Socialist Struggle India

If 20th century fascism can be imagined as a Formula One car racing towards a brick wall, the far-right populist projects envisioned by Prime Minister Modi and President elect Donald Trump are like an ice cream truck strolling into that same wall. Whether it destroys itself in a fiery explosion or merely butts up against the natural barriers standing at the end of its course, its dystopian final destination can never be achieved. Trump has rode the wave of anti-establishment sentiment to become just the second US president to serve nonconsecutive terms. Yet like Modi in his third term, he will face an uphill struggle to try and consolidate power against a divided nation, both in the working and ruling classes. In this age of disorder, international politics will dictate the course of history disproportionately in these two countries increasingly linked by trade and military deals but fundamentally at odds with each other in their strategies.

Modi administers a government with a very narrow margin of control, relying on the minor allies Telugu Desam Party and Janata Dal (United) in order to maintain its majority. However the TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu has heavily criticized the BJP in the past and neither of the BJP’s largest allies share its core political concerns. As communalist remarks and lynchings are only increasing, Modi will walk a razor’s edge in attempting to carry out the agenda of the far right while maintaining a loose hold of the centre. While the BJP continues to win at the ballot box, public discontent with collapsing infrastructure, growing poverty, environmental disasters and social instability grows as well.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, will preside over a single party majority which many believe will follow the agenda of “Project 2025”, a plan devised by the right wing Heritage Foundation for the new government to consolidate its power in the long term by lodging its own supporters in every facet of government, including rote administrative positions, a modern recollection of the 19th-century “Spoils System”. However, despite having already fully consolidated his own party, he faces significant resistance from powerful sections of the ruling class. Already his nomination for Attorney General, Matt Gaetz, has been forced to withdraw before his presidential term has even started. As well, Trump may find that eviscerating the deep state apparatus will lead to such a massive brain drain that his loyalists would find it difficult to operate this massive cumbersome machinery, similar to the takeover of Twitter by Elon Musk and the failure of his “hard-core mode” initiative. Ultimately, and at the cost of billions of dollars, Musk was forced to hire back the only people that knew how to operate the website while also reinstating the features he had pledged to abolish.

Trump’s opposition is of course not restricted to the borders of the United States either. Relationships with the European Union, still the second-largest economic power in the world, will doubtlessly be strained  by his divergent approaches to the Ukraine war, the future of NATO, and Putin’s regime. This of course necessitates building new alliances while Trump still remains hawkishly opposed to China, and India emerges as a key opportunity to form a relationship already warmed by the USA-India deals of the Biden administration. However India itself comes with baggage. The desire to project India’s power on the world stage is not only a point of prestige for Modi, it is a cornerstone of the BJP’s Hindutva agenda, and has led to conflict with neighboring Canada as well as the Biden administration, which jointly accused the Indian government of involvement in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar and the attempted assassination of Gurpatwant Singh, two leaders of the Khalistani separatist group Sikhs for Justice, based in North America. Tensions also continue to mount against Adani, India’s largest multinational corporation, which faces significant opposition to its operations in Australia, Kenya, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and an arrest warrant for $200 million-plus of bribery has been issued by US authorities against Gautam Adani himself as well as his associates, a case in which the BJP government was the central player.

India’s largest export to the western world is by far its labor power, with hundreds of millions of desperate Indians willing to do anything in order to escape from the crushing poverty and unemployment. It is through this export of labor power that Modi has slowly but steadily built a base in the United States, taking advantage of the racist selection process of United States immigration which disproportionately favors upper caste and male workers. According to some surveys, 90% of Indian immigrants are from an “upper caste” background. Organizations like the Hindu American Foundation have steadily built a Hindu supremacist movement in the United States, emerging as a minor player in the Republican party base, and showing their strength through “anti-Hinduphobia” declarations, the torpedoing of the California SB 403, and pro-Modi rallies such as “Howdy Modi” in Texas, attended by over 50,000 and addressed by then-President Trump and Modi jointly.

However, it is unclear how the two governments can collaborate while continuing in their plans which contradict  one another. Trump’s call for tariffs and promises to greatly restrict immigration signal a shift towards enhanced nationalism and protectionism, which would greatly reduce the potential for Indo-American economic collaboration. This is because while maintaining a huge population advantageous for outsourcing service labor, India has limited manufacturing capabilities; the poor infrastructure, combined with corruption that eats into the profitability of any capital ventures, prevents the country from usurping the role of China in the global economy.

As muddy as the waters may be for direct economic collaboration, in terms of foreign policy, Trump and Modi have much common ground. While Donald Trump cheerleads the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, positioning himself even to the right of the Biden administration, the Modi regime sees it as a model for its own anti-Muslim policies. The recent, temporary China-India détente is unlikely to solve the underlying  border disputes in occupied Kashmir, Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh, which will naturally compel India deeper into the arms of China’s biggest rival.Additionally, Modi and Trump are more likely to find overlapping ways  to deal with Russia. The Trump administration will also do away with any pretense to care about systematic violations of human and democratic rights within India, which is to Modi’s benefit. Yet none of this changes the fact that New Delhi and Washington have conflicting interests. While the BJP and its allies such as RSS and VHP attempt to recycle Israel’s playbook and run an insurgent lobbying campaign, this will not only be limited by Trump’s racist immigration restrictions, but also by the nature of right wing politics itself.

As the saying goes, the day the last non-Hindu is gone from India, there will no longer be Hindus, but only Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishyas, Shudras, and Dalits. This is the reality of the “final victory” of the right wing: there is no pot of gold, but rather an endless chase to the end of the rainbow. Modi and Trump rely on the promise of a utopia waiting around the corner for the pure and faithful. When it fails to materialize, they must find new internal divisions or create them, or else they will fail. As history demonstrates, the centralized power of the ruling class in the bourgeois nations also ultimately leads to instability and conflict between the nations themselves. There cannot be two “greatest countries in the world”, but neither can one ultimately permanently dominate all the rest. As the circle grows smaller and smaller, the elite, though each increasing their own share of the spoils, command a diminishing share of power as a whole class.

Yet these natural tendencies do not themselves guarantee a victory for the working class, nor will they prevent the looming intertwined catastrophes of global political, economic and climate systems. Rather it is these forces which select people like you, the reader, to act as conscious agents of the working class, organizing our fellow workers to resist the agenda of the far right through the power of our class, and defeat it by abolishing permanently the capitalist system which makes it possible.

We cannot wait for the next outrageous and destructive move of the far right. While Trump has promised to begin mass deportations on day one of his presidency, Modi is already well underway with the BJP’s agenda of ethnic cleansing and erasing Muslims from India’s history. However it is these very same ties between the USA and India that makes collaboration between the working class of the two countries possible. Workers collaborating internationally must organize with each other and develop plans of action to resist the right. What may begin as simple discussions can result in effective workplace actions, such as the #NoTechForApartheid movement. We must begin this work immediately and aggressively. Our survival depends on it.