Reactionaries win three Indian nation. grown, so the working class movement has ness interests and criminal elements have all played the communal card when it suits their There is a crying need for mass struggle against communalism - but the form that this struggle should take is still not clear. Recent class struggle push communalism into the background, but only for it to come creeping back If is no coincidence that in the Com- munist-controlled state of West Bengal, com- Ir is an unpleasant fact that communalism has heen growing in Indin over the last few years As populist communalist forces have declined. Landlords, religious leaders, bust- history has shown that periods of heightened FEATURES The state elections in India have resulted cess in last year's national elections by win- than, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh) as well as winning suhstantial support in other The general election of last November, which roplaced Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister with V.P.Singh, highlighted the frightening rise of communal politics The chief victims were Muslims, who make up less than ten percent of India Vicious fighting took ning control of three important states. (Rajas The BJP has now topped its enormous suc- in triumph for the reactionary chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party. states
more closcly Janata Dal are likely to resemble over the Babri Mosque. Prime Minister Singh and his Janata Party will attempt to deal with The reactionary response of Singh and the Janata Dal to the mobilisations in Kaslmir shows that the longer they are in office, the the Congress Party they defeated. An alliance with the Congress Party or parts of it is on the Oliver New Kashmir has been fought over, invaded, occupied and repressed by successive ar- mies for at least 1600 years, with the last the uprisings by repression. cards. task of the bourgeois democratic revolution which has remained un- Nevertheless, bourgenis democracy, which BJP accepts in theory the need for seculariam. For example, in left-dominated Calcutta, the BJP put forward the slogan "Equal treatment munalism has been kept at bay. Secularisation was integral to the rise of the national move- ment, has deep social roots in India: even the wave of clashes with the lodian army, More than 100 Kashmiris have been killed and hundreds wounded in the present completed in India. important place in the state of Bihar, Teading to hundreds of deaths. A clear part of the responsibility lies at the door of the Congress Piuty, which The Congress Party is widely credited with having deliberately stirred up the old Hindu- Muslim dispute over the Babri Mosque. The Mosque, constructed 500 years ago on the site of an important Hindu temple, has become a symbolic focus for Hindu chauvinism. There despite its electoral defeat is still led today by have heen dozens of battles over Gandhi's Congress Party has tried in escalate this and other the site, stretching back to the six- teenth century. Rajiv Gandhi.
government of 150 directly involving British imperialism, which supported the brutal Dogra Raj. The British wanted Kashmir to be part of India at independence in 1947: when the Kash- Pakistani irregulars and many thousand volunteers entered Kashmir to fight a holy war - a jihad - for Islam; freedom fighters from Pandit Nehru's government in Delhi, signed a declaration acceding to India. In January 1949 a cease-fire was concluded miris resisted, they faced massacres. Mabarajah Hari Singh, under established a provisional army detachment stationed in Kashmir, February, the elected government resigned, embedded in the sad history of Kashmir, of their national freedom. 77 percent of Newly-elected Prime: Minister sent in 100,000 troops to reinforce the already huge and the governor declared that Kashmir's The reasons for the present crisis are whose people have until now been deprived Kashmir's 10 million total population are Muslim, 20 percent Hindu. Pakistan claims governor. legistative assembly would be dissolved. appointed a new which began in January. Intent disputes as a manoeuvre to Rajiv's mother Indira a few yews Instead uf saving its skin, the defeut in November, which has now heen reinforced by the state cessful opposition alliance, the National Front, But in reality, the hands of the National Front are no maintain political support. It was cynical behaviour by ago which exacerbated the com Congress Party suffered a heavy elections. Many Muslims who had traditionally supported the Con- gress Party defected to the suc- munal conflicts in the Punjab: similar
Page 27 between India and Pakistan, giving India two thirds of Kashmir and Pakistan the rest. 43 years on, India and Pakistan are as far as ever from agreement over Kashmir. While there is little chance of Pakistan risk- ing a war on the issue, India has never been so united as on the repression of the cation- Meanwhile Kashmir, called paradise on earth' by the great Mughal emperor Jahan- al movement in Kashmir. gir, goes on suffering. that with its vast Muslim majority it should be part of Pakistan: India still quotes the "document of accession' to claim legitimate Now the Jammo Kashmir Liberation Front, headed by Amanullah Khan, is call- ing for self-determination, refusing to ac- cept any solution imposed by India or Pakistan. Mr Khan has been jailed and tor- tured in Pakistan, and branded as a Pakis- tani agent by his opponents in India: control over it. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 23, April 1990 cither in relation to the issue of communalism or on the other The National Front includes the Hindu chauvinist BJP, along with V.P.Singh's Janata Dal and Ties: Singh needs the backing of the left and the newly boosted cicaner tram those of Congress BJP to keep his Parliamentary the two Indian Communist Par main election issue, corruption. majority.