The three essays collected in this short volume were written over a period of some eight years and represent a small but perhaps representative selection of my recent writings on the issue of communal fascism and, more obliquely, the nature of imperialism in our time. Implied in this juxtaposition of two texts on communalism and one on globalization is the suggestion that there is a structural even though not a causal connection between the current fascist offensive in India which passes itself off as Hindu Nationalism, the new imperialist offensive which passes itself off as 'globalization', and the immense brutalisation of culture and politics that we are witnessing at present on the national as well as global scale. Within India, a historic shift toward neoliberal economic policies coincided with the onset of a historically unprecedented communal offensive that was initiated with the destruction of the Babri Masjid in an orgy of violence that had all the classic features of a fascist spectacle. However, this sea-change within India also corresponded, chronologically and structurally, to three fundamental shifts on the global scale: the destruction of the Soviet Union and final dissolution of the socialist project in Southeastern Europe, the outbreak of powerful fascist movements across the world, and a global triumph of neo-liberalism. What has been happening in India since the late 1980s is not caused by the new imperialist offensive on the world scale in some direct, linear way; but it is not unconnected either.
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