In our interview with our Indian comrades, we discussed their organizations; their ideological foundations, goals, and campaigns; the Indian student and university movement; the working-class struggle; the issue of peoples and their struggle; the state’s relationship with Zionism and the Palestinian cause; the country’s position within the capitalist imperialist system; and the globalizing war.
- Can you introduce Students for People’s Democracy to our readers? When and how were you founded? What are your ideological characteristics and primary aims? What are some recent campaigns you are engaged in?
Students for People’s Democracy (SfPD) was founded in March 2024 by a group of around 50 students, based mostly in Bangalore in the state of Karnataka in south India, looking to build a platform to fight against the BJP-led Brahminical Hindutva fascist regime and the oppressive social order on which it rests.
SfPD is a non-partisan, anti-fascist student mass organization. We recognize that the current fascist regime in India with its anti-people policies and perpetuation of caste violence, persecution of religious minorities, patriarchy, cis-heteronormativity, etc. is rooted in the exploitative production relations in our society, based on the exploitation of cheap labour power and raw materials by imperialism and its Indian intermediaries. Therefore, the struggles of students and youth against the fascist regime and these exploitative social norms must be rooted in class struggle, and orient towards the revolutionary struggle to dismantle these relations of production and establish toiling people’s democracy. Adherence to a specific ideology is not essential for joining SfPD, though many of our members read and discuss aspects of Marxism-Leninism and revolutionary struggles of the past and present, in India and around the world. Non-communist individuals who are opposed to different aspects of Brahminical Hindutva fascism and willing to base their work on a Marxist understanding of society are welcome to join. We place great emphasis on democratic functioning, to collectively fight against tendencies of the exploitative social order that permeate our organization as well. Our primary aims are to build a platform for students in and around Bangalore to organize around anti-fascist politics in campuses and across the city, and promote a revolutionary understanding of Indian society and the world.
Besides taking up day-to-day issues like hikes of student fees and public transport fare, SfPD has stood with people’s struggles in Karnataka and across India. We supported the long struggle of farmers in Devanahalli, on the outskirts of Bangalore, to halt the acquisition of their land by the state for foreign and domestic corporations, a struggle which ended in victory this August. We have opposed the eviction of the indigenous Jenu Kuruba tribe from Nagarahole in Karnataka, in the name of making a Tiger Reserve. In August, we organized a solidarity campaign for Advocate Rajat Kalsan, a Dalit activist who has fought for the rights of oppressed castes in several cases of caste atrocities, and was facing unlawful police detention and custodial torture. Last November, we organized a Pride event parallel to Bangalore’s mainstream Namma Pride March, to work towards an alternative to the pink-washing and corporatised Pride that excludes queer people who are from oppressed castes and poorer sections of society, and we emphasised that Pride is not only a celebration but a militant struggle. Besides, we are part of several joint forums, such as Bengaluru for Justice and Peace, which is part of the Palestine solidarity movement in India, and Karnataka People’s Forum against War on Adivasis, directed against the Indian state’s genocidal war on indigenous people in central India.
- What is the general status of student and university organizing in India? What are the problems that students are facing? Why do these problems arise?
The situation varies across India, with some regions seeing an organised political assertion and struggle by students, even at the face of continual crackdown, repression and depoliticisation. Repression on student organising has also intensified in the last decade, with students from oppressed backgrounds facing the greatest brunt of it. For example, in Delhi, two prominent student leaders from Muslim families were arrested in 2020 under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for protesting the BJP’s CAA-NRC citizenship laws, and still remain incarcerated and denied bail. In Kolkata earlier this year, the West Bengal Education Minister’s car ran over a student protestor, severely injuring him. Such examples abound in the country.
In Bangalore, there has been a persistent ban on party-based student politics within college campuses since 1989, which makes it harder for students to organise, contest elections and demand their rightful say in the affairs of the institutions which affect students the most. Electoral parties continued to back groups in student elections for a time, albeit not on paper. However, in 1997, student unions were completely banned in state universities of Karnataka, citing incidents of violence. Notably, these incidents of violence were not due to conflicts between progressive and reactionary political groups, but rather between different ruling class parties.
Nonetheless, students across universities – public and private – continue to struggle to organise and politicize themselves, and struggle for their rights. Last year, at Mount Carmel College (Bangalore), the administration decided to invite a businessman from Israel to deliver a talk, which several students found utterly shameless, especially in the midst of an ongoing genocide being committed by Israel. A number of students disrupted the talk and raised their voice for Palestine. However, the university management chose to double down on them and target the students in various different ways.
In 2023, Christ University (Bangalore) – which is notorious for extremely archaic, draconian and misogynistic dress-codes and utterly devastating attendance rules with heavy (and unaffordable) fines in case of violation – suspended some students for merely creating some posters to spread awareness about the difficulties faced by students due to the university’s regimented rules. With privatisation of education, this sort of a thing is becoming more of the norm, as private universities are tasked to produce a labour-force disciplined to sell cheap labour-power to imperialist corporations.
Problems faced by students in university are many, and they reflect the oppressive structures in our society at large.
Casteism, Exclusion and Attack on Reservations: Educational institutes continue to be dominated by a handful of upper castes, who have monopolised all major high positions, and who engage in various kinds of atrocious and discriminatory practices against students from Dalit, Bahujan (oppressed caste) and Adivasi (indigenous tribal) backgrounds. The institutional murder of a Dalit scholar Rohit Vemula in the city of Hyderabad by the Brahmanical fascist state and its Brahmanical lackeys in the university, gave rise to protests across the country. However, this gruesome incident of casteist bullying and institutional murder is only one instance among countless others.
When students from Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi communities enter a college, they are made to feel like they don’t belong there. They are taunted that they have entered the college by availing reservations, and that they aren’t meritorious enough. These students face constant humiliation, and as result there is a high rate of dropouts and suicides among them. Reservations for students from marginalized communities, which are themselves concessions won by deep and long-lasting struggle, are also being reversed and nullified by the state making it harder for the students to gain admission.
When students from a backward economic background enter Indian colleges, they face class-cultural shock. They find it difficult to make connections with students who are coming from economically privileged backgrounds, and they also feel excluded in social gatherings. Since connections and ties continue to be crucial for getting jobs in Indian society, all these factors play a great role in determining one’s chances of getting a job. In India, class and caste have a strong correlation, so all these issues are, in turn, issues of the Dalit, Bahujan, and Adivasi community students, as well as issues of students from toiling and working class backgrounds.
Communalism and Islamophobia: We have also witnessed a rise in Islamophobia and Hindutva chauvinism in Indian universities and colleges over the past decade. This manifests itself in the form of glorification of India’s past before the entry of Muslim rulers (including the rewriting of history), glorification of regressive cultural practices, and rationalizing them by giving pseudo-scientific reasons. For example, emphasizing vegetarianism, turning simple physical exercises into something supernatural, and inviting religious charlatans to speak in renowned Indian universities. Additionally, Muslims are treated as second-class citizens on campus, where it’s made nearly impossible for them to practice cultural customs or even wear markers of identity. In contrast, institutional funds are allocated for the celebration of Hindu festivals. Muslim students are otherized as if they don’t belong to this country.
We may also add that Indian university campuses can be broadly categorized into two categories: those that are liberal and have a good reputation in the country, and those that are not liberal and are not the face of the education system of the country. In the liberal campuses, Islamophobia and casteism are practiced in a subtler way, as these campuses are the face of the country’s education system. However, class-based and social exclusion is rampant in these campuses due to high fees, requiring social privileges to gain admission, and a better economic condition to afford tuition for entrance exam preparation. Alongside, colleges that are not considered the face of the education system exhibit rampant casteism, Islamophobia, and, in some campuses, class-based and social exclusion. In these colleges, students from dominant castes and elite sections of society often bring their expensive bikes and cars to campus to show off their social status. These campuses are comparatively less safe for female students, and students are often not gender-sensitized, with Brahmanical patriarchy also playing a role. Lumpen violence to demonstrate one’s social status is common in these colleges.
Moreover, we may state that in a class-divided, exploitative and retrograde social order like ours, educational institutions – far from being neutral spaces – reflect the oppressive nature of the society. We must struggle continually to ensure that students can exercise their right to a democratic campus, we must struggle against privatization and fee-hikes, against Islamophobic, casteist and misogynistic practices, every single day, while also struggling for a new social order where education and educational institutions will truly serve the needs of people, rather than profits.
- How do you assess the status of the working class struggle in India? India witnesses many large strikes, numbering millions of workers. How effective are the current labor strikes and labor unions in challenging capital’s power? How does the state repress the workers’ movements and what are the prevailing modes of resistance among the workers? What are ways in which the Modi government specifically enforces and sustains class domination ideologically, politically, culturally etc.?
While India continues to see annual general strikes, their political content has been diluted by the reformist leadership that persists across several parties and unions. These strikes are mainly one-day strikes, and declared well in advance – though the mass mobilizations effected are at least a symbolic show of strength. Yet pockets of militant resistance do arise, from platform workers unionising in gig economies, to ASHA (healthcare) and Anganwadi (childcare) workers fighting for recognition as workers, to industrial actions in auto and electronics sectors demanding secure employment and fair wages. These struggles represent both continuities and emergent forms of working-class politics.
There is an emergent working class in India with immense revolutionary potential, and the majority of them work in the informal sector and are a migrant labour-force from landless and poor peasant backgrounds. This section is most brutally exploited, and also remains unorganised into unions, as reformist parties and union officials don’t see any necessity in offering them support to unionise. Middlemen (labour contractors, sub-contractors, etc. as well as state bureaucrats and administrators) eat away at the worker’s wages; payment of wages are delayed and arbitrarily reduced with no way to contest; debt, usury and bonded labour are common in large parts of the country. Caste plays an important role in this extra-economic coercion and superexploitation of sections of workers. For example, sanitation workers are almost entirely from oppressed caste backgrounds – they are underpaid and dismissed at whim, attempts at unionizing are cracked down on, not to mention the social ostracization they face from oppressor castes as a whole.
The Modi government’s labour codes mark an attempt to institutionalize so-called employer flexibility, i.e, the capacity for multinational corporations to avail labour-power at dirt-cheap rates, while weakening collective worker’s rights. Strikes are criminalized, registration of unions is made more difficult, and mechanisms for arbitration and inspection are diluted. These have been welcomed by Indian capitalists, with some of them extolling a 90-hour work week. Beyond legislation, repression takes the form of police violence, sedition and UAPA cases, mass arrests of trade unionists, and blacklisting of militant workers. The BJP’s communalism reinforces the superexploitation of workers. For example, their citizenship laws effectively denaturalize many workers and poor peasants who have no property ownership documents to prove their residency, leaving them at the mercy of employers and landlords. Homes of Muslim workers are bulldozed with impunity, fascist lynch mobs attack Muslim communities in slums. Fearmongering about immigrants from Muslim-majority countries is used to justify crackdowns on migrant workers – e.g., Bengali-speaking migrant workers are tagged as Bangladeshi, arbitrarily arrested, and sometimes deported to Bangladesh, even if they are Indian citizens.
More broadly, the Brahminical Hindutva fascist ideology, with its casteism, communalism, great-nation chauvinism, and feudal patriarchy, is the extreme expression of what the ideology of the Indian ruling class has always been. The BJP/RSS machinery is adept at utilizing the Indian electoral system and all its loopholes, and they have sweeping control over mainstream news media and social media which they use to overwhelm dissenting voices. In the ideological sphere, they attack not just communism but all progressive ideologies as “anti-national”, for being opposed to their vision of a “Hindu state”. We have spoken above of the increasing “saffronization” of college campuses; the same is true for Indian society at large, with jingoistic cultural displays of dominant-caste Hindu supremacy fast becoming the rule, while any assertion of identity on the part of Muslims or oppressed castes is treated as an existential threat. The ugliest of the fascist Modi regime can be seen in not just the brutal lynchings of Dalits and Muslims who pose any perceived threat to their unchecked power, but also the military occupation and settler-colonial ethnic cleansing of Kashmir, and the genocidal war on indigenous tribes.
- What are the relationships between people’s struggles for self-determination and class struggles in India as an incredibly diverse country? How do indigenous struggles and other struggles for self-determination operate in India and Bangalore more specifically?
India is diverse to the extent that it is a prison-house of a multitude of nations, nationalities and tribes, with nearly two hundred different languages and cultures. While our ruling class’s narrative offers token words of praise to our “unity in diversity”, the reality is that our country is rife with national antagonism and oppression, with indigenous tribes and minority nationalities historically marginalized, dispossessed and exploited. Bengal, Punjab, and several other nations were forcefully fractured during partition at the end of British colonial rule, leading to immense casualties, while numerous nationalities were assimilated with larger ones into states, enabling their continued subjugation. National oppression has been an Indian ruling class consensus, even as the BJP heightens it as an indispensable part of its jingoistic “Indian” nationalism. BJP/RSS seeks to impose the Hindi language upon non-Hindi speaking nations, and stokes communal hatred against religious and national minorities.
One of the most glaring examples is Kashmir in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent. After the end of British colonial rule in 1947, Kashmiris were denied their UN-mandated right to a plebiscite to determine their nationhood, and divided between India and Pakistan as nominally autonomous territories, but in reality under occupation. India has committed repeated massacres in Kashmir, especially of the Muslim population. The Kashmiri people, rising up repeatedly to demand their right to self-determination in mass movements and armed resistance (under groups like Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front), have been brutally repressed, with India imposing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act to carry out mass arrests, disappearances and extrajudicial killings. The BJP government, in 2019, revoked Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution, removing the last shred of autonomy Kashmir had on paper. Since then, there have been widespread internet blackouts and crushing of any dissent, with over 700,000 Indian troops stationed there, in addition to an ongoing settler-colonial project geared towards ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri Muslim population. Agricultural and mineral resources are opened up to imperialist exploitation, with the Indian military additionally using coerced village labour.
The mineral-rich regions of central India have likewise been exploited by imperialism since colonial times, robbing the indigenous nationalities and tribes. After the transfer of power, foreign corporations have repeatedly partnered with Indian monopoly capitalists and the Indian state to seize land from indigenous peasants and tribespeople, deny them proper compensation (using pretexts like lack of qualifications or land ownership documents), and employ them for basically no pay in horribly dangerous and exploitative conditions. The human and environmental cost is immense; indigenous tribes have been reduced to just 20-30% of the population on their own land. Equally long is the history of indigenous people’s resistance to the plunder, to which the Indian state has responded with a genocidal onslaught. Indian armed forces and paramilitary forces have been deployed in waves since the 1970s, besides the infamous state-sponsored militia Salwa Judum that carried out brutal massacres and atrocities. At present, the state’s Operation Kagar, declared to be an anti-Maoist operation, has turned the Bastar district of Chhattisgarh into one of the most militarized zones in the world, with over 300 paramilitary camps and a troop-to-civilian ratio of 1:9. Adivasi villages face drone-strikes and aerial bombing, unarmed civilians are massacred and posthumously declared Maoists (or “human shields” for Maoists!) after their bodies have been burnt or left to rot beyond recognition. Even peaceful democratic forums protesting against the military occupation and corporate plunder are banned, with leaders and activists facing incarceration, torture, and threats of extrajudicial murder. The Indian ruling class claims that they do this in the interest of “security” and “development” – certainly not for the people who are facing this genocide! Indigenous people all over the country are marginalized and deprived of their rights. In Nagarahole, near Bengaluru, the indigenous Jenu Kuruba tribe was evicted from their land in the 1980s and prevented from collecting forest products (their traditional occupation), in the name of tiger conservation. After multiple failed legal battles, on 5 May this year, 52 Jenu Kuruba families returned to reclaim their ancestral land. Starting the very next day, hundreds of paramilitary were deployed to break their huts. Following a tense standoff, as progressive organizations rallied in their support, the eviction has been stayed for the moment.
National movements sometimes take the form of a movement for recognition as a separate state in India. Numerous such movements in India’s history have led to states being formed on the lines of language and other aspects of nationality. Sometimes it is a progressive demand, like in Ladakh, a minority region of Kashmir, where the people are demanding statehood for more local control over their economy and politics, against the domination of the BJP and imperialist capital. But sometimes the ruling class themselves shoehorn struggles for self-determination into the channel of statehood, enabling the exploitation to continue. One example is Jharkhand in central India, which saw a militant national liberation struggle in the 1970s-80s with deep ties to the revolutionary communist movement, based on unity of workers, peasants and indigenous tribes. But it eventually stagnated and died down in 2000 when Jharkhand was recognized as a separate state, following which the lands were opened up to the fullest for exploitation by monopoly capital.
It is very common for the demands of oppressed peoples for democracy and self-determination to be slapped with the label of terrorism, being “a threat to the unity and integrity of the territory of India”. Which begs the question: is the unity and integrity of India contingent upon the most brutal national oppression and division of its people?
The existing unity of India is based upon the unity of our ruling class, structured to enable them, and the imperialists whose interests they serve, to plunder maximum profits. The superexploitation of oppressed nations, nationalities and tribes is essential to maintain a supply of cheap labour power, land, and raw materials to the imperialists and their Indian intermediaries. As long as the Indian state exists to protect the interests of foreign and domestic corporations, national oppression will remain and intensify. An end to national oppression and imperialist domination in India is essential for building a society free of exploitation, and class struggle for democratization of society must include the struggles of the masses in oppressed nations for self-determination. We uphold unconditionally the right to self-determination, including secession, of all nations and nationalities in India.
Together with national struggles, peasant struggles are one of the main aspects of class struggle in India. India still remains an agrarian country, with over 65% of the Indian workforce employed reliant on agriculture, while over 80% of farmers are small or marginal farmers, owning less than 1 hectare of land. Peasants are severely exploited by usurer-traders and landowners, with chains of middlemen denying them control over their land and produce. The widely covered farmer protests in North India in 2020-21, centred on the demand of Minimum Support Price (MSP) which would allow peasants to reinvest surplus in agriculture, revealed just part of the problems – widespread landlessness means that most peasants cannot demand MSP! Increasing imperialist control over agriculture worsens the exploitation, and also leads to land grabs which displace thousands of peasant families, leaving them pauperized and in destitution. There is a long history of militant peasant struggles in India against semi-feudal exploitation and land acquisitions by foreign and domestic capital. They have taken on the nexus of monopoly capital and local exploiting classes, demanding the rights to their land. In many cases, like in the Telangana Revolution (1946-51), the Naxalbari uprising in 1967 and years since, they have raised the slogan of land to the tiller and political power to peasant committees, asserting people’s control over agrarian economy and politics to break the ruling class’ power. Supporting and intensifying peasant struggles is essential to the struggles of workers and the toiling masses against the current fascist regime and the Indian ruling class.
We have stood in solidarity with a movement against land grabs in Devanahalli, on the outskirts of Bangalore, where over 700 hectares of land were to be seized by government authorities for foreign and domestic corporations – from 13 villages, affecting around 1300 families, nearly 400 of whom were landless peasants and over 450 from oppressed caste communities. Having seen thousands of peasant families around them lose their land and livelihood, denied compensation, and made paupers doing informal labour, the farmers launched a struggle to defend their land on 4 April 2022. An Anti Land Acquisition Struggle Committee was formed by the peasants, and Samyukta Horata, a joint platform of farmers’, agricultural labourers’, Dalits’, women’s, and other democratic organizations supported them. Their tactics included foot-marches, rallies, a continuous sit-in protest, and a boycott of the parliamentary elections in 2024 (which was eventually withdrawn after concessions were won). The state reacted with crackdowns and premeditated mass arrests, false promises to the farmers, two-faced lies to media and businessmen that the farmers were willing to part with their land, and attempts to divide the farmers by exempting a section of the land from acquisition. It is noteworthy that the movement began when BJP was the ruling party in Karnataka, and the Congress government which came to power in 2023 proved little different. Not only did the farmers show unwavering unity in the face of the ruling class’ lies and divisive tactics – mixing soil from the 13 villages and planting a tree as a symbol of their solidarity – they also developed, in a matter of months, the militancy to fight back against police repression. On 15 July 2025, the state agreed to drop the land acquisition, in a landmark victory. But it can yet prove short-lived, as some farmers have received fresh acquisition notices in early October. Workers, students, and progressive democratic sections of society must stand unwaveringly with the struggles of farmers for the rights to their land and livelihood.
- Can you talk about India’s ties and relationships with Israel? How and why did these relationships develop to the current level? What has been the response in India against Israel’s recent genocide against the Palestinian people, and what is the status of the pro-Palestine movement in India in universities and the working class in general?
In 2017, Modi became the first Indian prime minister to officially visit Israel, breaking with previous Indian leaders who also visited Palestinian leadership in the Occupied Territories. This signaled that even a token recognition of the Palestine issue could now be dispensed with by the Indian ruling classes. We may note that the dependent relationship that the Indian ruling classes have with the world-imperialist system, reflects here, as loyalty towards U.S imperialism has gone hand-in-hand with endorsing Israel.
Between 1997 and 2000, 15% of Israel’s exports went to India. Over the next five years, weapon deliveries surged to 27%. By 2006, Israel’s arms exports were worth $4.2 billion, with India accounting for $1.5 billion. Between 2003 and 2013, India became the largest buyer of Israeli arms, making up over a third of Israel’s arms exports. Israel became India’s second-largest arms supplier after Russia, and at one point in the 2000s, it was supplying more arms to India than to its own army. From 2000 to 2007, Israel’s arms exports totaled nearly $29.7 billion, a significant increase from around $1 billion annually in the early 1980s. In 2012, arms exports reached $7.5 billion, a 129% increase from the previous year, solidifying Israel as a top defense exporter with India as a key customer.
This has increased exponentially during the fascist Modi regime. The Modi government struck a deal for the purchase of Pegasus, the military grade spyware whose traces have been found in the phones of Indian journalists and opposition leaders. Drones (such as Hermes, Heron) and technology for producing drones are imported to India, from Israel. Heron drones are then found being used by the Indian state on its own citizens in central India.
The current situation in Palestine and Kashmir both have their origins in the aftermath of British colonialism. Palestinians were uprooted by the Nakba, while hundreds of thousands in Jammu and Kashmir were displaced following Partition and a massacre against Muslims in Jammu by RSS militia. Over the years, both the Kashmiri and Palestinian peoples have been denied their right to national self-determination.
On August 5, 2019, the Modi government revoked Articles 370 and 35A, splitting Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories under Delhi’s direct control, effectively annexing the region. This move dismantled the myth of Indian democracy and Kashmiri autonomy. It marked an intensification of India’s settler-colonial project, as the new status allowed non-Kashmiris to gain residency and buy land previously restricted to Kashmiris. The goal was to alter Kashmir’s Muslim-majority demography in favour of Indian Hindus, with future elections masking the ethnocratic, colonial rule imposed on the region.
Recently, there is news of white phosphorus, an extremely dangerous and hazardous chemical that is banned by international law, has been reported to be used by the Indian state on the people of Kashmir. This is yet another lesson that the Indian ruling class has learned from Israel.
On October 26, 2023, India abstained from a UN General Assembly resolution calling for an “immediate, durable, and sustained humanitarian truce” in the Israeli invasion. This stance reflects the course of development in Indian policy towards Israel that can be observed in the Vajpayee and Modi governments, compared to earlier Congress-led ones. The shift started with Narasimha Rao establishing full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, and since then, all Indian governments have strengthened ties with both Israel and the US. Consequently, military and economic exchanges between India and Israel have surged, with Israel becoming a key supplier of military and surveillance equipment to India.
In the current BJP-regime’s attitude towards Israel, we can observe both continuity and change from the previous Congress regimes. In 1950, India (at the time led by Nehru) recognized the state of Israel. However, due to various socio-political reasons, such as involvement in the ‘non-aligned’ block, the Indian state had certain limitations in openly strengthening its ties with Israel. After the 1967 war in which Israel occupied the Palestinian territories of Gaza and West Bank; and the emergence of Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) led by Yasser Arafat, the Indian state had to maintain diplomatic ties with the PLO as well. However, India did not break its ties with Israel, and also maintained back channel communication with Mossad (Israel’s secret service intelligence agency.
Pro-Palestine movement in India has existed for a long time, and post the intensified genocide by Israel post-October 7th, thousands of people have gathered in mass protests in every state in India. In our city, Bangalore, we have witnessed dozens of protests across the past two years, denouncing the Israeli regime, its genocidal project, the complicity of world-imperialist powers, as well as the complicity of the Indian ruling classes and state. However, these protests have been met with severe repression, violent detentions and arrests. It must be noted that it is not only the BJP, but every single ruling-class party without exception, that has been quick to repress pro-Palestine protests. The Congress party is in power in Karnataka, and despite some token gestures by its leaders, they have been upfront in cracking down on pro-Palestine protests. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) which rules the state of Kerala, despite its proclamations, have also gone ahead with similar repression and vandalism against pro-Palestine protesters in the state, often branding the protesters as ‘fundamentalist’ in Islamophobic fashion.
- How do you assess India’s place in the capitalist-imperialist order; its participation in BRICS, and its relationships with the US, China and Russia? How do you think India will react to developing war and warmongering in the world and more particularly in Asia?
In spite of our formal political independence, the size of our economy, and the Indian ruling class’ claims of becoming a superpower, India’s place in the capitalist-imperialist world order is that of a semi-colony. Our ruling class plays the role of middleman for the imperialist plunder of our country; throughout our history since the end of colonial rule, they have never been able to rid themselves of their dependence on imperialist capital. In fact, the recent Hindenburg Report on Adani Group, one of India’s biggest monopoly capitalist groups, showed their near-complete dependence on foreign investments and international bonds. What they have done repeatedly is bargain within the ambit of inter-imperialist conflicts to gain a bit more for themselves here and there, while remaining dependent on multiple imperialist powers. At present, India is heavily dependent on both imperialist blocs, participating in QUAD and BRICS. In both alliances, it is a junior partner to imperialist powers. These alliances serve as avenues to deepen our economic dependence on the US and its allies on one hand, and Russia and China on the other. India continues to be reliant on imports for capital goods, and while peddling lies about self-reliance, our ruling class enthusiastically opens up all sectors to maximum foreign investment while stifling indigenous production. Different Indian monopoly capitalist groups and governments at the state and central level compete amongst themselves over attracting the most foreign partnerships and foreign capital investment.
The Indian ruling class has repeatedly engaged in expansionism on a regional level, seeking to get military and diplomatic aid from imperialist powers to pursue their agenda. There have been repeated wars and border conflicts with Pakistan, often in Kashmir, which has also served to perpetuate violence on the Kashmiri people. Earlier this year, on 7 May, the Indian armed forces launched missiles at Pakistan, prompting a few weeks’ exchange of hostilities. This escalation was on the back of an attack on tourists in Pahalgam in Kashmir, which Indian ruling class politicians and media ascribed baselessly to a nexus of Kashmiri resistance groups and Pakistani terrorist groups. What followed on the Indian side was weeks of communal violence against Muslims, witch-hunting of Kashmiris, and jingoistic chest-thumping for war. The Indian missile strikes into civilian areas in Pakistan under the pretext of targeting terrorist camps, cynically named “Operation Sindoor” – a reference to the (Hindu) widows left by the Pahalgam attacks, even as bereaved families themselves condemned the communalization and warmongering – was cheered by mainstream politicians and media alike, with sickening calls to adopt Israel’s genocidal tactics in Gaza. It was disappointing to see opposition parties, including “left” parties like CPI and CPI(Marxist), and other parties claiming to represent marginalized communities, openly take the side of the Indian state in supporting the operation. Meanwhile, numerous “civil defence mock drills” were organized across the country, including thousands of kilometres from the border, to drum up national chauvinism. A couple of our comrades had a funny interaction with a media person in Bangalore “interviewing” people to manufacture consent for the war and warmongering – when they politely laid the blame for the escalation on the BJP/RSS and the Indian ruling class, the interviewer received a hurried phone call and then cut them off abruptly.
The conflict had its effects internally – for example, a nationwide general strike planned for 20 May was postponed to 9 July. BJP is also using it as propaganda in the upcoming state elections in Bihar. But broadly, the Indian ruling class’ all-out campaign to manufacture consent for war with Pakistan did fail, as the contradictions of such a war with the interests of toiling people in both countries couldn’t be more clear. For imperialism, however, it served as a test run for their weapons (e.g. the Chinese PL-15 missile used by Pakistan against the French Dassault Mirage 2000 used by India), allowed weapons manufacturers to reap profits, and cemented imperialist control over both countries in various ways. For example, both the 7 May escalation and the Trump-negotiated ceasefire happened within hours of various tariff agreements with India announced by Trump.
For imperialist warmongering and developing war in Asia and around the world, therefore, we can expect the Indian ruling class to react as they have throughout their history – in the interests of imperialism, while looking to get as much of a cut of the superprofits as they can without endangering their position as intermediary. In case of inter-imperialist conflict, we cannot predict now whose side they will take, as the relative degree of their dependency on the different imperialist blocs is always changing. They are certainly no lovers of peace – as can be seen most starkly from the genocidal war they are waging on their own people to protect and maximize imperialist plunder of our country, unleashing cutting-edge weapons procured from imperialists on their people in Kashmir and central India. Any international wars in which India embroils itself, the interests of India’s toiling masses remain firmly against our own ruling class, against imperialism, and on the side of workers and oppressed people in all countries.
- Do you have anything to add for our readers?
We would like to thank our comrades at Kaldıraç Magazine for this interview. International solidarity is an essential aspect of our shared struggle, from India to Anatolia. The decaying, parasitic capitalist-imperialist system is our common enemy, and we are aligned in our goals of building a society free of exploitation. We look forward to continued dialogue and collaboration to carry out this struggle together.
