https://maktoobonline.wordpress.com/2015/12/11/1-15/ Excluding Muslims from kerala’s anti fascist struggle is stupid: meena kandasamy Team Maktoob Media <https://maktoobonline.wordpress.com/author/teammaktoob/> / 2 days ago <https://maktoobonline.wordpress.com/2015/12/11/1-15/> Opinion -Meena Kandasamy
[image: Meena Kandasamy 3] In Kerala, there’s going to be a massive public event organized by the People Against Fascism. Now, this umbrella formation has several organizations coming together under this banner and several important and famous activists, writers, grassroots movements are expected to be represented in the public meeting. I learnt from one of my friends that no Muslim organization has been invited to be a part of this formation. When I first heard about this exclusion, I was too shocked and could not find the right words to express my outrage. I really could not believe that something like this can actually happen, that too in Kerala, and people can get away by “justifying” this with one lame argument or the other. After all, this meeting is not organized by the RSS, right? So, when I got the chance to meet two of the activists who were organizing the event, I asked them why any Muslim organization–Solidarity or SDPI or Jamaat-e-Islami or PDP or Muslim League or any other–was not taken within the fold of People Against Fascism. One of the activists stayed totally silent and did not address my question, another said, “there are forty organizations” (too many, problem of choice, what is it?) and said it was a “general decision” This “general decision” or its basis was not explained to me. Firstly, what kind of an understanding of “fascism” is this? Aren’t Muslims, like Dalits, the most threatened group in India today because of the emergence of the Hindu far right and the free reign of militant fringe outfits? [image: 12360375_1072038619494215_9031159640899505958_n] Secondly, is this exclusion of Muslims an effort to not step the oppressive Hindu state structure on the wrong side, and instead send the signal that even as we are opposed to the dangers of Hindutva fascism, we also cannot tolerate the presence of politicized Muslim groups? Thirdly, can such neo-liberal “secularism”–that merely condemns all religions without understanding the specific social context deliver us from anything, let alone the rise of fascism? Fourthly, is this not some kind of islamophobia–w here by one gains credentials only by keeping Muslims out of the discourse on anti-fascism, by speaking for them, instead of allowing them to speak for themselves and organize themselves and be a part of the political resistance to the far right onslaught? Is this not a denial of legitimacy to Muslim organizations that have been formed to offer resistance to communal attacks and saffronization and violence unleashed upon the minority communities? Fifthly, are they not replicating the Hindutva organizations through such an exclusion of Muslims? Sixthly, the Muslim organizations who may be accused of being jihadist-ISIS-types are not going to come and align themselves with progressive, democratic, secular organizations—so those who align with such a struggle are by default committed to secularism in India and in resisting the Hindutva caste forces. Why is this reality ignored? And 1000thly, those who think that fundamentalism = fascism, are ignoring grassroots realities. If Tunisia has the highest number of ISIS fighters it does not happen overnight because all the Tunisian young men decided to read the Quran, demand 72 virgins, and wage a holy war, but it is a reaction to impoverishment, unemployment, and state oppression. Do these people even bother to address the economic base of fascism here? In a country like India, even the possibility of Islamic fundamentalism transmogrifying into a fascist force is so remote as to be as a fantasy–so why stirring up so much the scarecrow of Islamic fundamentalism while we are faced with the much more serious threat of Hindu fascism? Drawing out the difference between Communism and Fascism, Trotsky wrote: “If the Communist Party is the party of revolutionary hope, then fascism, as a mass movement, is the party of counter-revolutionary despair. ” Unfortunately, I think the “counter-revolutionary despair” of the caste/Hindu overlords has percolated so deeply into society, that our dear neo-liberal “anti-fascists” now embrace this despair, they claim to be under threat from a monster of an Islamic fundamentalism that they have filled with enough air to resemble the power-wielding Hindu far right. This false equivalence is nothing but a total sign of despair, or perhaps, the first stage that reason has stopped functioning. There are several suicidal positions to take in fighting and fending off fascism, but excluding Muslims en masse (also known as hindu savarna liberal secular islamophobia) I’m sure is going to be one of the most insanely stupid. Congratulations on such a potent discovery, and good luck with your anti-fascism movement in India that does not involve Muslim resistance. ———————————————————— Courtesy – Meena Kandasami’s Facebook wall. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
