TRILOKPURI, Moradabad, Muzaffarnagar…and more than the two hundred odd riots after the Modi government took office pose a serious challenge. They represent the dangerous combination of neo-liberalism and communalism that has come to represent the corporate backed ruling classes in contemporary India. Hence we can safely say that majoritarian communalism is a hegemonic ideology of the present day ruling classes and an instrument of State whose leadership is in the hands of Hindutva leaders. To this extent a neo-liberal depoliticised trope of development is being used by the Modi government to create space for communalism which is reflected in the newly emerging tie up between Hindutva and corporate capitalism. This understanding however is not widespread and scholars like Ashutosh Varshney still live under the misunderstanding that Modi will not endorse his party’s efforts to encourage riots and do polarisation because it will adversely affect both investment and his own newly found secular image which seeks to shed the ghost of the Gujarat riots (Indian Express, October 30, 2014). This erroneous understanding of a section of influential liberal and democratic intellectuals is based on the understanding that the interests of capital are antithetical to a communal agenda. It is therefore the urgent task to counter such misconceptions, both ideologically and through mass mobilisations of social reform, in order to combat neo-liberalism and its new hegemonic avtar: Hindutva and social fascism. WORKING CLASS UNITY AND SECULARISM Within classical European liberalism, secularism implied the separation of State from the church. In other words, religion would remain a private affair for people to pursue on their own without interference in affairs of the State or politics. In contrast, communalism is the active use of religion in politics. A secular State was thus meant to ensure the political and cultural rights of all types of minorities without actively ensuring larger interests of the working class. Such recognition was a double edged sword because it created sectarian sectional interest within the working class movement while recognising the legitimate community based rights. In this sense, the recognition of rights in one sphere did not necessarily ensure working class unity to challenge the exploitative capitalist system. Rather it posed a challenge to the communist and socialist political leaders and ideologues with the problem of ensuring the legitimate rights of linguistic, cultural and religious minorities without dividing the unity of the working classes. The debate within the communist movement on the rights of political self-determination responded to these pressures. Amongst others, Lenin, Stalin and Rosa Luxemburg wrote extensively on the national question and a new conception of the multi-national State was introduced to ensure that the legitimate rights of non-class entities were incorporated within the working class movement. Perhaps the formation of the Soviet Union was the first of its kind where all cultural groups ran their own political units, but were united together into a State through organisations and institutions that built the unity amongst workers. Hence the idea of an egalitarian system was firmly embedded in the idea of the struggle for workers rights and the need to build an egalitarian economic order. Perhaps the communist States of the middle twentieth century achieved this objective in a limited way and the break-up of the Soviet Union showed how difficult it is to manage class unity and communitarian rights at the same time in the context of changing power relations within a larger transforming capitalist system. In this sense, the communist and socialist ideas of secular democracy were theoretically and ideologically distinct from the liberal democratic notions of secularism. SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION AND THE SECULAR PROJECT The problem of embedding minority and other communitarian rights within a broader working class unity has remained with the Left and democratic forces since the 1940s. The dominant communist thinking accepted the liberal conception of secularism as an interim arrangement on its way to strengthening the working class movement. It was believed that the idea of secularism, if implemented in letter and spirit will strengthen the democratic framework and provide space for the meeting the limited demands of a working class movement. But this was not a stand alone project. Ideologically, the secular project was linked to the process of social transformation of land reforms and labour rights. The greatest evidence of this came during the second phase of the Tebhaga movement where a united peasant movement was faced with serious political attempts to divide the peasantry into Hindu and Muslims by the landlords who dominated the Congress and the Muslim League. As Abani Lahiri states in his memoirs Post War Revolt in Rural Bengal, the Kisan Sabha emphasised the class unity between Hindu and Muslim peasants, thereby avoiding riots in the Tebhaga areas, i.e., 19 out of 28 districts in united Bengal. (Lahiri 1998: 73-75). Such a class unity was forged around four essential slogans: Adhi Nai Tebhaga Chai (down with half share system we want two thirds); the second Korja Dhane Sud Nai (no interest to be paid to landlords for paddy loans we take for seeds); the third Nij Kholane Dhan Tolo (after harvesting take paddy to your own house and keep control over it: do not allow the landlord to measure in his house) and the fourth slogan was Dakhal Deke Chaash Karo (no eviction just because peasants had joined the movement). Through a protracted struggle for such rights, the Kisan Sabha played an active role in maintaining communal harmony and averting riots. An example of this is given by Lahiri in the Nilphamari town of Rangpur district where Bihari Muslims workers were killed in riots. Lahiri explains that the march of the Red Flag ensured that Hindus and Muslims maintained their social relations and peace by helping each other (Lahiri 1998: 90-91). In this sense the Red Flag became a symbol of a new social solidarity at the heart of which was the secularism of the working classes. This showed the potential for the working classes to develop a secular consciousness that is fundamentally different from the secular consciousness of the ruling classes. THE CURRENT CONJECTURE The snippets of history elaborated above have important implications for the Left and democratic forces, albeit with some historical specificities. The first thing to be noticed about the current context is that the definition of communalism has itself acquired a new meaning with its stronger than ever links with socially conservative customary institutions as well as corporate capital. The local level functioning of this alliance through a direct coordination by the instruments of the Sangh Parivar have created a rightward polarisation that has multiple social dimensions and in fact constitutes a social counter revolution. This is reflected in the appearance of new right wing organisations that do moral policing and also raise controversial polarising issues. The role and statements of the ministers of the union governments is also to be investigated in this regard. Second, this alliance has been a consequence of the weakening of social welfare and social reform with the progressive intensification of the neo-liberal onslaught. The idea that development should be separated from politics and the State should refrain from social regulation has strengthened the forces of religious fundamentalism, economic and social conservatism. Thirdly, the direct attack on the rights of the working class and working class unity is a result of both the weakening of Left and democratic forces as well as the strengthening of bourgeois identity politics. Fourth, the role of the media in spreading the cynicism against the political process is playing an important role in delegitimising secular politics cannot be underestimated. Hence it is essential that the Left and democratic movements take up the challenge to define their own brand of secular politics and reform in order to build an anti-neoliberal and anti-Hindutva secular consciousness. Such an effort should be specifically embedded in working class unity and make a broader mobilisation against the rightwing counter revolution, thus leading to an alternative that is different from bourgeois secular politics.