Significantly, in both US and UK the growth of right-wing populism have had its opposite in the shape of left currents – once represented by Bernie Sanders in US and persistently by Jeremy Corbin^[12] in UK – which rejected the new liberal credo and thus succeeded in drawing considerable mass support, especially from the youth. This trend has been visible elsewhere too.

The bottom line: the crisis of and popular backlash against the neoliberal order marked by growing inequality have created new historic opportunities for both the radical left and the radical right. This reconfirms a cardinal fact of history. The idea of socialism, and the Left in the broader sense as its protagonist, is the only political force that can – and must – mobilise all left, democratic and progressive people in the struggles to resist and defeat the new breed of fascist and authoritarian populist forces. In the process, the ‘Age of Anger’ will, sooner or later but most certainly, develop into a qualitatively new ‘Age of Revolution’.

Notes:

1. This mechanistic approach even led a section of India Marxists to assert that since there is no acute economic crisis in India today, the Modi dispensation cannot be seen as fascist!

2. In addition to street demonstrations, various other forms of protest and sensitization were also witnessed. Thus the Department of Theatre and Drama at the University of Michigan staged the Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui in October 2017. Notably, Brecht wrote this “parable play” (as he subtitled it) on his way to America and was set in the American context.

3. The present debate is essentially an updated version of the one that emerged in the 1930s. Intervening in the debate, A. B. Magil and Henry Stevens argued that “to search for national resemblances based on what some writers called a “fascist minimum” was a mistake. “The national peculiarities of each country, its specific economic and social position, its historical traditions,” they wrote, “all play a part in shaping the form that fascist movements and fascism take.” (The Peril of Fascism, (International Publishers, New York, 1938)) It will be interesting to note that this view was at one with Dimitrov's detailed exposition, made three years ago, on the multiplicity of forms and features of fascism.

4. The author alludes to the Nazi practice of calling Jews “vermin”, “a dangerous bacillus” etc. for provoking and justifying hate assaults on them.

5. This notorious military detention camp-cum-torture chamber, established by President George W. Bush in 2002 was sought to be closed down by President Obama, but he failed in the face of bipartisan opposition in the Congress. One of the first things Trump did as president was to sign an executive order to keep it open indefinitely.

6. In tracing the still incomplete evolution of the American model of 21st century fascism, one must also factor in the roles played by certain essential elements of post-war US history which got deeply embedded in the ruling American ideology, such as McCarthyism, rabid militarism (cold, hot and proxy wars and the military-industrial complex), the penchant for full- spectrum global domination, both encouraging and fighting terrorism to serve American geo-political goals.

7. As a strategy to counter economic slump, Americans were goaded into “sub-prime” home loans -- loans provided on very easy terms with little mortgage. When crisis struck in 2007-08, many distressed homeowners failed to pay their dues on time and lost their homes as premature settlement of their loans.

8. This term, borrowed from a computer game of the same name, is used by US authorities when humans are murdered by drone missiles. Suspected or alleged terrorists are likened to bugs that must be swatted on sight, without any judicial process. This is an Obama-era legacy carried ahead by the present dispensation, even in sovereign states like Pakistan.

9. In a sharply divided (5-4) judgment the Federal Supreme court rejected the claim of anti-Muslim bias and upheld the ban in late June 2018. Crucial to this outcome was the stance taken by Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch, who got his seat last year after Republican Senators blocked Obama nominee Merrick Garland for ten months.

10. Resolution on International Situation adopted at the Tenth Congress of CPI (ML) Liberation (March 2018).

11. Literally, coordination or consolidation, by which Nazis meant totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of society.

12. In the face of the Corbyn wave, the fascist UKIP’s vote share dropped sharply from 12.6% in the 2015 general election (which represented a rise of 9.5% compared to 2010) to 1.8% in 2017.

In the preceding chapters we have outlined the genesis and essential features of Nazism, the evolution of the NASDAP’s political line from a reckless putschism to a pragmatic combination of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary (demagogic-terrorist) forms of struggle and lastly, Hitler’s dramatic ascent – first to the position of the Reich Chancellor and then from that base camp to the summit of absolute dictatorship. Here it might be useful to highlight the most important lessons we have learned.

Synergic Combination of Demagoguery and Terror

Nazism is not just about unbridled violence, old conspiracies, extreme cruelty and large-scale repression. In an equal measure it is about high-pitch, extensive, relentless propaganda and mass indoctrination. It appeals not only to people’s base instincts and regressive ideas/beliefs; it can also stir up noble emotions like selfless service to the nation and sacrifice for a great cause. That is why it attracts not the riffraff and the lumpenproletariat alone, but also sections of genuine patriots and idealist students and youth.

It is, however, the complementary or symbiotic roles played by terror and demagoguery that made the duo deadly. Terror was not only a tool to silence, immobilise and to some extent physically eliminate the opposition: it had a strong demagogic impact or demonstration effect in showcasing the fascists’ strong will and power, which many saw as the need of the hour for a Germany in chaos and disorder. Thus the torture on the Jews were meant to send a strong message to all others that any individual or social group earning the displeasure of fascists will meet the same fate.

If during the years prior to Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor, demagoguery was a fundamental element in the terror-demagoguery synergy, it was clearly the other way round during the period of consolidation of fascist dictatorship (January 1933 – June 1934). The smashing of trade unions and disbanding of political parties were accompanied by communists, social democrats and other opponents of the regime being brutally tortured in the “Brown Houses” of fascist Brownshirts and then sent back to their homes and workplaces with broken limbs as living warnings to others. At the same time, anti-Semitic polarisation and social ostracisation of Jews were carried on under slogans like “Germans, only buy from Germans”, “Germans, do not let anybody but Germans to treat you”, “Germans, only allow Germans to judge you” and the like, obviously meant to remove Jews and other ‘outsiders’ from business, the medical profession, the judiciary and so on. There was no dearth of parochial nationalist/racist propaganda either, e.g., “Germans, only read German literature, only enjoy German art”.

Adaptations of such slogans are quite familiar to us today, and so are the launching of infrastructure and housing projects, many of which had actually been planned or initiated by the previous government (both in Germany then and in India now). Fulfilment of promises made during the election campaign was not an easy job, however. The government tried to placate the people with the declaration that its first priority was to undertake a complete overhaul of the entire policy framework in a genuine nationalist orientation (a job entrusted, in India, to the NITI Aayog) and thus to lay the foundations for more substantial changes and developments that would follow. “New Germany”, the Fuhrer promised, would once again be a flourishing nation, a “national socialist people’s community” freed from ‘artificially introduced’ class divisions.

(In Modispeak, “Social harmony” – sab ka sath, sab ka vikash!)

Connivance of State Authorities and the Emerging Policy Consensus

As we have seen, on many occasions the judiciary treated the Nazis very leniently. Had the Supreme Court of Bavaria stuck to the five-year prison term for Hitler as mandated by law and confined him behind bars till the end of 1928, the modern history of Germany – indeed of the entire world – might have been very different, because that would have deprived him of crucial four years of political preparation before taking the final plunge for power.

Soon after the court ordered his release in late 1924, Hitler appealed to the Bavarian government to lift the ban on his party, and that too was granted on the ground that “the beast is tamed”. All this goes to show how grossly both the judiciary and the executive underestimated the budding monster. Similarly, many in the Army, including a section of the serving top brass and retired generals, strongly supported Hitler even as the mass of ex-soldiers actually joined the fascist movement as its foot soldiers – not because Hitler had once been an army man, but because they fully endorsed Hitler’s aggressive national chauvinism.

Of course, Marshall Hindenburg as Reich President refused to appoint Hitler as chancellor for a pretty long time, but that was only because he knew Hitler would not submit to his authority for long. Sympathetic officials in the civil services, like those in the armed forces, also helped the NASDAP in various ways.

The connivance or active complicity of the existing state authorities was but a reflection of a broader consensus in the ruling classes and their political representatives: the republican government must be ousted, preferably by constitutional means. Given this policy thrust, the Nazi leader continued to be hated and feared by his competitors, but it was simply not possible to ignore the greatest crowd puller among the lot. This political imperative ultimately got the better of personal and partisan rivalries and Hitler was made Chancellor by common consent. Then everyone in the cabinet, as well as the Reich President, actually helped Hitler – unwittingly to their own perils – to demolish the entire foundation and edifice of bourgeois democracy and monopolise all powers in his own hands. Occasional internal bickering notwithstanding, in an overall sense almost the entire political class (save those on the left) thus acted as willing accomplices in the construction of what has been called the Fuhrer state.

Objective Conditions and Role of the Individual

Hitler soared over his more experienced rivals because he was undoubtedly the worthiest of the pack. By adding the ‘socialist’ tag to the dominant discourse of nationalism, he adorned it with a pro-poor, pro-working class coat of paint and successfully initiated in Germany a brand-new style or trend in bourgeois politics, one that is now known as right-wing populism. And by simultaneously locating in the Jews the ‘other’ of the ‘pure Aryan German race’ he invented a convenient fall guy –  an enemy within – against whom a  majoritarian ethnic German community could be polarised and mobilised as the party’s  social base. This narrative of “national-socialist revolution” – where “national” stands for a new breed of racist or majoritarian nationalism and “socialism” means nothing but deceptive rhetoric – served as an attractive template to hold the entire gamut of fascist tools: demagoguery and terror, political intrigues and manipulations, and of course, a fine teamwork woven around the Fuhrer cult. Hitler wielded these instruments with exemplary dexterity and determination, tactical flexibility and strategic steadfastness, ingenuity and mendacity to utilise the post-war situation to his best advantage and reached his goal defeating his Left antagonists and outsmarting his right-wing competitors. That he ultimately failed to save the day is, of course, another big story.

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“Without Hitler, the rise of National Socialism would have been
unthinkable. In his absence, the party would have remained one of many ethnic-chauvinist groups on the right of the political spectrum. Nonetheless, the special conditions of the immediate post-war years in both Bavaria and the German Reich were also crucial: without the explosive mixture of economic misery, social instability and collective trauma, the populist agitator Hitler would never have been able to work his way out of anonymity to become a famous politician. The circumstances at the time played into Hitler’s hands, and he was more skilful and unscrupulous about using them than any of his rivals on the nationalist far right.”

– Volker Ullrich, Hitler Ascent 1889-1939

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From Movement to State Power

The story of Hitler tells us – and so does that of Mussolini too – that Nazism/fascism serves the monopoly bourgeoisie and ultimately becomes a tool in satisfying its fathomless greed and expansionist ambitions, but is not produced by it^[1]. Rather it is adopted, so to say, by the monopoly bourgeoisie when in a period of economic and socio-political crisis it passes a certain threshold in the road to power or assumes power. Once in power, fascism tends to metamorphose, more or less rapidly, from an ultra-reactionary political tendency/movement into an “open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital”, as the Thirteenth Enlarged Plenum of the Executive Committee of Communist International (November-December 1933) described it. This definition, it is necessary to note, applies only to fascism in power, not to a party striving for power.

It is also important not to confuse the social composition of a fascist movement with the class character of the fascist project in general or a fascist group/party in particular. Fascists try and recruit followers from all sections of the population, but with greater success among the unemployed youth, jobless workers, frustrated intellectuals and crisis-ridden petty producers – in short, the worst victims of economic crisis and social instability – whom the left parties have not yet been able to politicise and organise^[2]. So the social base of a fascist party – in other words, the social composition of a fascist movement – remains heterogeneous, with the petty bourgeoisie and the poor predominating. But its class character is determined by the class policy and ideology it pursues, the class it serves and is politically programmed to serve more nakedly if and when it comes to power. Right from its inception, the Nazi party with its physical attacks on trade unions and ideological onslaught on Marxism/Bolshevism – and this at a time when Germany stood at the forefront of international working class movement – did yeoman’s service to the German as well as the world bourgeoisie. And after coming to power, it served capital better than any other government in the world. The fascist state did this not only by regimentation and suppression of labour, massive state investment in infrastructure, armaments and related sectors, thereby boosting overall demand; but also by lesser-known policy measures like privatisation of a number of public sector units.

Irresistible? The Masses and the Left

Bertolt Brecht, eminent Marxist poet and playwright and a contemporary of Hitler, keenly observed the ascent of the megalomaniac and declared, in no uncertain terms, that it was resistible.  In borrowing the title of this booklet from Brecht’s very pertinent play, we have endorsed this view, and we believe the facts assembled here do corroborate it.

Now, what are the facts?

As we have seen, Hitler did not ride to power with a clear popular mandate with more than 50% vote share. Utilising the political vacuum marked by short lifespans of successive governments, he did attract large sections of people with his promise of a strong and stable government and an end to social anarchy and his national-socialist rhetoric. Between September 1930 and July 1932 the NSDAP made consistent progress in the hustings, but suffered great losses in the November 6 Reichstag elections, when the number of seats in its kitty went down from 230 to 196 in just four months. In December, the Nazi Juggernaut crashed in the Thuringia landtag election, losing nearly 40 percent votes. Yet the very next month Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor – how, we have seen before, and this was certainly not inevitable.

Did the people of Germany join Hitler’s war – political and physical – on the Jews? By no means. However, the fascists did succeed in opening up a chasm between the Jewish minority and the Christian ‘ethnic German’ majority. The latter saw overt acts of brutality as unnecessary and unjust excesses, but came to passively accept the policies of legal discrimination and exclusion on racial grounds. The Nazis, much like the Sanghis here, thus appeared before the electorate as the most aggressive – and therefore most effective – champion of the supposed supremacy of the majority. No doubt, this strategy brought them handsome dividends at the hustings.

Yet, the Left always remained a formidable force. Right from its inception, the Weimer Republic was a left bastion. In the first, that is the 1919 Reichstag election, the SPD and the USPD (Independent Socialist Party, which had split from the SPD in 1917) together gathered 45.6 percent of votes cast. And if we look at the last election to the Reichstag, we find that the combined tally of the two left parties far surpassed the Nazi kitty both in terms of seats won and percentage of ballots cast: 221 seats (SPD 121 and KPD 100) vis-a-vis 196 and 37.29 percent vis-a-vis 33.09 percent.^[3] Had the two parties campaigned together before the election – and more important, fought the fascists together on the streets, at the factories and in the fields – they must have scored much better not only in the electoral arena but also in inflicting a crushing political and moral defeat on the fascists. (This growing challenge from the Left was arguably one strong reason why the ruling classes and their representatives – including the monarchist aristocrat Hindenburg – ultimately accepted the Nazis as the last resort for preserving and bolstering the rule of capital.) How the disunited left frittered away this massive, largely organised and highly conscious mass support remains a sad chapter of history with profound lessons for us today.

The two left parties’ failure to unite was rooted in their opposite ideological and political positions. Ever since 1914, when the SPD leadership sided with the German imperialists in World War II and thus reneged from proletarian internationalism and revolutionary Marxism to bourgeois nationalism and revisionism, and when revolutionary sections of the party came out as the Spartacus League (the forerunner of the KPD), the two parties drifted further and further apart, often colliding directly. In 1919 they found themselves on the opposite sides of revolution and counterrevolution, with the Ebert-Scheidemann government unleashing the freikorps against revolutionaries including Luxembourg and Liebknecht. Thereafter the KPD continued to combine militant extra-parliamentary battles with parliamentary struggles, with a clear stress on the former, while the SPD got itself mired in parliamentary cretinism and economism, even abandoning its own agrarian reform program. In 1929 Berlin saw the ‘Blutmai’ or ‘Bloody Sunday’ when the SPD government fired upon a KPD-sponsored rally killing more than 30 people. The KPD in its turn made itself ludicrous in 1931 by first opposing a Nazi-sponsored popular referendum seeking the deposition of the Prussian government, and, when the SPD rejected its (KPD’s) “ultimatum” for a united front, supporting the same referendum, now calling it the “red referendum”! Communists in league with fascists and other hard-core right-wing groups campaigning for the ouster of a democratically elected left-led government was a shocking sight indeed. However, the people of Germany proved to be more mature and massively defeated the referendum.

The constant clashes between the two parties were rooted in their extremely negative political assessments about each other. The KPD believed that in the context of severe capitalist crisis, it was social democracy which held back the workers from fighting capitalism to finish (this much was not untrue) and therefore was the “main enemy” (which was absolutely wrong); hence arose the dangerous thesis of “social fascism” where social democracy and fascism was seen as “twin brothers”. The KPD at least appealed for joint struggles on certain occasions, but the SPD was always adamant. As the party Chairman Otto Wels declared at the Leipzig party convention in 1931 that “Bolshevism and fascism are brothers. They are both founded on violence and dictatorship, regardless of how socialist or radical they may appear.” With this level of mutual animosity, it was only natural that the two parties won’t be able to unite even in self-defence, barring some commendable examples of camaraderie at lower levels. It is also to be noted that, despite the policy paralysis of the SPD leadership, their ranks and individual leaders including Reichstag deputies continued to put up a commendable resistance to the Nazi Chancellor’s draconian measures.

As against the political shortcomings and blunders of the Left leadership, what stands out in bold relief is the courage, determination and class solidarity of the German workers as the most powerful bulwark against fascism. As Professor Hett points out in Class Struggle and the Rise of Hitler, “In 1930, when the Nazis had gained 18.3 percent of the electorate in the Reichstag elections, the Nazis could only muster a pathetic 0.51 percent of delegates in factory council elections.” Referring to “the fear reigning among party leaders at the thought of unleashing a struggle that could become a revolution or civil war”, Hett goes on to say, “The formation of the Eiserne Front (Iron Front)^[4] in 1931 was a concession to rank-and-file dissatisfaction with the leadership’s political passivity. At an Iron Front rally, one activist declared, ‘Socialists deserve to end up in the madhouse if they confront the fascists with democratic means alone,’ and at an SPD shop stewards’ meeting, someone argued, ‘if the others threaten civil war, we can’t wave the peace palm; if the others spray bullets, we can’t toss candy.’ In the summer of 1931, the SPD’s leadership dissolved the Socialist Youth organization because it continually disagreed with the leadership’s conservative orientation.”^[5]

In our country today, we find the working classes marching at the forefront of the struggle against the BJP government. The Indian Left may not be as strong as their German comrades were 100 years ago, but the good part is that unlike in Germany they are closing their ranks and also uniting with other fighting forces such as the Dalit organisations. The majority of bourgeois parties, rather than joining the BJP-NDA bandwagon, are trying to put up a unified opposition to the ruling coalition – which is, moreover, plagued with growing internal bickering. Fascism in India is certainly resistible and definitely defeatable, both in the electoral arena and as a socio-political power.

Notes:

1. Captains of industry supported the Nazi attacks on the trade union movement, but opposed the social disorder created by the latter. This love-hate relationship began to turn into uninhibited support only when the party started making apparently unstoppable strides to power and when, roughly since 1928, the big bourgeoisie and its parties felt the time had come to go over to an offensive against the Weimer system.

2. The overlap of the potential social bases of the fascists and the Left, and therefore the political tug-of- wire between the two, was clearly visible in Germany. While the class-conscious organised workers remained a stable base of social democrats and communists, fascists succeeded in winning over large chunks of the social democratic vote bank in other sections of the downtrodden. This experience holds out a lesson that remains valid to this day: to resist fascism, the Left must expand its direct political and organisational work beyond its traditional worker/worker-peasant base to other sections of the populace.

3. In the previous (July 1932) election also, the SDP and KDP together got 222 seats (only 8 less than the NSDAP) and 35.9% compared to the Nazi’s 37.27% (just 1.37% lower).

4. An anti-Nazi, anti-monarchist and anti-communist paramilitary organization formed in December 1931 by the SPD. It worked as a united front of labor and liberal groups and the SPD youth organization.

5. Pham Binh History 300, Historical Research; planetanarchy.net

[ ** David Olere - From March 1943 to January 1945 he was detained in Auschwitz as a Sonderkommando, a special labor unit responsible for emptying the remains from the crematory ovens as well as removing the bodies from the gas chambers. He also bore witness to the horrific testing performed by the Nazi’s and was forced to work as an illustrator and write letters for the SS. He began creating his art after his release in 1945 out of a sense of obligation to those who did not survive.]