Fascist Relations in India

Anandi Sharan

Brijesh Thakur is the man accused of sexually abusing 34 out of 44 young women in his care as sex slaves, and terrorising 11 others to flee from another care home run by him. Aman Sharma in the Economic Times on August 1 2018 sums up the fascist reality of rape in India in his article about this man, describing how he co-opted the district child welfare committee that was supposed to supervise his NGO that got government contracts to provide shelters for homeless girls. Thakur’s palatial house in the town has an adjoining printing press that houses his three newspapers and a small staircase leads up to the shelter home. Thakur co-opted the district child welfare committee, which is supposed to survey such child shelter homes and raise red flags in case of maladministration. Till 2015, there were five people on this committee including three women. But since 2015, only three men have been on the committee. “No surveys were done. The committee chairman, Dilip Verma, is on the run while one member, Vikas Kumar, is in jail. The local child protection officer, Ravi Roshan, is in jail too for covering up these crimes,” a senior Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) official in Muzaffarpur told ET. A key person whom the CBI is also looking for is a woman named Madhu, who ran Thakur’s shelter.

Fascists, from the days of the Austrian Empire onwards, – if not from the days of the Roman Empire on which the entire miserable system of law and money today is founded,- are very often male children who were systematically tortured by military training officers during their formative years to toughen them up for war. They become perverts who cannot live without torturing weaker creatures; they express themselves by co-opting similar but weaker personalities who fall into their pattern of cruelty as if it were normal, not only in war but in civilian life too. They see nothing wrong in touching the body of another against the other’s will for their own gratification. In India fascist behaviour is not confined to those who have gone through such formal indoctrination in schools. The behaviour is inculcated through caste and class systems of power through the family. The young boy and his same class and caste sister are brought up to exert random and willful psychological and physical power over boys and girls from lower castes. This behaviour has become so normal that boys and girls from lower castes who are tortured in this way are usually forced to laugh off this systematic mental and physical cruelty inflicted on them. The unspoken assumption expressed through their laughter is that it is common knowledge that everyone (like me) is tortured all the time, haha haha, and nothing can be done.

This is this depraved country India, in which Hindutva ideology merges seamlessly with fascist gender and caste and class violence inculcated in people like Brijesh Thakur down the centuries and in his family members who are so vociferously denying he did any wrong, despite the public recorded statements from the victims accusing Thakur of rape and pimping. Yes the man like any other accused should get bail. All accused have a right to bail. It is wrong to confine the millions of accused in India in jail pending trial. That said, the fascist system of state administered suffering in India is completely out of control and bail or no bail the rot is much deeper than just at the bail or no bail level. The crime would not have occurred without the active involvement of those public servants of the district child welfare committee with fascist personalities. And on July 26 2018 believe it or not, the President of India accorded his assent to the Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Act, 2018, that bars an “enquiry or inquiry or investigation” by an anti-corruption agency (CBI included) against a public servant in matters relatable to the discharge of his official duties, without the prior approval of the Centre or the state government, as the case may be, or the disciplinary authority. This provision would apply to all public servants, including the lowest rungs of administration.

Such decisions when combined with the new law passed by the BJP government allowing complete secrecy in political contributions by corporations to political parties cement the power of the Brijesh Thakur’s of this world. Millions are dying of arsenic poisoning from drinking arsenic infested groundwater supplied by public servants of the Brijesh Thakur variety. They simply do not care about other human beings and see nothing wrong in inflicting suffering as part of their daily work for their own gain and gratification.

It is in this context that one is especially saddened to have to note that the Chief Justice of India himself lives in cloud cuckoo land. With millions of pending cases, in courts staffed by around 17’000 judges at all levels, one for every 75’000 Indians, he gave a talk on 28 July 2018 in which he managed to list 15 changes in behaviour the officers in the courts of India should make to speed up disposal of cases without once mentioning shortage of funds as the primary let alone secondary and tertiary cause of the collapse of the administration of India let alone the dispensation of justice. The perpetuation of the state by and for those employed in it, – and benefiting from its corruption and collapsed condition, – cements fascist rule in India. This fascist rule in India is nothing other than the daily exploitation of the backward castes through social, political, economic and gender violence. The BJP government at the centre and their Sangh Parivar crowd mobilisers not only condone but actively promote this fascism, not least by underfunding the administration and judiciary, combined with maintaining and reinforcing the power of upper castes and the capitalist class businessmen in India in all spheres of life.