India

Gardiner and Gujarat: how a "left" Labour MP defended genocide

I hope readers were sad to be reminded, or shocked to learn, of the vicious anti-Muslim pogroms in Gujarat in 2002 ( Solidarity 626). There is a supplementary fact, connected to the UK, that is also shocking (in a more minor key). I wrote recently about Labour MP Barry Gardiner’s support for Narendra Modi and the Hindu right. Gardiner has also defended Modi over Gujarat specifically. Gardiner’s background is firmly on the Labour right, but he now presents himself as some sort of left-winger. He is a regular presence at labour movement actions and demonstrations. After a union fringe meeting at...

Gujarat 2002: the mass killings that launched Modi's rise

Hindu nationalist "rioters" in Gujarat, 2002 Twenty years ago, from the end of February 2002, the Indian state of Gujarat saw horrific, arguably genocidal, violence against Muslims, with its government implicated in the pogroms. Gujarat’s chief minister then was Narendra Modi, now the prime minister of India. The 2002 events were linked to a chain of sectarian conflicts in the state, involving Hindu-chauvinist attacks on Muslims, going back to the late 60s. These outbreaks were exploited by the organised Hindu right and far right to feed their rise. The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party...

Alongside her comrades in India, Priti Patel attacks Sikhs

Home Secretary Priti Patel is not just a very right-wing Tory. She is also an admirer of, with close links to, the far-right, Hindu-chauvinist BJP government in India. 230 UK Sikh organisations have signed a statement of protest after it emerged that last November Patel gave a speech to the right-wing Heritage Foundation in the US – in which, after attacking ISIS and four white nationalist organisations, she said: “Sikh separatist extremism has also caused considerable tension in recent years”. (The speech is proudly republished on the UK government’s website.) Sikh religious fundamentalism is...

Hindu bigots' hypocrisy against the hijab

Amid the hijab row, students from different communities walk together to the Government Girls Pre-University College in Udupi, Karnataka Our report last week on the very important state elections in India (results 10 March) discussed the far-right BJP’s doubling down on anti-Muslim agitation in Uttar Pradesh (UP). Last week Hindu nationalist students in UP began agitating for the hijab head-covering won by some Muslim women to be banned on college campuses. Undoubtedly there will be similar campaigns beginning in other states. This is an extension of right-wing agitation in the southern state...

Free Fahad Shah

On 4 February the Indian state arrested Fahad Shah, editor of independent news platform The Kashmir Walla . The authorities claim Shah has “glorified terrorism” — code for reporting on human rights abuses in Kashmir. Many Kashmiri journalists have been arrested. The Indian government wants to stop the flow of information about its abuses and about the increasingly colonial regime it has imposed on Kashmir. On 11 February a hundred supporters demonstrated to free Shah outside the Indian High Commission in London. • Sign the petition to free Fahad here

Opposition to Modi expands

Farmers protest in Uttar Pradesh The next Indian general election is 2024. But five state elections take place in February, with over one hundred million people likely to take part, and two very big ones. The approach of the elections in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab was surely part of why Narendra Modi’s far-right Bharatiya Janata Party (Indian People’s Party, BJP) government retreated in November 2021 on its pro-corporate agricultural laws. The year-long farmers' movement in 2021, forcing repeal of Modi’s pro-corporate agricultural reforms, has pushed him back , and many of its leaders help to...

Uttar Pradesh election: UK left, pay attention!

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi and his comrade, fundamentalist monk and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath Starting on 10 February, the giant Indian state of Uttar Pradesh - population over 230 million! - is voting in crucially important state elections, in a major test of how much last year's victorious farmers' struggle has pushed back India's far right. The left and labour movement in the UK should be paying much more attention. Many farmers’ leaders are vocal about their desire to drive Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government from power. In March 2021 much of...

After the farmers' victory, a hundred million vote in India

Protesters burn an effigy of Uttar Pradesh's chief minister, fundamentalist monk Yogi Adityanath, after the gang rape of a Dalit woman, October 2021. Effigies of Adityanath were also burnt during last year's farmers' struggle During the year-long farmers’ movement which humbled India’s far-right government in 2021, forcing repeal of its pro-corporate agricultural reforms, many farmers’ leaders were vocal about their desire to drive that government from power. In March 2021 much of the movement’s leadership went to West Bengal, target of a huge campaign by prime minister Narendra Modi’s...

Christine Lee, Barry Gardiner and the labour movement

The media is awash with stories about the fact that lawyer Christine Lee, who has links with many politicians and has donated almost £600,000 to the office of Labour MP Barry Gardiner, has been revealed as an operative of the Chinese state’s “United Front Work Department”. (The donations to Gardiner became public two years ago; there is no suggestion he has broken any law or rule.) The "United Front" organisation exists to strengthen and spread Chinese political influence in other countries. Contrary to some claims in the media, Lee seems to be more like a lobbyist than a spy. (Of course China...

India heads for new clashes

In February last year, at the peak of state violence against the Indian farmers’ struggle, I wrote in Solidarity that the “repression… could signal the Hindu-nationalist regime’s panic-stricken weakening and decline, or the onset of an even more consolidated authoritarianism”. With the farmers’ defeat of the Modi government, one of the most important popular victories against capitalism anywhere in years, chinks of light have opened up. Nonetheless both possibilities remain. Modi announced withdrawal of the three pro-corporate agricultural reform laws on 19 November. By the end of the month...

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