Hindutva politics has given new lease of life to neoliberal capitalism, initiated by Congress

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*
The BJP and Narendra Modi had promised “Achhe din” (good days) and “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas, Sabka Vishwas” (with all, development for all, faith of all) to capture the political power in Delhi. The majority of corporate media and many liberal intellectuals have projected him as a reformer, popular and experienced leader, who can claim Indian century in the world stage.
Instead of delivering economic growth and development, some Hindutva politics and their neoliberal economic policies have ruined the present and destroying the future potential of India and Indians.
The bigoted Hindutva ideology of RSS, reactionary politics of BJP and its crony capitalist policies have increased poverty, inequality and unemployment jeopardizing future development of a prosperous and peaceful India. The Hindutva politics has become a reigning ideology and weapon of the social reactionaries and economic elites. The tyranny of Modi and market is a marriage literarily made in heaven.
The Modi-led BJP government has not only emulated the neoliberal economic policies of the Congress but also expanded it to every sphere of lives in India. The Hindutva politics has also provided new vistas to neoliberal capitalism. The neoliberal economic policies are based on four pillars:

liberalisation of rules and regulations that protects labour and natural environment,
privatisation of public resources,
globalisation of market integrations, and
withdrawal of state and government from economic and welfare activities but provide security to capital and market.

These economic ideals were the foundations of neoliberal capitalism launched by the Congress in India during 1991 reforms. These reform policies have consolidated the base of both global and national capitalist classes in the country. Hindutva politics is expanding these reforms to further deepen and consolidate capitalism in India.
The idea of neoliberal capitalism rests on anarchy of deregulations and legal protections for capital mobility to increased market competition. But Hindutva politics has given a new lease of life to neoliberal capitalism by giving absolute freedom to capital to consolidate itself without any competition. The few crony capitalists’ friends of BJP have absolute control over Indian economy today.
These corporations have grown enormously within and outside India. Hindutva politics has created conditions of capitalist market oligarchy in such a way that killed the idea of freedom and competition. It killed medium and small businesses in India.
The oversold ideals neoliberal capitalism found its natural ally in the Hindutva politics of hate. Hindutva neoliberalism in India is capitalism without any form of anxiety of internal conflict, competition or crisis. Hindutva is an organised project of corporate capitalism to govern people and environment to secure long-term social, political and economic stability to capitalist corporates.
The Hindutva politics has transformed Indian state and government as merely a weapon of corporate and capital expansion. It looks as if the state and government is standing behind the capital for its security as people perish in poverty, hunger, homelessness and unemployment.
It has destroyed the abilities of Indian state and governmental institutions to govern its citizens. The weakening of the link between the state and citizenship paves the path for the erosion of democracy in India. It shows disastrous consequences for people and country. Such a condition creates fertile ground for the electoral dividends of BJP and Hindutva ideology. It venerates the rich and ruins everything that makes India as a liberal, constitutional and secular democracy.

Modi government's failures has created a crack in political base on Hindutva politics, but its social and ideological base is on solid foundations

The Hindutva politics continues to grow with the help of corporates. The electoral bonds scheme helps the corporates to control Indian electoral democracy by flowing some of their profit into the political system. It is the biggest beneficiaries of such a scheme.

The BJP and RSS networks are paid, sponsored and sustained by the corporations. In return, the triumph of Hindutva politics solves the moral, intractable material, inherent economic and political nightmares of capitalism in terms of class conflict.
The Hindutva politics has also successful in creating an environment where party, state and government move together. Any opposition to such a formulation is branded as anti-Indian and anti-national. It is a single window system to facilitate market forces and control people and their opinion against their will.
The society is governed by transactional mass anxiety and fear created by the Hindutva ideology and organisation network of the BJP and RSS. There is no morality in Hindutva ideology and their market forces. The unbridled exploitations of natural resources and working classes are the core of Hindutva capitalism and its neoliberal variant in India. Its frontal attack on ‘reason, science, secularism, multiculturalism, social solidarity and liberal democracy’ is a systematic design of shock therapy to manufacture crisis.
The global pandemic and the failures of the Modi government has created a crack in the political base on Hindutva politics, but its social and ideological base is on solid foundations. There is growing tremor in public opinion against the Modi government, but Hindutva ideological and cultural base continues to be strong due to relentless false propaganda to reinstall Modi as a messiah of Indians.
The worshiping of false god in democracy only breeds disasters and Indian have many examples of failures of the Modi government from demonetisation to Covid-19 vaccination Hindutva is project without any principles or coherent convictions. It is a fascist hydra with many faces and constantly changes its forms to survive. The Nagpur project of RSS to convert India into a Hindu state is absence of any reasons. It is a strategy to completely control India and Indians resources with brute force.
The failures of the opposition parties and their abilities in accurately exposing Hindutva politics has led to the strengthening of this reactionary ideology. The worldview of Hindutva and its dogma isn’t only posing a serious danger to India but a potential danger to the world peace. It is restructuring Indian society, economy, politics and culture today, but it will have far reaching consequences on the world tomorrow. In the wake of declining democracy with the rise of Hindutva supremacy led by BJP and RSS putting our people and planet in peril.
The history of mass movements have swallowed all powerful dictators within its waves and the future of Hindutva will be no different. It is time to have a mass movement against Hindutva and crony capitalism in India. The global solidarity is an inalienable part of this struggle. The struggle against Hindutva fascism and struggle against capitalism is a common struggle. The peace, prosperity and the future of India and Indians depends on the success of this united struggle.
---
*University of Glasgow, UK

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