India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, is taking every possible step to ensure he wins a third term in the general election, which runs from April 19 until June 1.
Modi’s party, the BJP, is based on far-right Hindu chauvinism, Hindutva. Modi himself rose to prominence through the fascist inspired Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is the backbone of the BJP. Modi presents himself as a strongman, defending Hinduism.
The BJP’s electoral prospects are boosted by its domination of mass media, including the Bollywood film industry, which supports Hindu supremacy.
The government has arrested nearly 150 opposition politicians, including Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi, and, most recently, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. The government routinely brands opponents such as journalists as terrorists. The Elections Commission of India has faced criticism for tolerating pro-BJP campaigning, even when it crossed the line into defamation and hate speech.
Voter suppression is ongoing involving purging of tens of millions of voters, mainly Muslim, Dalit (lower caste), poor communities and women. All people who are less likely to support the BJP’s Hindu supremacist and misogynist policies.
Lack of Viable Alternative
Modi’s policies including the demonetization fiasco in 2016 and the handling of COVID, have faced repeated mass resistance. In 2019 and 2020 workers organized mass general strikes, mobilizing up to 250 million people. In a year-long protest, in 2020 and 2021, Indian farmers blocked the capital, New Delhi, in response to government’s attacks on their living standards. The farmers successfully forced Modi to retreat. A defeat that still rankles.
The opposition parties, especially Congress, wasted these huge openings to defeat Modi and the BJP. The political parties of the left, the two mass communist parties, have been losing ground. The Congress, which dominated Indian politics from Independence until 1996, has lost much of its support, due its decades of failing to deliver real improvements for workers and the poor. It is now part of a 41-party alliance against the BJP.
The absence of any working-class party that mobilizes the masses around a political program of demands has meant that Modi’s right populism has risen with little challenge.
Western Imperialism Supports Modi
The capitalist West and its media outlets give Modi a virtually free pass for his anti-democratic actions. Even India’s support for Putin’s Ukraine invasion, with its sanctions-busting purchases of Russian oil, is ignored or covered up. Its campaign of international assassination impacting Canada, the US and Pakistan is met with a few polite grumbles, quickly forgotten.
India is a big market and there is money to be made by staying on the good side of the government. Modi has been very good for big business and the billionaire class, foreign and domestic. Wealth inequality has skyrocketed, with friends of the BJP doing especially well.
Most importantly, India’s main geo-political rival is China. China is a true global power that challenges US imperialism’s historic domination. If Modi stays onside, acting as a counterweight to Chinese imperialism, western leaders will largely turn a blind eye to his repression in India and abroad.
Repression will escalate if Modi wins. Behind the BJP is the RSS. One of its early leaders, Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar, held “being a Hindu was a matter of race and blood, not only a matter of culture.” Everyone else is an invader or a carrier of contaminating foreign ideas. Repression of Muslims, Sikhs and lower castes will increase. Modi has tried to brand all Sikhs as supporters of an independent Khalistan, trying to reverse the humiliation of the farmers’ victory in which Sikhs played a prominent role. The National Citizenship Registry, which discriminates against Muslims and others, is part of Modi’s repressive plans.
However, he will face mass opposition from millions of Indians who are not part of his racist vision. Democracy can find a voice not just at the polls, but in the streets. But to end the mass poverty, oppression and discrimination that blights Indian society, the working class needs to build a genuine revolutionary party.
