Face of the Challenge

POLITICAL NOTEBOOK

As complexities mount in governance of States what with the sharing of Cauvery waters between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu causing widespread violence in the two States, the problem of tackling dengue and chikungunia in the Capital has brought out the AAP Government’s lack of preparedness to meet such a danger. At the same time the Shahabuddin episode in Bihar has exposed the Nitish-Laloo coalition government’s weakness in combating the menace of goondaism once again raising its ugly head whereas the infighting in the Samajwadi Government in UP is causing legitimate concern among all those who are interested in building a united secular-democratic combine to halt the onward march of majoritarian communalism-cum-fascism represented currently by the Narendra Modi-Amit Shah-led BJP.

Precisely at this very juncture the oracle of the A.K. Gopalan Bhavan in New Delhi has spoken out loud and clear. In an article in The Indian Express (September 6, 2016) he has gone hammer and tongs against those who claim that the present set-up is a communal fascist one. Prakash Karat educates us by conveying that though the BJP is a ‘Right-wing party of majoritarian communalism’ and its ideology is ‘semi-fascist’; it has the ‘potential’ to ‘impose an authoritarian state on the people when it believes that circumstances warrant it’. So we know there is no authoritarian rule now. We have more pearls of wisdom: “The classic definition of fascism leaves no room for ambiguity. Fascism is ‘the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital’. In India today, neither has fascism been established, nor are the conditions present—in political, economic and class terms—for a fascist regime to be established. There is no crisis that threatens a collapse of the capitalist system, the ruling classes of India face no threat to their class rule.” Then comes the piece de resistance: “No section of the ruling class is currently working for the overthrow of the bourgeois parliamentary system.”

Really, Comrade Karat? When Ministers, MPs and MLAs of the ruling party publicly proclaim that their aim is to establish a Hindu Rashtra in India, still there is no threat to the bourgeois parliamentary system? And all this casuistry to differentiate between ‘majoritarian communalism’ and ‘fascism’ takes one’s breath away. Targeting Jews is fascism but targeting Muslims and Christians is not fascism? The BJP must be chuckling to see Prakash Karat in his new role as an advocatus diaboli to give it the certificate of being a non-fascist party, fiercely loyal to parliamentary democracy! Is this pure ignorance or deliberate deceit to make people believe in the Sangh Parivar’s democratic credentials? In either case, what Prakash Karat has said will only confuse the people and weaken the fight against the present BJP leadership’s communal fascism.

September 15 Analyst