The Hindu Rashtra

India is a land of multiple cultures, communities, languages and ethnicity.Though, one may find several contradictions with its social frame. Historically, It has been a tolerant and progressive society and this is evident in its arts, food, commonalities in languages and shared traditions.It is home to almost 17.5% of the total world population. This relative harmonious nature has been time after time challenged by the reactionary forces universal in every society.The fulcrum of the recent unrest has been conviction and death sentence of '93 Mumbai blast accused Yakub Memon. Even before I elaborate the underlying effects of this judicial verdict, I would like to make it clear that I do not deny the real threat posed by the reactionary forces within the Muslim community. Alienation is a class-issue which affects working-masses from all communities.But,the most troubling aspects about this particular incident has been the outright Islamophobia and the blood thirsty consciousness which reeks among the majoritarian Hindu nationalists. I do not intend to use the word Hindu nationalism loosely and therefore, I'll attempt to articulate a summary of the harmful effects of its reactionary nature.

The history of this communal antagonism is predominant in the mid 20th Cen. colonial India, where the idea of nation-state was an emerging phenomena and the only means for future governance was a bourgeois democracy. This gave rise to what we now understand as communal vote bank politics.Till then the word 'Hindu' had a broader and vague connotation. Hinduism being a polytheistic religion never had a centralized consciousness which one might see in the Abrahamic religions. The social system of caste was an equivalent to a modern day apartheid system of oppression where majority within its contemporary fold(false conscious)are still oppressed socially and economically because of their descent. To define a caste, it can be said as a tribal system of endogamous marriage practices primarily based on an exogamous base. It has a hierarchical pyramid of religious privileges and duties, where the highest of the castes enjoys most of the privileges and minimal duties where as, most of the "duties" were pushed on the lower ones. This infers to the fact that Hindu by themselves were never a one nation. Similarly, the remaining minorities of the sub-continent i.e: Muslims, Sikhs, Christians etc,were and are still marginalized in all aspects of the society.(Housing, jobs,prestige, social acceptance) This system of hegemony of the upper-class Hindus is what I term as Hindu-supremacy.I do not intend to criticized the philosophical attempt of a religion to understand the nature of existence,but the institutionalization of its prejudicial social structure i.e so-called Śāstras "scared laws" needs to be smashed!

A through analysis of Hindu nationalism would be a topic of another blog, but since it's a summary I would jump into post-independent India, Where caste-based segregation still remains as an issue(i.e socially accepted), but the apathy of the rising urban educated middle-class fumes its sentimentality.Fear based intimidation has been its prominent streak. An international product of capitalist propaganda, Where "war on terror" has been intentionally placed in such a manner which blurs the lines between fundamental Islamist groups, the ideology of Islam and the word terrorism. Since most of the rational for the hanging were based upon "fighting terrorism". I would urge the sincere to objectify their stand. To fight terrorism we need to 1st be able to define it and later find appropriate measures to deter the crimes committed. So, Terrorism can be defined as "the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature...through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear"-NC. It is a method, not an ideology.If one applies this definition to other acts of calculated violence like the intimidation by Hindu leader Bal Thackeray during the'92 Mumbai riots, openly spilling venom against the Muslims of Mumbai and challenging the police and judiciary to arrest him for his fear mongering, this coercive nature has given his proto-fascist Shiv Sena party the political capital which still has its hold on working-class communities in Mumbai. Or take for example the infamous Gujarat Riots of '02 where there has been suo moto evidence against the now Prime minister of India and then, the members of his state cabinet with his associates from the same reactionary groups like the RSS, BD and VHP, to which Mr. Modi belongs. RSS(Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) has a history of openly praising the fascist dictators of 20th Cen. Europe. It preaches for a Hindu state and has openly called out the Muslims as the Jews of India. There are several examples of terrorist activities instrumented by the state on its own people. In a bourgeois democracy the state is always antagonistic towards the interests of the people, and this is evident in the deeds of the so-called secular party the Congress,the "lesser-evil" which has its own hands in people's blood(the plight of the Sikh community in'84) While the national consciousness was very keen on hanging Yakub, the accused on the other side have not faced any considerable legal actions. Mr.Thackeray was given a state funeral on his natural death, whereas Maya Kodani and Babu Bajrangi accused for their respective involvement during Gujarat riots are out on bail. can't this be ruled as the use of state to institutionalize a reactionary anti-people ideology?

"The peculiarity in Memons’s case stems from the fact that he had chosen to travel to Delhi from Pakistan—where he and his family had been in hiding since the blasts—on 28 July 1994.He had come back with the intent, as the sequence of events seems to suggest, of aiding the investigating agencies in their task. The evidence that Memon provided during the investigation proved to be crucial in proving Pakistan’s links to the blasts. However, if Memon had made this journey with the expectation being shown leniency, he was to be proven wrong. This became evident when his death sentence was read out by a Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (Preventive) [TADA] judge in 2007".[1]TADA is a similar draconian law which parallels the Bush era PATRIOT act of '01 in the US. This was the reason why the reactionary elements from the Muslims community vocalized their rhetoric, which in turn would create another generation of Yakub Memons. Remember!the Mumbai blast of '93 was a reaction to the post-Babri riots of '92-93."Punishment in a humane society must balance between retribution on behalf of the victim and the possibility of the rehabilitation of the criminal.And, of course, it must meet the requirement of proportionality, in other words, the punishment must fit the crime".[2] The issue of capital punishment morally speaking is a remnant of inhuman colonial era law,and my denouncement doesn't equals me of being an anti-national.This verdict doesn't serve as justice but adds the vicious cycle of vengeance.

"While the youth of the nation got occupied in a jarring outcry post the commutation of the sentence. The ruling class with its politicians has managed to subdue the recent surge surrounding the External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and Rajasthan’s Chief Minister Vasundhra Raje over their murky connection to Lalit Modi,the former commissioner of the Indian Premier League(Cricket event); the scores of mysterious deaths around the massive Vyapam scam"[3]. Looks like our Capitalist masters have revived the old trick of stroking the goat in the process of looting the wealth of the nation.

Articles cited: [1].http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/death-yakub-memon-should-alert-us-birth-new-republic [2]Paraphase.http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/death-yakub-memon-should-alert-us-birth-new-republic [3]Paraphase http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/death-yakub-memon-should-alert-us-birth-new-republic

Black lives matter.

The plight of African Americans can be explained from the beginning of the 15th century, as western European monarchies began to recover from the dark ages. Many people call Christopher Columbus as the, “godfather” of the Trans-Atlantic trade, and rightfully so, as his “discovery” of the new-world led the Spanish and Portuguese monarchies on a literal frenzy to snatch up new land, which was impossible in the already crowded Europe. By this time imperialism was in full swing. Due to the naval supremacy of the Spanish and the Portuguese they had already began trading with the western African kingdoms. The main commodity for the impetus of this trade was labour, initially for house-hold purposes which later expanded in to their plantations in Caribbean, central and South America. With the systematic genocidal murders of the natives there arise a vacuum or demand of indenture servitude, thus giving rise to the vicious triangle of trans-Atlantic trade.

As time passed, the Spanish and the Portuguese empires declined, they were replaced by the British and the French who hoarded of the land in North-America which was previously untouched by the Spanish and the Portuguese. As far as what was happening in Africa, most of the people who were enslaved were captives of rival tribes captured in a battle. The Europeans traded them on the Atlantic coast, like the Bight of Benin in the north or Angola in the south, even though many of them came from places inland. Thousands of them died on a thousand miles marches from inland towards the coast to be sold, and once they were sold they were packed into the ships in literally the same manner as cargo. Roughly 2 million out of 12 million people brought to the Americas in the Trans-Atlantic trade died in the voyage due to the conditions on the ships.

The US bourgeoisie post the revolution (declaration of independence 1776) made it extremely clear that the Africans were property, and not people. They did so by creating legal code that would disadvantage them. Soon after, the US constitution featured a population count, that counted 5 blacks as 3 people, i.e. 1 black person was only 3/5 of a person. Black people were not allowed to hold land. Even seldom when they became free, they were not allowed to vote legally until 1865 and actually in practice till 1965 (post-civil-rights movement) the enslaved were intentionally traded away from their families. By the end of 19th century a civil war broke in the United States, between the industrial north and the agrarian south. In India, we usually presume that the conflict at its core had a moral impetus of ‘abolishment of the slavery’. This is far from the truth if you observe the conflict with the lenses of historical materialism. This movement of abolishment was a top to down revolution, by that time industrial capitalism had established its roots in the north. The northern bourgeoisie manufactures intended to push this new form of economic system on the wealthy southern plantation owners. The south’s succession- understanding that there was virtually no manufacturing in the south and nearly all the manufactured goods came from the north. This became unacceptable for the northern bourgeoisie who stood to lose a lot of profit in the process.

The end of the civil war marked with a northern victory opened a new chapter in the history of African Americans. Then ushered the era of reconstruction where considerable progress was achieved in the advancement for the rights of former slaves. The first decade also saw an increase in the rise of the black population in the prison labour systems which till this day stand to be disproportionate. Following the years all southern states including some states in the north adopted the draconian Jim Crow laws, claiming to provide ‘separate but equal’ rights for the blacks, the law prohibited blacks from using the same facilities, attend the same schools or hold the same job as whites. This continued almost post WW2. Black people were largely occupied as share-croppers. I.e. Agricultural labourers living under peasant like conditions. To escape from these treacherous conditions many young black people migrated to big cities like New York and Chicago in a hope to find better paying industrial jobs. This era particularly marks the cultural emancipation of the black people in the US in the form of Harlem renaissance, a movement which witnessed black communities actively contributing in various walk of life including religion, arts, music and academics. This great migration also saw an increase of the black population into the industrial workforce, yet they were paid less than their white counterpart. Many of them were left unemployed and used intentionally as strike-buster by the factory owners to create more antagonism in all-white unions. This didn’t change until the radicalization of the labour movement and the emergence of the Communist party USA during the time of the great depression.

The post-modern American society saw a decline in the living conditions of the working-class. The US was no longer was a major producer or manufacturers. All those production jobs were systematically outsourced to exploit the cheap-labour in third world countries like ours. The current BJP led government’s “make in India” campaign is an ideal example of such an abuse. This de-industrialization of the American working-class affected the black communities the most, since black people were denied education, the blue-collar jobs were the prime source of economic stability. Why Black lives matter? In the last 40-45 years, after the beginning of the decline of American domestic industrialization, virtually all the economic expansion in the US have occurred in either the field of finance or service sector. The finance sector has been inaccessible to black people because of the denial of education and institutionalized racism, which has been internalized in all walks of the American society. While, the service sector which approximately employees 70% of the American workforce, the capitalist over here have been successful in creating low-wage jobs by decades of union-busting laws in early 80’s and 90’s.

One cannot begin to have an objective discussion on the condition of the black people in the US today without accounting to the fact that out of the total general US population blacks constitutes 13% of the total population, yet they comprise 37% of the prison population, 30% of the total population living below the poverty line and 44% of the total population working on low-wage jobs. Why is that they have a high rate on unemployment and low rate of high school graduation (not college) compared to whites? While these questions remained unanswered the effects of cultural hegemony have been tremendous. Imagine a group of people forcefully removed and then being denied the right to learn their own heritage, being denied basic schooling and treated as savages and thugs by the state apparatus (media and police). The new civil-rights movement started with the murder of a young black teenager being shot by the police in the small town of Ferguson in St. Louis County, MO, while he had his hands up. But the underline grievances have been years of exploitation by the ruling elites. A recent report on the municipal courts of the Ferguson city backs this claim. Out of the city’s total population, 67% of residents are blacks. Of it, 22% of the total population lives below the poverty line. Despite, Ferguson’s relative poverty, fines and court-fees comprises the second largest source of the city’s revenue. A modern day debtor’s prison has become a common practice in America’s small towns and cities. Malcom-X was right when he said, “You can’t have capitalism without racism”. Black lives matter is a revolutionary movement demanding for radical justice especially economic justice. The black people of the US are fighting to shake off their chains!

P.S: A special thanks to Com. Albert Terry(MBSA CWI-US)who gave me a definite perspective so as to introduce the topic of slavery in the U.S