Narendra Modi, leader of the openly fascist Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, came to power as the next Prime Minister of India by winning the recent elections. His victory was guaranteed by the billions of dollars spent on his campaign by the five largest Indian multinational corporations that control over 90 percent of India's economy.  Now the BJP, a violent Hindu nationalist party with a long history of racist mass murders, is set to rule India for the next five years.

The victory of the BJP comes as inter-imperialist rivalry sharpens and US imperialism rapidly declines.  The Indian capitalist bosses desperately need to expand their market share and control of natural resources worldwide.  They see the US decline as an opportunity to grow by making both short-term and long-term alliances with rival imperialists China and Russia. Chinese imperialists have supported Modi for years. Now the US is courting him.

By winning a large section of the Indian working class to fanatic Hindu nationalism, the BJP-led government will confront other capitalists in the world by building a strong military and attacking Indian workers. About 15% of Indians are Muslim and 80% are Hindu. The main section of the Indian ruling class built an anti-Muslim mass movement by financing the BJP, which accuses Muslims of being pro-Pakistani terrorists. 

In the last 60 years the BJP has carried out successive pogroms where impoverished Muslim workers were murdered, and pregnant women were gang-raped, savagely tortured and burnt alive to win the masses to Hindu nationalism.  However, masses of Hindu workers and students have risked their own lives to save the lives of the Muslim workers. 

In textbook fascist style, the BJP has built a base among the urban professionals to spearhead Hindu nationalism. The bosses have praised the elections in India as an overwhelming mandate for the BJP.  This claim exposes the class dictatorship that is democracy. Of over 800 million eligible voters, 66 % participated in the elections. The BJP received 31 % of those votes. That works out to only 1 out of every 5 eligible voters actually voted for the fascist BJP. 

Historically Hindu nationalism was built by the British ruling class during their colonial occupation to keep Indian workers divided.  All the political parties in India have modified this racist ideology in different ways to attack the working class. 

However, India also has a long history of the working class fighting back in unity.  In the 1920s, the Communist Party of India was formed in exile by five young communists from both Hindu and Muslim backgrounds.  During two world wars, the CPI built a mass base in some areas of India and was winning armed struggle against the Indian nationalist ruling class.

After WWII, the world communist movement led by the Soviet Union instructed the CPI to participate in the peaceful democratic process rather than continue armed struggle. This was consistent with the Khrushchev position of peaceful coexistence in which the Soviet Union would catch up with US imperialism in the production of consumer goods. The foundation of such a reactionary line was already unfolding in the Soviet Union during WWII when nationalism along with religion was used to mobilize workers to fight the Nazis.  By the war's end, internationalism was replaced with nationalism.

After World War II, in response to a mass movement for independence and mutinies of Indian soldiers in the British Army, India became independent of the British Empire, and was split into two countries, India and Pakistan. (Pakistan was split again in 1971 into Pakistan and Bangladesh). The 1947 partition was accompanied by ethnic cleansing and one of the largest forced migrations in history, with over ten million Muslims moving from India to Pakistan and Hi-dus and Sikhs moving from Pakistan to India. In the accompanying riots, more than a million people died.

The International Communist Workers' Party, ICWP, identifies wage slavery as the material basis of the reversal of  workers power in the Soviet Union and China.  The existence of the wage system creates the foundation for nationalism, racism, sexism and world wars for profit. 

The emergence of the BJP as the ruling party in India opens doors wide  for our party to build a mass movement for communism.  Millions of Hindu and Muslim workers and students are angry and ready to fight fascism.  Many already are fighting. Only communism can put an end to fascist capitalism.

Only ICWP organizes the international working class to end the tyranny of wage slavery.  Workers and students in and from India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan read Red Flag.  Many of them are immigrant workers in the Middle East and Europe.  We will intensify the struggle for readers to become active members of ICWP to fight for communist revolution.   

Communism Will Smash The Barbaric Wage System

Mukesh Ambani is the CEO of the largest Indian multinational, Reliance Industry.  The home he  built for his family, the most expensive dwelling ever built in the world, cost over one billion dollars.  The 28 story home has three helipads, hundreds of luxurious bedrooms, swimming pools, tennis courts, multimedia theaters, and tropical gardens. It is decorated with the most expensive furniture and diamond-studded chandeliers.  A staff of over 600 people works round the clock to maintain the house. Tellingly, the house is designed to withstand thermo-nuclear war.

In stark contrast, over 800 million workers in India live on less than 50 cents a day without running water or electricity.  Hundreds of millions in the slums of Indian cities have no access to basic services like toilets or clean water. 

No reform can end the brutal life capitalism creates for the workers who produce all value in society.  Only communist society, built for the needs of the working class, will end the barbarism that capitalism creates.