How can a "socialist" party justify being part of India's NDA alliance?

[Revy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolut...28Bolshevik%29

RSP(B) has joined BJP-led National Democratic Alliance in March 2014. Party general secretary A.V. Thamarakshan will be contesting as NDA Candidate in Lok Sabha Election 2014 for Alappuzha Lok Sabha constituency.

NDA is the right-wing alliance that includes Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the far-right Shiv Sena.

No idea why a party calling itself "Revolutionary Socialist Party" has joined.

[Broviet Union]

They are Marxist-Leninists. Big shocker.

[Bala Perdida]

Wouldn't be the first time a "socialist" party did this. In 1990 the Nicaraguan Communist Party joined the right-wing National Opposition Union against the Sandinistas.

[audiored]

Lots of groups call themselves socialist or communist but are in practice nothing of the sort. Indian "Socialist" Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav said during the recent election:

Politicians in India’s largest and most politically important state have sparked outrage by claiming women who have sex outside of marriage should be hanged and that men who committed rape should be forgiven their “mistakes”.

In an election speech on Thursday, Mulayam Singh Yadav, head of the Socialist Party (SP), which runs the state government in Uttar Pradesh, said if he became prime minister he would scrap a recently introduced law that fixed the death penalty for rapists. Referring to a case in Mumbai where three men were sentenced to death for two gang-rapes, Mr Yadav claimed the men should not face the death penalty as it was not uncommon "for boys to make mistakes".

"Boys will be boys. Following a girl-boy fight, the girl complains she was raped," he said in the city of Moradabad.

Mr Yadav's comments sparked outcry from women's rights campaigners and commentators, as well as his political opponents. They were also denounced, though not that vocally, by the ruling Congress party, which had been long allied in the federal government with the SP in a ruling coalition.

On Friday, the 74-year-old Mr Yadav, whose son is the chief minister of sprawling, impoverished UP, appeared to backtrack on his comments.

"Many people said that my comments were right. I am against rape. Rapist should be given the most severe punishment," he said at another rally, according to local media. "Innocent people should not be hanged. Rape is being debated in half the world. If I said this, what was wrong."

Matters were made worse when another senior leader of the SP, whose government oversees a population of 200 million and which draws much of its support from Muslims, appeared to suggest that women who were raped might also be hanged, along with the rapist.

Questioned by the NDTV news channel about Mr Yadav's comments, Abu Azmi said: "Rape is punishable by hanging in Islam. But here, nothing happens to women, only to men. Even the woman is guilty."

"When the reporter questioned him further, he replied: "Any woman if, whether married or unmarried, goes along with a man, with or without her consent, should be hanged. Both should be hanged. It shouldn't be allowed even if a woman goes by consent."

Mr Azmi's comments sparked further outcry, including a denunciation from his son, Farhan Azmi, who is contesting a seat in the city of Mumbai.

"I believe a rapist should be hanged a hundred times," he said. "I have five sisters and everyone in my family believes the same."

This is a story from the Independent in the UK.. I'm not allowed to link.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

They are Marxist-Leninists. Big shocker.

Didn't you call for popular fronts in a recent post?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Didn't you call for popular fronts in a recent post?

Presumably, "popular front" doesn't refer to just any old ideologically incoherent alliance. I don't think it has to do with opportunistic alliances with a party that has ties to the religious far-right against an old, politically dead national liberation party.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Presumably, "popular front" doesn't refer to just any old ideologically incoherent alliance. I don't think it has to do with opportunistic alliances with a party that has ties to the religious far-right.

It's also pretty much a Marxist-Leninist thing.

In any case, the principle is the same - a coalition with bourgeois parties. Do you think the "religious far-right" bourgeoisie is somehow "worse" than the liberal one?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

It's also pretty much a Marxist-Leninist thing.

In any case, the principle is the same - a coalition with bourgeois parties. Do you think the "religious far-right" bourgeoisie is somehow "worse" than the liberal one?

I don't know if I'd say it's better or worse, but it at least seems a little less dissonant for a party to sign up with a bourgeois party that is fine with the odd welfare reform and liberalization of de jure oppression of minorities than with a bourgeois party that is committed to religious conservatism. It seems easier to come up with some kind of ad hoc reformist justification (which the CPI did last time they were in coalition with the INC, which incidentally did move to the right when the CPI split with them). In both cases they are watering down revolutionary politics for parliamentary gain, but its even more obvious how when the party you team up with is famous for its religious conservatism, sectarianism and pro-business reforms.

You're right as far as I am concerned that alliances with bourgeois parties (except in some kind of extraordinary circumstance) is counterproductive for revolutionary politics.