We are heading to Asia when the crisis of imperialism is in question. While the geographical centre of imperialism is Atlantic and its periphery, problems seem to occur as well at the far end of the world. As the locus of crisis becomes distant from the power centre, it seems that the freedom of maneuver of the regional actors leads to a multi-polarization in a geographical manner. Even the theses on the East-West dichotomy could arise from this point during the last quarter century.
However, there are some certain historical reasons behind the drift of crisis to Asia. The central powers of Asia were shaped during the decades following World War II. Of the two biggest countries of the continent, the People’s Republic was founded in China in 1949, while India became independent from the British dominion in 1947 and played on the leadership of the Non-Aligned Movement. The world system determined by the Soviet Union allowed such a configuration.
After the Soviet Union dissolved, imperialism reached out the geography which had been under the influence of socialism in the past, considering that this historical factor lost its validity. However, imperialism’s treatment the old actors as satellites while trying to re-establish domination in these regions stimulates those actors to mutual competition. The Atlantic-centred imperialism’s ignorance of historicity that shaped the Asian geography leads it to take tizzy steps in this region.
Imperialism’s restoration attempt cannot be separated from capitalism’s restoration. Putting aside China, it is possible to see how these steps are intertwined if we see how this restoration took place in India.
INDIA’S JUSTICE AND DEVELOPMENT PARTY (AKP)
The legacy of the Republic of India which was founded under the influence of the Soviets following World War II looks like the legacy of the Republic of Turkey which was founded under the influence of the Bolsheviks’ intervention in World War I. Pro-Enlightenment and pro-people legacies of these republics were liquidated by sectarian and collaborationist rules in these countries in the post-Soviet era. Taking the advantage of the force rising from this liquidationism, the rules in question, however, started to lay claim over the regional imperialist shares. Hence, these liquidator rules emerging from the imperialist-capitalist restoration have also undermined the governability of imperialism.
The Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP-Indian People’s Party) that came to power in 2014 has had the mission of eliminating the founding values of India, which it gained during the struggle for independence. The transformation of India under the rule of BJP highly echoes that of [Turkey’s] Justice and Development Party (AKP): BJP’s leader Narendra Modi won the elections by means of his discourse “burying the secular Republic into history” and “returning India to its original values”. The ideology of Hindutva undermining India’s patriotism was officially adopted by BJP in 1980. BJP set its agenda as the readjustment of education in accordance with the Hindu cultural elements, the removal of implementations protecting the Muslim minorities that compose ten percent of the population.
This ideological transformation takes strength from the economic transformation. India’s scale is much larger than that of Turkey, thus the social destruction of restoration in economic level is much heavier. The neoliberal reform program of BJP has brought about a qualitative jumping during the period when statist policies were abandoned after 1991. BJP is discussing whether to open its pharmaceutical industry that has an important market share particularly in developing economies to foreign capital. Ten percent share of India’s Coal Company, which is fourth biggest in the world, was sold during the rule of the Indian National Congress party, corresponding to Turkey’s Republican People’s Party (CHP) [in terms of both parties’ role in founding the modern republics in the two countries], and now another ten percent is to be sold. And, furthermore, the foreign property is allowed to have more than 49 percent of the defense industry.
Agriculture marks the most striking element of liquidation in India. The substitution of industrial agriculture for traditional agriculture has led to a great havoc in rural areas. The fact that farmers’ resorted to GMO seeds in order to escape from the use of patented seed imposed by Monsanto, an imperialist food monopoly, which also led to hundreds of lawsuits, has indebted farmers due to the need of chemical inputs. It is known that tens of hundreds of thousands of peasants committed suicide because of the agricultural transformation since 1997. And the debts of the victimised farmers are charged on their families.
The practice of demonetarization in India further increased this dramatic picture. The BJP government decided the transfer of currencies to bank accounts, obliging the Indian labourers into starvation, who meet their basic needs via currencies. This decision, through which plenty of currencies became useless at the end of 2016, ignored the population half of which did not have any bank accounts, realising the first large-scale attempt of global digitalization in direction of the interests of finance capital. This attempt stands for the abuse of the Indian poor as a sort of ‘guinea pig’. Some attempted to conceal the fact that this implementation, which aimed at integrating large-scale surplus value accumulations into the market, was launched under the control of the crisis-hit US capital.
This dramatic picture emerged during such a period when the BJP rule played on the championship of BRICS that showed itself as an alternative to the Atlantic axis, and when it made the nationalistic show of force in the region.
‘I’ OF BRICS IN TRUMP ERA
As we have often underlined in this article series on the crisis of imperialism, Trump’s Presidency in the US does not mean a deviation from the Obama line, which is also true for India. What is new is the increasing possibility of the wounds that were scratched during the Obama administration.
While the free market system into which India was integrated since the middle of the 2000s was further progressed under the rule of BJP, some policies were put on the agenda in India with the slogan of “Make in India’, similar to the Trump-led US capital’s consolidating policies. The negotiations of Free Trade Agreement between the EU and India, which was interrupted for a while after 2007, were restarted by BJP in 2015. This, above all, aims at marketization of India's still public pharmaceutical industry. The BJP government’s hesitations in this respect do not arise from its resistance for the protection of publicity but from its concerns over gaining a bargaining force in the military-strategic fields.
While BJP tries to compensate the ‘Make in India’ initiative for establishing partnerships with foreign capital investments, it uses the pharmaceutical industry as a trump card against defense industry. Preferring the Russian partnership that provides more shares for domestic industry in defense to the Japan partnership, it keeps a distance from the Atlantic camp in order to gain a bargaining power. On the other hand, the US and the EU support to India to strengthen its regional political influence against China may catalyze India to remove its free trade reservations over the pharmaceutical industry. The bargaining policies of Trump era under the guise of ‘protective’ policies increase the transnational tensions whereas victimise the working people in such fields as health. The more domestic weapons are, the more dependent healthcare is to the foreign capital…
India’s approach to the Russian initiatives in Southeast Asia seems ambivalent. The goal of developing bilateral trade with Russia falls behind Japan as a US ally. While an agreement on submarine production reached during the defense agreement with Japan in the autumn of 2015 has been suspended, Russia’s offer of ‘partnership’ in helicopter production approached India to Russia. However, India has not participated yet in the S-300 defense system agreement which is important for Russia in the common defensive axis.
The conflict between India and Pakistan is a point of tension increasing the crisis dynamics in Asia as the crisis of imperialism jumps to Asia. Obama-led pivot policy in Asia was based on some certain distinctions of friends and enemies from the viewpoint of the US. According to the US, China was an enemy whereas India was a friend. Nevertheless, Pakistan’s effect on the Islamic State in Afghanistan, which undermined the US’ regional policy, and the US’ reluctance to grant old ally Pakistan completely to China have directed Trump’s advisors to develop a multidimensional policy. When Russia sold arms to Pakistan due to India’s tendency to the US during the Obama rule, the Republicans offered that the US should play a double game in India just as Russia did. Ensuring a weapon agreement with Pakistan, Russia, on the other hand, takes expanding its defense for granted thanks to the common helicopter production with India.
There are some other historical reasons, which will determine what position the US will take amid the conflict between these two countries…
WILL NUCLEAR WAR BEGIN IN KASHMIR?
Here we are talking about the two countries that became nuclear powers in the aftermath of World War II. The Britons provoked the division of Hindu-Islam in 1947 against India that became independent from colonialism, leading to the birth of Islamist Pakistan. Pakistan was turned into a nuclear power as a US tail against Afghanistan in the region during the Cold War. In turn, India, as a nuclear power, approached the US after the Cold War, turning into the main ally against China in the region. Today, an old ally encouraged by the US against India, Pakistan seeks for the domination of China. The two countries [India and Pakistan], which were tasked by the US imperialism as nuclear powers in different phases, hold the danger to stimulate a nuclear war calamity in Asia.
Hot conflicts emerge in Kashmir, on the borderline of India and Pakistan. While a half of Kashmir is under Pakistan’s control, another half is under India’s control. The India-led state’s name is ‘Jammul and Kashmir’. The majority of the population is Hindu in Jammul whereas Muslims predominate the valley of Kashmir. The local Islamist movements seek for autonomy or union with Pakistan. India declared in October 2016 that it performed an ‘operational strike’ against the terrorists in the Pakistan-led part of Kashmir. Pakistan announced that India did not infiltrate into its borders, otherwise, it could have carried out a harsh reaction. Pakistan’s status of the cradle for Islamist terrorists and India’s regional militarism lead to a fragility that could escalate a war in Southeast Asia.
Kashmir is a very controversial region because of the Muslim population that had a role at one time when the British colonialism took Pakistan apart from India. Despite the communists had been influential until the beginning of the 1970s, the government oppression led to the deactivation of the communists following a pro-China split within the party. When India was founded in 1947, as some local feudal leaders did not want to join the national union and thus resisted, Pakistan took a part of the territory while conceded to agree with India on autonomy conditions for the rest of the territory. Because Pakistan hosted the Islamist organisations to encompass the Soviets, thus Kashmir became a transit point in that region, the autonomy has become controversial and dysfunctional. The two communist parties in India, the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) advocate that some measures should be taken against the terrorist organisations and that the autonomy should be provided again in Kashmir. But there are many limitations before this factor in resolving the regional imperialist competition.
Conflicts rose when a young man from the CIA-backed mujahedeen movement was killed last year. On the other hand, the BJP rule’s militarist intervention policy towards Kashmir takes strength from the party’s Hindu nationalism and regional claims. It is said that the Indian state’s harsh attitude (which resulted in shooting hundreds in the eye) have dragged the youth to revolt in the region. Despite the tension is attributed to Pakistan because of the particular dominance of the Muslim population and Pakistan in the region, CPI argues that today’s revolt is a local one against the oppressive rule.
Kashmir is also of importance in terms of the US’ strategy to encompass China. This region is also a transit point of the Economic Corridor of China and Pakistan, thus standing as a sensitive point in which India feels the Chinese threat. The government of the People’s Republic of China is following a policy of approaching the old US ally Pakistan against India as a US ally at the moment, which is why legitimating the concerns of Republicans during the Obama rule. However, as a regional power, China does not stand provocative but takes the advantage of its balancing position, ensuring its role as a cold-blooded regional power since it advocates the solution of the problem between the two countries through negotiations.
These fault-lines underlying Kashmir, which appears as a local question, host many burdens from Asia’s historical shaping to militarist investments of imperialism. Therefore, imperialists' feet would probably entangle in such a high-tension line.
Tomorrow: End of the dream in Balkans
Mapping the crisis of imperialism - I, II, III, IV and V:
