This interview with Subin Dennis, a researcher with Tricontinental Research, New Delhi, was conducted remotely in September 2020. That month, the Indian Parliament passed three laws to increase corporate control over Indian agriculture. Beginning on November 26, hundreds of thousands of farmers occupied the outskirts of Delhi, “in explicit recognition that the fight is against corporate rule.”1 November 26 also saw a nationwide general strike by the workers’ unions in India, drawing the participation of 250 million people. In March 2021, India saw a devastating second wave of COVID-19, contributing to the world’s second-highest number of confirmed cases (after the United States). As Subin has argued, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) government “has displayed an astounding level of incompetence in handling the COVID-19 crisis,” even as it used the pandemic as an opportunity to ram through antiworker laws and continued its assault on science, while seeking to deliver superprofits to the corporate-financial oligarchy.2 In the elections held in April 2021 to several state legislative assemblies, the BJP suffered a series of reversals. It suffered defeats in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu, and voters in Kerala kept the Left Democratic Front in power, with a mandate to end absolute poverty.3 While the BJP government remains in power and the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) project to remake Indian society proceeds, progressive forces in India continue the long struggle for freedom.

An economist by training, Subin was active with the Left student movement in India during his university days. He is currently based in Thiruvananthapuram (also known as Trivandrum), Kerala.

Manu Karuka: What is the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party, or Indian People’s Party)? Is it a fascist party? What is the BJP’s relationship to the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh)?

Subin Dennis: The BJP is India’s current ruling party. It was founded in 1980 and came to power for the first time in 1996, for only thirteen days. It returned to power in 1998 and ruled until 2004. The BJP was out of office for ten years after that and then won the elections again in 2014. In 2019, they were reelected with a much bigger majority than earlier. Narendra Modi, of the BJP, has been the prime minister since 2014.

When we talk about the situation in India, we need to clarify two concepts. The first is communalism. In South Asia, communalism refers to the idea that religious communities are political communities with secular interests that are opposed to each other.4 So Hindus will be a political community whose secular interests are opposed to the secular interests of Muslims. Organizations or political parties organized around this principle are called communal organizations, or communal parties. The BJP is a Hindu communal party. We also have Muslim communal organizations, like the Jamaat-e-Islami. Communal organizations are quite common in India.

But the BJP is not just a communal party, and it is not an independent political party. It is the political wing, the main electoral instrument, of another organization. That organization is RSS: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or National Volunteer Organization. The RSS was formed in 1925, many decades before the BJP was formed, and it is possibly the world’s largest fascist organization. So to ask whether BJP is a fascist organization is somewhat less relevant. It is the RSS which is the driving force of the BJP. Narendra Modi is an RSS man. He was sent to the BJP by the RSS to eventually lead it in Gujarat. As the chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi presided over a communal pogrom in which about two thousand Muslims were massacred in the year 2002. After that, he was reelected as chief minister in Gujarat. In a long-term sense, his popularity did not decrease after the pogrom.

What does the RSS want? What is the ideology of the RSS? That is where we get to the second term: Hindutva. Hindutva literally means “Hinduness.” It is right-wing political Hinduism, or, you could say, it is Hindu supremacism.5 It is often said that fascism doesn’t have a coherent strategy for economic and social reconstruction and so on. That is applicable to Hindutva as well. Basically, they want to create what is called a Hindu Rashtra, that is, “a Hindu state.” That is their objective.

RSS has eight million members in nearly sixty thousand branches, which they call shakhas. RSS has only male members. It has a mind-boggling array of affiliated organizations. These include organizations working among students, among lawyers, workers, farmers. They have set up organizations to provide social services and charity. There is an organization to rewrite history to suit the RSS’s worldview, for example, to say that India had a glorious Hindu past, that Muslims invaded India and thus led to India’s degeneration. There is a children’s cultural organization. There is one for cow protection, because many Hindus consider the cow to be a sacred animal. There is an organization to promote “family values.” There is an organization to promote small industries. There is one for doctors and one for ex-servicemen (veterans). There is one for writers. There are organizations to work among Indigenous communities. They have organizations that run schools. They have a religious wing: the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), or Universal Hindu Council.

Aijaz Ahmad has a formulation, that RSS wants to be both the Church and the State.6 That prospect is truly terrifying. The RSS is indeed moving in that direction—it is trying to control Hindu monks; it is taking control of Hindu temples. There are countries where religion and state are deeply enmeshed, deeply intertwined, but if the RSS manages this in India, the scale of it will be unprecedented.

The VHP, the religious wing of the RSS, has a paramilitary wing called the Bajrang Dal. They are among the most important sections of stormtroopers in Indian fascism. They are young, excitable people, often unemployed. In classical fascism, stormtroopers were often drawn from the ranks of the Lumpenproletariat, a large section of which would be unemployed young people. There is a clear parallel here.

Communal violence polarizes people on the basis of religious lines. That is beneficial for parties like BJP, which seek to create a “Hindu vote bank.” Once people are polarized on religious lines, and more Hindus consolidate behind the idea that Hindus should unite against Muslims and Christians, it creates a very conducive atmosphere for a party like BJP, which presents itself as the savior of the Hindus. Communal violence is something that the RSS has systematically used from the time of its birth. That is how the RSS-BJP increased its mass support in many parts of India. The RSS also provides physical and arms training to its cadre and regularly uses violence to try and subdue its political opponents.

In the 1980s, the RSS, the VHP, and the BJP embarked on a campaign to build a new temple for the Hindu god Rama at a place called Ayodhya in the state of Uttar Pradesh. They wanted to build this temple on the site of a sixteenth-century mosque, called Babri Masjid. RSS and VHP claimed that the mosque had been built in the place where Rama, the Hindu god, was born. They claimed that Muslim rulers had destroyed a temple that stood at that spot and then built a mosque over it. So they wanted to demolish that mosque and build a new temple for the Lord Rama.

They were helped along by decisions of the Congress government, led by Rajiv Gandhi, which facilitated the entry of Hindus into the Babri Masjid to offer prayers there. In 1992, a massive mob of activists of the RSS, VHP, BJP, and Bajrang Dal demolished the Babri Masjid, while the state machinery stood by passively. That was a major event, the destruction of a major monument which was important for the Muslim community. Communal violence raged all across India. This campaign to build a temple, the demolition, and the communal clashes afterwards all led to a strengthening of the communal camp and mass support for the BJP and the RSS.

MK: With this backdrop of communal violence and communal polarization, what kinds of economic policies has the BJP pursued in power?

SD: After Modi took power, there have been a series of blunders in economic policy. The worst of these was demonetization, announced in November 2016—the government withdrew currency notes of denominations Rs. 500 and Rs. 1000, thus sucking 86 percent of the Indian currency in circulation out of the economy. There was also the introduction of the goods and services tax, which had a deep adverse impact on the informal sector and on the finances of state governments. And of course, the thoroughly incompetent manner in which the Modi government has handled the pandemic crisis. All of these have contributed to the Indian economy now facing among the worst recessions in the major economies of the world. There is a deep crisis of livelihood as far as the Indian people are concerned.

Like classical fascism, the BJP also came to power in the midst of worsening economic conditions, although there was no prospect of the Left coming to power. There is no political party strong enough to take power on behalf of the workers and peasants of India.

Nevertheless, India’s monopoly capitalists all lined up behind Narendra Modi, even before he was elected. They saw in him a leader who could serve their interests, even more than the Congress Party. The Congress had introduced neoliberal economic reforms in India and did the bidding of finance capital. Their rule led to a deep agrarian crisis in India. About four hundred thousand farmers took their own lives as a result of this crisis. That was very much part of the economic situation that paved the way for the rise of the BJP.

Ever since coming to power, the BJP has faithfully carried out their duty on behalf of the corporate-financial oligarchy. It is neoliberalism on steroids. They have been selling our public-sector industries. They have been trying to dilute labor laws to the detriment of workers, reducing their bargaining power, taking away unionizing rights, and making it increasingly easier for employers to hire and fire. Even before the pandemic, India had the highest unemployment rate in forty-five years. Even before the pandemic, the purchasing power of the people, reflected in per capita consumption expenditure, was declining.

The BJP has ruled for the big bourgeoisie in general, but its rule has been particularly beneficial to a set of favored capitalists, like the Ambanis and the Adanis. Mukesh Ambani is the richest Indian; he heads an empire of industries: Reliance Industries. And then there is Gautam Adani, who heads Adani Group, another corporate conglomerate. These groups have benefited disproportionately under Modi rule. While many other companies are facing great difficulties, especially since the pandemic, Reliance is raising massive amounts of money and is claiming to have gone debt-free. Adani has just gobbled up six airports. Adani did not have any experience running airports, but it has been awarded the rights to run six airports. These are just two examples. Reliance Industries was originally into polyester, textiles, petrochemicals, and petroleum, and they have diversified into telecom, Internet, retail, and so on. Adani was into commodity trading and ports, then diversified into power, shipping, et cetera, and is now into airports as well. They are solidly behind BJP. Privatization of public-sector enterprises has accelerated under BJP rule, which has provided massive tax cuts to the corporates. The overall support of the corporates to BJP is such that 79 percent of corporate donations in India have gone to the BJP in 2018–2019. In 2017–2018 it was 95 percent.

It’s not the case that the corporates in India hate the Congress, the political party which has ruled India for the longest time. The Congress organization has been weakened considerably, over many years, and it doesn’t have any ideology to rally people behind it. BJP has Hindutva. They can talk about Hindu unity; they can preach hatred against Muslims. They offer people something to rally around, even though it is something hideous. The Congress has no ideology to speak of. Other than the prospect of making money by becoming a Congress leader, there is nothing that can attract people to the Congress. It is unable to offer a viable opposition these days. The corporates have not found the need to support the Congress, and the BJP has been successful in keeping the corporates on its side.

The BJP is also aware that to get to power, you need mass support. Fascism is propped up by finance capital, but it is also a mass movement. BJP claims that they are the biggest political party in the world, with a claimed membership of 180 million. It’s not the case that they’re all active members, but it is an indication of the number of people who want to be overtly associated with the BJP. Survey data on the general elections of 2019 shows that support for the BJP among the poor has increased to 36 percent compared to 24 percent in 2014. India is a country with steep inequalities. The rich are a tiny minority, and the middle class is also quite small. Any political party would need the support of the lower middle classes and the poor to win. Through various means, the BJP has managed to win the necessary mass support.

From its birth in 1925, the RSS has engaged in a politics centered around communal violence. All incidents of communal violence don’t get the same kind of coverage in the media. The Gujarat massacre of 2002 was, of course, big news. It got a lot of coverage in the international media as well. But much smaller communal clashes take place in numerous places which don’t get that kind of coverage. Such clashes are enough to create polarization in various regions, even if they don’t lead to deaths. For example, there might be some procession of Muslims on some festive occasion, somebody throws a stone into their midst, and a clash starts. Then there is propaganda that Muslims started the clash. So in that region, people get polarized on religious lines, and thus a Hindu vote bank is created. This is a method that has been replicated in numerous places. Communal violence is a key element of the RSS’s attempts to reshape India into an increasingly Hindu state.

Propaganda is crucial in order to win mass support, and that is something the RSS-BJP has been extraordinarily efficient at. It controls the media landscape, because the media is dominated by corporate media, and the corporates are lined up behind BJP. They have done solid organizational work for nearly a century, and they have perfected the art of propaganda.

Let me give you an example from the Left-ruled state of Kerala. In the entire history of Kerala, the BJP has had only one member in the state legislative assembly. But even in this state, the BJP is able to mislead people into believing all sorts of things. For example, there is a big housing project known as LIFE Mission, which the Left government of Kerala is implementing. Almost 240,000 houses have been built as part of this project. But RSS-BJP activists have been campaigning that this is a scheme of the Modi government, and as a result of sustained propaganda, there are many people who actually believe this claim. Because of its hold over the media, and because of its sheer financial power, flush with corporate money, the RSS-BJP is able to greatly expand its campaign networks, including on social media: WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, all of that. There is a huge apparatus that is often termed the BJP IT cell, which churns out propaganda and pushes it through social media. All these are part of the mechanisms through which the BJP wins mass support, even as its policies favor big capital.

And of course there is the network of schools I mentioned earlier. RSS runs numerous schools across India. RSS affiliate Vidya Bharati runs 13,000 schools, with 3.2 million students and 146,000 teachers. It is the largest private school network in India. There is another RSS organization which runs 54,000 single-teacher schools, mainly in areas where tribal or Indigenous people live. These schools have more than 1.5 million students.

In states where the BJP is in power, the syllabus in state-run schools is also changed to enable the teaching of unscientific beliefs, the mixing of myths with history, the peddling of caste prejudices and gender stereotypes, and the propagation of religious hatred. Once children move through this system for decades, you have entire generations trained to hate the religious minorities and well adjusted to the Hindutva worldview.

MK: The RSS seeks to exploit communalism as the organizing principle of Indian society. In doing so, how does Hindutva engage the other major cleavages, such as caste, that have shaped Indian life and society for so long?

SD: How has the RSS-BJP navigated the issue of caste? That is a complex question. As I said earlier, RSS’s theory is not a coherent one. What is this Hindu nation that it seeks to build? In Hinduism, there is the caste system, embedded in traditional Hindu theology. In a Hindu nation, will this be retained?

If you look at earlier Hindutva ideologues, some spoke of caste as an impediment in their efforts to create a unified Hindu unity. On the other hand, there are others such as the current head of the RSS, Mohan Bhagwat, who often quotes from the ancient text Manusmriti, in which caste divisions are very clearly delineated. Almost eighteen years after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, on August 5, 2020, the foundation stone for a new Ram temple was laid at the spot where the Babri Masjid once stood. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself attended the ceremony. Mohan Bhagwat recited lines from the Manusmriti saying that people should accept Brahmin domination. Recently, BJP activists in Tamil Nadu led a demonstration against remarks made by another political leader against the Manusmriti. This may be the first time the BJP has publicly demonstrated in favor of Manusmriti.

With the RSS-BJP in power, enjoying so much corporate support, winning elections by a big majority, able to muzzle dissent and imprison political opponents, they feel that they can act with impunity. In this context, despite all talk about Hindu unity, the central cabinet is dominated by dominant castes. Uttar Pradesh, the most populous state in India, has the BJP’s Yogi Adityanath, a rabidly communal man, as its chief minister. He and his cabinet ministers are mostly from dominant castes. In July 2017, the BJP government of Uttar Pradesh appointed 312 government lawyers out of which 90 percent were from the dominant castes, with Brahmins alone accounting for almost half the total number. When BJP governments make appointments to powerful positions, dominant castes, who form a minority of the population, are disproportionately favored. The BJP government at the center has slashed budget funds for the welfare of Dalits and Indigenous communities. RSS leaders often speak out against affirmative action for the oppressed castes. Despite all talk of Hindu unity, it seems that the RSS envisions a subordinate position for oppressed castes. Now, in spite of that, how did they win mass support?

If you look at Bajrang Dal, the paramilitary wing of the VHP, a large section of them are unemployed youth, and many of them are from oppressed castes.7 How does the RSS manage this?

Prabhat Patnaik points out that classical fascism was able to eliminate unemployment through military spending, while contemporary fascism, which is beholden to finance capital, is unable to eliminate unemployment.8 What do the fascists in India do then? They tell the unemployed youth, “The degeneration caused by the Muslims, Christians, and so on is the reason for your misery. Come and join us. Let us regain the glory of ancient Hindu India.” They give a sense of identity to these unemployed youth who have been oppressed their whole lives but who now feel that they are powerful. The RSS and its frontal organizations also make the effort to invent or reinterpret myths, to provide a “pride of place” for many oppressed castes within Hindu mythology. Instead of substantive rights or redistribution of resources, the RSS offers oppressed castes some avenues for their resentment towards the system to be diverted towards violence against religious minorities and to feel good about themselves.

It is clear that the RSS has no commitment to reform as far as the caste system is concerned. But if they find that opposing a progressive movement or court order on caste is not politically useful, then they may not oppose it. For example, there are temples in some parts of India where women are not allowed to enter. One such temple was the Shani Shingnapur temple, in the state of Maharashtra. The BJP was in power there in 2016, when a court order allowed women entry into the temple. The BJP permitted it because they were in power, and they saw no political advantage in opposing it.

Now contrast this with what happened in 2018, when the Supreme Court of India pronounced a verdict that allowed women’s entry into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. The Left government of Kerala supported the verdict and said it will implement the verdict. The RSS decided this was a “golden opportunity.” Those were the exact words used by the BJP’s Kerala State President. The RSS and its affiliated organizations opposed women’s entry into the Sabarimala temple and embarked on a violent campaign. Kerala has a long history of struggles demanding that oppressed castes be allowed entry into temples, particularly during the first half of the twentieth century. These constituted an important part of the anticaste struggles in the state. During the Sabarimala turmoil, many in contemporary Kerala connected the legacy of struggles against caste oppression, struggles which produced the fertile ground for the Left in Kerala to grow, to the struggle against gender oppression, around the question of temple entry for women.

The RSS is adept at talking in multiple tongues on many issues, including the issue of caste. Going by the pronouncements of the leaders of the Hindutva forces, and going by their actions, we can be certain that the RSS has no interest in reforming the caste system. When there is no commitment, the trend will favor the status quo, to propagate the rule of the dominant castes. Therefore, under the RSS-BJP’s Hindu Rashtra, there is no chance of the lot of the oppressed castes becoming substantially better. Forget emancipation, which will require a revolution.

MK: You’re suggesting that the RSS is extremely effective with its propaganda and its mass fronts in offering a politics of hatred in place of people’s genuine need for dignity. The RSS offers hatred as a container to fill that vacuum, that hole, in so many people. What programs has the Left put forward to oppose this feeding of hatred, and to fulfill the need for dignity?

SD: It might be useful to look at Kerala, as an example where the Left is still the most powerful organizational force and where the struggle against caste can be seen in somewhat clearer terms. We often say that the communist moment in Kerala grew on soil which was tilled by social reform movements. These movements were mostly anticaste movements, movements that tried to eradicate the most horrible forms of caste oppression. Many of the early communist leaders were active participants of these struggles. Some communist leaders like A. K. Gopalan were prominent leaders of such struggles. These movements flourished in the first half of the twentieth century, and by the 1940s, some of the major anticaste struggles were being led by communists. Later on, the struggle against untouchability was bolstered by the work of the agricultural workers’ union, which was led by communists. The work of the All-India Peasants’ Union (the All-India Kisan Sabha) was crucial in the anticaste struggle. For peasants to unite and fight their immediate oppressors, the landlords, they had to engage in a struggle over dignity. It was not just a struggle against economic exploitation. They were being humiliated, violently repressed. Through struggle, they began to stand tall before the landlord, address the landlord by his name, to stop using self-denigrating terms, stop speaking of themselves as servants or slaves. They gained the confidence to assert, “If the lord beats us, we’ll beat back.” This was a militant struggle. In Kerala, the work of the peasants’ union, the agricultural workers’ union, the communist party—all of these have been instrumental in weakening caste oppression. The caste system is still there, but the worst excesses of the caste system, still visible in many parts of India, are not as visible in Kerala. Land reforms, spearheaded by communist state governments, broke the dominance of the upper-caste feudal landlords. Land reform allowed the tenant farmers to stand up. They now had their own land. Likewise, the agriculture workers also got some land, their bargaining power increased, and they were organized into trade unions. They built organized strength to fight social oppression and economic exploitation.

This is the story in Kerala, where there has been some success. In the last one and a half decades or so, communists in India have set up various platforms for anticaste struggle in different parts of India. There is the Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front (TNUEF), a coalition of more than one hundred organizations, led by the CPI(M).9 There are similar organizations in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Kerala. At the all-India level, there is the Dalit Shoshan Mukti Manch (Forum for the Liberation of Dalits from Oppression). These are communist-led platforms that coordinate action on the anticaste front.

The TNUEF has led temple-entry struggles and struggles against other practices related to untouchability. Among these is the two-tumbler system. This is a practice whereby people of oppressed castes are not allowed to enter tea shops and instead have to stand outside and have tea from glasses kept by the window. There are places where Dalits could not get a haircut in a barber’s salon. So there were struggles demanding the right for Dalits to get their hair cut inside salons. In some temples in Karnataka, for example, devotees belonging to oppressed castes have to roll their bodies over leftovers of food that has been eaten by Brahmins. Communists have led struggles against that. These are struggles against inhuman practices. These struggles for basic dignity point the way forward, along with the organization of peasants and workers, to build organized strength against the oppression and exploitation that they face.

MK: You are giving us a snapshot of profoundly courageous, painstaking work in different localities around India, organizing some of the most oppressed people to fight their humiliation and degradation, building new social unities through struggle against Hindutva’s politics of hate, which has resulted in such devastating consequences for the vast majority of Indians and incredible returns for the ultrawealthy minority.

Manu Karuka is the author of Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad and assistant professor of American studies at Barnard College.