From U.S. President Donald Trump’s impeachment to massive protests against austerity reforms in Chile and France, the international capitalist system is in crisis. Nowhere is this clearer than in India. Once paraded by the capitalist bosses as “the world’s largest democracy” and a shining example of economic growth, India continues to be plagued by racism, nationalism, and massive poverty and inequality.
Indian Prime Minster Narendra Modi has responded to workers’ frustrations over economic stagnation by scapegoating Muslim workers and forcing through a wave of anti-immigrant laws. Hundreds of thousands of workers are pushing back against these racist crackdowns, flooding the streets of major cities and battling with police and government forces.
While these countrywide protests showcase some of the boldness and solidarity that will be needed to defeat capitalism, their narrow reform content is a trap for workers. Settling for anything less than communist revolution will only strengthen the bosses. The Progressive Labor Party (PLP) stands with the working class of India as it fights against fascist anti-Muslim policies. But ultimately, only international communist revolution led by a mass PLP will smash Modi and the racist profit system that puts him and other capitalist stooges in power.
Modi Operandi: Fascism grows in India
Since winning re-election and a majority in the Indian parliament last May, Modi and his Hindu hyper-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have been emboldened to ramp up racist, anti-worker attacks across the country. In August 2019, in a brazen land grab, Modi’s government canceled the “autonomous” status of the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir. It flooded the region with troops, shut down the internet, and jailed opposition leaders.
Next the BJP established a National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the eastern state of Assam, forcing workers to prove that they’d arrived in India before the mid-1970s. Since most workers lack the required documentation, over two million people, mostly Muslims, have been stripped of their citizenship. They now face placement in detention centers or deportation to neighboring Bangladesh (Time, 12/20/19).
To ramp up anti-immigrant racism and further divide the working class, Modi and the BJP fascists moved to extend the NRC to all of India. To protect their majority Hindu power base, they drafted a Citizenship Amendment Bill for fast-tracked citizenship—except for Muslim workers, who were excluded (The Guardian, 12/19/19). These fascist measures have prompted mass protests of millions of workers.
India’s rulers are trying desperately to use racism to distract workers from an economic slump that has seen annual growth drop from nearly nine percent to less than five percent in 2019 (Times of India, 1/5). For decades, the Indian bosses diverted billions of dollars of foreign investment into the hands of a few finance capitalists. As a result, for the 12 million workers entering the job market each year, job prospects are slim and highly competitive (LiveMint, 11/19/19). To deflect attention from the profit system’s failures, the bosses are forced to resort to more intensive racist scapegoating, hand in glove with intense nationalism.
Caught between rival imperialists
Despite its worsening economic and political crisis, the importance of India on the world stage should not be understated. India’s geopolitical importance, massive workforce, and wealth of natural resources ensure that the world’s top imperialist powers will keep competing for a dominant influence in the country.
For decades, the U.S. ruling class has viewed India as a critical counterbalance to the growth of rival imperialist China in the Asia-Pacific region (Foreign Affairs, October 2019). To avoid alienating their ally, Trump and the U.S. bosses have turned a blind eye to the Modi government’s racist treatment of Muslim workers (Washington Post, 12/19/19).
Meanwhile, the Chinese imperialist bosses have maintained a strong if uneven relationship with the Indian ruling class. Chinese economic and political support for Pakistan, India’s top regional rival, certainly creates friction. Territorial disputes in Kashmir, partly governed by China, have strained the relationship, as have clashes near the Himalayan mountains. But striving to keep U.S. imperialism at bay, the Chinese bosses continue to engage the Indian rulers with  negotiations and summits (The Diplomat, 1/4).
Not to be overlooked are the Russian capitalist bosses, who are projecting political power in the region through big defense contracts with the Indian government, including a $5.4 billion deal for advanced missile systems (Business Standard, 9/4/19).
For now, the opportunistic Indian ruling class appears content to hedge its bets—at least until a global conflict breaks out, when they may be forced to choose a side.
Smash nationalism and fight for communism!
In response to the government’s racist bill and fascist crackdown, thousands of Hindu workers and students have stood side-by-side in solidarity with Muslim workers. Demonstrators have been killed and beaten, but the movement has not been deterred. Women have given strong and essential leadership to the protests.
While this working-class fightback is inspirational, it is being co-opted by liberal misleaders who are calling for the restoration of “secular democracy”—a meaningless term under the capitalist dictatorship of the bosses. In the southern state of Kerala, politicians like Pinarayi Vijayan are leading workers astray by exploiting the protests to gain support for himself and other opposition leaders (Aljazeera, 1/4).
Though it’s a promising glimpse of class struggle, the movement to repeal the Citizenship Amendment Bill won’t stop attacks on Muslim workers. It won’t stop capitalism from destroying our lives. With the capitalist system in crisis internationally, the bosses are using fascism to safeguard themselves with anti-Black racism and attacks on immigrants. From Europe’s anti-immigrant movements to the United States’ bipartisan assault on workers from Latin America, capitalism is showing its true colors. Only the struggle for communist revolution can liberate the working class by smashing the bosses and their nationalist borders once and for all. That struggle can’t wait. Join PLP and fight for communism!