Certain features associated with neo-fascism have manifested themselves quite clearly during its ascendancy in India. These easily observable features are: the “othering” of a hapless minority and the generation of hatred against it among the majority; the unleashing of repression both by organs of the state as well as by neo-fascist thugs on members of this minority, on critics, on those belonging to the political opposition, on intellectuals, artists and others; and the open, unadulterated class rule by monopoly capital, especially by a newer segment of monopoly capital. All these typically fascist features are patently visible in India at present with the ascendancy of neo-fascism. In addition however there is a less obvious, but no less important, feature of neo-fascism, which is also visible in India but which has not been much discussed as yet; this relates to the very concept of the nation.

The concept of nationalism that had developed in the course of the anti-colonial struggle in countries like India had been fundamentally different from the nationalism that had developed in Europe in the wake of the Westphalian Peace Treaties. The Indian concept of nationalism had, unlike its European counterpart, been inclusive, and had not identified an “enemy within”; it had not been imperialist, as distinct, at the most, from being territorial; and it had seen the purpose of the nation essentially as serving the interests of the people and not the other way round. With neo-fascism however not only do we have a shift towards a European-style nationalism (evident above all in the identification of an “enemy within”), but a shift so stark that we would be justified in calling it a veritable inversion of the concept of the nation that had developed during the anti-colonial struggle.

With this inversion, the nation is seen as standing above the people rather than the opposite; the people’s role is seen as serving the interests of the “nation” rather than the other way round; the rights of the people are underplayed while their duties are emphasized; and, to top it all, the “leader” is seen as the embodiment of the “nation”. We thus have a double apotheosis: there is an apotheosis of the “nation” as distinct from the people, and this in turn becomes an apotheosis of the “leader”. Any criticism of the “leader” ipso facto becomes an anti-“national” act.

This inversion of the concept of the nation becomes manifest in the fact that instead of the “leader” being chosen by the people to serve their interests, it is the people who are expected to serve the “leader” (and in an ultimate expression of irony, as we shall see, it is the “leader” who also gets to choose the “people” whose leader he is supposed to be).

The tendency towards this inversion shows itself in numerous ways through numerous instances. No less a person in terms of rank than the U.P. Chief Minister, Yogi Adityanath, has referred to the Indian army as “Modiji’s army” which shows an amazing attempt to usurp the identity of the “nation” by the “leader”. Likewise, there has been a massive onslaught on the rights of citizens. Sometime ago when the UPA-I government had been in power with Left support, it had adopted three significant pieces of legislation conferring rights on the people: the Forest Rights Act, the Right to Information Act, and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA); all these Acts are being nullified at present.

While the Forest Rights Act continues on paper, it has been superseded by the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act 2023, which now permits easy diversion of forest land for “infrastructure” purposes (for use, that is, by monopoly capital), even without the approval of the Gram Sabha. The Right to Information Act has been amended in 2019 and 2023 allowing more rejections of information requests. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which had provided a life-line for millions of rural households by making the provision of employment on demand mandatory (or a compensation had to be paid to those applying for work) has simply been abrogated; this Act which had been passed by parliament unanimously after detailed discussions within the house, and with public intellectuals and workers’ representatives outside, has just been amended through a voice vote, and that too after hardly any discussion.

While rights have been snatched away from the people, there has been a proliferation of targeted schemes named after the Prime Minister; they convert what people should be getting as a matter of right by virtue of being citizens of India, into acts of largesse conferred upon them by a benevolent Prime Minister (the “leader”). This withdrawal of rights has been accompanied by an emphasis on “duties”. Government functionaries from the Prime Minister downwards never tire of stressing the “duties” of citizens. And now,  the most important road in the capital city, on which the President of India takes the salute on Republic Day, is renamed “Kartavya Path” (or Duty Avenue), lest people forget their obligation to perform duties.

The most bizarre instance of this inversion of the concept of the nation however is provided by the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls ordered by the Election Commission of India in several states that are holding elections at present. Let us first see how the composition of the Election Commission is decided nowadays. Earlier, the Chief Election Commissioner and the two other Commissioners were chosen by a three-member committee consisting of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India. This was altered by the BJP government, without giving any reasons whatsoever, into a law whereby the Chief Justice was replaced by a Minister from the cabinet chosen by the Prime Minister, which in the present case is the Home Minister. The majority in the present three-member committee that appoints the Election Commission therefore is enjoyed by the Prime Minister who has two votes out of the three.

This Commission, in the name of removing unauthorized voters from the rolls, has started deleting names by demanding impossible documents. Of course, several documents that were originally not recognized by the Commission as constituting proof of eligibility for voting, were reinstated by the Supreme Court; but, even so, lakhs of voters have been eliminated from the voters’ list. In West Bengal alone, an estimated 90 lakh voters, which amounts to more than 11 percent of the electorate, have been eliminated, and a very large number of them belong to the minority community that is currently being targeted by the neo-fascist outfit. The finality of this elimination has of course been slightly stalled by the Supreme Court which has extended the date by which complaints can be heard from those eliminated; but this, though welcome, only delays, or, at the most, mitigates, the damage somewhat, but does not negate it altogether.

Thus what we have in the country now is that the Prime Minister and his nominees are deciding who the “people” electing the government are. Instead of the “people” choosing the government we have the government choosing the “people”, which constitutes quintessentially the inversion of the concept of the nation. It reminds one of Bertolt Brecht’s famous poem: “The government it appears has lost the confidence of the people; why doesn’t it dismiss the people and elect another?” We have here a literal implementation of Brecht’s ironical advice. But this irony captures the essence of neo-fascism and the inversion of the “leader-people” relationship that it brings about as a complement to the inversion of the concept of the nation.

 Neo-fascism however is currently on the retreat internationally. It is suffering a setback everywhere: with Trump’s defeat in Iran, where none of the stated objectives of his assault on that country were fulfilled; with Viktor Orban’s defeat in the elections in Hungary; with even the arch-fascist Netanyahu losing support within Israel for his murderous projects; and with Modi himself failing to get parliamentary support for changing the Indian Constitution to increase the number of Lok Sabha members, that would have made BJP rule go on and on.

This of course would not mean the end of neo-fascism, which  has arisen within a certain conjuncture, a conjuncture of crisis of neo-liberalism. This conjuncture cannot be overcome within neo-liberalism itself; but unless it is overcome through a transcendence of neo-liberalism, the conditions producing neo-fascism would continue, and neo-fascism would come back even if defeated in elections, as Trump himself has shown. The defeat of neo-fascism at the elections however constitutes a necessary condition not only for the restoration of democracy, but also for the transcendence of neo-liberalism itself.