RIP Democracy in India, Hello Fascism
Is Business in the Business of Turning India Fascist? Yeah, I'd say so.
Appalled today to read about India's hard turn to right under Modi. Even more alarmed when I read about how Muslims are being stigmatized. A standard tactic of fascist governments backed by the world business community is to divide and conquer the working class by redirecting its anger at a sizable minority. Were I Dalit (untouchable) in India, I would be very, very angry at a system that has conspired to keep me down because of my caste. How tempting it must be to those in power to distract me by holding up my Muslim neighbors as the real enemy, so that I will not notice that those in power are still keeping me down and stealing the fruit of my labor.
To my brothers and sisters in India, this is how it starts. You can kiss your vote---and your liberties---goodbye and jump on the pogrom bandwagon. Or, you can do something about it.
Here are some other folks who are worried, too:
http://www.firstpost.com/politics/left-out-in-narendra-modis-inclusive-politics-dalits-in-gujarat-1184031.html
However, if the Dalits in Narendra Modi's own backyard continue to face the heat of caste supremacy, it won't be too long before it becomes a political hot potato that Modi and BJP finds difficult to handle. Also, if the country indeed is looking for a 'change', the clean-up should start from the grassroots - a sizable part of which seems to have fallen in the wayside of the country's contemporary political narrative.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/opinion/being-muslim-under-narendra-modi.html?_r=0
It was on his watch as chief minister that more than 1,000 people, many of them Muslims, were killed throughout Gujarat in 2002, when rioting erupted after some 60 Hindus died in a burning train in Godhra. A Human Rights Watch report that year asserted that the state government and local police officials were complicit in the carnage.
http://www.abplive.in/india/2015/01/03/article467575.ece/Discrimination-against-Dalits-in-giving-Bharat-Ratna-Mayawati
Alleging that the Modi government appeared to be "failing on all fronts", she said interests of capitalists were being safeguarded for which, the BSP leader said, changes were being made in laws, flouting the spirit of the Constitution.
"The Modi government is playing in the hands of capitalists and now they are out to help them as BJP won the elections with their monetary help and by adopting all wrong tactics," she alleged.
http://mic.com/articles/89441/11-photos-of-anti-muslim-violence-that-have-many-worried-about-india-s-future
Read the articles above and then ask yourself "Is the goal of so called Hindu nationalism to purge the 'foreign' influence of Islam? Or, is the goal of Hindu nationalism to keep the Dalit doing all the low paid menial work that no one else wants to do in order to make India attractive to domestic and foreign businesses?" Remember, one of the defining qualities of fascism is preoccupation with an "external" threat to the "purity" of the group. Funny how in cleansing the "external" threat, fascists always wind up stripping their "pure" brothers and sisters of their rights and driving down their wages.
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Unless you happen to be the party that will benefit. 
Indians were stuck with few good choices here. Maybe if Aam Aadmi had gotten its shit together and made the national ballot things would look better.
That said, you don't win an actual single-party majority in India's parliament (it's nearly unheard of) without getting a whole lot of the populace to support you.
I came in very distrustful of Modi, but I really like what he just did in Maharashtra. Shiv Sena (the very right wing nationalist party) tried to cozy in to the state government coalition, and Modi told them to fuck off unless they can reach the voters Modi doesn't already have (which, obviously, they can't).
