Transformation requires long-term, uncompromising mass movements led by oppressed communities — movements that cannot be co-opted by ruling-class politics.
Published Mar 03, 2025 | 9:00 AM ⚊ Updated Mar 03, 2025 | 9:00 AM
Revolutions fail when resistance movements themselves become morally compromised. (Representational photo/iStock)
Synopsis: Fascism is not just a political structure — it is a worldview, an ideology, and a moral code. To defeat fascism, we must replace its values with alternative social ethics — not just through slogans, but in practice.
Dr BR Ambedkar issued a stark warning about the fragility of political democracy on 25 November 1949 while presenting the Constitution to the nation.
However, both the nation and its progressive movements seem to have forgotten the warning. Consequently, fascism now dominates India politically, economically, and socially.
Dr Ambedkar emphasised the revolutionary achievement of universal suffrage — one vote for every citizen, with equal value. But he also warned that political democracy alone was insufficient unless it was accompanied by social and economic democracy.
Political democracy treats everyone equal only on election day. However, in a society structured around Brahmanical caste hierarchy and a capitalist economy that enriches a few while exploiting the majority, true equality remains a mirage.
The contradiction between political democracy and socio-economic inequality ensures that the principle of “one person, one vote, one value” fails in practice.
Ambedkar cautioned that if India failed to address social and economic inequalities, political democracy itself would collapse. The fundamental question today is: Has India’s electoral democracy attempted to dismantle caste-based Brahmanism and exploitative capitalism over the past 75 years?
The answer is clear: No. Not just in India, but across democratic nations, economic and social inequalities have only increased. This growing inequality fuels social unrest and strengthens authoritarian and fascist tendencies.
Instead of reducing disparities, political democracy has amplified them. In nations like India, where entrenched caste and class structures remain unchallenged, democracy has been hijacked by the ruling elites.
Elections have become a ritual where the poor and oppressed merely legitimize the rule of the exploiting classes. According to studies by V-Dem, more than 27 democratic countries have transformed into electoral autocracies over the past 15 years.
This pattern suggests that increasing socio-economic inequality leads to the failure of political democracy.
Reforming electoral procedures alone will not save democracy. Structural transformation is required. Contemporary history makes it clear that political democracy cannot survive without economic and social equality. This is why Ambedkar insisted that social revolutions must precede political ones.
In his 1947 work, State and Minorities, Ambedkar argued that liberty, equality, and fraternity are interdependent. If equality and fraternity do not exist, liberty will become an instrument for the privileged to exploit the oppressed.
Western democracies have historically guaranteed liberty but not equality, while communist regimes like Russia and China enforced equality but denied liberty. India, however, borrowed its democracy without developing its foundations.
Therefore, liberty, economic equality, and social justice must be achieved simultaneously — which is possible only through nationalising wealth and resources.
However, the Indian Constitution (adopted on 26 January 1950) enshrined liberty as a fundamental right but relegated economic and social equality to Directive Principles (Articles 38-39). These principles remained advisory, not legally enforceable.
Consequently, over 75 years, particularly after 1991’s neoliberal reforms, corporate capitalism and Brahmanical Hindutva forces have deepened inequalities and weakened democracy.
The failure of India’s political democracy to dismantle caste hegemony and capitalism raises critical questions:
1. Why hasn’t India’s political system defeated Brahmanism and capitalism?
2. Can these oppressive structures be dismantled through laws alone?
Caste and capitalism are not just legal structures but deeply entrenched social and institutional systems. Legislatures, executives, judiciary, police, military, and cultural institutions safeguard the dominance of the ruling classes.
Even when progressive forces gain power through elections, institutions controlled by elites undermine them — either through coercion, sabotage, or compromise.
This phenomenon has been witnessed across history. In today’s fascist era, centrism has moved rightward, and the left has shifted toward centrism, leaving no space for genuine pro-people politics. To reclaim democracy, mass movements are essential.
In today’s India, elections have become instruments of fascist consolidation.
Fascists are deeply engaged in grassroots mobilisation, while opposition forces are choosing convenient and comfortable strategies, effectively surrendering the political battlefield.
To defeat Hindutva fascism, we need more than just electoral strategies. True transformation demands destroying the Brahmanical-capitalist power structure and building an alternative socio-political order based on caste annihilation and socialism.
Such transformation cannot happen overnight or through elections alone. It requires long-term, uncompromising mass movements led by oppressed communities — movements that cannot be co-opted by ruling-class politics.
Anything less is either a waste of time or a grand act of self-deception.
To build such movements, leaders must gain people’s trust through their actions, ethics, and sacrifice. The current moral crisis in India’s democratic opposition underscores this need.
History shows that ruling elites are always corrupt and morally bankrupt. But revolutions fail only when resistance movements themselves become morally compromised. Every true revolution is also a battle of values — against old oppressive systems.
If anti-fascist struggles fail to challenge the cultural and moral foundations of fascism, they will be futile. Merely fighting political parties without addressing the deep-seated fascist mindset in society is a doomed strategy.
The Nazification of ordinary Germans under Adolf Hitler happened not just through state policies but through deep cultural indoctrination. Similarly, Indian fascism cannot be defeated through laws alone — it must be uprooted from people’s consciousness, homes, and communities.
Every genuine social struggle challenges not just economic and political oppression but also the moral and cultural values of the oppressor. For example:
• Farmer protests must challenge capitalist exploitation as well as the inhumane logic behind profit-driven food policies.
• Worker unions must fight corporate looting but also embody cooperative and egalitarian ethics.
• Dalit movements must resist Brahmanical oppression while rejecting casteist opportunism and ideological corruption.
• Kannada identity movements must oppose linguistic discrimination without replicating fascist tendencies.
Movements that fail to develop alternative moral and ethical frameworks will ultimately become another tool of oppression.
The collapse of alternative ethics is why many mass movements of the past have lost their transformative potential.
In Karnataka, Dalit, farmers, and workers’ movements of the 1970s-80s were once powerful moral forces — even without state power. Today, many former movement leaders have entered mainstream politics, but their movements have lost moral credibility.
This ethical collapse has led to confusion in alternative politics. The struggle against fascism requires movements that uphold ethical, moral, and ideological integrity.
Fascism is not just a political structure — it is a worldview, an ideology, and a moral code. To defeat it, we must replace its values with alternative social ethics — not just through slogans, but in practice.
The path forward requires building mass movements rooted in ethics, ideology, and genuine sacrifice. Without this, resistance will remain an illusion — a tragic betrayal of history’s lessons.
(Shivasundar is an activist and columnist based in Bengaluru. Views are personal. Edited by Majnu Babu).
