A Marxist View Of Modi's Hindutva

Peter Taaffe speaks to Jagadish Chandra

17 February, 2016
Countercurrents.org

The present day regime of the Modi-led BJP in India is getting more and more authoritarian. The patrons of the BJP, the apparatchiks of the RSS who undoubtedly draw their inspiration and motivation from the 20th Century extreme right wing ideologies of Fascism and Nazism, imagine they can establish an all-out Hindu Rashtra or Hindu Nation by artificially imposing a majoritarian and supremacist demagogy of Hindutva “philosophy”.

Since the advent of Modi to power in 2014, these reactionaries have let loose a reign of terror through their multi-pronged organisational set-up, which is euphemistically termed as ‘Sangh Parivar’. Attacks on Muslims, Christians and other minorities have increased ten-fold in the last couple of months. The centuries-old feudal practice of ‘untouchability’ and exclusion, which has hitherto been practiced and routinely perpetrated, is now openly heralded and has implicit state support under Modi.

This interview with Comrade Peter Taaffe of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) aims at analysing the present complex situation in India and bringing the collective experience of the CWI in understanding it from an internationalist perspective. We welcome discussion and debate on the issues raised and the analysis arrived at in this important interview which touches on the nature of the present Modi regime, the politics of the traditional left, the issue of Casteism and the approach that Socialists and Marxists should take towards these complex and important challenges.

Jagadish Chandra belongs to New Socialist Alternative (CWI in India)