The Attack on Democracy and Secularism in India
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- Published on Thursday, 28 April 2016 23:45
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A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1252 .... April 29, 2016
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The Attack on Democracy and Secularism in India
Raju Das
There are things. And there are conditions of existence of things. In India, as in all countries of the world, many social problems exist. Close to 700 million Indians do not have access to food that will provide the minimum number of calories required for a healthy life. In other words, there is a massive amount of absolute poverty. And then there are conditions of existence of problems such as poverty. These conditions include not only anti-poor economic policies of a government but also anti-democratic measures which stop people from fighting against poverty, in a united and effective way. These measures include those that divide up the masses along lines of religion and crush dissent... that challenges a government's pro-business policies or actions of its foot-soldiers. This is indeed what we witness now-a-days in India which is under a rabid right-wing Hindu nationalist government exhibiting fascistic traits. The deployment of anti-democratic measures becomes a positive condition for the existence of poverty and similar problems.
The struggle to remove poverty and similar problems must include the struggle against the conditions for these problems. This latter struggle includes the struggle for the very right to struggle. So, the struggle against social problems is really a two-pronged struggle: a) the struggle against the cause of these problems that lie in the economic/class system, including government policies, and b) the struggle to create conditions for this struggle.