An inquiry into the genesis of fascism is perhaps appropriate given the penchant of the Indian political class to use its adjective form as a pejorative for all seasons against opponents without understanding its meaning
In the wake of the arrest of five urban Naxals by the Pune police, Congress chief Rahul Gandhi accused the BJP-led Government of being fascist. This writer doubts if the Congress president knows what fascism means; although he is educated and certainly not an 'anpadh gawar' to use his party leader Sanjay Nirupam’s phrase for the Prime Minister.
The expression fascist as a condemnation was first used frequently in Indira Gandhi’s time. Her grandson is merely following the tradition set by her. Surely, other Congress leaders know that fascism is not a synonym for despotism though fascists can be despotic and despots fascists. The first is a particular ideology while the latter is a brutal autocracy which was equally a feature of Stalinism exterminating the bourgeois and the kulaks; Nazism mass murdering Jews and white American settlers' brutal treatment of Native Indians.
Fascism is class collaboration as communism is class conflict and capitalism is (accused of) class exploitation. Western Europe was deeply concerned by the Russian revolution of 1917 led by Vladimir Ilych Lenin and felt threatened. One of the reactions was the innovation of a new contrarian ideology, namely, of class collaboration, in order to keep class conflict from taking over society.
Some years ago in the US, there was a celebration to commemorate Swami Vivekananda’s birth anniversary. That was an occasion when the secular fundamentalists were provoked to call the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishva Hindu Parishad, fascists. A meeting presided over by well-known journalist late Kuldip Nayar was held to dissuade the distinguished Sonal Mansingh from going to Washington to give a dance performance in connection with the celebration. Because, in the view of those at the meeting, the organisers of the commemoration were fascist. What they did not realise was that the word was not the political abuse that they thought it was. Benito Mussolini initiated the fascist movement in March 1919 at Milan and founded the party called Partito Nazional Fascista in November 1921. It ruled Italy for two decades. To recapitulate what fascism was, the word “fascio” means a bundle or a bunch implying unity. To be effective, the answer had to be something that would prove attractive to the peasants, the workers as well as to their unions. This was discovered in “class collaboration” as represented by fascism.
Prof Alfredo Rocco, Minister of Justice in the Mussolini Cabinet, set forth the gist of this new ideology in the course of a speech at Perugia in 1925. According to him, society does not exist for the individual but the individual for the society. Economic progress is a social interest and all classes of people should combine or collaborate to maximise production. The interests of the employers and the employed are identical. To ensure that this is practiced, there must be a system of state discipline over class conflicts. Strikes and lockouts alike were held to be illegal and punishable by heavy fines, and in certain cases, imprisonment. Wherever possible, the employers and workers in each industry, trade or profession, were organised together in a syndicated association. Where it was not possible to form such syndicates, the unions and the employers’ associations remained separate but combined to form guilds to coordinate and ensure cordiality. If collective bargaining could not end satisfactorily, disputes were referred to law courts assisted by experts. This is how class collaboration was conceptualised by the Fascist Party in Italy.
In practice, the economy was toned up by rearmament and public works. Soldiers were recruited in large numbers and so were workers in factories to produce arms. This would bring profits to the bourgeoisie who could then pay the proletariat well. Urban prosperity would increase demand for agricultural produce. What was left of the under-employed youth was absorbed by the armed forces. The promise to the whole nation was foreign conquests which would bring economic surpluses. The Albanian adventure and the invasion of Abyssinia were two efforts to fulfil this promise until, of course, World War II broke out. Another example of the practice of fascism or class collaboration, albeit on a much more limited scale, was in Spain under Gen Francisco Franco. Neither the Italian nor the Spanish experience is widely known in great detail in India. What the members of the Indian intelligentsia are familiar with, however, are the doings of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. It was founded by Hitler and his six comrades in Munich in 1920. The economic deprivation in Germany was much greater than witnessed in Italy. The country paid an exorbitant price for its defeat in World War I. Runaway inflation as well as the world depression ignited by a crash in share prices on Wall Street in New York in 1929 made matters unbearable for Germany. It was widely believed that the initial attraction of the German people towards Hitler and his programme of class collaboration was more or less were on the lines of Mussolini’s Italy although on a far grander scale to save the economy and bring prosperity which Germany experienced in some measure in the 1930s before the Nazi racist, authoritarian ideology took over.
Japan is another example of a fascist experiment. With the restoration of the Meiji regime in 1850 and the reforms initiated in 1868, were sown the seeds of ferment and economic progress. The gates of Japan opened and foreign contacts began with industrial development growing, and the number of urban workers increased. By 1922, a Communist Party was founded. In the rural areas, silk farms sprung up and there was a fragmentation of farms. Also, discontent grew among the tenants who worked there. Thereafter came the share market crash which triggered the Great Depression in 1929.The Japanese economy received its share of tremors. One of the remedies to relieve the pains of the economic crisis was expansion through military conquest. The fact that the Japanese population had more than doubled since the Meiji restoration meant that more and more jobs were necessary. The ghost of Karl Marx and the scenes of the Russian Revolution were not invisible to the Japanese mind. War appeared to be a possible panacea which eventually led to the 1941 naval attack on Pearl Harbor, the American base of warships on its Pacific coast. This was followed by the land invasion of British and French colonies in South-east Asia. Just before the Pearl Harbor attack, Defence Minister Gen Tojo Hideki was made the Premier. The war moulded all classes of the Japanese people into one. This was an experiment of fascism in Asia.
So much for fascism and its smaller as well as grander variations. But what is its ugly connection with politics in India? India is not Europe. 2018 is not 1920. Communism is dead. There is poverty here but no Great Depression sparked by a financial collapse of the Wall Street kind on the horizon. The Indian ethos has no record of imperialism and, therefore, no promise of foreign conquests would be credible. If an attempt is being made to compare minorities in fascist states and Muslims of India, it is ridiculous and perverse. No one in their right mind has accused Muslims of betraying India, not even the BJP, whose only contention has been that there has been appeasement of the Muslim community’s clergy and its whims. All in all, to call anyone a fascist in India is to talk nonsense.
(The writer is a well-known columnist and an author)
