Table Of ContentE-book published in July 2018
Published in April 2018 by
LeftWord Books
2254/2A Shadi Khampur
New Ranjit Nagar
New Delhi 110008
INDIA
LeftWord Books is the publishing division of Naya Rasta Publishers Pvt. Ltd.
leftword.com
© 2018, Pinarayi Vijayan
Contents
Note from the Editors
Democracy in Danger
The Intolerance of the RSS
RSS Terror
Secularism and Minorities
Strong Centre, Content States
The Liberation of Women is Essential to the Liberation of Our Society
as a Whole
Uphold the Red Flag to Build an Alternative to Neoliberalism and
Communalism
A Quarter Century of Neoliberal Policies Has Only Sounded the
Death Knell of Agriculture in India
Advasis Are a Most Important Contingent in the Struggle for
Revolutionary Social Change
Muslims of Malabar and the Left
Note from the Editors
As the Right rises, everyone else, whether they like it or not, are
branded Left. Many of them are not, of course. There is little, if
anything, in Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, or Sonia Gandhi and
Mamata Banerjee, that can be reasonably described as Left . On the
contrary, there is much in their agendas and actions that can be
legitimately labelled Right . Yet, the hard Right, ranging from Trump
to Modi, from Erdogan to Duterte, routinely label anybody who
opposes them as Left.
Where is the real Left? What does it stand for? What does it
oppose?
One political figure holding elected office has emerged in the midst
of Narendra Modi’s term as Prime Minister as his most forthright
critic: Kerala’s Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan. What gives Pinarayi
Vijayan the strength to be so bold against the government of Mr.
Modi? One part of it is of course that he represents the state of
Kerala, a bastion of literacy and reason, but more importantly, that he
is member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). While various
political sections in India have problems with one or another aspect of
the governance of Mr. Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the
Communist movement stands in direct opposition to the entirety of its
social, political and economic vision – not only its theory of Hindu
Rashtra and Hindutva, but also its upper caste supremacist outlook,
its neoliberal economic policies, and its pro-American foreign policy.
For Communists, there is no compromise with any part of the
BJP’s philosophy, outlook, and policies. This is not true of any other
anti-BJP party in India. If the Congress party inaugurated the
neoliberal policy slate and pro-American foreign policy, the other
parties, including parties representing regional bourgeoisies, have
either gone along with these, or been in active alliance with the BJP at
one point or another. Only the Communists stand irreconcilably in
opposition to Hindutva and all that it represents. The Communists
recognize that the BJP and its policies have already begun to unravel
the social fabric of India and to disrupt the possibility for the people
to achieve their aspirations.
The BJP and its Sangh Parivar are acquainted with the way the
Communists will not budge from their firm sensibility to encourage
the diverse social development of India. They know that Communists
– unlike the followers of the BJP and the RSS – want to create a
society run by the people rather than the plutocracy. After the BJP
won the election in Tripura, vindictiveness against the Left was openly
on display – whether in the way the statue of Lenin was broken or in
the way homes and offices of Communists were attacked. Mr Modi
spoke out against the breaking of statues – not Lenin’s, but when
Periyar’s and Shama Prasad Mukherji’s statues were vandalised. There
is something deeply duplicitous here. Mr Modi, after all, has nothing
to say about the Sangh Parivar’s destruction of the Babri Masjid, or
the pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat when he was the Chief Minister, or
the routine vandalism of Dr Ambedkar’s statues, or the lynchings of
Muslims and Dalits. His is an ideology steeped in hatred, which he
hopes to camouflage with a mask of occasional and selective sobriety.
The Communists are a political force. They have a singular project
– to fight injustice and to build socialism. No other political force in
India is as firm against the Sangh Parivar. No other political force is as
hated by them. In fact, as we suggest, the Sangh Parivar hates the
Communists as much as they despise Dalits and Muslims.
This small book collects some of the speeches and writings of
Pinarayi Vijayan. At its core is Vijayan’s forthright criticism of the BJP
and the central organization of the Sangh Parivar – the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). In an interview, Vijayan offers his view of
the dangers that are posed by the BJP and the RSS,
If you look at the current political climate in the country, we are
going through a very dangerous phase. Because the BJP is not just
a political party like other political parties. What distinguishes the
BJP from other parties is that it’s controlled by the RSS. The RSS’s
ideology is the same as what Hitler implemented in Germany.
Their organisational structure is Mussolini’s fascist organisational
structure. So when an organisation with fascist organisational
structure and Nazi ideology leads a party, its dangers are huge.
That’s why we see fascistic tendencies in today’s India.
The BJP is a party that’s bound to establish the RSS’s policies in
the country. We have seen that on several occasions. It’s clear that
the RSS is directly taking key decisions on behalf of the BJP. RSS
policies are not compliant with our country’s interests. The RSS
doesn’t accept secularism. There were occasions when even Union
ministers attacked the reference to secularism in India’s
Constitution. This launches a direct threat to secularism. The
danger this poses to a pluralistic country like ours is huge. A strong
resistance has to be built against this attack on our constitutional
values.
Both the Congress and the BJP are representing right-wing
economic policies. Be it liberalisation, globalisation, or
privatisation, the Congress was in the forefront of implementing
them. The BJP is following the same economic policies. Since there
are no major differences in economic policies, both of them
represent a common sphere. That’s why the BJP is not seeing the
Congress as its main rival.
For the BJP, the Left is its principal enemy. The Left is not a
powerful force nationally in today’s India. Still the BJP is scared of
the Left. . . .
[B]oth the BJP and the RSS are trying to trigger communal
issues in society and through that gain political dividends. What
we have to do it to mobilise people from across the spectrum
against the RSS. All democratic forces have a role to play in
building such a resistance.
The BJP and its Sangh Parivar know about this uncompromising
attitude, which is why – in the political sector – it is the Communists
who have been their main target of attack (in the social sector, the BJP
and its Sangh Parivar have gone after Muslims, Dalits and Tribals).
No surprise then that the RSS has repeatedly called for the murder of
Pinarayi Vijayan (most spectacularly, in March of 2017, RSS leader
Kundan Chandrawat placed a Rs 1 crore bounty for the assassination
1
). The RSS, under pressure, fired Kundan Chandrawat. But the views
of Chandrawat – who also took pleasure in the murder of Muslims in
Gujarat (‘We sent 2000 to the graveyard’) – have not been
substantially repudiated by the RSS.
Vijayan exposes the roots of RSS terror in the state and in the
region. He shows that this is the RSS-BJP mechanism to overcome
their political weakness in the area. This is a point to bear in mind,
since the RSS-BJP has been known to use various forms of violence
elsewhere for electoral – and eventually institutional – gain.
The core of Vijayan’s speeches and writings collected here identify
the dangers of the ‘RSS government’, and call for clear and precise
resistance from all sectors – not just during the time of elections –
against the policies and cultural thrust of the Sangh Parivar. They are
essential reading.
But this is not all that is within this book. We see also his clear
view that there is no alternative to the RSS/BJP within the policy slate
of neo-liberalism – and more specifically capitalism. A Left alternative
is imperative. It is available in the policies that are driven by the Left
in Kerala, but it is also being incubated in the struggles of key sectors
of the population – the workers and the peasants, surely, but also the
oppressed populations – women, tribals, Dalits and Muslims. The
Left, Vijayan’s speeches and writings indicate, are an essential part of
this struggle to envision a new future as well as to put in place – as
much as possible – these visions in places where the Left holds power,
such as in Kerala.
This book could not have been completed without essential help
from Prabha Varma, Samuel Philip Mathew and Subin Dennis.
