India

Sacha Ismail reviews Marc Wadsworth’s biography of Shapurji Saklatvala, Comrade Sak: A Political Biography (Peepal Tree Press, 2020) There are four biographies of 1920s revolutionary socialist MP Shapurji Saklatvala. Marc Wadsworth’s is the most recent, originally published in 1998 and republished in an updated version in September this year. It’s very good – mostly (when I started writing the recent series of articles on Saklatvala in Solidarity, I tried but failed to get hold of the original edition of Wadsworth’s book; the new version didn’t arrive until five out of six articles were...

The Hindu nationalist far right in India and beyond is waging a campaign against Netflix for showing the BBC TV series A Suitable Boy (adapted from Vikram Seth’s novel, set in India in the 1950s). Their objection is to a romantic relationship between a Hindu woman and a Muslim man (though it's clear they object to other aspects of it too). They have minimally dressed up their bigotry by saying they are offended by the lovers kissing by a Hindu temple. Members of the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP party are calling for the Indian government to investigate Netflix – and in fact the Modi regime has...

On 26 November many tens of millions of workers took part in a general strike against India’s far-right government. Indian unions gave a figure of 250 million. Alongside its fascistic Hindu-chauvinist and anti-migrant policies, which it has intensified during the pandemic, Narenda Modi’s regime has consistently pursued an aggressively neoliberal, anti-working class economic and social agenda. The strike, also backed by a mass farmers’ mobilisation, demanded the withdrawal of Modi’s anti-worker changes to labour law, expansion of social provision, the restoration of subsidies and price...

A series of articles in Solidarity about Shapurji Saklatvala (1874-1936), the revolutionary socialist activist and fighter for Indian independence who became Labour's first "BAME" MP. (Pictured above speaking in Hyde Park, demanding the release of the Reichstag fire suspects in Germany, 1933.) • Labour's first "BAME" MP • "Battersea versus the British Empire" • A tribune of the working class • The "MP for India" • Saklatvala and the Indian workers • A revolutionary trailblazer Review of Marc Wadsworth's biography of Saklatvala here.

This is part one of a series. For the other articles, see here. In 1922, sixty-five years before before Diane Abbott and three other Labour MPs of colour entered Parliament, Indian-born Shapurji Saklatvala was elected MP for Battersea North in South West London. Like some other Labour candidates more recently, Saklatvala was a bourgeois figure standing in a working-class constituency which was not his home. There the similarity ends. The first “BAME” Labour MP was a revolutionary socialist who attacked Ramsay MacDonald for failing to oppose British colonialism and Gandhi for failing to...

Three Indian states with a combined population of over 300 million have used the Covid-19 crisis to radically weaken workers’ rights. Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat have all legislated to allow a major lengthening of shifts with no increase in pay. Madhya Pradesh is allowing employers to hire and fire at will, has removed the need for contractors to have a licence to employ up to 49 people, changed factory licence renewals from annual to every ten years, and given employers the right to bar workplace inspections. Uttar Pradesh, whose chief minister is a radical fundamentalist Hindu...

Keir Starmer has signalled he intends to ignore Labour’s conference policy against Indian state oppression in Kashmir, as part of attempts to appeal to the Hindu right. Following a meeting with “Labour Friends of India”, which acts as a channel between people in the Labour Party and India’s far-right Hindu nationalist government, Starmer declared that Kashmir is “a matter for the Indian Parliament” and that he wants “even closer business links” and “dialogue” with India. He also wrote to the Hindu nationalist “Hindu Forum of Britain” asking to meet them. For more, see ‘Don’t bend to Modi –...

Starting with Austria reopening small shops on 14 April, almost all European countries have now begun easing their pandemic lockdowns, or announced plans to do so (Italy from 4 May, France from 11 May). Iran has reopened the bazaar in Tehran. Schools have restarted in Beijing and Shanghai. The World Health Organisation, however, has declared that “the worst is yet to come”. Its worry is not so much about a second wave in Europe, as first waves elsewhere. Africa so far shows 1,428 deaths, far fewer than Europe or the USA, and concentrated in Algeria and Egypt (over half that total between them)...

Late February saw an outbreak of anti-Muslim violence in New Delhi, the urban area around the Indian capital. Although reports vary, they suggest forty-three dead and many hundreds hospitalised. Muslim homes, businesses and mosques were attacked, burned, and destroyed. Most of the dead and injured were Muslim. The trigger for the attack was President Trump’s visit to the city. On Sunday 26 February, a local leader of India's governing part, the Hindu-chauvinist BJP, Kapil Mishra, speaking at a rally, demanded that police clear protests in the city against the BJP’s Citizenship (Amendment) Act...

The Hindu-chauvinist BJP Indian government is meeting serious resistance. Trade unions have been taking action. The Modi government was forced to back off a series of economic reforms including privatisation and attacks on workers’ rights after strikes in 2015, 2016 and 2019. Those issues have not gone away. Ten India trade union federations called a one-day general strike on 8 January against the government’s economic policies (the eleventh federation is affiliated with the Hindu chauvinist movement and did not strike). The workers were joined by farmers in their action. It brought out...