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On September 2, a one-day national strike brought much of India to a halt. Eleven central trade unions — national-level bodies affiliated with major political parties — issued the stop-work call. At the last minute, the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) union pulled out of the strike. This was to be expected: the BMS has close ties to the ruling party in India, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as both belong to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist organization. Even without the BMS’s participation, however, union leaders expected the strike to draw large numbers, due to increasing discontent with the BJP’s anti-worker labor reforms. The unions announced afterwards that the strike was one of the biggest industrial actions in the world, with roughly 180 million workers taking part. Government officials downplayed it, claiming that the unions exaggerated their success. Whatever the numbers, we need to put this action in the context of past strikes and other ongoing protests — not all of which are progressive. Taken together, the political situation in India highlights an increasing sense of unrest and the difficulty of the task the Left faces.

Flawed Organizing A summary of this year’s strike may provoke a sense of déjà vu, and for good reason: all of these things happened on September 2, 2015, as well — as I described in some detail at the time. In both cases, things returned to normal on the streets and in the factories on September 3. In some ways, these one-day strikes have shown unions’ strength. Even if 180 million participants is an exaggeration, tens of millions did participate — no small feat for a working class riven by divisions of caste, gender, religion, region, and sector. But these strikes also outline the central trade unions’ weakness. Like their counterparts around the world, they have been in decline for several decades, thanks to a sustained neoliberal offensive and many leaders’ accommodative stance. In India, these challenges have been exacerbated by the central unions’ sluggishness in engaging with informal-sector workers, who make up the overwhelming majority of the workforce (up to 93 percent, by some estimates). But even central trade union leadership has begun to recognize these weaknesses. In the run-up to this year’s action, leaders focused on issues that primarily affect the informal sector, including raising the minimum wage and extending social security benefits to unorganized workers. In addition, a new organization, outside the sphere of central trade unions, has formed to address these flaws. The group, called the Mazdoor Adhikar Sangharsh Abhiyan (MASA), draws together many movements and organizations from around the country. Unlike the mainstream unions, MASA is not affiliated with any political party, and it has poured its energy into supporting rank-and-file workers’ movements. MASA organizers, while skeptical of the central unions’ newfound commitment to grassroots organizing, supported the strike. But they see it as more than a symbolic one-day affair: it will kick off a more sustained campaign for workers’ rights. Organizations like MASA indicate a larger movement is coming and reflect a restive mood in India that extends beyond labor issues.

The Gujarat Model The BJP won a convincing majority in the 2014 national elections, riding high on the popularity of their prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi. But now, roughly halfway through their term, Modi and his government face resistance from all sides. The party had campaigned with the slogan “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas” (roughly, “Development for All”). Modi promised to bring the “Gujarat model” of high economic growth nationwide. But, after failing to deliver on these promises, the government has leaned more heavily on its other plank: aggressive Hindu nationalism. This aggressive stance has informed the government’s response to the ongoing quagmire in Kashmir, a Muslim-majority region claimed by both India and Pakistan. The territorial issue serves as a stand-in for the rivalry between the two countries — both nuclear powers — who have already fought wars over the disputed land. The Indian portion of Kashmir is one of the most highly militarized zones in the world; the population lives under a virtual army occupation. On July 8, when a separatist militant was killed by Indian troops, widespread protests — which continue to this day — erupted. This prompted a brutal crackdown from the state. The use of pellet guns has left hundreds of Kashmiri protesters blind; to date, eighty-four civilians have died at the hands of security forces. Meanwhile, Modi and his cabinet have ratcheted up their rhetoric against Pakistan. The savage suppression of the Kashmiri protests is galling, but perhaps unsurprising, given the region’s troubled history and the BJP’s commitment to a muscular, Islamophobic Hindu nationalism. But the BJP has also faced challenges where its popularity seemed most secure, including the prime minister’s home state of Gujarat. A major challenge came a few months ago, when so-called cow vigilantes — observant Hindus who attack anyone suspected of killing cows — escalated their activities. Protecting the holy cow is one of the BJP’s Hindu nationalist commitments, but this has largely operated as an excuse to target Muslims: not long after Modi became prime minister, a man named Mohammad Akhlaq was lynched after a rumor spread that he had killed a cow. However, Muslims aren’t the only ones who handle cow carcasses. Such work has long been the domain of the Dalits: the castes formerly known as untouchables, who were forced to do work the upper castes considered polluting. The BJP captured a large chunk of the Dalit vote in the 2014 election thanks to a difficult balancing act: Modi promised Dalits a place in the majority Hindu fold but could not threaten upper-caste dominance in society. The impossibility of this position became clear when cow vigilantes attacked a group of Dalits in Gujarat on July 11, prompting an upsurge of protest and resistance. Dalits vowed to stop doing this stigmatized work, and, in several cases, they dumped cow carcasses at police stations. They organized huge rallies and protests, culminating in a massive gathering in Ahmedabad, Gujarat’s capital. One of the movement’s main demands was land reform, and specifically land distribution to Dalits, who have historically been landless. A prominent slogan translates roughly to “You keep your holy cow, just give us our land,” aptly dissecting the intertwined nature of religious and economic oppression under the caste system. One of the leaders who emerged from these protests was a Dalit activist named Jignesh Mevani. He had been engaged in grassroots politics for years but was catapulted into the national spotlight this July. Mevani is engaged with both Marxist and Dalit resistance, a challenging position considering the Indian left has long been upper-caste dominated. Indian Marxism tends to ignore caste in favor of a crudely deterministic class-based critique. There are some signs, though, that this is changing. After the Gujarat protests, the left-wing activists involved in MASA welcomed Mevani at an open meeting in Delhi. At the same time, however, some Dalit organizations have criticized him for not taking a critical enough stance toward the Left and its tainted caste history.