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15 Oct, 2015

The blood-dimmed tide of fascism is loosed in Modi’s India | Asia Times

By M.K. Bhadrakumar, Asia Times News & Features

Seldom does adrenaline flow so instinctively the moment one begins reading the morning newspapers in the Indian capital, but today is one such day. I am not entitled to claim friendship with Sudheendra Kulkarni but do have an acquaintance going back by several years. I hold him in high esteem as an intellectual and humanist.

I am unable to read the newspapers anymore today. Can’t simply get past the blackened picture of Kulkarni, smeared with oil paint. I feel numbed with pain as the thought begins stealthily entering the consciousness: This is the face of India that I saw in today’s Indian Express.

Yes, this is how India looks after 18 months of relentless RSS rule under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s watch as gatekeeper. The episode on Monday on a Mumbai street reminds one of the street battles and violence that the Nazis deployed to supplement their electoral battles in the mid-1920s, which they fought with political acuity, deceptiveness and cunning to convert their party’s non-majority but plural status into effective governing power in the ailing Weimar Republic of 1933. All the while, the Nazis created a mythology surrounding their rise to power.

Read the rest: The blood-dimmed tide of fascism is loosed in Modi’s India | Asia Times