Merchants of Death

When Sonia Gandhi characterized Modi as “Merchant of Death” after Gujarat carnage, it was the most apt description for the man who supervised pogrom of Muslims in Gujarat under his watch.  It was déjà vu in Delhi, when his henchman Amit Shah and his deputies orchestrated another such carnage of Muslims.  Killings and deaths don’t flinch Modi; he is the architect of death, Gujarat and Delhi are his monuments.  It is not enough for Modi to drench his hands in blood, he wants to bathe in it – for that, mere states are not enough, the trail of blood must flow all over the country.  And what an opportunity COVID-19 crisis presented, it was God sent for Modi.  By implementing the most brutal lockdown anywhere in the world, he now has blood spattered all over the country.  Deaths give him macabre satisfaction; only eclectic league of mass-murderers have that capacity to feel such deathly calmness.  Sans any conscience such psychopaths do not even bat an eyelid when migrant workers are cut to pieces on train tracks, when they die in their long march home, when they die of hunger due to no work, when they kill themselves due to sheer hopelessness and indignity of existence the current crisis has created.  He is impervious to human suffering; in his one way monologues, he never bothers to mention the dire and inhuman state of crores of migrant workers.  Workers are nothing but necessary evil to make the wheels of economy turn, and they dare not have any decency in any form afforded to them.  What better moment can come along than now to turn this crisis into yet another ‘masterstroke’ by stripping the workers of all labor rights and protections, and relegating them to the state of bonded labor.  His satraps in different states are blazing the trail in this inhuman subversion of natural justice and dignity of working life.  These workers are tolerated only as vote banks, and once their usefulness as vote bank is over, they can very well go back to being slaves.  This aligns well with the grand Hindutva project, which can exist only on the backs of slavish working class, resulting in establishment of the most violent, unequal, caste based society.  And pursued this goal must be, ruthlessly and relentlessly. 

The migrant labor crisis has exposed the true intentions of BJP/RSS/Hindutva gang – they don’t care about Hindus in general either, their sole aim is to formalize and legalize a class based society, where upper caste Hindus, who mainly constitute the bourgeoisie, controlling most of country’s resources, to become permanent ruling class.  No scope is to be left for the underprivileged working class to rise and challenge the supreme authority of this bourgeoisie class.  Religious sanction of caste comes tremendously handy in the project, where natural division of labor was ossified through religious texts and legal constructs of Hindu society.  Communalism against Muslims is another manifestation of the superstructure in place, which can be used as a powerful anesthesia for Hindu population at large to keep them numb with hate, while chipping away their fundamental and constitutional rights.  The real power lies in controlling the majority population; the hateful violence and politics against minority population is simply a device to divert the majority population from the real issue of production relations.  Hitler successfully did it in Germany, where as he institutionalized hatred and violence against Jews, the Germans thought he was doing a great service to the nation.  It was only after ruin of Germany in world war they realized that anti-Semitism was merely a tool to keep them distracted, while fascism was being consolidated.  A similar pattern is being followed by Modi in India. 

Migrant laborers are mostly poor Hindus coming from lower or backward castes, who together with workers of other communities form the proletariat class in India.  Most of hard physical labor that is essential for churning the economy are reserved for them.  People who do mental labor come from upper class, mainly comprising upper caste Hindus.  The caste distinctions mostly align with class distinctions, and nothing has more brazenly shown this than the migrant labor crisis.  The bourgeoisie cannot get rid of them, but at the same time refuses to pay them living wages.  The profits are derived directly from that labor; in Marxian terms, the tremendous surplus value they produce provides the material basis for the bourgeoisie/the upper castes to enjoy the comforts which they feel they have earned or are entitled to.  Without the continuous exploitation and dehumanization of these laborers, such class distinctions are not possible.  The document of constitution still provides some façade of equality and is often invoked for the greatness of the country, but now even that façade has become intolerable for the Hindutva fascist, and they are sharpening their fangs to tear it down.  Slavery is their wet dream.  Their capitalist cohorts want complete abolition of any labor and human rights; not an easy project, so distraction in form of communalism becomes an evil necessity, otherwise violence of caste directed at lower class is too obvious for majority to ignore.  This caste and communal violence breeds death, but is necessary for class based society to flourish.  These merchants of death do not bother themselves with conscience for human life.  

COVID-19 crisis has exposed the underbelly of capitalism.  The beacon of capitalism, the US, with enormous resources, the richest country in the world stands today with maximum deaths, and spiraling infections.  Even after more than a month of shelter in place, the curve has not dipped, the deaths, the infections keep on rising every day, now crossing 1.3M mark.  When a small communist state of Kerala can control it, why not the US?  The leading capitalist country in the world has its resources concentrated in just few hands who refuse to share any wealth with the class beneath theirs.  Who is the worst affected by this pandemic?  It is tempting but is misleading to think that the corona virus is affecting all sections of society uniformly.  It is the poor and vulnerable of our society, the working class, mostly bereft of any social or economic security is getting affected the most.  This is the population that cannot maintain social distancing or practice all other kinds of health and safety precautions due to dire question of life and death they face on a daily basis.  The daily struggle is to survive and get by.  They live in ghettos, slums or other high density housing where the struggle is for most basic amenities like clean drinking water and sanitation.  It is a tale of two worlds – the haves and the have nots.  If they don’t work daily, they will soon be facing death due to hunger.  Nowhere in the world it is more starkly represented as in India, where the plight of migrant labor is a blot on collective humanity of the nation.

It is the utmost duty of the working class to unite themselves and struggle together to overthrow their oppressor.  The artificial social differences created at the superstructure level to keep them divided must be firmly cast aside for good, and should work towards class unity.  Their base is indispensable for capitalist economy as reflected in refusal of some states to allow the workers to go home.  Without the working class, the economy will come to a grinding halt and cannot be started.  This is the power the working class holds, a class that is most ignored, most marginalized and most disrespected.  The masks of ruling elite have come off.  If communist parties are true to their principles, the COVID-19 just like ruling classes, also provides them an excellent opportunity to become vanguard of such struggle and throw off the yoke of class exploitation.