REDEFINING DEMOCRACY AS A POSITIVE ALTERNATIVE TO COMMUNALISM
by Rohini Hensman[November 2002]
Introduction
27 February, 1933: one of the blackest days in German history. That was the date when the Berlin Reichstag, the seat of Germany's parliament, was set on fire. Hitler and the Nazis used the event as a pretext to hit at their Communist and Social Democratic opponents, annul basic rights, increase their share of the vote, and consolidate their power. Subsequent investigations showed that those who were accused of plotting and carrying out the arson could not have done so, and it was the Nazis themselves who lighted the fire (1). But that did not prevent Germany from going through the nightmare of fascism, and the murder of millions of people in Nazi concentration camps and gas chambers.
27 February, 2002: one of the blackest days in Indian history. Following the burning of a bogie of the Sabarmati Express near Godhra station in Gujarat, a genocidal massacre of Muslims throughout Gujarat was unleashed. Reports made by numerous agencies who investigated the carnage concluded that it was planned well in advance, and carried out with the active complicity of the state government(2). Various spokespersons from the Sangh Parivar followed up the slaughter with open threats to do the same in the rest of India. Initial accusations that the train was burned by a Muslim mob which surrounded it had to be abandoned when the forensic report revealed that the fire had started from within the bogie, fuelled by a large quantity of inflammable material. As in the case of the Reichstag fire, suspects from the community being scapegoated were arrested and apparently found guilty, without any explanation as to how they could have carried out the deed and escaped unharmed from a train packed with hostile Ram sevaks. When the aftermath is taken into account, the date begins to appear as something more than an uncanny coincidence.
What we are concerned with here is to understand how it is possible for such barbaric cruelty to be visited upon helpless people - how a paramilitary operation to exterminate or drive them out of their own homeland can even be contemplated, much less undertaken, in a country that is supposed to be the world's largest democracy - and to begin to outline an agenda to make it impossible for such atrocities to take place in future. Many people have been aware of the danger to democracy posed by communalism and have attempted to combat it at least since 1992. The Gujarat carnage is spectacular evidence of the failure of these efforts. The fact that the state government and central government, as well as a large proportion of civil society, can witness the wholesale violation of all human and democratic rights guaranteed in the Constitution without feeling the need to take drastic steps to restore and protect them, shows that democracy has already been undermined very seriously.
This has not happened overnight; it is the result of decades of patient, molecular work by communal forces. But how is it that the secular, democratic, progressive forces have been pushed back so badly, even though the communal agenda has nothing to offer the vast majority of people in this country? The threat of fascism is not sufficient to frighten people into fighting communalism, partly because there is so much confusion about what fascism means. Moreover, the sad fact is that for many, perhaps most, people in this country, it is hard to imagine that life could possibly get any worse. Even supposing communalism could be eliminated, what kind of society would we have? One where women and girls are systematically discriminated against, raped and killed with impunity; dalits are routinely humiliated, raped and killed; adivasis are robbed of their homes and livelihoods; over 90 per cent of the labour force in practice has no rights, and therefore lives and works in subhuman conditions, while the government does its best to push the small minority who do have rights into this sector; and even falling in love with someone outside one's own caste and community can be punished with a death sentence. Not a vision many people would want to fight for, although this is what passes for 'democracy'. Unless there is some basic clarity about these issues, and the anti-communal forces project an alternative vision of society that is sufficiently attractive to expose the Hindutva utopia for the hell it really is, democracy will continue to be destroyed.
What do we mean by democracy?
For most people, the meaning of 'democracy' is very simple: it means majority rule by means of representatives who are elected once every four or five years and are then more or less free to do as they wish. According to this conception, if the government elected by the majority then proceeds to allow or practise discrimination against, persecution of, or even extermination of various sections of the population, this behaviour is not in conflict with the norms of democratic government because they do, after all, represent the majority of the electorate.
This kind of 'democracy' can go along with the violation of human rights and civil liberties, and is quite compatible with communalism, casteism and sexism. While the holding of elections may distinguish it from a more thoroughly authoritarian state, it provides ideal conditions for the growth of communal and fascist tendencies whose long-term agenda is the wholesale destruction of democracy, including the abolition of elections. In other words, communal slaughter is only the visible tip of the iceberg; however hard we chip away at it, it will simply grow so long as the vast, submerged mass of day-to-day authoritarianism and oppression is allowed to subsist and expand. If today more and more people are turning to communalism because of widespread disillusionment with the model of democracy bequeathed to us by the national movement, the solution cannot be to reiterate that very model which is perceived to have failed. We need to project a different vision.
This could be a conception of democracy as the protection of certain basic human and democratic rights: the right to life, freedom from torture and arbitrary detention, the right to information, freedom of peaceful assembly, association and expression, the right to equality and freedom from discrimination, the right to participate in government, and so on. In order to qualify as a democracy, a state must be able to guarantee these rights and freedoms to all, irrespective of differences: it has to be democracy for everyone, or it is not democracy at all.
Of course, this is still far from being an ideal state of affairs. There is no guarantee, for example, that everyone will receive basic necessities like food, clothing, shelter, health care and education; poverty and deprivation are not ruled out. What it does, however, is to provide the conditions in which people can organise and take collective action to obtain these necessities for themselves, where people have sufficient control over their own lives to enable them to live with dignity. Equally importantly, it limits the power which some people have over others: the power to deny to others the rights and liberties which they claim for themselves.
Secularism and religion
It should be obvious that if equality is a condition of democracy, then a state that is linked to any particular religious, ethnic or linguistic group cannot be democratic, because the very fact that it is thus linked will mean that it favours members of that group and discriminates against others. Moreover, not only citizens who do not follow that religion, but even those who do, will be denied basic democractic rights. The same religion can be interpreted in innumerable ways, but the freedom to do so is denied by theocratic states, which in all cases have their own doctrinal definition of their faith and discriminate against or persecute those whose interpretation is different. So no matter what claims are made for them, Islamic, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu or other religious states cannot be democracies. This means that secularism is a necessary condition for democracy. However, there are at least four definitions of a secular state, not all of them compatible with democracy.
The first is a state that does not intervene in religion in any way. This would be neither practicable nor desirable. It would mean, for example, that the state would not be able to intervene to prevent practices such as human sacrifice, so long as it is claimed that these are undertaken for religious reasons. It would therefore be compatible with gross violations of human rights.
The second is a state that actively clamps down on all forms of religious expression. This, too, interferes with the democratic rights to freedom of expression and association, which are the basis of freedom of religion. It can result in actions similar to those of a theocratic state: destruction of places of worship and religious monuments, persecution of followers of various religions, and so on.
The third is the Indian variant of the secular state: equal respect to all religions, or sarva dharma samabhav. All our experience since Independence shows this formula to be self-contradictory and unviable. Self-contradictory because it means, for example, respecting the right of Muslims in India to worship in the Babri Masjid and other mosques while also upholding the right of Hindu fanatics to destroy these mosques if their religious sentiments impel them to do so. In practice, this conception has involved bolstering the stranglehold of the most reactionary interpretations of all religions, for example by passing the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, in the wake of the Shah Banu controversy. By insisting that Muslim women could not obtain relief by appealing to Section 125 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the Muslim Personal Law Board established the principle that the secular laws of the land do not apply to Muslims. (That this particular provision is completely inadequate for protecting the rights of women is irrelevant in this context.) If one demands that the law and the state must discriminate between individuals on the basis of their religion, it then becomes inconsistent to complain when the state does discriminate against minorities, as it regularly does when pogroms take place.
Defending secularism in India necessarily involves a critique of the prevailing model of the secular state, and admitting that a state which does not consistently enforce the principle of equality before the law is not genuinely secular. The slogan of a 'Uniform Civil Code' suffers from the defect that such a code could be uniformly Hindu and uniformly discriminate against women; but that does not negate the necessity for gender-just, secular family laws which apply to everyone regardless of religion. These are enabling laws: the right to adopt a child does not mean that you are forced to do so if it goes against your religious beliefs. What it does mean is that you do not have the right to impose your interpretation on your co-religionists. For this reason, genuinely gender-just, secular family laws will be resisted by Hindu communalists as much as by communalists from any other community; giving up the struggle for such laws is a concession to all communalists, especially the Hindutva variety.
The fourth definition of a secular state is one that intervenes in religious practices only where it becomes necessary in order to protect fundamental human and democratic rights. This is an essentially ethical, humanist notion of secularism which links it to the positive conception of democracy outlined earlier. The basic principle here is not equal respect for all religions, but equal respect for all persons regardless of religion.
Just as a secular state is one which does not discriminate between people on the basis of religion or caste, a truly secular person too would not discriminate between people on the basis of religion or caste. Individuals can be secular and religious at the same time, provided they do not choose their associates, friends and family connections according to religion and caste. If a white person says, 'I have nothing against blacks, but I wouldn't want my son or daughter to marry one,' we would certainly think of that person as a racist. Similarly, someone who claims to be secular, but cannot tolerate the idea of a son or daughter marrying someone from another community, is essentially communal. Not necessarily in the same vicious way as those who spread anti-Muslim propaganda or organise pogroms, and yet, sharing something in common with them: the feeling that 'they' are in some fundamental way different from 'us'.
But is it not part of the definition of religion itself that followers of one religion should feel themselves set apart from everyone else? The answer to that question depends on what kind of religion we are talking about.
Religion attempts to answer questions which cannot be answered by science - especially questions about the moral and ethical bases of human relationships - and communities grow around shared beliefs about these questions. However, beliefs and practices may differ widely, even amongst those claiming to follow the same religion. It is undeniable that practices which follow from some interpretations of religion are oppressive. For example, the dominant version of most religions usually involves some degree of violation of the rights of women and girls, ranging from exclusion, discrimination and patriarchal control to sadistic violence such as female genital mutilation, institutionalised sexual abuse of minors (in devadasi and other cults) and the burning alive of 'witches' and widows. Such interpretations also often include attitudes of superiority towards those who belong to other communities. Why should anyone tolerate, much less respect, such beliefs? On the contrary, violent and destructive practices arising from them should be opposed and condemned and, if possible, punished. Religious sentiment is no excuse for criminal actions although it might, like temporary insanity, be considered a mitigating circumstance while sentencing.
Where innocuous beliefs and practices are concerned, toleration is certainly desirable, but not necessarily respect. If certain religious beliefs or practices appear to someone as superstitious or irrational, that person is entitled to hold and express such an opinion, even if it offends someone else's religious sensibilities. Where religious beliefs and practices do not harm anyone, freedom of expression requires both that they can be engaged in freely, and that they can be criticised freely.
Finally, to some people religion means a recognition of the spiritual dimension inherent in every human being which makes human life of infinite value. Acknowledgement of the common, universal spirit shared by all implies recognition of the right of all human beings not only to life and the means of life, but also to freedom, dignity, and autonomy. It means desiring for all human beings the respect and consideration that one desires for oneself. This converges with the ethical, humanist notion of secularism, and is perfectly compatible with it.
Fascism and the state
Most people see fascism as the total destruction of all human and democratic rights, which is correct, but not the whole story. Not all authoritarian states are fascist: the former military dictatorships in Latin America, the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union and the Emergency in India were not examples of fascism, although they certainly involved large-scale violation of civil liberties. Unlike these, a fascist state is brought to power not by a coup of any sort, but by a mass movement inspired by fascist ideology. Crucial elements of this ideology are patriarchy, militarism, nationalism, and a belief in racial or communal superiority combined with the scapegoating of minorities. These elements are interlinked: patriarchy, with its emphasis on the authority of the father, is mirrored in the nation's domination by the authoritarian state and supreme leader, and both family and state have to preserve the superiority of the dominant 'race' by ruling out intermarriage with inferior 'races' and, preferably, purging society of them altogether (3.).
In other words, fascism exists as a mass movement before it achieves state power, and fascist ideology, embodied in fascist organisations, precedes the development of a mass movement. We see this very clearly in India, where the Sangh Parivar has existed since the 1920s, but has only in the last couple of decades succeeded in creating a mass movement inspired by its ideology. European fascist influence on its ideology and practice is revealed clearly by the writings of Golwalkar and the links with Italian fascists and German Nazis in the 1930s (4.). More recently, Bal Thackeray's open admiration for Hitler and the positive evaluation of Nazism in RSS-inspired school text-books show that the influence remains strong. Whether the Sangh Parivar will succeed in consolidating their hold over state power depends crucially on the strategy adopted by their opponents.
For example, opponents need to decide if it is legitimate to use the state against fascist propaganda and militias before they achieve full-scale state power. One left-liberal position which argues against doing this is based on a misconception of the state as a monolithic bloc: either an instrument which can be manipulated by any class or fraction which gains control over it, or a subject with its own unified will. This conception cannot explain contradictions within the state: the fact that sometimes 'it' can violate the rights of workers, women, dalits or minorities while at other times upholding them. Even the same institution, the judiciary, can on different occasions give diametrically opposed judgements. Indeed, the very existence of civil rights groups is testimony to this complexity: it would be pointless having such groups if there were no hope that the rights they fight for could in some way be recognised by the state.
In fact, it makes more sense to regard the state as an embodiment of a relationship between classes and social groups rather than a 'thing' (5.). The contradictions can then be explained as the expression of conflicts between different fractions of the ruling class as well as struggles between oppressors and oppressed groups. It is true that the relationship of domination and subordination between ruling class and working masses is inscribed in the material structure of the state. But at the same time, the particular balance of forces within that relationship makes a crucial difference to the ability of oppressed groups to struggle effectively. To ignore these differences on the grounds that bourgeois democracy and fascism are both forms of bourgeois rule would be lunatic, and for some of us suicidal. The state is a site of struggle, and unless we push it to protect the rights of vulnerable groups, it will increasingly be captured by those who are already using it to destroy those rights. Communal organisations inciting and organising violence against minorities are engaged in criminal activities, and should be treated as such (6.).
This stands in contradiction to the principles of some democratic rights and civil liberties activists who, in the name of 'freedom of expression and association', argue that the state should not be asked to stop right-wing groups from inciting violence against minorities or organising to carry out pogroms. Their argument is based on the misconception that at all times and in all circumstances, the state is more oppressive than all groups in civil society. It also ignores the principle that all human and democratic rights are limited by the rights of others. They therefore, paradoxically, provide a green light for communal organisations to inflict violence on minorities and eventually destroy democracy itself.
Another critical strategic question is: What is the difference between the BJP and Congress? It is true that Congress politicians have acted in a communal manner on numerous occasions, that it is not principled on this issue, and is willing to play the communal card in order to win votes. But strong popular pressure can equally well push it in the opposite direction. Because its basis as a party is not communal, it can, unlike the RSS-controlled BJP, take a secular position and defend democracy. In fact, the electoral situation in India today is in many ways similar to that of Germany in the early 1930s. The Social Democratic Party of Germany had many crimes to its name, including its nationalist stance which took Germany into World War I. Nonetheless, it had a large working class following. Had the SPD and Communist Party united their forces against the Nazis, the latter could have been defeated. Instead, the Communists characterised the SPD as 'social fascists', as bad as the Nazis, and refused to form a United Front with it, allowing Hitler to come to power. An analogous split between Congress and the Left in India could have similar disastrous consequences, dividing the anti-fascist forces and allowing the Sangh Parivar to take power by itself, with consequences that have been foreshadowed by the Gujarat carnage.
Nationalism and anti-globalisation
Certain conditions existing in civil society can be more conducive to the success of fascist organisations than others. Thus, in Germany, the wide prevalence of patriarchal families, authoriarian employers and anti-Semitic prejudices facilitated the absorption of Nazi propaganda. A sense of humiliation by the French and British imperial powers which imposed the conditions of the Versailles treaty on Germany after World War I, cleverly amplified by demagogues like Hitler, also contributed to the success of fascist ideology, with its militant nationalism (7.). Hitler's opposition to international capital and the globalisation of the German economy were key elements of Nazi ideology: 'The sharp separation of stock exchange capital from the national economy offered the possibility of opposing the internationalization of the German economy without at the same time menacing the foundations of an independent national self-maintenance by a struggle against all capital. The development of Germany was much too clear in my eyes for me not to know that the hardest battle would have to be fought, not against hostile nations, but against international capital.' (8.)
The parallels in India are striking. Preservation of the hierarchical caste system requires a particularly vicious form of patriarchy, with tight control being exercised over women and young people. The state policy of encouraging an enormous informal sector, in which workers have no rights, ensures extremely authoritarian employment relations for more than 90 per cent of workers. Prejudices against Muslims, already quite widespread, have systematically been stoked by the Sangh Parivar to such a degree that a horrifyingly large number of people are willing to endorse the Gujarat carnage. And finally, the RSS and its affiliates, including the Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM), articulate an economic nationalism strongly reminiscent of Hitler's rhetoric. It has not even spared the BJP from criticism for its 'weak-kneed attitude to the World Trade Organisation,' urging it to withdraw India from the WTO (9), and organising a protest demonstration against (then) WTO Director-General Mike Moore in January 2000, proclaiming that 'We will not allow a global system' (10).
In this context, the position taken by anti-globalisers in various NGOs and the Left, which involves using very similar language to express the same sentiments, is particularly dangerous, in that it lends credibility to Right-wing nationalism and thus reinforces it. The argument that the RSS is not serious about its economic nationalism is seriously mistaken; not just in India but everywhere in the world, the Right is, and always has been, serious about its ultra-nationalism in every sphere: indeed, that is the hallmark of fascism. The neo-fascists in the US and Europe are equally opposed to globalisation, seeing it as encouraging immigration and the export of production to Third World countries, thus causing unemployment in their countries. This is typical Right-wing reasoning; it has nothing Left-wing about it. Marx, on the contrary, while debunking the tall claims of the Free Trade party (the capitalist globalisers of his time), nonetheless concluded that 'the Free Trade systemÖbreaks up old nationalities and carries the antagonism of proletariat and bourgeoisie to the uttermost point. In a word, the Free Trade system hastens the Social Revolution,' and is therefore worthy of support (11.). Seeing capital as inherently global right from its inception, and thereby creating an international working class which could alone overthrow it, he would have thought it reactionary and perverse to oppose globalisation from a nationalist standpoint.
The positive connotations of 'nationalism' in India go back to the freedom struggle, which is also commonly called 'the national movement'. But the bulk of the ordinary people who participated in that movement were not fighting for state power, which they would never have, but for democracy and self-government. Today, more than ever before, the notion of 'national sovereignty' has come to mean the very opposite of democracy and human rights. It is used by the Indian government to protest against foreign governments expressing concern about the Gujarat carnage, and by the Bush administration in the US to reject the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, international monitoring of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the International Criminal Court, and a host of other international treaties, all of which are seen as interfering in the 'internal' affairs of the 'nation'. Here 'national sovereignty' is defined as the sovereignty of the state, including its right to violate the human rights of its citizens and citizens of other countries, rather than the sovereignty of the people, as it should be in a genuine democracy. If we are referring to the sovereignty of the people, then it becomes clear that institutions set up to safeguard human and democratic rights globally can only enhance, not conflict with, democracy within a nation, even while they limit the power of the state.
In fact, it makes no sense to counterpose nationalism to communalism, because both ideologies are based on the same 'othering' of those who do not belong to one's own community or nation, and therefore become fair game for any kind of oppression, up to and including genocide. It is particularly meaningless in India, where nationalism by definition means hatred of Pakistan, which in turn is seen as the embodiment of Muslim identity. The situation in cities like Ahmedabad, where Muslim areas have become known popularly as 'Pakistan', shows that it is impossible to fight the irrational hatred of Muslims without at the same time fighting the irrational hatred of Pakistan; and doing that is seen as ó and is, in fact ó anti-nationalism.
Rejection of nationalism and patriotism does not mean that we cannot love our country; it means that we can and must be critical about what the state is doing in our name, and oppose it whenever it engages in oppressive, inhuman activities. We can still love our country as a place which is familiar to us and where we feel we belong, just as we may love our city, village, neighbourhood or even our flat or house, because it is our home.
Identity and Community
This brings us to the important question of identity, which can be posed in two ways: (a) who am I? (i.e. individual identity) and (b) with whom do I identify? (i.e. collective identity). These two meanings of identity are linked, to the extent that human beings do not develop a personal identity in isolation, and to a very great extent our image of ourselves is derived from what we see reflected in other people's eyes.
Individual or personal identity is built up through a complex psychological and social process which begins from birth, through interaction with people who love and care for the baby and young child. Love and recognition continue to be important in adolescence and adulthood, and there can be in addition the satisfaction obtained from expressing oneself through meaningful work which is appreciated by others. Development of a strong and stable personal identity requires the freedom to discover one's own capacities and inclinations within the context of a caring community which respects that freedom. In our society, unfortunately, there is very little respect for individual freedom. In education there is an emphasis on rote-learning at the expense of encouraging critical and creative thinking, and most young people are pushed into occupations (including, for many women, the 'career' of being a full-time housewife and mother) which hardly take into account their talents and abilities. Even the choice of a marriage partner is not free, but is undertaken by others in the family without much consideration for the young person's chances of emotional fulfilment. From a very early age, there is pressure to submit to caste and community norms, regardless of whether these are beneficial or harmful. In such circumstances, the growth of individual identity is often stifled; hence the heavy dependence on communal identities, completing the vicious circle of forced communal identities leading to stunted personal identities, leading in turn to reinforced communal identities.
Paradoxical though it may seem, a strong and stable sense of personal identity and the acknowledgement of individuality in others are necessary conditions for the recognition of universal human rights. A very negative consequence of having a communal identity is that others too are identified primarily in communal terms rather than as individuals or human beings, and this results in the barbaric doctrine of collective guilt and collective punishment, whereby it becomes quite acceptable to 'punish' perfectly innocent people of a certain community in the most cruel manner for crimes committed (or supposedly committed) by others of the same community, sometimes centuries or millennia ago. Lacking either a conception of individual responsibility for actions, which would lead to an understanding that the people being attacked are innocent while those attacking them are criminals, or a conception of human rights, which would preclude the orgies of rape and murder that characterise fascism, a communal consciousness has the essential characteristics which allow its owner to be used as a stormtrooper.
In Western societies there is much more emphasis on individuality, but the context of competitive individualism deprives many people of a caring community in which this personal identity can be nurtured. This is why some people turn to racist or fundamentalist ultra-nationalism in order to establish a sense of identity, and the result can be the growth of fascist organisations in these societies too. The problem is compounded in both developing and developed countries by unemployment, which deprives people of an important component of identity which can come from their work. Conversely, in both types of societies, people can create groups and organisations, such as trade unions, women's groups, neighbourhood community groups, etc., where they feel recognised as individuals as well as gain a sense of collective identity. Ideally, Left groups should have provided this sort of space, but unfortunately this has not been the case, mainly because the authoritarian and doctrinal character of these groups restricts freedom of thought and expression, and precludes real equality and reciprocity.
Creating alternative communities which are non-patriarchal, egalitarian, and cut across existing ethnic, linguistic, religious, caste, and even national divisions is a necessity if we are to combat the attraction that communal organisations exert on people who do not necessarily endorse their violent, genocidal agenda. This is not a completely utopian exercise: the beginnings of such communities do exist already, but it requires a sustained effort to ensure that they spread and grow. It is strange that there is such a widespread belief that 'community' and 'culture' are entities which are somehow given to us, as though there is some fundamental difference between us and our ancestors: they had the privilege of actually creating communities and cultures, whereas we are only given the option of accepting or rejecting them, so that if, for example, we wish to break with the authoritarian, sexist norms of one or the other traditional community, we are threatened with being left without any community at all, victims of Western atomised individualism, and if we have reservations about using traditional religious symbolism, we are threatened with being cut off from our culture. But in reality there is nothing (other than our own inhibitions and lack of imagination) that prevents us from creating our own pluralistic, egalitarian, democratic, humane community and culture which will attract rather than repel millions of people suffering bondage to oppressive traditions.
Conclusion
If we are serious about defending democracy today, we have to be able to combat the forces engaged in destroying it at a number of different levels. We need to use whatever legal resources we have to pressurise the state to clamp down on organisations spreading hate propaganda and organising pogroms; to ensure as far as possible that communal parties and their allies are not elected to power; to combat hierarchy and authoritarianism in the family, schools and colleges, the workplace, and elsewhere, including organisations like trade unions, which often absorb these values from the society around them; to combat nationalism in all its forms, including those that are propagated by anti-globalisers; and to create alternative communities by building bonds of solidarity, friendship and love cutting across traditional communal barriers.
Given the magnitude of the task, we need to attract as many people as possible to join in undertaking it, and this implies the ability to debate differences creatively while working together on the basis of shared principles. In a sense, the movement itself has to prefigure the kind of society we are advocating; unless we are capable of functioning in a truly democratic manner, our arguments for democracy will hardly be credible, and unless we can establish and maintain mutually caring relationships, we cannot attract people desperately seeking the security of belonging to a community. To this extent, means and ends are inseparable.1. Alexander Bahar and Wilfried Kugel, Der Reichstagbrand óWie Geschichte gemacht wird (The Reichstag Fire ó How History is Created), edition q, Berlin, 2001, reviewed by Wilhelm Klein, 'The Reichstag Fire, 68 years on', 5 July 2001, www.wsws.org
2. See Genocide Gujarat 2002: Communalism Combat March-April 2002, Year 8, No.77-78, www.onlinevolunteers.com/gujarat , www.sabrang.com and www.sacw.net
3. Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, (translated by Vincent R.Carfagno), Souvenir Press, London, 1972, chapters II and III;
4. 'To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races ó the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how wellnigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by' (M.S.Golwalkar, We or Our Nationshood Defined, Bharat Publications, Nagpur, 40-41). See also Marzia Casolari, 'Hindutva's Foreign Tie-up in the 1930s: Archival Evidence,' Economic and Political Weekly, 22 January 2000
5. For a more extensive explication of this idea, see Nicos Poulantzas, State, Power, Socialism, New Left Books, London, 1978. E.g., 'The state is the condensation of a relationship of forces between classes and class fractions, such as these express themselves, in a necessarily specific form, within the state itself. In other words, the state is through and through constituted-divided by class contradictions. Thus, an institution destined to reproduce class divisions is not, and never can be, a monolithic bloc without cracks, whose policy is established, as it were, in spite of its own contradictions. Contrary to conceptions which treat it as a Thing or a Subject, the State is itself divided' (p.132). 'Law does not only deceive and conceal, and nor does it merely repress people by compelling or forbidding them to act. It also organises and sanctions certain real rights of the dominated classes (even though, of course, these rights are invested in the dominant ideology and are far from corresponding in practice to their juridical form); and it has inscribed within it the material concessions imposed on the dominant classes by popular struggle' (p.84).
6 This can be done without using draconian laws like POTA, which can be used against people engaged in perfectly legitimate, non-violent activities, and therefore should be repealed.
7. See, for example, John Weiss, Conservatism in Europe 1770-1945, Thames and Hudson Ltd., London, 1977, Chapter X
8. Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1943, p.213, quoted in Doug Henwood, Wall Street, Verso, London & New York, 1997, p.303
9. 'RSS plans stir against government today,' Business Standard, 30 November, 1998
10. Open Letter to Mr Mike Moore, quoted in full in Singh J., 'Resisting global fascism in India,' My Enemy's Enemy: Essays on Globalisation, Fascism and the Struggle Against Capitalism, Anti-Fascist Forum, Toronto, 2000, 84-85
11. (Marx, 'Speech on the Question of Free Trade,' Marx & Engels, Collected Works, Vol.6,1845-1848, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976)return to New collection at South Asia Citizens Web
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