THE working class is being subjected to a determined onslaught with the sole intention to take them back to the social and economic conditions of the times of the Industrial Revolution. Internationally, this is a juncture marked by continuing global economic crisis, massive inequality and relentless assault on the living conditions and basic rights of the working people. Accompanying this economic crisis is a renewed rise of fascist tendencies and forces riding on war and racist violence, rampant Islamophobia and state surveillance. The victory of the BJP-led NDA in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections followed by the rise of BJP-led governments in a record number of Indian states has emboldened the RSS, the core organisation which leads the BJP and a vast network of allied and affiliated outfits, to unleash its fascist agenda with unprecedented aggression and speed. The BJP today is spearheading a neo-liberal policy offensive in every sphere, while simultaneously thoroughly polarising the society on communal lines and subverting and capturing the entire range of state and non-state institutions in furtherance of the RSS agenda.

History has time and again shown that fascism attacks the organisation of the working class and deprives it of its political and economic rights won through struggle.

The fascist forces are primarily directed against the working class as it slashes wages, destroys unions, attacks the right to strike and re-establishes the absolute rule of employers. Whether the current fascist onslaught serves as a temporary instrument or not, it is the responsibility of the proletariat to fight it head on. The power of the organised revolutionary class struggle of the proletariat is the only weapon that can defeat the onslaught of fascism. This is all the more necessary since fascism is able to attract the masses including from the proletariat since it makes a demagogic appeal to their most urgent needs and demands much like Modi has come to power on the “Acche Din” and “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas” bogeys.

A new world order was established from the 18th century onwards marked by industrialism and imperialism. The industrial revolution brought prosperity for the bourgeoisie and intense exploitation for workers with the introduction of wage slavery replacing previous systems of social slavery. But before long, the working class started revolting against their new masters, the bourgeoisie. Waves of workers’ struggles were witnessed all over the world. Revolutions in Russia in 1917, in China in 1949 and also scores of workers struggle in third world countries were outcome of the turbulence in society created by the new capitalist system. In India too, the struggles were more militant and against capitalists. The working class was at the forefront of the struggle against the British colonialists. Remember the words of the revolutionary Bhagat Singh who said that the workers are the most important element of society; yet, they are robbed by the exploiters of labour and deprived of their elementary rights; the peasant who grows corn for all, starves with his family; the weavers who supplies the world market with textile fabrics, has not enough to cover his own and his children’s bodies; masons, smiths and carpenters who raise magnificent palaces, live like pariahs in the slums, while the capitalists and exploiters, the parasites of society, squander millions on their whims.

Workers' movement succeeded in securing their right to form trade unions, job security, wage security and social security through their protracted, militant struggles and by throwing out imperialist colonial powers. An Independent India saw the emergence of a state-centred labour regime that sought to contain and control this source of political energy by enforcing industrial peace, fostering responsible trade unions and developing a social policy focused on workers in the organised sector. However, the unorganised sector continued to languish without any protection whatsoever.

The advent of liberalization in India witnessed the phase of theft of worker’s rights by myriad practices like contractualisation of the work force, ‘Hire and Fire’, starvation wages, lack of job security, no annual increments, no social security benefits, etc. Even the right to form union is also being attacked. This situation has worsened over the past 3 decades. Misleading slogans like India’s “Development” and “progress” are coined by the ruling classes, when in reality, workers are looted and poverty and disparity are increased. The Modi government, the darling of crony capitalists and imperialist forces, has extended an open invitation in the name of “Make in India” to come and loot and plunder the country including the “labour power” of the proletariat. Modi has boasted of providing 'ease of doing business' for global and local corporations: eroding and destroying labour and environmental protection laws in the process. To camouflage the pro-corporate image of the regime, Modi and his ministers have of late begun to talk about 'ease of living' alongside the much touted 'ease of doing business'. But this deceptive discourse stands shattered by shocking reports of starvation deaths and farmer suicides. Modi's 'Skill India' scheme stands exposed as a sham when instead of providing any fresh training and avenues for salaried jobs, the unemployed are left to eke out survival somehow by informal self- employment like street-vending and the government seeks to claim credit for avenues of self-employment such as selling pakodas in the name of providing jobs. Indeed, street vendors have poignantly pointed out that their own 'ease of living' and 'ease of doing business' are both under attack when they are evicted from urban streets. The World Development Indicators (March 2017) shows that wage and salaried jobs as percentage of total employment stood at 21.2 in India – shamefully behind the South Asia average (26), Bangladesh (44.5), Pakistan (39.6), and even behind the average for Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (28.9) and Least Developed Countries (33.3). A recent draft Systematic Country Diagnostic report by the World Bank has emphasised that India needs to create regular, salaried jobs with growing earnings rather than pushing the majority of the people in precarious and low-income survival activities.

Amidst declining growth and falling real income for vast majority of Indians, inequality has been growing sharply. The process has been steadily gathering momentum for the last three decades, and especially in the Modi era of unmitigated corporate aggression amidst growing economic disaster for the common people. Since 2014, the wealth share of the top 1% has begun to grow by leaps and bounds, from 49% in 2014 to 73% in 2017. Latest studies show that top 5% has income equal to rest of 95%. At the same time, India continues to remain one of the hungriest countries in the world, ranking 100 among 119 countries in terms of the Global Hunger Index in 2017.

The judiciary in India is only aiding the process of neo-liberalism. The courts are delivering most reactionary judgments consistent with the policies of liberalization. The hard earned rights of the working class movement like job security, wage security, social security and collective bargaining rights are being brutally snatched away. In the SAIL case, the Supreme Court ordered in 2001 that the abolition of contract labour does not entail automatic absorption of contract workers. In Uma Devi case of casual and temporary workers, the Supreme Court in 2006 ordered that workers employed without due selection process have no right to be regularized. In the era of neo-liberalisation, Courts and Government of India are the two sides of the same coin. Judiciary at all levels, including local courts, and also the labour departments are siding with industrialists. The workers are now convinced that the judiciary is compromised.

Unionisation and strikes are anathema to corporates. Modi’s amendments are reversing all labour laws to take the country to a situation of no laws of the 18th century. Corporate and multinationals are being given free hands for hire and fire. Workers are being treated like slaves. Hard won rights of the working class are being snatched away in the name of ‘development’. Even the barest minimum legal protections hitherto extended to workers are being removed to pave the way for unhindered ‘development’ of capitalism. The first and foremost target of Modi and Sangh Parivar is the workers right to protest, right to form unions and the right to bargain. Maruti, Yenam, NOIDA, killing of Jute mill and Tea garden owners of Bengal, etc., are the recent incidents of outbursts of workers. These incidents were not guided by any union but were the indication of the outcome of the helplessness and despair of workers when there is no avenues of legal, organized channels of remedy are possible. The BJP government is a ‘Corporate, Communal, Manuvadi, Fascist government. The situation in the present era is becoming more and more similar to that of the plight of workers of 18th century.

In this political context of unfolding fascism in India, working class struggles cannot just be confined to four walls of factories anymore and just cannot be limited to economic struggles alone. The struggles should assume the dimension of working class struggles for fighting fascism and asserting the dignity and for establishing social and class justice in the society. This encompasses the struggle against fascist tendencies, all forms of caste and patriarchal prejudices and obscurantism within the working class itself. Indeed when Ambedkar tells us that caste is not about division of labour but division of labourers, he actually calls for unity and assertion of labourers as a class on an anti-caste basis. It is the workers who have been, and still are, the only class capable of elevating the toiling people to masterhood of their destiny. The sole hope lies in the revolutionary potential of struggles by the working class.

Today in India, we are faced with not just a routine kind of class rule of capital, what we are confronting is nothing short of a fascist regime that combines the most unabashed kind of crony capitalism and subservience to imperialism with aggressive majoritarianism and the worst forms of caste and gender violence and oppression. While the Constitution of India is being daily subverted and shelved, the rule of lynch mobs, often openly protected and patronised by the state and the ruling party, has become the order of the day. This has emerged as the order in place of the rule of law that is supposed to be the basic foundation of every bourgeois republic. The most regressive ideas and trends in Indian history, that remained largely marginalised during the anti-colonial struggle, seem to have staged a parliamentary coup, using electoral victories as a licence to reshape the state and regiment the society on most regressive lines.

The spring thunder of India was the watershed in Indian revolutionary politics emerging at a time of the first major economic and political crisis of the independent nation, demonstrating the inescapable link between class struggle with the dream of Indian Revolution. A revolutionary communist line was forged on the battlegrounds of peasant struggles guides the path our thinking, line, method and style of work to this day. A time has come crying out for the revolutionary potential of the working class to be released in protection of the struggling masses and for the establishment of a just social order.