Humpty Dumpty

In the last century, when the world witnessed the horrors of fascism; the elements of fascism, it’s rise and fall were well-documented.  The warning signs of fascism are well-established.  Jairus Banaji’s work on fascism explored the historical contours of fascism, and painstakingly explained how the vigilante storm-troopers drawn from mostly unemployed and lumpen elements of society were the key feature of a society descending into fascism.  Employed by the fascist state, these storm-troopers became the guardians of fascism on ground and unleashed terror and violence on minorities and dissenting population as needed by the fascist state.  They were the foot soldiers, above law, protected by their supreme leader.  The Nazis took fascism to its ultimate expression by carrying out the genocide of minority Jews, who were made the enemies of the German society and the German state.  The propaganda and hatred against Jews were so viciously normalized that the average German did not feel as if anything bad was happening and that the Jews deserved their murderous fate.  They just went inside their homes when the ashes and the stench of the incinerated bodies of Jews covered the sky in their villages.  Goebbels came up with the doctrine of repeating lies to the public so that they be accepted as truths.  Laurence W. Britt laid out fourteen defining characteristics of fascism by studying seven fascist regimes of last century.  He identified that a roughly common theme ran through all fascist regimes – Hitler's Nazi Germany; Mussolini's Italy; Franco's Spain; Salazar's Portugal; Papadopoulo's Greece; Pinochet's Chile and Suharto's Indonesia.  One can add Myanmar to the list.  Similar traits can be observed in Modi’s regime in India.

It has a different name in India – Hindutva; an ideology for Hindu Rashtra akin to Aryan purity ideology of Nazi Germany, and hence the essential features are the same.  In fact, the original proponents of Hindutva held Nazis in high regard.  The fascist Hindutva ideology laid its ground on two main planks – incitement and pandering of visceral hatred for Muslims and other minorities; and creation of Hindutva storm-troopers, who openly terrorized minorities and larger society, and were above any law.  Once this groundwork was laid, the fascist structure was erected quite quickly in Modi’s first term.  Looking purely through electoral lens blurs the picture, but once analyzed objectively, the signs of fascism emerged pretty clearly.  Modi created a strong but false nationalistic rhetoric, accusing anyone questioning him or his government’s policies as anti-national.  He increasingly mixed state and religion, unabashedly pursued the agenda of Hindutva; made beef, cow-vigilantism, Ram mandir as part of national discourse without any regard for his constitutional position.  He openly suppressed democratic institutions including judiciary, which became a toy in the hands of the government.  A series of judgements from Supreme Court went in favor of government despite losing arguments in the court by state and its affiliates.  Mainstream visual media was controlled to such an extent that they now are nothing but propagandist mouthpieces for Modi, and constantly vilify and slander anybody who opposes Modi.  They launched coordinated and willful attacks against opposition parties and leaders to make a mockery of them and delegitimize them as political alternatives.  Mob lynching of Muslims continued without much repercussion or recourse to law.  Modi maintained deafening silence at their murderous plight.  Instead, he dog-whistled his based inciting violence against Muslims, making Muslims enemies to unify his far-right Hindu base.  A hate campaign full of lies, disinformation, historical distortions and filth was unleashed that rivaled Nazi propaganda and Rwanda Radio.  

As another classic symptom of fascism, he normalized crony capitalism and openly protected the interests of the biggest capitalists of India, who also happened to be the biggest donors of his party.  In the same vein he worked to erode workers’ rights and miniscule protection that the constitution provided.  A relatively untarnished Election Commission of India was bent for electoral benefits of Modi and his party, and in the event of losing any state election, representatives of other parties were bought by sheer money and state power.  Modi created frenzied anti-Pakistan and national security rhetoric, indulged in demagoguery for armed forces, whose sole intention was to score in elections.  Modi is notorious for his disdain for human rights from his Gujarat days.  He shut down Greenpeace, Amnesty International and other human-rights organizations, and went after human-rights activists with vengeance, falsely implicating them.  Bhima-Koregaon case is a glaring example where damning evidence was implanted against human rights activists to put them behind bars.  Every other trick in the book was applied to harass activists who work for people, the names are all too well known.  And finally, Modi showed an utter disdain for arts and sciences, and anything that remotely had any intellectual bearing; comparing Harvard to hard work, and falsifying his academic degree.  Modi thus checked all boxes for fascism.

Despite all signs, the fascistic nature of Modi’s rule was largely ignored by media and intellectuals.  The demonization of Muslims was a vehicle to consolidate his authoritarian rule, which now only lacks constitutional legitimacy.  The state under Modi has increasingly come to serve the capital, brazenly ignoring people’s needs of survival and tearing down the façade of whatever was left of the bourgeois democracy.  It is now probably too much work for the Modi government to keep up the pretense of democracy, and they have now resorted to a reign of terror and violence through draconian sedition laws, slapping them on citizens indiscriminately, on young and old alike, on most frivolous pretexts.  The reign of terror is further extended through their storm-troopers who are recruited as vigilantes for not only physical spaces but also digital spaces to tattle, harass and punish anyone who seems against Modi.  The divisive agenda is no longer based on religion and caste, but it’s people against people, it’s ruling regime and its acolytes versus the rest.  A most diabolical game is at play that not only threatens national security but is killing secular and democratic India in a very planned fashion.

The ignorance and dim-wittedness of even the alternative media is mind-boggling.  Instead of openly calling out Modi as fascist, they are trapped in neutrality, election-mongering and vilifying opposition parties.  If protests are outlawed, media acts as hitman, dissent is criminalized, protesters are maligned as terrorists and anti-nationals, judiciary is slave to the ruling party, parliamentary procedures are glossed over, there is not much space left for opposition.  Opposition is always crushed by fascist regimes, as democratic spaces are purposefully shrunk.  With police and state agencies used against them, they only fight to survive.  They should not be the focus of discussion.  They too seem to lack the intellectual capacity to counter this fascist onslaught.  But still the alternative media and other well-meaning intellectuals still believe in Modi’s strongman image and popularity even though the evidence points to the contrary.  As mainstream media turns into a gang of Modi, other section of media is befuddled, confused and simply aghast at the state of affairs.  They keep on analyzing disparate events, getting shocked at daily lows by the state conduct and regurgitating constitutionality, when those very notions are being slowly rendered irrelevant by Modi’s fascist rule.  They do not realize it’s fascism, they are still trapped in narratives set by fascist Modi, and keep trying saving a tree when the whole forest is on fire.

The hope is only from mass movement.  As the farmers’ protest galvanizes different sections of society and continues to transcend into a mass movement, it can spell doom for this government.  We may not have Red Army that liberated Auschwitz this time; we are in far more dire straits than we realize, and we the people of India need to rise to the occasion and bring an end to the descent into fascism under Modi.  A national mass movement akin to independence movement is the need of the hour.  Only then, my nursery rhyme will come to fruition:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall,
All the king's horses and all the king's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

He fell off the wall - from the highest high - so high!
He had a great fall - from the highest high - high!
All the king's horses and all the king's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again.