By developer (Article originally published in our newsletter for July 2025 https://newwavemaha.wordpress.com/2025/07/31/newsletter-no-39-for-july/ )
It would not be incorrect to say, that South Asia is going through a period of deep crisis. Since the pandemic of 2020, and subsequently the Russo-Ukrainian war, a worldwide economic crisis emerged which affected semi-colonial countries more adversely than others. Across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, we have witnessed economic crisis followed by deep political and social crisis. In South Asia, we see this pattern repeated.
We have witnessed a revolutionary situation emerge in Bangladesh around the fight to overthrow the Sheik Hasina regime, we have witnessed a revolutionary situation emerged and fade away in Sri Lanka which ended the Rajapakse dynasty, we have seen massive mobilizations in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and an intensification of the Baloch liberation movement, we have also seen the upsurge of reactionary forces particularly in Nepal.
In the aftermath of the Covid pandemic we have witnessed a worldwide economic crisis. In some countries and regions of the world, this economic crisis has created a wider social and political crisis, which have resulted in pre-revolutionary upheavals, or the creation of an outright revolutionary situation. India was not one of them.
Despite having suffered horribly during the pandemic, both in economic terms and in terms of lives lost, the Indian bourgeoisie remained secure in their power, the economy continued to grow even if unevenly. In this, India stands out among it’s neighbouring countries, all of which are going through either an economic or a political crisis, in varying degrees of intensity.
While India has seen massive protests, strike actions, agitations, and intense regional struggles, which have shaken the power of the ruling party, the BJP, and regional hegemons like the TMC, there was nothing close to a dual power situation in India.
Nor can we say, that India is suffering from a deep economic crisis comparable to that of it’s neighbours in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh or Pakistan. India’s apparent stability, even in the face of worsening living conditions and crisis of unemployment, stands out in this region which is otherwise ridden with crisis all around it.
Political and economic developments in South Asia, weigh heavily on what happens in India. Contrarily, developments in South Asia also affect India. Thus, it is important that we understand the political and economic situation across South Asia.
India:
India is the most populous country in the world with the second largest working class by number after China. It is the fourth largest economy by PPP yet having one of the lowest per capita incomes. It has some of the largest companies by employment in the world, as such the most important South Asian country. In fact, India alone counts for most of South Asia’s landmass and population. Therefore, it stands to reason that what happens in India affects the rest of South Asia, and what happens in the rest of South Asia affects India.
In our earlier analysis we had concluded that India’s situation was far from revolutionary, even in comparison with its neighbours. We say this despite important mobilizations like the farmer’s protest, the doctor’s protest, and the strikes of the ASHA workers. These protests and mobilizations emerged in the aftermath or during the COVID pandemic and much of their issues emerged precisely because of the pandemic and it’s mishandling by the Indian government. Of these, the protest that had greatest political consequence was that of the farmer’s protest.
While farmer’s protests did not break out in the same degree or intensity, the agrarian crisis has compelled farmers and agricultural workers to the path of struggle. One of the most significant fights in this was of the tea plantation workers. Important regional mobilizations, strike actions and protests have continued. These struggles have defined the second half of the year 2024, the same year that saw the BJP and Modi’s dominance over the parliament vastly reduced.
We had analysed that the reduction of the BJP’s share in parliament ended their impunity, and this has largely been true. This has not reduced its commitment to the reactionary Hindutva agenda. It must be understood that this massive setback for the BJP would not have been possible without the farmer’s protest, and the mobilizations which have taken place since 2021. The elections do not accurately reflect the situation, but they do show the symptom of the situation in India which has changed from acutely reactionary to one which is non-revolutionary but active.
We had said in 2024: An explosion in India’s neighbourhood will likely sow fear in the minds of the Indian bourgeoisie, at a time when working class movements in India also rise. These are breaking out in three sectors more than anywhere else. The service sector, particularly in the realm of healthcare as seen with the massive doctor’s protests, agrarian workers such as the tea workers in North Eastern India and Southern India, and among manufacturing sector industrial workers, as seen from the mammoth strike at Samsung Tamil Nadu.
Even as these individual struggles may have begun stalling, the underlying conditions that gave rise to them have not changed. Since the pandemic induced world crisis, there has been an additional crisis caused by the Russo-Ukrainian war. These have caused havoc in the weaker economies of South Asia, which in turn have contributed to undermining the reactionary BJP government in India. However, India has withstood both crisis to continue its economic growth.
India has developed a more sophisticated and sovereign economy than its neighbours, nor is it connected with one strategic sector which determines the larger economy. This allows great flexibility, and adaptability. Furthermore, the main force behind Indian capitalist growth remains unchanged, that is the proletarianization of the countryside, and the push towards the Indian hinterland. Successive policies of the Modi government is aimed at advancing the pace of this process, creating more misery in the countryside and worsening conditions of work in the cities.
These factors continue to influence developments in India. As long as capitalist growth is fuelled by proletarianization, there will be growing anger among the peasantry, growing anger among youth more and more of whom have to compete for limited jobs, growing anger among the working class who would see the quality of their work deteriorate. These in combination will fuel future struggles. The general strike of 9th July 2025 was called by workers unions, encompassing both the organized and unorganized sector, and saw solidarity from farmers and student bodies. This is a sign of the coming unity in the face of capitalist oppression.
The strike has brought out the contradictions of Indian capitalism, where India has one of the richest and fastest growing capitalist classes in the world, but most of its people live in abject poverty. The one day general strike also highlights the lack of revolutionary consciousness among masses, which still puts faith in the bourgeois institutions, unions and parties. At the same time, it also shows the working class willingness to come on the path of struggle. This reality must shape our approach in India.
Pakistan :
We had analysed the fundamental political dynamics of Pakistan in the following way : Pakistan’s bourgeois democratic edifice stands on rotten foundations. Weakened from the start, Pakistan has had to rely on the military to ensure not only, any degree of parity with India, but also maintain it’s exploitative and unequal union. Pakistan initially built itself on exploiting East Bengal, then survived by exploiting Balochistan and the frontier zones of Khyber and Kashmir. The ruling class clung on to power because of the assistance of China and the USA, which ensured it’s army, the chief tool of power and repression, remains well equipped.
The heavy militarization of Pakistan is the result of the political contest with India which began with the scramble for Princely states territories. Pakistan had largely been on the losing side of this scramble with most of the 500 princely states falling to India’s military might and diplomatic overtures. Pakistan acted with force to annex Kalat and sought to do the same with Kashmir, after having lost Junagadh and most other princely states. The two nation theory, the ideological foundation of Pakistan, was repeatedly undermined and denied throughout the partition process, and then the scramble for the Princely States.
The spiral of militarization and intensified exploitation of the peripheral states has driven Pakistan into ever greater dependency on foreign finance capital, particularly IMF loans and Chinese loans. The military tries to enforce itself with the help of foreign powers (Chiefly the USA and China) while also acting as their hired gun, exploiting and oppressing the workers and peasants of Pakistan. The result, is growing tensions, democratic mobilizations, and struggles for self-determination. This has only grown in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic.
Pakistan’s vulnerable economy is reliant excessively on two labour intensive sectors, the textiles and agriculture, these two account for most of Pakistan’s exports. Since the better part of the last 4 years, Pakistan has been suffering from a collapsing electrical grid and runaway inflation. These have made life hell for the working class and peasantry, who have to also face the effects of global warming induced climate disasters like the Indus river floods in 2023.
The heavy militarization, and imperialist finance’s dominance has created an economy that is very reliant on foreign loans, and the ever intensified exploitation of the land and people of Pakistan on the terms dictated by the IMF.
Today, Pakistan is witnessing an economic, political and social crisis, even as the military manoeuvres to entrench it’s power. The Pakistani state and army intensifies the oppression of oppressed nations like the Balochis and Kashmiris, while using the threat of war with India to legitimize itself. The fight against the military and those of the oppressed nationalities forms the crux of the struggle in Pakistan. While not quite pre-revolutionary yet, the objective conditions are heading in that direction.
Bangladesh :
Among all South Asian countries, Bangladesh has been the latest to undergo pre-revolutionary upheavals. It must be remembered that Bangladesh itself is the result of a democratic revolution that overthrew Pakistani rule and established a secular democratic state. Indian intervention ensured that the democratic revolution would not transition to a socialist revolution. The proxy bourgeois forces of the Awami League set up by India ensured this by institutionalizing a brutal dictatorial regime. The first Awami League government led by Sheik Mujibar Rahman was eventually overthrown by a reactionary coup, which was then defeated by a leftist coup, only to fall to another reactionary coup.
Bangladesh’s bourgeoisie has remained weak, crisis ridden, going from one political crisis to another, only temporarily stabilizing its rule through dictatorial means. In the period between 1975 and 1991, this took the form of military rule, in the period between 1991 and 2004, this took the form of a very chaotic bourgeois democratic period in which the two reigning factions of the bourgeoisie, represented through the Awami League and BNP, attempted to violently impose their hegemony. In the period between 2009 and 2024, it was the Awami League under Sheik Hasina which imposed the latest round of dictatorship in Bangladesh, backed to the hilt by India.
The Bangladesh economy transitioned from an agrarian economy largely dependent on India, to a labour intensive textile based economy, dominated once more by Indian capital. Democratic mobilizations which ended military rule, and the mobilizations which ended Sheik Hasina’s rule, stem from the same historical forces that gave birth to Bangladesh. The revolution led by students and youth brought in its ambit sections of the peasantry and a large number of urban workers.
Now we are at a point where the political conditions that gave rise to the revolutionary process have been ended, but the economic conditions have worsened. Bangladesh fell victim to the COVID induced pandemic which forced many of it’s textile factories to shut down creating an unemployment crisis. This was compounded when Russia invaded Ukraine, causing a rise in global oil prices that created an inflationary pressure. Youth unemployment combined with the dictatorial nature of Sheik Hasina’s rule created tensions which exploded in August of last year.
Now that Sheik Hasina is out, the situation remains in limbo as the bourgeoisie attempts to stabilize it’s rule. The caretaker government led by Md Yunus is fumbling at every step, swinging left and right, depending on whichever political force is successful in swaying it. At the same time, India continues to add economic pressure on Bangladesh, stopping it’s trade access, threatening it’s electricity flow and lessening investments. It continues to harbour Sheik Hasina who continues to add to the prevailing instability that Bangladesh finds itself in.
After the upheavals in August and September last year, the mood has quieted down considerably, but as long as the economic crisis remains in place, another uprising is but inevitable. Bangladesh’s history is full of it’s bourgeoisie failing to consolidate power, except through the direct help of an external imperialist force. Faced with this, the Bangladeshi revolution has only one way in which it can succeed, through the revolutionary expropriation of the capitalist class. If the workers, youth and peasants fail to do so, the democratic revolution will also fail, and we can expect Bangladesh to slide back to dictatorship and imperialist dominance, either under an Islamist regime, or an ostensibly secular one.
Nepal :
Nepal was the first nation in the 21st century to undergo a revolution. The significance of this revolution should not be underestimated. Nepal was an isolated mountain kingdom in the grips of a reactionary monarchy that wielded. That monarchy was ended by the revolution of 2006, when an army led by the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) toppled the monarchy, aided by an energetic working class in the cities, paralysing the cities through general strikes.
For long the Nepali monarchy had been the chief tool of subjugating the Himalayan mountain kingdom to imperialism. India has wielded the most influence over Nepal because it controlled the landlocked country’s external trade and had been one of the major donor countries.
The toppling of the monarchy to a Communist led force punctured the then popular notion of the end of history and the final victory over ‘democracy’ over communism. It also marked a new era of class struggle in the 21st century, where socialism did not seem such a distant thing. There was much hope with the Nepali revolution in 2006, but the traitorous leadership of the Maoists, aided by their dead end programme of stagism, ensured that the Nepali democratic revolution would not advance to a Socialist revolution, let alone a revolution in South Asia.
Since the new regime came to power, one of the main achievements has been the overthrow of the monarchy and the transformation of Nepal into a bourgeois democratic country. Despite this, the new Maoist led government refrained from expropriating capitalism or building the basis for a socialist economic transition. On the contrary, capitalism and particularly imperialist capital is thriving in Nepal. Having lessened India’s direct political influence, the new government have invited Chinese investments and secured trade with China. This has not however, ended India’s economic dominance which has been secured through Nepal’s geographic disadvantage, being landlocked and surrounded by the Himalayas in the North.
Nepal subsisted on tourism, agriculture, and the export of labour through the migrant workers diaspora. This put Nepal in a particularly vulnerable economic position when the COVID pandemic hit. The Nepali Maoists had nearly 20 years to build up the Nepali economy, pursue a Socialist agenda, nationalizing foreign capital, and abrogating one sided treaties with India like the 1950 ‘friendship’ treaty. Instead, following the theory of stagism, the Nepali Maoists have let reactionary forces regroup and build back up. While the pandemic has wrecked much of Nepal’s economy, the Nepali leadership finds more ways of subjugating the Himalayan kingdom to imperialism, the latest being the World Bank funded Arun hydel power project.
Today, it is reactionary monarchists and Hindu supremacists who are re-emerging in strength, finding new followers in the midst of an economic recession. The abolition of the monarchy was undoubtedly one of the main achievements of the Nepali revolution of 2006, and today that is threatened. Nepal presents a somewhat exceptional situation in South Asia, where the reactionary forces are advancing.
However, it is too early to say that the situation is objectively reactionary, the post-revolutionary status quo is threatened by economic collapse, brought about by the COVID pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war.
Sri Lanka:
At one time, Sri Lanka had the second largest Trotskyist party in the world, the LSSP (Lanka Samsamaj Party). The party led by one of the founders of the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India (Burma and Ceylon), Philip Gunawerdene, played a pivotal role in the independence of Sri Lanka. The revolutionary upheaval which finally forced the British to cede Sri Lanka could have opened up an opportunity for socialist transformation of the island, instead the LSSP capitulated to bourgeois forces led by the Sri Lanka freedom Party, and it’s Sinhala chauvinist agenda.
This was the seminal tragedy of the island that set up the violent genocide of Tamils in 2009. Throughout this process, the LSSP stood beside the Sinhalese bourgeoisie, and it’s chauvinist agenda. There have been pre-revolutionary situations in the past, notably the students uprising led by the Maoist inspired JVP, which also harboured a vitriolic anti-Tamil attitude. This was brutally crushed with the help of the Indian army. Sri Lanka remained trapped in the economic relations that had been built up during British colonization, the economy centred around plantations, with rubber, tea and later on textile production being it’s mainstay.
Many of the tea plantations are owned by British tea companies, the same goes for rubber plantations and processing plants. The most visible manifestation of imperialist dominance comes through military intervention, and loans linked to infrastructure projects. The Chinese are one of the largest lender countries, with India and Japan being other major debt holders of Sri Lanka. The Lankan economy faced collapse in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic, having already been weakened by the short sighted policies of President Mahinda Rajapakse and his brother Gotabaya Rajapakse.
The eruption of mass anger in March of 2022 resulted in a situation where real power was on the streets. The army and police became ineffective, as people burned down the president’s mansion and forced the resignation of two presidents. However, this mobilization suffered from certain critical weaknesses which eventually led to this revolutionary process failing.
In our 2022 article, we had written: The chief agenda for any revolutionary force in Sri Lanka today, must be to wrench the island nation out of the hands of imperialist finance. This means nationalizing essential infrastructure, and repudiate the external debt. Only on the foundations of these economic conquests, can the major political and social conquests be achieved.
The failure to build up revolutionary leadership and secure the leadership of the revolutionary process has resulted in the energy of the masses dissipating. Once the worst of the economic crisis had passed, and once the Rajapakse brothers were out of power, the protests lost their directions. Though the economy of Sri Lanka has been momentarily stabilized, this has resulted in the continued or even deeper subjugation of the island to imperialism, with Indian influence once again triumphal at the expense of China.
The underlying causes which gave rise to the mass mobilization remains, and is a key reason why the elections in 2024 resulted in the victory of the JVP led National People’s Power. The new Leftist government has yet to institute any policies even hinting towards socialism, on the contrary there is now a Defence Pact with Hindutva led India.
The situation is decidedly non-revolution, without slipping into outright reaction. While the economy is more stable now, it is not yet entirely out of crisis.
Conclusion :
Since the Nepali revolution of 2006, there has been an ascendancy of class struggle in South Asia. We have seen this, not only in the pre-revolutionary upheavals such as the lawyer’s movement in Pakistan, the wave of general strikes in India, the Shahbag movement in Bangladesh, all during or after the 2008 world financial crisis.
Most of these struggles were of a democratic nature, against a dictatorial regime, or for democratic goals such as a secular state. Even though Nepal itself appears to be receding away from a revolutionary direction, South Asia as a whole remains a tense and active region.
Reactionary forces have advanced steadily since 2014 and the victory of the BJP in India. While Hindutva has grown in India, Islamists have revived in Bangladesh and Pakistan, in part as a reaction to the growth of Hindutva in India, while chauvinist elements have been temporarily weakened in Sri Lanka with the ouster of the Rajapakses. The institutionalized Sinhala Buddhist chauvinism of Sri Lanka has not been ended with the victory of the NPP, discrimination against Tamils continue unabated.
Some of the fundamental dynamics remain intact since the financial crisis of 2008. The conflict in the countryside between big capital and rural classes remains and intensifies in India, the working class remains active in struggle as working conditions worsen in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. The exploitation of oppressed nationalities such as the Balochis and Kashmiris has also intensified, along with their oppression by Pakistan and India.
Revolutionary mobilizations such as what happened more recently in Bangladesh may happen again, but their success or failure depends on the ability of revolutionary forces to organize and gain leadership of the process. Thus far, it has been the youth, farmers, or petty bourgeois intelligentsia who have led the democratic revolutionary processes, with the working class lending their support. A consciously working class led uprising has not yet happened, building the working class movement and the revolutionary movement in the working class is our key task.