The Rajsamand Killing and What It Tells About the Indian Fascism
- Shivani Kaul
As the Left in India, most noticeably the Parliamentary one, continues to debate about the coming as well as becoming or not of the Fascism in this country, a spine-chilling Rajsamand happens and shakes even the smuggest from their slumber. What the gruesome murder in Rajsamand demonstrates is the pure and simple workings of Fascism and Fascist ideology at play. In the early days of December this year, in Rajasthan’s Rajsamand district, a migrant worker Mohammad Afrazul from Malda district of West Bengal was cold-bloodedly murdered by Shambhulal Regar with an axe and then burnt alive in the name of avenging “Love Jihad”. If this was not enough, Shambhulal also got the grisly murder video-taped by his 14-year-old nephew.
Later, Regar uploaded the video on internet and subsequently posted several videos where he could be seen spewing venom against the Muslims in particular and threatening more such murders. It is not ironical that Regar chose December 6, the anniversary of Babri Masjid Demolition as the day for carrying out his murderous act, a day which is celebrated by the Hindutva Fascist brigade as “Shaurya Diwas”. Interestingly enough, the Rajasthan police has described Shambhulal as an “abnormal,” deranged killer, and a “self-made Hindu fanatic” with no organizational links whatsoever. However, we already know that this heinous act is not the commission of some “deranged” mind or a psycho-sociopath. Rather, what we are witnessing is the violent outcome of an increasing fascisization of the social fabric by the Fascist forces in India.
The Rajsamand killing is not one off incident. It can neither be brushed aside as an act of lunacy. A recent report has pointed out that there has been an unprecedented spike in hate-crimes, incidence of violence and terror acts especially against Muslims, over the last three and a half years since Bharatiya Janta Party and Narendra Modi assumed power in May 2014. The incidents of lynchings and violence in the name of the “cow-protection”, beef-eating, “Love Jihad”, “Ghas Wapasi” that has been unleashed since the coming to power of Hindutva Fascism must be viewed in a continuity. Even as the aftermath of Rajsamand barbarity was still unfolding, other scenes of Fascist violence were on full display in yet another laboratory of communal Fascism, Madhya Pradesh. In Satna district, Bajrang dal goons attacked Catholics who were out singing Christmas carols and even set blaze a Catholic priest’s car. The police, instead of taking action and slapping relevant charges against the attackers, booked cases against the carol singers themselves!
The police’s claim that Shambhulal had no contact at all with any Hindu Right-wing organization is of little consequence here. However, there is also evidence to the contrary which clearly points out that Regar was incessantly gorging on the Fascist filth on social media and WhatsApp groups. These groups had videos of inflammatory speeches made by overt as well as covert adherents of Sangh and BJP members which Regar could be seen himself regurgitating in his own videos. One does not have to go to a Shakha to be a Fascist! In these times, the Shakhas are being run in an organized fashion through social media platforms as well where what is taught in Shakhas is being widely circulated. What else can explain the presence of many BJP leaders in these groups? Different media reports tell us that there was a Bajrang Dal pamphlet about “Love Jihad” that was distributed days before Regar undertook this act.
The RSS and its network of many ancillary organizations, which might not be manifestly linked with the Sangh itself, have been gaining success in perpetuating the Fascist ideology in the society in an entrenched and consistent fashion for years now. The RSS has been carrying out a sustained ideological propaganda through its huge institutional network and mind it, not during the past three and a half years but right since its inception in 1925, but especially after1980s. The Fascist ideology finds instant resonance among the petty-bourgeois and lumpen sections of the society which are faced with increased prospects of dispossession and uncertainty in wake of economic crises. The rise of Fascist social movements can thus be called the “mystical/romantic upsurge” of the petty-bourgeoisie which is instinctively, owing to its class-position, drawn to the Fascist reaction. It has also come to light that Shambhulal Regar was out of business for about a year. People like Regar are, therefore, the perfect foot soldiers for the Fascist apparatus.
Many in India, especially those harbouring liberal-bourgeois illusions regarding bourgeois democracy are shocked into silence at the normalization of violence they are witnessing in the public spaces. It must be borne in mind that wherever Fascism rose to power, street violence was integral to it. Not to forget that this violence on the streets is coupled with infiltration of Fascist cadre in armed forces, police, bureaucracy, judiciary etc. This is precisely what is happening in India too. The Fascist mobs running amok on streets is not because India has relapsed into some kind of “primordialism” or “tribalism” as some Liberals love to believe but is precisely because this is how the reactionary modern ideology of Fascism operates. The imaginary figure of an ‘Other’, an enemy is created to give cohesion to the various strands of petty-bourgeois reaction. The Muslim works as that “Other” for communal Fascism in India. However, the process of ‘othering’ soon engulfs the entire political opposition.
It must also be mentioned that the communal Fascists in India have been able to undertake, with considerable success, the fascisization of the Dalits and tribals and construct an ideological unification around “Hindu” identity. The Hindutva Fascist laboratory of Gujarat is a case in point where a substantial mass of Dalits has been co-opted by the Fascist forces. The riotous mobs of Gujarat 2002 consisted of many from Dalit and tribal communities. Shambhulal himself belongs to the Dalit community of ‘Regars’. In the Hindutva Fascist narrative, Dalits and tribals are glorified as Hindu bravehearts and religious warriors as Shambhulal believed himself to be. Distorting historical facts, the Muslims are held responsible for the adverse condition of Dalits and lower castes. It must be reiterated here that this also indicates the sheer absurdity of the Liberal-Left project of building an aggregative unity of different communities and identities against Fascism as if all communities and identities are homogeneous and class-undifferentiated. Evidently enough, any such pragmatist aggregative unity based on identities is impossible, forget for a moment its being sustainable! A militant class based anti-caste anti-communal movement is the only way out.
As is the wont, in the aftermath of incidents such as Rajsamand, some crocodile tears too, get shed. Expressing regret over the murder of Afrazul, Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje spoke of “strict action”, but nothing has been done so far. Has the Raje-led BJP government taken any swift “action” in the matter of Birloka’s (in Nagaur district of Rajasthan) Ghafoor khan, Nuh’s Pehlu Khan and Pratapgarh’s Zafar Khan? Who does not know that these heinous acts enjoy the direct or indirect patronage of the Sangh and the BJP governments? These are not being carried out by some “fringe” elements that need to be reined in. This is the real face of Indian Fascism. The RSS and its electoral wing, BJP cannot absolve itself of the crimes perpetuated by the Fascist machinery they themselves have put in place and whose operation they are meticulously overseeing. So, this has become quite characteristic of Hindutva Fascism now that everytime an Akhlaq or an Afrazul happens, blame can be put on “expendables” and the “fringe”. However, the demarcation between the “fringe” and the “mainstream” is itself quite blurry and it has deliberately been left so. Therefore, a Vadodara corporator and BJP candidate for Dabhoi Assembly constituency in Gujarat, makes incendiary speech against the Muslims in his election rallies. BJP’s Telangana MLA Raja Singh, who had earlier hailed the Una atrocity for “teaching filthy Dalits a lesson”, gives a speech calling for every Hindu to take up swords and guns to achieve a Hindu nation. The Surat President of the Hindu Yuva Vahini, headed by UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath himself, uploaded a video hailing Shambhulal for having the “guts” to kill a Muslim and called for more support for Shambhulal.
When the state machinery itself is in cahoots with the perpeltrators themselves, what else can be expected? No investigation has been launched so far into the most pertinent questions such as who circulated the Whatsapp videos that Regar repeatedly watched? Which organizations and networks circulated Regar’s video and made it go viral? Who are the people that are celebrating Regar as a hero on social media and spearheading the fund collection drive for Regar’s wife – collecting close to Rs 4 lakh before the police froze the bank account? Are they all not culpable? And if BJP leaders are part of Whatsapp groups hailing Regar, should they too not be investigated alongwith him? The mob led by Bajrang Dal which protested against the Shambhulal’s arrest resorted to widespread violence and stone-pelting. The mobs attacked and injured senior police officers, but still no force was used by the police personnel against this unlawful assembly. Now just think of the conduct of the police in face of a peaceful demonstration organized by a workers’ union protesting against the illegal termination by the management or demanding payment of the minimum wages as stipulated by the law. It would be hard to evoke the same response! Instead the Fascist mob boasted of its sheer impunity by climbing on the dome of the Udaipur Court Complex and triumphantly hoisting a saffron flag there. This reminds one of a Hindi proverb which when roughly translated would go something like this- “When the lover himself is a cop, what is there to fear”!
The Rajsamand killing is a reminder, yet again, of the devious ways in which Fascism spreads its fangs in the society at large. The street violence and terror tactics are employed by the Fascist forces to silence all kinds of opposition into submission. Whether in power or not, Fascism has always acted as an ‘informal state power’ of the big Capital. The liberal, pacifist argument bemoaning the breakdown of constitutional machinery and democratic (in reality, bourgeois) polity and traumatized by the sheer barbarity of current political-ideological dispensation is blind to the conditions and relations which give rise to this barbarism, i.e., Fascism. In the end, it would suffice to quote Brecht, “Those who are against Fascism without being against capitalism, who lament over the barbarism that comes out of barbarism, are like people who wish to eat their veal without slaughtering the calf. They are willing to eat the calf, but they dislike the sight of blood. They are easily satisfied if the butcher washes his hands before weighing the meat. They are not against the property relations which engender barbarism; they are only against barbarism itself. They raise their voices against barbarism, and they do so in countries where precisely the same property relations prevail, but where the butchers wash their hands before weighing the meat.”
- Published in Anvil-2, Jan-Mar 2018
