askchapo

Vijay prashads got some good lectures on it but the gist of it is that this was a huge and expensive concerted effort spanning decades to manufacture and we are seeing it come to fruition now

I’m going to defer to other comrades who are more familiar with the situation in India, but from my understanding, a lot of it came from the failure of land reform in India. This stifled industrialization because rural landlords often hold disproportionate amount of power and rule over their local fiefdoms, and as such were able to resist state-driven industrialization projects. As a result, the failure to industrialize means the failure to proletarianize the working class.

This is in stark contrast to the situation in China, whose land reform under Mao created the ideal conditions for industrialization, which subsequently enabled Dengist reform to take place. Despite having two of the highest populations in the world, Western capitalists vastly preferred China to India due to China’s highly industrialized base that resulted from the first 30 years of Mao’s rule.

Of course, the actual situation is far more complex and multi-faceted but the social relations between labor and capital play a huge role in determining the socio-economic development trajectory of the country.

i think 2008 was a real turning point (so was 1991 and neoliberal 'reforms'), the economy stagnated wages stopped increasing. atleast between 2001 and 2008, India had some growth for all income groups. After 2008 everything went to shit and liberals like the liberals they are failed to repress the fascists.

also the big bourgeoisie supported Modi (so called 'Corporate-Hindutva nexus').

I mean, India has actual Marxist guerilla movements like the Naxalites. And arent some of the biggest agricultural protests in India? Those guys are just protesting the BJP government... just cuz? Idk shit about India but like aint there more to the story like in most countries where fascism is dominant?

This video has the tea on Indian fascism.

Hindutva is a sort of restoration project of the caste system (largely financed and steered by members of historically elite castes) and it has been going since Scientific Racism times

1. Neoliberalism, the literal airlifting of gold reserves to the UK in 1991 being one of the more infamous examples

2. Underdevelopment, so much of India is still agrarian and semi-feudal

3. Unresolved contradictions caused by partition, which creates a social base for Hindu nationalism

4. The liberalization of the Congress Party, which creates a political base for Hindu nationalism

5. 25% of Indians are illiterate, lack of education plus miseducation (the fascist Whatsapp plague) hits Indian politics hard

For one, youtube comments are the seething, roiling biolfilm in the fermentation barrel of humantiy and are not representative.

When a country of 1bn turns fascist

Others are better at answering this but with the way I've seen their rhetoric towards China i have no doubt India would join in in a first strike against the PRC with their American friends.

India, imo, is a loose collection of peoples with the single uniting factor being anti-colonial solidarity, a sentiment that looks to be fading fast. The faultlines in this artificially concocted polity are plenty, and what they're witnessing now can be interpreted as the Hindutva movement conjuring a national myth that solidifies the Hindu position (specifically the Vedic flavor) as the numerical majority and asserting their sole right to the land.

1) India is a continent

2) The entire continent was invaded by Muslim powers (Bangladesh and Pakistan are still Muslim)
because of this, the Hindu perception of Muslims would be akin to the Black perception of Whites

Christians are a much smaller minority (5% vs 15%) and Christian conversions under Europeans were limited compared to Islamic conversions under Mughals etc. India is also bordered by an enemy Muslim nation, not a Christian one. And any terrorist attack in India over the last 50 years has been Islamic, not Christian

Also, European media is everywhere, while Arabs committed the crime of not colonizing enough places to become the worldwide linguistic/media/everything-else standard. This further tempers hatred towards Christians.

I'm not trying to justify anti-Muslim (anti-semitic? heh) hatred here, just explaining

3) Prior to the Islamic invasions, there were still problems which perhaps even made the Islamic conquests inevitable.

• 4500 years ago, a group called the Indoeuropeans ("Aryans") invaded both Europe and Northern India.
• In Europe, they committed total r*pe and genocide, leading to complete mixing/homogenization of the local population
• In India, this was impossible due to better tech/higher populations, so they instead formed clans and "castes", with themselves on the top. This is what "Brahmins" originally were
• For whatever reason, the Brahmins that migrated into the Gangetic Plain were especially nasty, while the ones that migrated into Gujarat and Dravidian regions were open to mixing. All Brahmins across all of India are genetically identical, but the ones in the Gangetic Plain have 70% Indoeuropean Y chromosomes, while the ones in the South/Gujarat have 30%. In other words, Gujarati/Southern Brahmins were open to mixing with local women AND men, while Gangetic Brahmins committed tons of female infanticide, (this is confirmed history, not just my theory) probably from being so racist that they didn't want the "lower castes" of men mixing with their women (this part is just my suspicion, but what other possible reason is there for widespread female infanticide?)

There is a long list of backwards trends which could be partially ascribed to either these Gangetic Brahmins, or their immediate ancestors in the Northwest:

• Sati, the tradition of the wife immolating herself after her husband's death, arose around Punjab or Rajasthan, and was mostly confined to here and later the Gangetic plain. Contrary to what mayos say, this was a practice that only took place among royalty and was numerically insignificant.
• Female feticide, the logical modern conclusion of female infanticide, is still practiced in the Northwestern + Gangetic states of India today, but not in the Southern Dravidian states.
• Muslim invaders were extremely successful in gaining converts from Bengal, but not the South--despite both areas being equidistant from their initial starting area of Pakistan. A probable theory is that the Muslims were helped by low caste people in Bengal who "betrayed" their religion because they were desperate to escape the caste system.
• There is currently, in year 2024, an epidemic of Punjabi Hindus converting to Christianity. Caste discrimination is cited as the major reason. Which lends more support to the above theory. Genetic tests of Punjabi Christians show that they have MUCH less "Indoeuropean" ancestry than the average Punjabi (5% vs. 35%). Punjabi Muslims average about 20%. Confirming that low caste Hindus abandon Hinduism to escape the rigid Northern caste system.
• The South had reformations like Bhaktism in Tamil Nadu, 600 CE, and Lingayatism in Karnataka, 1100 CE, both of which were anti-caste and pro-people. Lingayatism's leader Basavanna, went even further by not only rejecting caste, but rejecting temple worship altogether and embracing individual worship (In other words he was the 400 year earlier progenitor of Martin Luther)
• Historical conquests - North India had one major empire, the Mauryan empire, which is 2300 years old. After that, the South was consistently more successful despite having less land, and far fewer rivers. In other words, if the leaders (read: The ruling minority of Brahmins and other high castes) get their stuff by oppressing their own people, there is less need to conquer a neighbor for resources.
• To this day, there is a stark material divide between the poor, polluted, "BIMARU" states (Gangetic states + Rajasthan) and Dravidian+Gujarat. The latter is more developed on basically every metric imaginable, and it exactly parallels the thing I wrote about earlier
• Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and Odisha account for 71% of caste-based hate crimes in India. All of these save Odisha are Gangetic states

Basically, the lack of Brahminical casteism in Dravidian India, and to some extent also Maharashtra and Gujarat, set these places up to have conditions more compatible with communism. Now that India is united as one country, majority rule takes place, which means the more reactionary Hindustani/Hindi-speaking politics prevail.

lots of fools in this thread need to learn what "cultural hegemony" is

1. Sampling error: Rich people get on the internet before poor people, and they tend to be right-wing.

2. The internet will enable individuals to discover leftist ideas are better than what their parents allowed them to know.

It was founded by a lawyer whose quest for equal rights was based not on liberation for all people but on his aspiration to be considered a full fledged British citizen.

The communists in India tend to come from higher castes, just as the communists in the imperial core tend to be white. (Yes, I know that’s not always the case.) Casteism and racism are both creations of the British, and they’re both extremely effective at stopping communists from going all the way.

Apparently India mentions socialism in its 1953 constitution, but then proceeded to never do anything vaguely "socialist"?

I have my theories but because I'm not Indian anything I say could be construted to be chauvinist, paternal, not minding my own damned buisness to let these people liberate in their own time reguardless of how much it fucks them or the world over.

Just entertaining a question of such might be insenstive to their Asianess and could be seen as disrespectful. Only an Indian could have an opinion or even consern or solidarity so I've been told.