The first and foremost is the collapse of the Election Commission of India (ECI) with its current expose of having manipulated the electoral rolls with massive additions and deletion of voters to ensure covertly spectacular victory of BJP (RSS Pariwar) with vote theft in elections despite its mandate to conduct open free and fair elections, which must be seen publicly to be fair and free, as provided for in Article 324 of the Constitution of India. The ECI has lost all together its fairness and become a partisan cohort of the ruling Sangh Pariwar. This could happen only in a fascist state. The three election commissioners are out and out partisan and deserve to be impeached by Parliament for their most grievous misconduct. Even if the impeachment motion is not carried out, they will be recorded as ones with blot on their personae in the annals of ECI. The expose of their reprehensible partisan conduct in engineering fraudulent elections emanates from their own tampered official records.

The traits of fascism, described worldwide by social scientists and political observers, include powerful nationalism, disdain for recognition of human rights, suppression of dissent and incarceration of those who stand up for justice, identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause, suppression/terrorization of minorities and other vulnerable sections of society, supremacy of the military, rampant sexism, controlled mass media, obsession with national security, intertwining religion and government as a tool to manipulate and mobilise public opinion, managing headlines and propaganda for survival of the government, protection of corporate power, suppression of labour (workers) power, disdain for intellectuals and the arts, obsession with crime and punishment, intolerance of dissents, rampant cronyism and corruption, fraudulent elections, deification of leader turning ruthless autocrat elected through democratic process, concentration of collective responsibility in one man (herein PM Office), redundancy of council of ministers as a mere formality to let them enjoy comforts of power and pelf, reducing accountability of the government to nullity, exaltation of the leader (herein PM) with a focus on obedience to the leader, social and economic regimentation often with a hierarchical structure, fraudulent elections, right-wing ideology, suppression of opposition (dissent) including the prohibition of any other political party, a cult of action for action’s sake, dictating that action is of value in itself and should be taken like the demonetization et al.

The process of dismantling democracy in India began soon after the RSS Pariwar took over the union government following the General Elections in 2014 with installation of surveillance cameras at the entrance of government offices and on the corridors of power. The next step was prohibiting government accredited senior media persons from meeting senior officials in the ministries and departments for informed critical reports to help the people know how the government elected by the people was functioning and what it was doing for the overall uplift of people and the nation. Such meetings, if agreed upon, would materialize with a rider that the concerned official should inform and seek permission of the secretary concerned, as also inform secretary, personnel and training. This system was intended to spot the concerned official and take harshest possible disciplinary action against him. The system of quiet and personal interaction between the individual journalist and senior official was in vogue to encourage public debate to explore diverse views over policy and impending policies of the government. The union government destroyed this freedom barely a fortnight of its coming to power.

During his second term, the PM evolved a system that required the concerned official to also come to the reception desk and sign his or her visitor in, which ended all communications between government and public except what PM wanted the people to hear. PM’s next step to centralize power was creation of monthly meetings between his departmental ministers and senior officials, and nominees of the ruling BJP, in which the party would oversee the functioning of the government in the ministries. This transferred much of the decision making power of the government from the ministries to the ruling party. His third target was capture of mainstream audio-visual and print media by using every instrument at his command, from the denial of advertisements to selected print and electronic media, to the framing of never proved charges of tax evasion, and money laundering against their promoters, under which it attached their passports, and property till as long as the case lasted. NDTV’s case is an example, which from a credible premier TV news channels became a mouthpiece of the PM’s fascist regime.

PM’s third target was the judiciary, which he corrupted through the offer of lucrative post–retirement appointment to High Courts and Supreme Court of India judges. These ranged from CJIs. Sathasivam to the governorship of Kerala, to retired Supreme Court judge, A.M.Khanwilkar as India’s chief vigilance officer (Lokpal), two other CJIs Ranjan Gogoi and Sharad Bobde, and judge Arun Mishra. Besides, the PM also is learnt to have mounted pressure covertly on judges through blackmail by agencies to get verdict in his (government) favour. PM also made three other more insidious destructive moves, one deliberate and two defined by sustained avoidance. But all were designed to undermine India’s infinitely varied ethno-national federal democracy. The first was that in all the years of power, PM never held a single press conference. The second was that in those years, PM also never held a meeting of the NDC (National Development Council), popularly known as Council of State Chief Ministers that had become the main forum for coordinating central and state policies. That is how the much-hyped cooperative federalism was destroyed by the PM. During PM’s more than a decade, communication between the people and their government, and between the central and state government on policy issues became strictly one way.

But the PM’s most insidious assault on India’s federal structure was his replacement of the Planning Commission with NITI (National Institute for Transforming India) Ayog. On the face of it, nothing changed and it looked like no more than another petty manifestation of RSS Pariwar’s obsession with ‘Hinduisation’ of India. Beneath that deceptively innocuous change, however, PM took away the Planning Commission’s most important function, and vested it in himself. This was the annual plan allocation of central plan grants to the state governments. Till he came to power, this was done by the Planning Commission after prior consultations and consensus with the states on the basis of oft-revised Gadgil formula, based on factors like population, per capita income, and fiscal performance aiming to promote balanced regional development. PM turned this allocation into his personal prerogative, and began lavishing the loin’s share of these grants upon the BJP ruled state governments, at the expense of states in which the BJP had been unable to extend its influence.

Fascism develops from right wing extremism, supported traditionally by the middle class. In fascism, leader is exalted, with a focus on obedience to him. A deeply fascist transformation of society is underway, dehumanizing Muslims and Christians, marginalizing Dalits, Shudras and Adivasis, and eroding institutions. India is witnessing fascism that has deeply infiltrated society, inheriting fascism values through caste order and formalistic democracy. To defeat it, revolutionary struggle is necessary. It must be a grassroots movement against upper caste supremacy and corporate capitalism. Only then country’s fascist trajectory be reversed. Any anti-fascist political investment should be made in building a genuinely anti-fascist people’s movement instead of investing in a delusionary elite anti-BJP alliance. The union government is conducting itself, as a colonial government, treating the people as subjects, must be held accountable to the weakest of its citizens through collective political action, lest the country should be drifting further deeper into fascism!