In response to Nirmalangshu Mukherji's comment on Pravat Patnayak's article 'The Left and Opposition Unity...'"

Anjan Basu

With supreme condescension, Nirmalangshu Mukherji pooh-poohs Prabhat Patnaik's analysis of the Indian variant of fascism now spreading its tentacles across all aspects of the citizen's life in India today -- steadily and surely, if not at the break-neck speed which Hitler unleashed in Germany after 1933. In fact, Mukherji uses the word analysis within parentheses (".."), such is his apparent contempt of the points that Patnaik so patiently makes in his brilliant essay. It would have been hilarious -- unless the 'protagonists' involved in this 'debate' were Prabhat Patnaik on the one hand and Mukherji on the other -- to read the self-important posturing underlying words such as these: "Patnaik is free to call any historical moment 'fascism', but then he needs to categorically assert that the term is his own fancy invention...". Mukherji's humility, his modesty is really touching -- considering that he is critiquing one of India's most consistent, level-headed and well-informed commentators of political economy. For all one knew, he might have been referring to an adolescent who is cutting his teeth on political analysis yet.

Patnaik begins his piece by saying that the original German (or even the Italian) prototype may no longer be relevant in the 21st century neoliberal milieu. He goes on to demonstrate why -- very cogently, as most lesser mortals who read the piece seemed to think. But that is as far as lesser mortals are concerned. Mukherji will insist on holding Patnaik to the same archetype that Patnaik thinks no longer works today -- and hold him to it endlessly, piling on with one 'weighty' argument after another: if fascism is the fusion of state power with corporate  power, then ......; or " if Patnaik wants to use the term 'fascism' ONLY for "fusion" between state power, corporate power and communal forces during neoliberal era, then it applies only to India unless he wants to expand it to ALL islamic, buddhist, christian countries." If Prabhat Patnaik were to feel unnerved by this heavy artillery of sophistry, tautology and capital letters, he could surely not be faulted.

Prabhat Patnaik was making the point that fascism is also adapting itself to vastly changed -- and changing -- political economy in the 21st century scenario of a globalised finance capital exploring new ways and means of strengthening its  stranglehold on popular imagination even as neoliberalism tries desperately to stay afloat. He was warning us -- or at any rate those of his readers whose souls have not yet been fully deadened by can’t, humbug and mindless orthodoxy -- that, unless we appreciate fascism's ability to reinvent itself, we are in for a long, dark night. But Mukherji will have none of that: he must teach Patnaik a lesson or two in both historical understanding and political economy.

Patnaik's reference to the possibility/desirability of a broad anti-fascist front in India came in for the choicest academic abuse. Mukherji witheringly talked about the 'non-existent left parties', among other things. It seems that things like the march earlier this year of a gigantic farmers' procession to Mumbai (organised by the 'non-existent left') are no more than a chimera for Mukherji's radical imagination. Or that the broad 'popular front' against the Hitler- Mussolini axis -- a front in which the ultra-conservative Churchill joined hands with the 'Bolshevik' Stalin, though both had been, and were again after the war to  become, sworn enemies -- which defeated the 'classical ' Fascism upon which Mukherji is so fixated as a model, never existed. Extraordinary!

In an earlier rejoinder to another of Mukherji's interventions I had pointed out how the line that he is pursuing should be to dear to the hearts of India's ruling dispensation today. By mocking Patnaik's hope that a broad anti-fascist unity can be a reality in India also, Mukherji lays his cards willy-nilly on the table. And whether he likes it or not, his cards bear varying shades of only one colour: saffron.

Oct 21, 2018