I have very little knowledge of India, but thought it might be interesting. I’d love to hear an informed comrade opinion.
I am not really informed on the most current state of Indian politics but my own gut feeling is that this is very unlikely to work. The BJP has entrenched itself pretty firmly from what i have seen so far. This would be like trying to oust Erdogan in Turkey. Despite some significant discontent they both unfortunately still have a very solid base of support, their opposition is weak and the electoral system in many places is heavily rigged in the ruling party’s favor. The advantage in India is that due to its being a federal state there are regions where the BJP just can’t and won’t make any inroads as the local governments there tend to also be very strong, and some of them are quite far left such as Kerala in southern India.
They can try, UPA 1 was able to dispose of the Vajpayee government once, as much as I hate INC, Kharge is the best hope we have currently;.
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Yes, Brother. It our last chance to save our Country.
How’s the opposition situation in India? Any socialists? Or is it as infected with west-brained liberals as elsewhere?
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CPI (M) hold strong positions in Kerala and West Bengal. The main opposition to BJP is Congress, which is a centrist liberal party and just opportunists. There is a noticeable North-South split however, with Southern states being more sympathetic to SocDems and Congress while the North is a BJP stronghold.
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I don’t think they have a shot. A lot of the members of this coalition are opportunistic political parties with no coherent ideology. Their goal is likely to prevent a BJP majority in national elections but BJP and Modi are still popular. People have no faith in parties like Congress whose neoliberal pillaging is the reason why the country slid into fascism in the first place.
It would be nice if they succeed though. But I think that’s unlikely.
Edit: To emphasise my point, most of these parties don’t have a problem with the BJP being a Hindu nationalist party wielding the fascist state apparatus to the benefit of mega corporations. They are just mad that they are the ones that don’t get to do this. Even disregarding the fact that incidents like the Naxalbari uprising took place during Congress rule, these parties have started exhibiting their Hindu pride ever since BJP made Hindu nationalism fashionable.
Why does Modi have the highest approval rating of any world leader? It baffles the mind. Do you think that this figure is fabricated or does he really control some kind of charismatic ideological apparatus?
Propaganda plays a large part in it. BJP was the first political party to figure out how to use social media to spread their message. As they gained popularity, they got close with Adanis and Ambanis, the richest families in India, who ended up buying a lot of a media houses so the media is generally uncritical to a blatantly visible degree. There has been a long campaign of crackdown on reporters who were critical of BJP, with many labeled Maoists and put in jail waiting for trials against trumped up charges.
BJP and RSS have also exacerbated the preexisting communal tensions and used them to their advantage. A large majority of our population is Hindu and for many of them their programme of turning India to a explicitly Hindu nation unfortunately sounds desirable.
Modi individually is also generally seen positively. BJP works with PR firms for this. His image has been rehabilitated through concerted efforts after the massacre of Muslims in Gujrat while he was CM there. While other fascists like Trump and Bolsonaro are clowning around, Modi does not interact with traditional news media, social media or even his constituents directly. His main form of communication is through the speeches that he gives. Recently he went on a trip to the US where he took a couple questions from reporters for the first time in many years. Because of all this his image is relatively clean in the consciousness of the average person.
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So many parallels with the religious right in the US. Weaponising faith to forward extreme right and fascist ideologies, using it as a justification to discriminate against other people, races, nations etc. The ‘muslim ban’ that Trump put in place was just candy for the ‘evangelical’ movement.
I think Hindu Nationalism is playing the same game. Modi is fucking evil but he’s just another facet of an inherently evil system that rewards fascist behavior and works to oppress the working class by any means necessary.
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nice to see fellow Indians on lemmygrad!
BJP can manipulate both voters and their votes by the use of Media and EVM hacks. So it’s gonna be real tough for opposition, however organized they are.
