Crossposting from the
MotF thread
India on the verge of a red-on-red civil war
The USPR has always had, among the various socialist states, a particularly diverse set of ideological variations, coexisting more-or-less peacefully in the country, working together under the guise of the Delhi-centric Politburo to establish a socialist economy from the feudal mess that India once was. Among the most prominent are the native Gandhian and Jinnahist variations of socialism, the mostly-principled and always-loyal opposition from the Leftists and Rightists (less different than you might imagine), the various proponents of a more federal system, popular among the more tribal regions and among more distinctive cultures in the country who are depreciatively known as "nationalists", although no genuine separatist is allowed anywhere near power nowadays, and, for some forsaken reason, even a few Trotskyist nuclei around some major cities and railways, who are mostly inoffensive anyway.
The Centralists, the Moscow-aligned and faithfully Stalinist line in Delhi, have allowed these oppositions to exist, unlike their own Moscow patrons, knowing full well they are weak enough not to present a genuine threat yet regionally strong enough to be too much of a bother to dislodge. This peace under the Centralists has existed for more than a decade now, but it seems that, after the latest reshuffling of Panchayat delegates, a change might be coming to Red India.
The problems started brewing due to a split in the Communist Party, that is, the breaking of one faction into two (both continuing to be members of the Communist Party, the only legal political party in the country), one that, interestingly enough, didn't even spring from Indian affairs, but rather, as a by-product of the increasingly hostile relation between Khrushchev's USSR, the traditional beacon for all world socialist movements, India's included, and Mao's PRC who, unlike its Soviet counterpart, rejected the denouncement of Stalin's legacy and the attempts at normalizing relations with the West, and criticized Khrushchev for revisionism and for collaborating with Western imperialism. This bitter split would, inevitably, reach the ranks of the Communist Party of India, as it found itself divided between the stalwart Centralists, defenders of the Moscow line at all times, and the newly-fledged Maoists, who turned to Mao Zedong as the new face of socialism in the Third World.
It went beyond that small political matter, of course. The split had deeper roots, based on differences of opinion between country and city (with many farmers, criticizing what they saw as Delhi focusing all efforts on cities, rather than in the agriculture regions of the country, siding with the Maoists who put greater emphasis on the revolutionary spirit of the Indian peasantry), opinions on the need for militancy (with the Maoists attracting many young Indians who were extremely energetic and warlike in the outlook towards society and the world) and even resentments towards the Centralist policy of making Hindi the language for running business in the government, while other languages struggled to be understood. Even without the Sino-Soviet split, the possibilities for internal struggle, between regions, between generations, between different political outlooks, would inevitably caught up with the Centralists and their ever-narrower popular appeal, as bureaucrats focused on responsible industrialization. India's first generation coming of age after the Revolution was growing up, and they were about to change everything.
The 1964 elections to the All-India Panchayat only confirmed what was already unavoidable: the Centralist faction, for the first time, did not hold the majority of districts, showing that plenty of regions around the country were displeased with their rule. Now, if this were a strict parliamentary democracy, that wouldn't be a problem in itself: the Centralists held a good plurality of the votes and could certainly work with other currents, further from the Maoists than from themselves even, to continue governing. But of course, autocracy can sometimes be more fickle, depending on the strength of your social basis to continue operating fine. And the Maoists happened to have a great deal of popularity among the youth and the youth happened to man the armies. Adding to that their support among the farmers of the country, and they had a power greater than their number of seats in the Panchayat. And, considering their love for militancy and action, it was quite clear that they would not restrain themselves to the bonds of legality and party unity for what they genuinely saw as a need to save the socialist world from a tide of revisionism stemming from Khrushchev all the way to their countries.
India was about to fall to one of the world's largest civil wars, after the Russian and Chinese ones. But this time, it wouldn't be a civil war between the forces of socialism and those of autocracy, or those of liberalism, but rather, a civil war between the forces of socialism and themselves.
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So basically I wanted a intra-communist civil war. You know, since the left has that whole thing about splitting up and fighting itself more than others). And since India does happen to have, shall we say,
a healthy tradition of political fragmentation to the left, I thought it would be an ideal candidate for this. And since I had already had an idea for a United Raj - turned red, I decided to apply it here (the idea is that the various islands were just kept by the British or British-aligned forces and are sort of Taiwans, although I didn't really figure that into the election results)
This was a fun map to work, if a bit of a workload. I know some of the borders are silly, but what's a good map without some quirky borders, eh?
Anyway, I hope you all enjoy this map, as always comments and questions are welcomed