What the left thinks of Modi

Submitted by AWL on 20 May, 2014 - 5:33

On May 16, Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi stormed the Indian elections on a scale not seen since 1984. He beat the National Congress Party, who have dominated India politically since 1947, by 316 seats to only 50.

Solidarity has gathered opinions on Modi from the left in India.


Praful Bidwai:

“The Left parties are floundering. They are unsure of their prospects in their former bastions West Bengal and Kerala, and are experimenting with little-known candidates and independents. They have no strategy for crafting a non-Congress-non-BJP front. Left unity, long their major asset, is under threat. The Revolutionary Socialist Party has quit the Kerala Left front after 35 years, and the CPI and CPM are negotiating with rival groups in some states... [Modi’s]regime is likely to be even worse [than Indira Gandhi's imposition of emergency rule in 1975-76], with systematic attacks on civil and political rights, railroading of all legitimate opposition, despotic imposition of corporate-driven economic agendas, and further militarization and communalization of society, which will lead to harassment of conscientious citizens, and outlawing and repression of dissent.”

(The News International, 5 April 2014)

Jairus Banaji:

“The threat [to democracy] is absolutely real. A new model is emerging of the far Right in this country. It is not part of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, right-wing Hindu nationalist paramilitary group) tradition to encourage personality cults. Their sarsanghchalaks [top leaders] have never projected themselves the way Modi is being projected now, as a sort of supreme leader, a desi Duce or Fuehrer. This concerted drive for a personality cult represents a new current within the politics of the extreme Right, a further development of electoral fascism. Modi realizes that communal mobilization, the RSS’s organic strategy, has paid rich electoral dividends. The violence of 2002 was precisely concentrated in districts of Gujarat where the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] had the most to gain in terms of increasing their vote share. But Modi also knows that there was a strong backlash to that ghastly explosion of orchestrated violence and that he won’t be able to retain credibility with the same sort of strategy.” (Hardnews, 8 April 2013)

Priyamvada Gopal:

“Modi was a leading activist for [the] secretive and militaristic…Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – whose founder expressed admiration for Hitler, ideologies of racial purity and the virtues of fascism. It is an organisation that, on a good day, looks like the British National Party but can operate more like Nazi militias. Known for an authoritarian leadership style, Modi's only expression of regret for the [2002 Gujarat] pogroms compared them to a car running over a puppy, while he labelled Muslim relief camps "baby-making factories”… A Modi victory will strengthen the arm of chauvinist forces in Britain, which have already had successes such as shutting down exhibitions, quashing caste discrimination laws, and withdrawing Royal Mail stamps. Under Modi there will be no progress on Kashmir, which will also have far-reaching violent consequences. In the face of a global resurgence of the right we must be alert to all its extremist forms.” (The Guardian, 14 April 2014)

New Socialist Alternative (Indian section of the Committee for a Workers International)

“Yes we do see the immediate possible danger of an avowedly communal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) headed by the mass murderer Narendra Modi coming to power, who is a professed hatemonger and doesn't hesitate to use state power against the religious and other minorities. But that threat cannot be seen in isolation of the political and economic processes that have been in progress at least in the last quarter of a century. Willy-Nilly the corporates, both Multinational and Indian, have long decided that their interests are safe in the hands of Congress-BJP and the teams they muster to "govern" this vast land mass called India.

Hence a de-facto, creeping two party bi-polar political "choice" is presented, [or] rather foisted on [us]... We categorically reject this sham of a "choice" between the Congress and BJP.” (14 April 2014)

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