BY EVA CHENG
The March massacre of more than 2000 Muslims in Gujarat was not a spontaneous outburst of religious anger, but a cold-blooded, anti-Muslim pogrom masterminded by India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary of Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) Liberation (CPI(ML)) told Green Left Weekly in early April, when he attended the second Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference.
The BJP leads the 24-party National Democratic Alliance which has been ruling India since 1998. Bhattacharya explained that, since its formation in 1925, the BJP has argued for India to become a Hindu state, with the government's interpretation of the religion governing all aspects of people's lives.
The party didn't have much of a hearing until 1947 when India's partition took place and the Muslim state of Pakistan was formed. After partition, the content of Indian nationalism changed, Bhattacharya pointed out, saying that it degenerated from an anti-colonial movement into one driven by anti-Muslim, anti-Pakistan frenzy.
The BJP is associated with the armed Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which has a notorious record of killing people to achieve its goals. The RSS does the dirty work of the BJP, Bhattacharya told GLW.
The BJP is urban-based and strongest among north-Indian traders. It has also cultivated significant support from the upper castes, some sections of the lower castes and marginalised sectors. It has allies throughout India.
Since coming to power the BJP has been in a strong position to impose its Hindu-chauvinist agenda. It has been aggressively "saffronising" Indian society, especially the education system.
The BJP suffered a set-back, however, in a crucial state election in late February in Uttar Pradesh. The BJP polled very badly, losing government. Because of this and other unexpected electoral losses, the BJP now governs only three of India's 28 states in contrast to 14 held by the main opposition Congress party.
The massacre came shortly after the election defeat. It followed a renewed push to build a Hindu "Ram" temple in the north Indian town of Ayodhya on the site on which the Babri Masjid mosque stood, before it was demolished in 1992. The BJP was instrumental in the demolition, a highly provocative act.
Gujarat
Tension over the building of the temple has resulted in increased violence by Hindu chauvinists. After a train carrying Hindus to the proposed temple site was attacked at Gujarat in late February, organised gangs of Hindu chauvinists went on a rampage in the area. During the violence, alleys adjoining Muslim homes were filled with water and electric cables were submerged in them so that those who tried to escape would be electrocuted. Many Muslim women were raped.
Bhattacharya said: "In the short term in Gujarat, the recent rampage could lead to some consolidation of communal forces there. But on the national scale, that incident has done a lot to expose the communal-fascist character of the BJP and isolate it. In fact, that carnage is some kind of a desperate attempt by the BJP to force its agenda."
Bhattacharya emphasised that even though left forces are weak in Gujarat itself, on the national scale they responded effectively to the crisis.
"The CPI(ML) was the first left party to go to Gujarat after the first spat of violence. Our fact finding team visited the affected areas", he said. <%-2>"We launched a major campaign demanding the resignation of the Gujarat home minister. We also organised relief for the victims including 40,000 displaced people who received no government assistance whatsoever and are agonising in 36 makeshift relief camps."<%0>
Bhattacharya praised the working-class solidarity evident in Gujarat, pointing out that there could have been tension between Hindu and Muslim workers or between Gujarat workers and workers from other states.
Instead, Bhattacharya said that "even in the face of such serious provocation, the working class in Gujarat, especially the unionised textile workers, really held their 'cool' and played a very exemplary role".
"There's absolutely no violence in working class neighbourhoods along communal lines. They at least succeeded in holding these forces at bay there."
This contrasted markedly, Bhattacharya continued, to the previous popular support for the BJP. "There are very real indications", he said, "that the BJP is losing ground and that people are in no mood to buy [their chauvinist arguments]".
During India's municipal elections in late March the BJP was dealt another blow its seats were reduced from 80 to 15 out of a total of 129 seats.
While still seeking power, the BJP pledged to free India from terror, hunger and corruption. But Bhattacharya pointed out: "Three years [after taking government], all these illusions [that the BJP would fulfill its promises] have been completely shattered. It's now realised that the BJP has been leading to terrorise and intimidate more and more people... It was responsible for bringing back starvation and famine-like situations."
The BJP has been seeking a new lease of life through US President George Bush's "war on terrorism". In the name of supporting the US-led "war", the BJP has tried to promulgate its own version of anti-terrorist legislation the Prevention of Terrorist Ordinance (POTO).
The POTO contains draconian provisions which seriously undermine democratic and civil rights. It allows indefinite detention without trial, shifts the onus of proof to the accused party and has made admissible to the court any confession given to the police.
"This means the police will be in a position to intimidate, terrorise and coerce people into making all sorts of confessions... all based on a thoroughly vague definition of what constitutes terrorism", Bhattacharya said, adding that the POTO reverses current Indian principles of justice.
The POTO has been approved by the lower house of Parliament but not by the upper house. This has prompted the BJP to take the extraordinary move of calling a joint session of the two houses in order to push the ordinance through, ignoring widespread opposition and popular protests.
Anti-globalisation, anti-war
Bhattacharya explained to GLW that struggling against corporate globalisation is nothing new in India. "Even long before [the 1999 protests in] Seattle, in India we have a pattern of anti-globalisation and anti-liberalisation struggles and a long history of a sustained democratic movement.
"However, the anti-globalisation movement in the First World has had an impact on India, giving it impetus, changing people's mood and giving it greater militancy and solidarity."
Bhattacharya also explained that many Indians understand that the US drive to war was caused by imperialist interests: "It's not only among the core left. Even a broad section of the public very clearly understands the origin of the war, and understands that the imperialist agenda in India also facilitates and reinforces the communal fascist forces in India. Because of this, the anti-fascist, anti-imperialist consciousness is quite sharp."
After being a key driving force behind the March 2001 anti-globalisation gathering in India, the CPI(ML) is leading a struggle against both corporate globalisation and the war. Large protests were held on November 9, opposing both the WTO and the US war.
Bhattacharya expects the integration between national and global struggles to increase: "This anti-globalisation movement is helping to bring about a shift, slow at the moment, but still perceptible, in the global mood, the global political climate and the global balance of forces.
"The left, of which the CPI(ML) is a part, has the role to intensify this struggle and give it a sharper political thrust."
From Green Left Weekly, May 29, 2002.
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