The RSS: Fascism in India
The realities of India are in sharp contrast with the image it projects internationally. For example, you probably haven’t heard of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the RSS. It is an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary organization. The RSS, with its millions of members, exerts enormous influence and power in India. Its political party is the BJP, the Bharatiya Janata Party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The RSS is the progenitor and leader of a large body of organizations called the Sangh Parivar, which has a presence in all facets of Indian society. It promotes a Hindu supremacist ideology that is intolerant of India’s minority communities, especially Muslims. India, particularly under the current regime of Narendra Modi is in Arundhati Roy’s words “a dangerous place” where “a deeply flawed, fragile democracy has transitioned– openly and brazenly–into a criminal, Hindu-fascist enterprise.”
Speaker
Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy is a world-renowned award-winning writer and global justice activist. Tariq Ali says of her she “is both loathed and feared by the Indian elite. Loathed because she speaks her mind. Feared because her voice reaches the world outside India and damages the myths perpetrated by New Delhi.” Among her many books are My Seditious Heart and Azadi. Her latest book is The Architecture of Modern Empire.
listener in NM –
Your interview with Arundhati Roy was fantastic. She said something that really struck me (equally about US), that people will take all kinds of abuse for a promise of a glorious imaginary past.
Listener in Canada –
A remarkable conversation between Arundhati Roy, vastly celebrated as one of the best novelists and essayists in the English language, and David Barsamian, many consider him one of the savviest interviewers of our times. Lamenting the rise of fascism in India, the consequent losses of all forms of freedoms, Roy has in fewer words denuded the entire oligarchic, colonial, and fundamentalist nature of current Indian state, or for that matter the US polity and economy. In the context of national liberation struggles or movements for the protection of our “Panchamama”, as Evo Morales would call Earth and its atmosphere, Roy has an encyclopaedic store of information. Barsamian has brilliantly channeled the conversation that includes analysis of almost all popular post-Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru period resistance movements in India from Narmada Dam to anti-Muslim pogroms, to adivasi struggles in Chattisgarh, to Farmer’s Movement, to the rise of Hindutva, to COVID, to Kashmir, to citizenship, to Islamophobia
listener in MA –
Arundhati Roy delivers a devastating critique of the BJP capture of India’s democracy and political economy. For anyone desiring a deeper understanding of the main currents driving India’s retrograde political order, this interview is an indispensable place to start, including for its insights on the RSS, an organization that played the long game and built up the Islamophobic ideologies now wielded shamelessly by so many contemporary politicians.
Harjeet Dhura (verified owner) –
The best of the best! Thanks for your service!