INDIA'S new government is the Hindu right-wing Bharatiya Janatha Party (BJP). It won over 185 seats in the 545-member Lok Sabha and 25 per cent of the popular vote.
The eleventh general election result confirmed the meteoric rise of the Hindu communalists and their fascist allies and the ignominious fall of the Congress (1).
Two important issues contributed to the ruling party's defeat.
In the Hawala scandal, a business family was revealed to have large sums of money to leading politicians in both the previous government and opposition parties over many years. Corrupt politicians in hock to the rich are the plot of many Indian films. Corruption is assumed by most people.
Congress (1) leader Narasimha Rao has traded on a clean image. The revelations have confirmed the institutionalization of money politics at the highest levels.
Another, more diffuse, issue is the effect of the New Economic Policy on the poor and lower-middle class. Finance minister Manmohan Singh introduced the NEP in 1991. The national economy has implemented the neo-liberal mantra: "liberalization, privatization and globalization. Transnational plunderers have prised open the economy. The Young Communists burn effigy of new prime minister Rao at Jantar Mantar NEP has spurred middle-class consumerist attitudes and behavior.
Congress (1) is plagued by factionalism. Rao remains its parliamentary leader only because his strongest rivals have deserted or been expelled from the party.
Rao's opportunism led to an electoral pact with a megalomanic former actress who is Chief Minister for the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Rao's pact consigned the local unit of Congress (I) to political oblivion. But he relied on his new friend to save the national government of the Congress (I).
Local members were enraged by this transparently cynical measure. They split the local unit of Congress (1) to form a new party, little better than its parent, which made a coalition with the Communist Party of India. The coalition won a clean sweep of national assembly seats in Tamil Nadu.
The BJP temporarily toned down its activity for the elections. It virulently attacks Muslims and provocatively campaigns to 'reclaim' the sites of Hindi temples.
The destruction of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya by its supporters in December 1992 opened a series of riots. They spread across India and spilled over into Bangledesh and Pakistan. The attack on the temple outraged liberal opinion and ostracized the BJP.
The BJP has made political capital out of Congress (I) corruption. It also led protests against India joining GATT and against transnational food corporations. However BIP leaders are implicated ion the Hawala scandal. The party claims economic liberalization would favour India's economy. This reflects its base of support amongst would-be capitalists with greater aspirations than ability.
The BJP attacks and scapegoats India's 100 million Muslim minority. It threatens to 'assimilate' them into a mythical Hindu identity or to force them out of India. They threaten nuclear war against Pakistan and Bangladesh in order to defend India from Islam—while selling it to the World Bank and IMF.
Many hopes rest on a third front of all the secular parties except the Congress (I). It includes the bourgeois populist Janata Dal, regional and lower caste/dalit parties and the two mass Communist parties. Political pragmatism unites these parties against the BJP and Congress (I).
The Communist parties confine their ambitions to bastions in West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. Elsewhere they aspire to be junior partners to 'secular democratic forces'-with a liberal share of crooks, charlatans, landlords and other scoundrels.
A new force needs to be constructed. Socialist politics must be committed to secularism, democracy, regional autonomy and an economic programme which serves the oppressed and exploited.
A moderate bourgeois alternative to Congress (I) cannot survive more than one term. Congress (I) has a well-oiled machine. Its national spread and assets are to be reckoned with. Political obituary writers can put away their pens.
The BJP may not have long to savour victory. They face a parliamentary motion of confidence on 30 may. Virtually every opposition party aims to defeat them.
India's uncertainty and confusion will not end then. A solution rests in linking the strategy and tactics of the Indian left to the needs of those in struggle on the land and in the towns.