CPM Invisibilising Fascism | Nalini Taneja

Nalini Taneja, a historian and a well-known left activist in India, critiques the Draft resolution of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI(M) for its 24th congress that drops its characterisation of the BJP as a fascist entity

What more do parties like the CPI (M) and others who think like them want to wait for the Modi regime, powered by the RSS and the most reactionary sections among the monopoly capital, to do before they open their eyes to its fascist moorings?

It is before our eyes what the Sangh Parivar has achieved since 2014, not to forget the 1980s and the 1990s; and yet a communist party like the CPI (M) is unfazed and unwilling to concede the rapid strides towards implementation of what are recognisably fascist policies and actions.

Rather, it is willing to list these actions and policies without acknowledging their content to be any more than attempts to divide Hindus and Muslims, a thrust towards inequality with heavy consequences for the working people, and, at best, a state of "corporate authoritarianism" tinged with Hindutva.

In other words, a state of affairs that COULD lead towards ‘neo fascism’, “if not checked”: meaning thereby that a lot more needs to happen before people need worry about building alliances towards a united front against fascism.

At a point in the life of our nation when millions of people are beginning to recognise and acknowledge the degree of hegemony and control exercised by the fascist forces in this country, and political life is being polarised between these millions and the many more millions who support the fascistic regime, the CPI M is in complete denial. It refrains from making the logical connection between Hindutva, the Sangh Parivar and fascism in its latest Draft Political Resolution (adopted by its Central Committee).

One can’t say one is shocked or disappointed because the CPI(M)’s direction and stance on this matter has been clear for some time. What is shocking and unacceptable is the indifference and wilful nonchalance with which it describes the period between its last Congress and now. One understands that a document cannot become eloquent, that it is meant only to be a statement of positions, but nowhere in the document does one get the sense of degree of suffering of people as a result of the actions of this regime, an idea of what the Muslims go through in their daily lives, attacks and lynchings, and threats to physical existence, the NRC and potential denial of citizenship, the detention camps, or the war on tribals and smaller nationalities: in short, the fascist conditions to which certain regions of the country and certain categories of our people are subjected.

Political and educational institutions, the judiciary and civil services have been taken over, and the media has been made subservient and made to follow the dictats of the regime to a degree not seen before.

The Resolution notes inequalities, unemployment figures, and the capture of the economy by monopoly capital for its benefit but fails to draw the conclusion that this is the darkest period of our history as an independent nation. That we have an evil government in power, led by the most reactionary and cruel political organistion in the country, remains unacknowledged.

The Resolution categorically rules out any alliances with the Congress because, ultimately on economic policies, it says, the Congress is not much different and is, moreover, prone to succumb to communalism.

In order to justify its ‘cancel’ attitude to some parties (that it would be forced to ally with IF it characterised our ruling regime as fascist), it decides not to characterise the present dispensation as fascist.

That the TMC and the Congress are more untouchable than the RSS-backed BJP is the message. In effect, time has not come yet to isolate the Hindutva forces.

The characterisation of the State is made by the CPI(M) on the basis of who it does not want to ally with rather than choose its alliances on the basis of what is actually happening or what is really needed. What an inversion of Marxist practice! The historical experience of United Fronts is thrown into the garbage. The United Front between the Soviet Union and the Western imperialist powers or the Communist Party and the Kuomintang in China seems to have escaped their historical memory.

Therefore, the absurd theoretical expositions of why the present regime is not fascist or neo fascist. For them, it’s like this: Fascism has to be ‘the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital’ which, presumably, is not so in India. Neither is there a crisis for capitalism to aid it, so why would the ruling class be interested in fascism? End of the matter!

2.

No serious Marxist in history has ever suggested that if the phenomena being studied does not fit one’s slot of a definition perfectly, in a later or different societal context, it must necessarily be something else. It is equally plausible that a definition needs to be looked at afresh, in view of a concrete conditions of the time.

Can today and tomorrow be the yesterday that has passed? Or is it more likely that it could be similar to a yesterday, with some elements added on and some missing?

The problem with the CPI(M)’s characterisation of our socio-political situation, or to use a more technical term, the present day Indian State and the forces that hegemonise it, is based on an a priori definition (derived from fascist Italy and Nazi Germany), which it wants to fit Indian reality into.
Its leaders have underlined six or seven elements as necessary for fascism and then decided to refrain from using the term fascism in the country today, on grounds that one or two elements are not exactly similar to fascist Italy or Nazi Germany!

Did Marx see capitalism in the different countries of his time as carbon copies of each other? Didn’t Lenin, in his ‘State and Revolution’, argue how the ruling classes could adopt a variety of State forms, a variety of parliamentary regimes and dictatorships, or alliances and policies to instrumentalise its rule. Hobsbawm has admirably shown the trajectories of nationalism in different times and historical contexts. Why, then should the mix that constitutes fascism have to fit a permanent template or be a replica for all times?

Fascism in Italy, Germany, Spain, and Japan was not identical at any given time. Capitalism in those years accommodated and was aligned with the fascist forces in all of them.

And yet, even going by the preferred definition of the CPI(M) above, can we honestly doubt that we are ruled by the most reactionary, chauvinist sections of our ruling class, and a political regime that represents the longest continuous surviving and thriving fascist organisation, that there is a dual membership between this organisation and the political party in power, that they believe in race, violence, unequal citizenship, elimination of minorities, subjugation of women and deprived sections of society in the way that fascists always have. Do they not stand by the text ‘We and our Nationhood Defined’, as outlined in the book written by their ideologue Golwalkar? Don’t they celebrate the murder of Gandhi and want to replace Gandhi with Sarvarkar, as Sitaram Yechury, the late General Secretary of CPI(M), had said in Parliament?

Is the politics of Hindu rashtra not modelled on fascist Italy and Nazi Germany? Doesn’t the CPI(M) know what a Hindu rashtra means? Is it a simple continuation of Congress’s ideology? Is corporate authoritarianism a sufficient definition of it? If one doesn’t want to confront fascism, then it is. That is what is at stake in this matter of characterisation of the ’"national" situation today.

[Reproduced from Facebookin public interest and for educational use]