Chirashree Das Gupta[i]
The
rise of the Sangh Parivar and with it the BJP in its present form from the
1980s had initially led to a debate among the liberal intelligentsia as to
whether they could be characterised as ‘fascist’. The BJP along with the other
constituents of the Sangh Parivar in little more than a decade, from the
demolition of the Babri Masjid to the Gujarat pogrom, resolved that question.
On a more serious note, the debate within the Left about the nature of fascism
in India led to a wide spectrum of writings. One strand was based on either a
political critique [ii]aimed at exposing the
project of Hindutva in its pristine form as envisioned by Savarkar in 1923 and
later by Golwalkar in 1939 or by tracing the history of the Sangh Parivar from
its precursors to present times. The other strand was based on political
economy interpretations of European fascism of the 1920s and 1930s and
comparisons with the trajectory of the RSS led formation and expansion of the
Sangh Parivar. The two strands of scholarship overlapped and together formed
the basis of the political debate that was vital to the emergence of a progressive
praxis of wide alliance with all anti-communal forces against the BJP – a strategy
that had worked periodically in terms of checking its meteoric rise but broke
down under the contradictions of neoliberalism.