February, 2020 — Anti-fascist protesters in Delhi, India fight Modi’s police
March 8 — Four days of state-sponsored fascist carnage in Delhi, India has left over one hundred dead (mostly Muslims). Thousands were gravely injured. Tens of thousands were burned out or driven away from their homes.
Prime Minister Modi and his ruling party (BJP) prepared this horrific pogrom. For weeks they spewed hate against the millions who were opposing the BJP’s xenophobic citizenship laws. Modi’s trusted fascist partner Amit Shah, head of the powerful state police, meticulously planned the attack. It was under Modi and Shah that thousands of Muslims were murdered in the state of Gujarat in 2002.
The BJP armed its members with metal pipes, gasoline and guns. They went on a rampage,
attacking and killing Muslims and torching their homes and property. Police, acting under direct orders, protected the fascists and even joined their gruesome violence. They blocked ambulances taking the injured to hospitals. A lone judge issued an emergency ruling in the middle of the night, forcing police to provide safe passage to the injured. He was immediately transferred to another state.
Students and workers, including members of the International Communist Workers’ Party, resisted the fascists and assisted the victims. Students from Jawaharal Nehru University and other colleges opened their dormitory rooms and turned them into makeshift medical emergency rooms. Many doctors and other trained healthcare providers worked day and night to take care of the victims of the Delhi violence.
“When the authorities found out that the JNU campus was being used to treat the injured victims, they sent police to evacuate us,” reported a comrade. “They threatened to suspend any student involved in providing help to the injured. We had to shift the patients to private homes of many sympathetic Hindu families, to other campuses and to the local Gurudwaras (Sikh temples) who generously provided food and medicine.”
ICWP members in Delhi contacted comrades in Bengaluru and Chennai and asked for financial help for the victims of the fascist pogrom.
“Here is Rs. 1000 ($14) to help the victims in Delhi,” said comrade Asha in Bengaluru. She is a garment worker who makes about $110 a month. She expressed tremendous anger and pain as she read a report that fascists had tossed a four-year-old boy into a fire.
Asha led other comrades in her factory and neighborhood, and comrades in Chennai, to raise a sum equivalent in purchasing power to about US$20,000 (over 300,000 South African Rands).
The ICWP members held regular meetings to give a communist outlook on the events.
Italian fascists in the 1920s violently attacked workers, union members and communists. Then they would claim to be the real victims. BJP and its parent organization RSS follow their lead. They accuse Muslims of being invaders, outsiders, destroyers of ancient Hindu culture.
But the pogroms were not a religious Hindu-Muslim religious conflict. By portraying Hindus as victims, fascist BJP is attacking the whole working class.
This capitalist violence is a response to the serious crisis of global capitalism. The meteoric rise of Chinese imperialism has penetrated every corner of the world. In contrast, US imperialism has steadily declined since the Vietnam War. This decline accelerated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Today, US imperialists know that they need to confront their Chinese rivals. However, they can’t do that while trying to control the Middle East.
The Delhi pogrom was planned and executed to coincide with Trump’s state visit to India. As Trump and Modi effusively greeted each other in Delhi’s vast Presidential Palace, smoke from the massacre billowed just 6 km away. Modi was letting Trump know that India could be a junior partner in countering China. His ruthless violence sent chilling signals to the Middle East and beyond.
Capitalists worldwide are witnessing falling rates of profit and stockpiles of unsold commodities. Their response is to attack workers internally to reduce wages. For this they use racism, xenophobia and fascism. Meanwhile, they require new markets. This contradiction is leading us closer to imperialist wars. The working class is forced to choose between fascism and communism.
In Delhi, ICWP comrades have encountered thousands of angry workers and students who want to change the system. Some have joined ICWP. These new members are full of hope and energy. They have seen the horrors of capitalism and they have a vision of the world without it. Their confidence and their utter disgust with bigotry is an inspiration to the international working class.
Our job is to recruit, recruit and recruit more to build a formidable force that will demolish capitalism forever.
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