The Strength Of Movements And United Struggle In 2019 newsclick.in

As a tumultuous year for India ends, it would appear that the country and her people have entered a dark tunnel, a period of dark foreboding, of anguish at freedoms lost, of bonds severed, of distrust and animosity, all tethered to economic hardship that is destroying lives and futures. Most of this is a direct consequence of the nature of the present ruling dispensation, the Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government, which secured yet another electoral mandate this year. By nature and legacy, it is an instrument for putting into place the vision of what India should be as defined by the Hindu fundamentalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). But simultaneously, it is also an instrument of fostering the interests of big businesses, big traders, big landlords—the super-rich, in short. Not to forget global corporations and capital that Modi is so enamoured of, despite all the ‘nationalist’ chest thumping.

But this perception, while true and chillingly so, is but only one part of India’s story. As history tells us, no people ever meekly surrender. They fight back, in small groups or in big breath-taking movements, in villages and towns, and in metropolises, in universities and schools, in factories and fields, in blindingly hot summers and in icy winters. That is what has also been happening in India this year. And, this was not just the outburst of anti-CAA/NRC protests in December. These were without doubt unprecedented in scale and sweep. But the resistance to Modi and all that he represents carried on—unsung and unreported perhaps—for all of 2019, continuing from the previous years but gathering pace and strength.