Marxists reduced everything to class struggle. In India are we are producing oppo-Marxism (opposite of Marxism) on the other side of the spiral? Does this mean everything is reducible to ethno-religious struggle in our country? Are we not reproducing or transposing western conception of nation, law, and sovereignty onto our indigenous cultures? Can we truly avoid it? When we pose this transposed version of colonial power apparatus as Indic are we not reproducing coloniality in our post-colonial time? Do we, therefore, need total decolonization? Is such a decolonization possible at all? The inssurectionist mode of responses that we have taken up trying to decolonize the colonial as well as precolonial legacy is taking us to what may be called decolonial anarchy while the neo-colonial state domesticates social relations to lay its hand on the resources of our nation.
What may pass off as anarcho-communalism seems to have become a facade for the political elite to control the resources of our country. We may call this a production of oppo-Marxism as it vivifies capitalism with a mask of nationalism. This is why maybe we have to agree that ethno-religious nationalism is a new religion and as such is opium of the masses. Can this capitalist realism identified by Mark Fisher be replaced by a genuinely Indic nationalism? At this stage it appears unlikely because oppo-Marxism or ethno-religious nationalism is itself a hybrid capitalism and is continuously cross pollinating and producing political tensions in our society.
Anarcho- communism attempts to try to take control of the productive infrastructure to produce an egalitarian society while anarcho-communalism tries to take control of the productive infrastructure to hand it over to private players and thus produce society of inequality. Hence, it is not surprising that dehumanizing poverty in on the increase in our country. All this is hiding behind an inssurectional anarchism that is targeting the minorities around emotive issues casting them around religion, and culture of the majority. This unmediated direct action against the minority is surprisingly not seen as unlawful and is sometimes not sought to be controlled through the mediation of the law and order apparatus. The anarcho-communalism is a vertical and hierarchical and is suffocating horizontal cultures in our society. This is why the test of our civilization has to be seen in the civilization of the state. When the state itself appears to promote uncivil practices it seems to stand in need of civilization itself. This is the reason why we may need to adopt civilized ways to contest the uncivilized practices that are being promoted in the name of our ancient civilization.
What we may need is anarcho-civil practices if we may name those emancipative interventions as such. Anarcho-civil practices much like any anarchism, cannot be locked in a word like a grave stone. It is a harmonious way of conceiving and living life. It constitutes emancipative ways of being Indian. Anarcho-civil practices can be seen in the practice of civil disobedience as well as ahimsa of Mahatma Gandhi. Hence these practices are not new to our country. We seem to need these anarcho-civil practices as mediated practices like our parliament, media, and even law and order apparatus often does not seem to be on the side of the people.
We seem to have the challenge to reclaim our self-determinism. The constant patrolling of boarders between the majority and the minority that shows in different shades and hues because of anarcho-communalism is erasing the voice of the other in our society. This erasure of the voice of the other has reached its climax in the silencing of the opposition as well as silencing of the parliament. The divisive boarder patrolling / policing has reached its climax in what may be called a rise of totalitarian silencing of our democracy which exemplifies the silencing the other voice of the opposition in the parliament and legislative assemblies.
Indeed, state which is an advancement of colony model unfortunately have become the material is infrastructure of neocolonialism. All identity politics produces exploitable boundaries and relies on reductive essentialisms. This then enables us to minoritize, villainize and demonize difference and work to eliminate it. It seems to be encourage politics to become a leviathan that is eating otherness while at the same time perpetuating the cut throat capitalism. Such a politics that appears to become an ungovernable force is certainly putting our democracy and civilization in danger. The state unfortunately appears to have become equitable distributer of harmful effects of exploitation ( like inflation patrol prices etc.) within our society making it difficult to be found out. This shows that those who appear to be favored by anarcho-communalism also do not benefit from it. What we suffer is the re-branding of colonization that continues to play the divide and rule politics of the colonial era. Thus, the majority is co-opted into acceptance of their exploitation thinking that its minoritized other is the reason of all its ills.
The oppo-Marxism that is masquerading in our society as nationalism is nothing but the other of /West /Marxism at several levels. It is other of the same. It means that it is Western to the extent that it assembles Indic resource in Western form. Thus, the matter is Indic while the form is Western. In order disentangle our acceptance of self-exploitation, we need to decolonize our mind. The colonization of the mind is the one that is producing our acceptance of neo-colonization. The colonizers ruled us and produced their sovereignty by producing colonial difference. The colonial difference led us to submit to the’ superior’ rule of the colonizer. Today the colonial difference has become coloniality difference. As a result, we are seeing the neo-colonizers as our redeemers. We, therefore, have the challenge to decolonize ourselves beginning with the decolonization of the mind.
