10th Anniversary Issue
August - September 2003 

Year 10    No.90-91
GRASSROOTS


 


‘A historic response to the needs of the time’

Dilip Hota

I think it was the second or the third issue of Communalism Combat that saw my introduction to this militant periodical with its deep commitment to fight com-
munalism in all forms. What had started as a fledgling tabloid has now evolved into an attractive and confident-looking magazine, a testimony of its growing strength. Needless to say, its strength derives from fulfilling a long-felt need of a large community of readers who share its commitment and identify with it themselves.

Around the same time as Communalism Combat was first brought out, a good number of books and booklets, both in Marathi and English, were also published, in the aftermath of Ayodhya and the Bombay riots, all dealing with communalism and its nexus with the Indian variety of fascism. The majority of them, however, were ideological/polemical in nature. While such works do play an important role in developing a coherent understanding of communalism, in certain pressing situations where united action is the need, they confuse or divide activists. Under such circumstances, a periodical with a clean focus and broad perspective, which offers itself as a dynamic platform for interaction of thoughts and actions, becomes paramount.

This is precisely the role Communalism Combat played, as a historic response to the needs of the time, and one that it still continues to play. In the process, it developed into an ‘activist magazine’, as also an organising instrument for collective action on a number of fronts in the struggle against communalism and fascism. The crucial role that Communalism Combat has played in these struggles can also be judged at a different level.

We all know the vast and powerful machinery that the sangh parivar has at hand, its control and influence over the media and the battery of a large and alert communal intelligentsia under its command, ever ready to defend and push forward the parivar’s viewpoints in the secular and democratic media. However, if we contrast this with the combined resources of the left and secular forces, under party banners and outside them, the latter would definitely far outweigh the former.

Yet, the left and secular parties have done precious little to counter the ongoing communal propaganda and ideological attacks in a systematic manner and on a continuous basis. It defies common logic that while a small, dedicated group of activists like the team behind Communalism Combat can do this, these powerful political players cannot!

Credit goes to Communalism Combat for standing up heroically to take up the challenge. To my knowledge, it is the only magazine in India with its objective spelt out in its very name. However, I would like to mention that it did have a predecessor in Hindi: a periodical brought out by the Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan in Delhi, at the initiative of Dilip Simeon and Purushottam Agarwal. Unfortunately, that periodical did not survive for long.

Communalism Combat has just completed 10 years of uninterrupted publication. This is no small achievement for a magazine committed to social causes when we consider the fact that the average life span of most magazines of the kind is much shorter.

The vigour and vitality of Communalism Combat undoubtedly lies in its remaining true to its commitment and satisfying the needs and expectations of its readers. However, on the eve of its completing 10 years, a long enough time, it would not be out of place to ask in what concrete way it has helped activists in their own engagements with social and political issues.

For those involved in explicitly anti-communal activities, for example, against the saffronisation of education, communal hate campaigns and misinformation, conscientisation of the masses in the struggle for secularist democracy, and human rights, to name just a few, the answer is obvious.

In terms of information and analysis, Communalism Combat has lots to offer that can be put to direct use. But what about those who fall outside this set? Speaking from my own experience, I am sure that they have benefited equally, but perhaps, in a different way.

Communalism Combat, its name notwithstanding, does not confine itself to a narrow definition of communalism. Rather, in all its articles, it strives to explore and expose the connection between communalism and fascism. As a matter of fact, over the last two decades, communal violence and communal politics have been interwoven and honed into a powerful tool for the growth of the Indian variety of fascism. What underlies this process is the aggressive desperation of the ruling class to stay in power in the prevailing regime of acute socio-economic and political crisis on the one hand, and the rising political aspirations of the masses on the other.

This is not the place to elaborate upon the inter-connection between communalism and fascism although the consequences are obvious: there are hardly any social, economic and political issues that can be analysed and acted upon without addressing the above.

For example, the issue of development (which transmutes itself into the ‘anti-incumbency’ factor at the time of elections), earlier perceived as apolitical and non-communal, has, in recent times, acquired a communal colour, as witnessed in the way Digvijay Singh of a ‘secular’ Congress is trying to fight the communal BJP. This is also visible in the pro-Hindutva swing of those sections of Dalits and Adivasis who have been denied the benefits of development, as compared to others of their community who have derived some benefits, however small. (For example, neo-Buddhists in Maharashtra.)

I won’t say that my understanding of these issues is derived directly from articles published in Communalism Combat. But I would definitely say that a lot of information, as ideas scattered in various articles in the magazine, has helped in giving direction to my thinking, which, in turn, have influenced my activities.

Communalism Combat is not an overtly theoretical magazine; it is an activists’ magazine. However, it has theoretical underpinnings as the very basis of its conceptualisation, which are far more radical than conventional radicalism.

A case in point is the incorporation of Dalit issues within its general perspective. This very form of contextualisation orients our thoughts to approach the Dalit issue from an angle that automatically bases itself on the fundamentally communal nature of the caste system, founded as it is on a hierarchical system of domination and exclusion. Caste and ethnic violence lose their distinction from communal violence. They become one and the same, as manifestations of virulent Brahmanical ideology.

Looked at from this point of view, communalism has been with us since the advent of the Brahmanical caste system. The externally directed communal violence of modern times derives its nourishment from within, from internally directed caste violence. The practical and political import of this reality is that anti-communal struggles or, for that matter, struggles for secularism and democracy, can never be successful without simultaneously waging a struggle for the annihilation of the caste system.

These are but a few examples of the many ways in which Communalism Combat has helped me to think and decide upon a concrete course of action. At a purely practical level, I have also made ample use of Communalism Combat while bringing out the monthly, Shramikancha Asud, an ideological organ of the Shramik Mukti Dal, of which I am a member.

As Communalism Combat completes 10 years, I wish it more productive years ahead. For obvious reasons, I am hesitant to wish it a long life!

(Dilip Hota is with the Shramik Mukti Dal).


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