The candidates have been announced for the upcoming Lok Sabha election in 2024. The parties have started their campaigns and several small groups, community forces, major section of democratic forces are gathering with the slogan of “Defeat BJP”. Few of us who are not swayed away by this type of jargon mongering without providing an alternate action of the time feel it is important to introspect into the question whether BJP is truly different from the other parties contesting them hardly. It will be good to centre the discussion around whether Congress and its allies (who has reigned India for majority of the time post 1947 and is portrayed to be “democratic” alternative to fascist BJP) is truly different from BJP.
From an economic perspective, Congress, BJP, regional parties like BJD, RJD have advocated liberalization-privatization-globalization and stood for “trickle down theory” subsiding the rich and cutting subsidies for the poor. Tax concession for the rich and subsides for poor are billed as incentives and obstruction for growth by all the regimes.Ex-RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan noted “…a larger number of [the] bad loans originated in the period of 2006-2008” and that is be used as ammunition by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party that has opened the floodgates of Non-Performing Assets during the last decade. The disastrous impact of WTO and IMF interventions on agriculture and industry has been initiated by Congress when they proposed “selective privatisation” of the public sector, talked of competition in the financial sector as a euphuism for promoting the private sector etc. and all these have made the platform smooth for the BJP to run their show. None of the parties in state power have ever opposed these trends. The state governments leaded by the regional parties have always pursued the economic agenda of the Central government and have always aligned with the class character of the Congress/BJP of serving the big corporates and landlords. In short, the traditional social democratic parliamentary left parties and other parties have surrendered to the neo-liberal trajectory and have taken shapes of social fascism. This is evident from the land and industrial policies, policies related to labour, education, health, environment among all others. It will not be unfair to cite the examples of Labour Codes and New Education Policy 2020 in which all the state governments have aligned themselves with the central government with minor modification that does not impact the essence of policies.
Apart the economic agenda, the monstrous BJP has targeted the religious minorities and other backward castes and communities. But what has the Sachar Committee report depicted? It has highlighted the deplorable socio-economic plight of the mass of the Muslim community. Sachar Committee report and the Rangnath Mishra Commission report give ample proof of the injustice and discrimination against minorities may it be in terms of development, employment, income generation, education, security and so on. Dalit atrocities are also a carryover from a past that Congress must account for, instead of defaming only the BJP which is vocal in its Manubadi agenda of Dalit suppression in all possible forms. For example, crime and atrocities against Dalit in Haryana have gone up by about two-and-a-half times during 2004-2013 as compared to the previous decade. This was the phase of Bhupinder Singh Hooda from Congress. Can any Congress spokesperson answer that why the caste survey has not been implemented by any of the Congress-ruled states? With respect to the Adivasi oppression (put aside their development), the regime of Manmohan-Chidambaram has paved the way for loot of Adivasi land and natural resources which has been formalised by the amendment of several bills like the Forest Conservation Bill and other acts like CNT, SPT during the BJP rule. It is interesting to see that the the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) assessing Bill to amend the Forest Conservation Act in the Lok Sabha includes 31 other members from the BJP, Congress, TMC, BJD, DMK etc. The BJP government used its majority in Lok Sabha and support of Trinamool Congress, Samajwadi Party and BJD in Rajya Sabha to pass the Mining and Minerals (Regulation and Development) Amendment Act 2015. The Act is a charter for handing over the mineral wealth of the country to private loot and plunder.
Taking note of freedom of expression, the question of democratic rights, expression of dissent, is the Indira regime during emergency any different from that of today? Or the way the left front government or TMC have treated the political opposition in our state? What has been the role of AAP in dealing with the fearless agitation of Muslim women in Shaheen Bagh? Is there any state government that has not used UAPA against political opponents? Consider the question Kashmir-a burning issue that all the governments at the center have faced from the inception. Has anyone tried to solve it politically or just give a befitting military reply to it. One may argue that the level of aggression might have been different due to the economic crisis of the ruling class. But this cannot be identified as a qualitative change from that of the past.
All the parties that have been in state/central power have shown fascist trends and have established fascist regimes at times when economic crises have reached the peaks. Then is there any point that make the BJP different from other parties? It’s the Hindutva ideology or the Hindu Rasthra project of the Sangh Parivar that BJP is obliged to implement and the rise of the hindu fascist state should not be seen in isolation with the global crisis of capital. In 2005, the United States that denied Modi a diplomatic visa to enter the country on the grounds that he had been responsible for ‘severe violations of religious freedom’ has welcomed him in recent years where he addressed members of the US Congress, and interacted with some of top CEOs of MNCs. Basically, the Hindutva agenda of the RSS/BJP has mingled well with the neo-liberal project at the correct time when there was no alternative other than BJP to divide the people and exploit them to the hardest possible. But does it mean that non-BJP parties have not used Hindutva cards as and when required for winning elections? In recent Madhya Pradesh election last year, Congress has made the “Dharmik and Utsav Prakosth” fully active. The committee also projected Kamal Nath as a devotee of Lord Hanuman and has organised 30 religious programmes across the state in the last two years. During that time, Kamal Nath has argued that India being a Hindu rashtra is not debatable as Hindus are a wide majority of the population and the statement got accepted in national media without any rejoinder from top congress officials. In 2023 only, Uttar Pradesh Congress organised kanya pujan at its headquarters in Lucknow. The ceremony was led by party state president Ajay Rai and Congress Sewa Dal chief Pramod Pandey, who were joined by senior leaders. Can other top oppositions of Modi like AAP, TMC claim their politics to be dissociated of any religious practice? “Secular Kejriwal” normalising Hindutva as a “Way of Living” mentioned “I recently went to Ayodhya to visit Ram Lalla. While coming outside, I prayed to God to make me able to ensure every person in the country gets to visit Ram Lalla. In Delhi we are running Mukhyamantri Tirth Yatra Yojna under which the elders in Delhi are given the facility of tirth yatra free of cost.” Several other instances can also be cited from other veterans like Rahul Gandhi or Mamata Banerjee to show their religious affections. But the Modi government, now being much more openly declaring its Hindu majoritarian and Hindu nationalist instincts, and unabashedly neoliberal and pro-big capital stance has left no space for these oppositions to gain back the throne.
This article is from April 2024 issue of Matribhumi journal – the mouthpiece of
Azad Gano Morcha
Cover photo courtesy – https://thewire.in/politics/congress-opposition-alliance-bjp-tyranny [Retrieved On: 17/04/2024]