1992 Revisited

Nalini Taneja 

THE act of demolition of the Babri Masjid ten years ago was more than the demolition of a place of worship. It was a blow to the idea of India as a democracy, a place where all communities can live together in mutual respect, and much else that we treasure as part of our secular-pluralistic heritage. Quite rightly it was seen as such as well by most people. But beyond efforts by social scientists the event itself was projected as a breach in law and order achieved by the forces of religious frenzy and organized communal forces, a breach that was somehow an aberration, an overkill by these forces that would not be repeated, and a default on the part of the government which also would not be repeated. It remained in the media, and in retrospect in memory as well, an aberration till Gujarat shook us out of complacency once again. It would not be out of place to recollect once again these reactions to the event, and to see the light of where we stand today.

The demolition was followed by numerous dissections of the event, and initially it seemed to many social scientists that we were on the threshold of what we were used to characterizing as fascism, i.e., the kind of state and society that Germany was during Hitler’s regime.

But the demolition was not followed by other demolitions and no grand victories for the BJP; and although BJP formed the government, it was forced into a coalition. We heaved a sigh of relief: it now seemed the Indian people have not really voted for the BJP and that Indian diversities will not allow for fascism.

No doubt the objective conditions for fascism are somewhat harsher for fascism than they were in the Germany of the 20s and early 30s, not least because of the different levels of development in our country and the enormous complexities of classes, as well as the usual regional and religious diversities talked about, and that people in our country as much as all over the world have much more to defend of their gains, particularly due to the alliance of globalisation with fundamentalism and other forms of attacks on democracy across the world.

Also, likely, therefore, that, fascists would face resistance in this country in ways very different from the resistance movements against fascist regimes in Europe, but it would be shortsightedness to think that fascism cannot happen here just as it would be jumping the gun to assume that that there is no need to defend our state against it because it is already in place. Our polity has made a remarkable shift towards the right, and the fascist forces are poised for the final kill should the opportunity present itself. This opportunity must not be allowed to present itself. This primarily is what democratic forces need to ensure today.

Yet, today the discussion on Fascism has already gone into the background, except when we use the term loosely in abuse or protest suppression of secular cultural expression by the Hindutva forces. We are debating Hindutva in its own terms again, which means essentially that we are looking at Hindutva as communalism, which it is, but not as fascist, which also it is. We may not be experiencing, today, in all senses what we know as fascism, but it is difficult to say that the attacks on Muslims are not fascist in character and spirit. Hindutva is specific to our own political terrain, as it must be because it is born of us, and fascism in our country can only come through the agency of Hindutva and its alliance with globalisation forces, as Aijaz Ahmed has pointed out in his numerous writings, and it is necessary we recognise that it has been undermining the secular democratic state in ways quite reminiscent of the fascist goons in Germany.

There is a need to recognize the fascist character of Sangh Parivar activity and the fascist character of the Sangh Parivar forces, which as German experience itself illustrates, can very well operate in liberal democratic states as well, and have a long history of enmeshings with ‘liberalism’ even as they undermine it, before they are actually take over and build the state and nation in their own image. We are at a political juncture when this building of the fascist state is quite concretely on the agenda of the Hindutva forces--and not in some unforeseen future but soon if they win the next Lok Sabha elections on their own.

The 1992 spectacle was the beginning of the assault on the institutional structure of the secular democratic state. What have followed are classical attacks on people’s rights that seem part and parcel of the globalisation process in all capitalist states, and are in continuation of the rightward trend in economic policy and polity that Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao’s regimes signified. But then a dialectical relationship between the most rapacious capital and a mass base that espouses and seeks to protect its petite bourgeois interests has very much been part of fascist offensives in history, and the decision making reflecting interests of the narrowest minority through a centralized leadership in fascist organisations is quite consistent with spectacles of mass frenzies of support for these organisations given the mediation of the irrational, racist and enemy targeted ‘causes’ espoused by these organisations. In the case of our home grown fascists this is reflected clearly in the hold that the RSS has over a growing plethora of mass fronts that Hindutva has given birth to, of which the VHP, Bajrang Dal and other such are only the most visible and well known. The Right all over the world has successfully learnt the art of subverting the principles of democratic centralism to rope in the people to act against themselves, and our Sangh Parivar is no exception.

It is a consolation that sufficient numbers refuse to exercise vendetta on the Muslims at their behest even if they believe what the Sangh says as true. For us, however, it is crucial that the so many who do not act at their behest nevertheless believe what they say, and the smaller number who do act on their behalf are already great enough to threaten our secular polity and the progress of our democratic struggles. The contestation today is clearly over a critical majority this way or that way rather than a numbers game at which the BJP and even its fascist affiliates can be defeated any day even at this political juncture, and most surely in any election-maybe even in Gujarat today.

These ten years have seen a terrifying growth of the forces of hatred and divisiveness, unleashed and tied together by the Hindutva so-called nationalists, the nation is being redefined before our very eyes, and the state is unashamedly with the killers and looters of people’s income earned through hard labour. At such a juncture it would be shortsightedness to see Hindutva entirely in its own terms without reference to fascism, very much the offensive of Capital on a national and international scale, despite all protestations from the self characterized new and ‘independent’ left that such definitions of fascism smack of orthodoxy and ‘simplicity’.