Palestine Archives – People's Review

South Africa's vs Israel at ICJ: A moral triumph amid Gaza's struggle for justice

South Africa vs Israel at ICJ: A moral triumph amid Gaza’s struggle for justice

South Africa wins a legal battle against Israel at the ICJ, accusing it of genocide in Gaza. While the court lacks enforcement power, the ruling exposes the plight of Palestinians and challenges biased narratives. Can this be a turning point for accountability?

Wed, Jan 31 2024Sat, Feb 03 2024 Ahmed A Shahbaz Foreign Affairs

Abraham Accords: What will be the consequences of Bahrain severing ties with Israel?

The recent Israel-Palestine crisis is restructuring the 2020 Abraham Accords, which had implications for oil pipeline routes and defence deals, but now seems to be disintegrating as we see the Gulf engaging in a multifaceted diplomatic venture.

Mon, Nov 27 2023Mon, Nov 27 2023 Ahmed A Shahbaz Foreign Affairs

The Zionist Israeli attack on Palestine has dug the grave for the West in the Middle East

Did the West just dig its own grave in the Middle East and in the Global South by supporting the Zionist Israeli attack on Palestine?

Mon, Oct 23 2023Mon, Oct 23 2023 Editor Editorial

Is the Palestinian resistance creating a new history with Operation Al-Aqsa Flood?

The Palestinian resistance stunned the world with its strategic offensive campaign. Is this the beginning of the end of Zionist hegemony?

Tue, Oct 10 2023Tue, Oct 10 2023 Tanmoy Ibrahim Foreign Affairs

Harnaaz Kaur Sandhu and the Miss Universe pageant glorified Zionist occupation

Harnaaz Kaur Sandhu won the Miss Universe pageant, which was marred in controversy over its normalisation of Zionist terrorism in Palestine.

Wed, Dec 15 2021Wed, Dec 15 2021 People's Review Women

Pegasus spyware row: the secret dots that connect Hindutva and Zionist fascists

Pegasus spyware row: A trail of events connecting Zionists and Hindutva fascists paved the way to India’s controversial snoopgate scandal allegedly led by Modi

Sat, Jul 24 2021Sat, Jul 24 2021 Tanmoy Ibrahim Politics

Ceasefire between Hamas and Zionist terrorists will encourage intensified people's resistance

Ceasefire between Hamas and Zionist terrorists is a victory for Palestine

As the ceasefire between Hamas and Zionist terrorists has become a headache for Benjamin Netanyahu, it will encourage to intensify Palestinian resistance.

Mon, May 24 2021Mon, May 24 2021 People's Review Foreign Affairs

Zionist Israeli terrorist attacks on Palestinians call for stronger resistance

Zionist Israeli terrorist attacks on Palestinians can’t be stopped through resolutions in the UN but by intensifying the struggle to realise a free Palestine.

Thu, May 13 2021Thu, May 13 2021 Tanmoy Ibrahim Foreign Affairs

Zionist terrorist Netanyahu’s victory in the polls will be catastrophic to Palestine

Netanyahu is fanning jingoism to incite his hardcore Zionist fanatic voters. His victory in the Zionist elections will pose serious threat to Palestine.

Sat, Sep 14 2019Sat, Sep 14 2019 Tanmoy Ibrahim Foreign Affairs

Netanyahu’s “friend” Narendra’s foreign policy is going to surrender India’s sovereignty to the US-Israel-Saudi nexus

The Modi 2.0 regime’s foreign policy will fully mortgage India to the US imperialism and make it an appendage of Zionist Israel and Wahhabi Saudi Arabia.

Thu, Jun 06 2019Sat, Jun 08 2019 Nabeel Anwer Foreign Affairs

The world has been mourning the white-supremacist fascist terrorist attack on two mosques in New Zealand’s Christchurch on 15 March 2019, where 50 Muslims were killed when they were offering their Friday congregational prayer. However, unsurprisingly, the RSS-led Indian Hindutva fascist terrorist camp celebrated the incident with much fanfare, like the western white-supremacists and the Zionist terrorists. Many of the prominent Hindutva fascism supporters, rabble-rousers and social-media influencers, who support the incumbent Narendra Modi-led BJP government, shamelessly defended the terrorist attack on the Muslims by vilifying the community as a harbinger of terrorism and violence. Banned by the micro-blogging site Twitter for hate speech earlier, a certain advocate was found featuring in a video shared by Hindutva thugs, in which he tried to legitimise the Christchurch terror attack and build up support for the white-supremacist fascist terrorism that’s blistering at an epidemic proportion throughout Europe, North America and Australia. Many other Hindutva flag bearers were found lambasting the Muslim community for purportedly waging a “jihad” against the non-Muslim world by citing western propaganda and justified the terror strike as a method to resolve the problem. These type of propaganda became viral on social media platform Facebook as well. Though these platforms worked swiftly to delete the video of the terrorist attack, nothing was done to curb hate speech and profanity that was spewed by the Indian Hindutva fascist terrorists on social media. No action was taken by the Indian government’s security agency against these communal vitriol mongers and terrorism supporters, though it’s claimed that India has “zero tolerance policy against terrorism”. What stopped the government machinery from taking action against the culprits if not an open pact with them? This display of unapologetic hatred against Muslims isn’t an isolated incident or a deed of few fringe elements, rather, as an institution, the Indian government and the state machinery endorse the jaundiced views of these Hindutva fascist terrorists. As these narratives go quite well with the ruling party’s political line and its poll propaganda, therefore, the state machinery unapologetically stood behind those who openly expressed their support for a terrorist killing Muslims in New Zealand. Prime minister Modi wrote a letter of condolence to the New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, calling the attack an “act of terrorism” and expressed his grief. This was an official letter and was written following due protocols as the head of the government. However, as Modi has turned social media, especially Twitter, into his default press release publisher, it was expected that apart from a letter to his Kiwi counterpart, the prime minister would at least tweet a few lines condemning the terrorist act by using the same cliche that he reiterates whenever the menace of terrorism strikes anywhere in the world. Alas! Such a tweet became a lacuna in the prime minister’s daily communication, despite reports of seven to nine Indian citizens being killed in the terrorist attack. The prime minister disappointed those who expected such a condemnation of white-supremacist terrorism from someone like him when the elections are less than a month away and the support of the hardcore Hindutva fascist elements and ruling classes is quite essential for the BJP to retain its dominance over India. Not a single word of condemnation of the terrorist attack on Christchurch came from Modi; even his government didn’t take any action against those who have been justifying the barbaric crime on social media and internet. The BJP or the RSS didn’t say what actions it will take against those who have been celebrating the New Zealand terror attack. This nonchalant attitude isn’t quite surprising to any non-liberal sane mind that’s aware of the intricacies of Indian politics. What keeps Modi silent on the issue of such a terror attack that has killed people of his own country? Why Modi and the Hindutva fascist camp have not condemned the Christchurch terror attack? Why are the Hindutva fascists celebrating a white-supremacist terror attack, when the killer’s manifesto names Indians as one of the major threats to European civilisation apart from Chinese and Turks? How can someone celebrate the killing of their own by a foreign terrorist? The answer to these questions lies in the toxic political ideology of Hindutva fascism and its severe effect on the minds of the Hindutva indoctrinated terror-mongers. To understand the complicity between the white-supremacist fascism and Hindutva fascism, one needs to delve deep into the history of fascism globally and its influence on India. The Hindutva fascism isn’t a monolithic block that can be defined by citing the example of the Modi regime or its parental body — the RSS — which is called the fountainhead of Hindutva fascism. It’s a fascist ideology, that’s a collaborative project in which each has provided according to their own to put up a large canvas, saffron and grotesquely reactionary. The Hindu, Hindu Nationalism and Hindutva Fascism Like evolution of species, before the multitude of Hindutva fascist organisations following a rickety narrative came into existence, the religion named “Hindu” was formed by the British colonial rulers when they started enacting laws according to religious customs of all major sects and communities in India. The British colonial rulers’ categorisation of the Hindu religion, absolving all non-Abrahamic faiths in it, including different religions like Sikhism, Buddhism, Jainism and the pagan tribes, was driven by the Brahminical upper-caste feudal landlords and comprador capitalists’ aspiration to remain in the “majority community” despite being numerically inferior vis-a-vis the Bahujans, ie the ostracised Dalits, the lower-caste shudras, the tribal people, Muslims, Christians and followers of other non-Brahminical religions. To hold the compartmentalised caste blocks together and promote the interests of the comprador upper-caste Hindu capitalists, it became necessary to carry out some reformation of the religion. Thus, from the Arya Samaj movement to Vivekananda’s Hindu arousal movement, all started under the aegis of British imperialism. A peculiar character of the Indian comprador bourgeoisie, who were born out of the colonial womb, has been their liberalism regarding economy while adhering to strict feudal conservatism in the spheres of politics, society, etc. Both Hindu and Muslim social-reformers of the 19th century, portrayed as the “pioneers of Indian renaissance” by the Indian rulers so far, have been socially conservative. Yet, those among them who opposed some social evils like sati system or advocated women’s education, like Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, had to face strong vitriol from the conservative ruling blocs, despite having the patronage of the colonial rulers. It was at the beginning of the 20th century, when a popular movement started in the Bengal province against the evil design of the British imperialism to divide the province into two parts with a divisive communal agenda, that the need to distract and deviate any nationalist outrage was felt by the British rulers. The upper-caste Bengali Bhadralok community began a massive movement in the urban areas, burning British commodities, and many taking to militant revolutionary struggle by assassinating British government staffs to oppose the colonial hegemony. The frightened British imperialists first tried to suppress the movement by unleashing state violence, failing which they tried to ensure that the Muslims are segregated from the Hindus, who were at the forefront waging the struggle, by forming the Muslim League in 1906. With the formation of the Muslim League it became easy for the British colonial rulers to spew communal hatred among the people and incite riots. The Muslim League adopted the Two Nation Theory propounded by Sir Khan in the 19th century, which gave an opportunity to the British imperialism to vilify the Muslims as enemies of Hindus and thereby paved the way for the Hindu Mahasabha, founded in 1915 by turncoat revolutionary VD Savarkar, along with Hindu comprador bourgeoisie like Madan Mohan Malviya and Lala Lajpat Rai, a disgruntled Congress leader. The Hindu Mahasabha laid the foundation of the Hindutva fascism at least a decade before the formation of the RSS and had been a major political force in India until the 1960s, when it was finally cast into oblivion by the RSS’s rise. VD Savarkar coined the term — Hindutva — by mixing Hindu identity with the nationality of an Indian nation, which has been since depicted as a goddess. Bengali upper-caste bureaucrat-turned-author Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s fictitious work Anandamath, which played a crucial part in arousing the anti-colonial nationalist fervour among petty-bourgeois revolutionaries, was used by Hindu Mahasabha to build up its version of nationalism. The Hindu nationalist idea, which earlier played a progressive role in arousing the Bhadralok community against foreign oppression, became a reactionary weapon under the Hindutva fanatics, who — as stooges of British imperialism — used the occasion to deprive it of any revolutionary and anti-colonial essence. The Hindu nationalism used fictitious claims from the Anandamath and other sources to depict the narrative of a glorious Hindu past of an Akhand Bharat, a land from where the Aryans, claimed to be the superior race, originated and spread all over the world. It was claimed that the real enemies of the Hindu nation was the Muslims and Christians, who have stolen the wealth and glory of the Hindus. It called for a revival of the Hindu culture and restoration of a Hindu state founded on Brahminical hegemony. A Hindu goddess Bharat Mata, narrated in Anandamath and earlier revered by revolutionary militants, was turned into a cult for Hindu nationalists and Vande Mataram, a song in the fiction, became the war cry, with even the Congress using it as its slogan. Following the international fascism’s trait in later years, the Bharat Mata, a vulnerable woman and mother, was shown under threat from the “other” — ie the Muslims, Christians and those who are secular. The threat quotient was intensified to spread the xenophobia, which is still continuing, and the Hindu “sons” of the vulnerable Bharat Mata are called upon, even now, to save her honour from the Muslims, Christians and other enemies. The concept of Bharat Mata, plagiarised from Chattopadhyay’s Anandamath, is used in a sheer patriarchal way to show women as weak, vulnerable and in need of masculine protection. This patriarchal and feudal masculinity, quintessential of the Hindutva’s Hindu, has been an aspiration for generations of Hindutva fanatics across different organisations to become feral and boisterous. However, though the Hindu Mahasabha and the Muslim League were quite well splitting the Indian people on religious lines to weaken the anti-colonial struggle, the 1917 November Revolution in Russia and the growth of Bolshevik revolutionary theory, which started weaning a large number of youth, frightened the British imperialism, which took up the task of building a militant organisation to thwart the menace of communism and foment communal trouble. To serve this goal, the British colonial rule and its infamous Intelligence Bureau (IB) formed the RSS with turncoat nationalists from Brahminical castes at its helm in 1925. Since then, in the last 94 years, the organisation have been a crucial support system for colonial and neo-colonial rule in India. One of the major differences between the RSS and the Hindu Mahasabha, despite their similarities in many other things, has been the RSS’s strategy of building a movement from the grassroots calling for a Hindu Rashtra (Hindu Nation) and the Hindu Mahasabha’s frantic attempt to replace the Congress and become the political alternative for the upper-caste Hindu feudal landlords and comprador capitalists of colonised India. Other differences were over leadership, strategy and tactics of the two organisations. While the Hindu Mahasabha unapologetically spilled the beans and shared its political vision of getting a share of state power from the British imperialism, the RSS wanted to work from the backstage and use different offshoot political outfits for ventriloquism in the political sphere.

Part II: Understanding Hindutva fascism’s support for white-supremacist fascism

Part 2 of the special series, we will delve into the historic growth of Indian fascism — the Hindutva fascism — and its ties with global fascist movement.

Fri, Mar 22 2019Sat, Mar 23 2019 Tanmoy Ibrahim Politics

Resignation of Nikki Haley Points Towards Crisis of US Imperialism

As the Donald Trump regime failed to counter the Russia–Syria–Iran nexus in the United Nations, the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley had to resign and the Trump regime […]

Thu, Oct 11 2018Sun, Oct 14 2018 Editor Foreign Affairs

The Zionist Israeli Massacre of Palestinians in Gaza Can’t Stop Intifada

The world mutely looks upon as the US-puppet state Zionist Israel carried out brutal massacre of more than 60 Palestinian protesters in Gaza, who have been protesting against the occupation […]

Sat, May 19 2018 Nabeel Anwer Foreign Affairs

Jawaharlal Nehru in Palestine in 1960, then under Egyptian control (United Arab Republic)

Nehru Beats Modi in the Race to Palestine

The media is portraying the visit of Narendra Modi to Ramallah of Palestine as the “first ever” by an Indian prime minister to the “State of Palestine”, as recognised by […]

Mon, Feb 12 2018 Tanmoy Ibrahim Opinion

Narendra Modi visits Palestine to hoodwink the people

Modi’s Palestine Visit a Sheer Hogwash by Pro-Zionist Hindutva Camp

The recent visit of Narendra Modi to Palestine made headlines around the globe, especially, when Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian National Authority awarded Narendra Modi the “Grand Collar […]

Mon, Feb 12 2018 Tanmoy Ibrahim Foreign Affairs

The Butcher’s Paradise: Analysing the India Tour of Benjamin Netanyahu

An average Indian news consumer knows that there is a good pious man, who is a good friend of Narendra Modi and he visited India with a 130-member-strong entourage to […]

Sun, Jan 21 2018 Tanmoy Ibrahim Opinion

The evil axis of Trump and Netanyahu trying to dip Palestine in blood

Shifting of US Embassy to Jerusalem to Hide American Defeat in Syria?

Donald Trump’s decision to shift the embassy of the US from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem of Palestine is an act that carries a lot of hidden attributes than what’s apparently […]

Sun, Dec 24 2017 Ameen Gautam Foreign Affairs

Shifting capital to Jerusalem can't end Palestinian struggle

By Shifting Embassy to Jerusalem the Trump Regime Can’t Defeat Palestine

On 6 December 2017, Donald Trump-led fascist US regime decided to shift its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in contravention of international laws and the stand of the United […]

Sun, Dec 24 2017 Tanmoy Ibrahim Foreign Affairs

The Dire Need of a Political Vanguard Organisation in Kashmir

Ever since Burhan Wani was gunned down by the Indian Army in the Kashmir one year ago, the valley never returned to what New Delhi and its toady media houses […]

Thu, Jun 29 2017Sun, Oct 21 2018 Bashir Dar Opinion

Fascist Tulsi Gabbard is not a friend of Syrian People

Fascist Tulsi Gabbard not a friend of Syrian people

Since the time Rep Tulsi Gabbard returned from a tour of war-torn Syria in January, her revelations regarding the facts about the war have caused a lot of discomfort for […]

Fri, Feb 24 2017Wed, Feb 20 2019 Tanmoy Ibrahim Foreign Affairs