National and Left Movements in India

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tiona a e vements in ia

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Edited by

KNPanikkar I

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Contributors ADHIKARI, G., Chairman, Central Control Commission, Communist Party of India. BANAJI, JAmus, Research Scholar, Centre for Historical .Studies, Jawabarlal Nehru University, New Delhi. •

BHA'JTACHARYA, S., Professor of Economic History, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; CHANDRA, BIPAN, Professor of Modern Indian History, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. DAMODARAN, N.P., ·Writer in Malayalam and retired. Assistant Editor, Mathrubhoomi, Calicut. , Ds, AMA.LENDO, Lecturer in History, Jadavpur University, Jadavpur Calcutta. DHANAGRE, D.N., Professor of Sociology, Poona University, · Poona. . \

GoPAL, S., Professor . of Contemporary Indian 1. History, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaha.rlal Nehru University, New Delhi. · JOSHI, P.C., Professor, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi University, Delhi. MUKHBllJI, An1TYA, Assistant Professor, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. ,

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NAMBOODIR.IPAD, E.M.S., General Secretary, Communist Party of . India (Marxist). SesuADRI, K.., Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. SBKBAR, N.C., Founder Member, Communist Party of India, Malabar Unit. SARKAR SUMIT, Professor of Modern Indian History, Delhi University, Delhi.

Preface This volume is dedicated to the memory of Comrade K. Darnodaran who passed· aw_ay· on 3 July 1976. The memorial committee constituted in the · Jawabarlal Nehru University immediately after his . death decided to focus this volume on the National and Left Movements in India .which embraced Damodaran's political and intellectual endeavours. Apart from this, the Committee also undertook to organize an annual memorial symposium (the first symposium was on the ''Prospects of Left Unity in India," the proceedings of wm:ch have already been published) and to award a merit-cum-means yearly scholarship to a student of Sreekrishna College, · Guruvayur, Kerala. This vol11me consists of two sections: the first deals with the theme of the volume and the second contains reminiscences of those who knew Damodaran closely. In a way, the second section is also a part of the first; what the contributors have stated there forms a firsthand account of the struggle for political and economic justice in India during the first half of the nineteenth century. This volume is by no means exhaustive, p~rhaps it could not be, given the scope and complexity of the theme. What is intended is to present the fruits . of recent research and thinkiQg on certain aspects of this subject. We are thankful to all contributors and members of the committee, Bipan Chandra, K. Seshadri, Sudipto K.aviraj, R.R. Sharma and R.G. James, for making this volume possible. It would not perhaps be out of place to mention here that the members of the editorial committee do .not necessarily share the views expressed in these essays. \

K.N. PANIK.KAR

Contents S.

GOPAL

SUMIT SARKAR

S. BHATIACHARYA

AorrvA MuKHERJI

N. DHANAGRE ,,,,,.--D. ..

The Formative Ideology of Jawaharlal Nehru

1

Primitive Rebellion and Modern Nationalism: A Note on· Forest Satyagraha· in the Non-Cooperation and Civil Disobedience Movements

14

Cotton Mills and Spinning Wheels: Swadeshi and the Indian Capitalist Class, 1920-22

27

Indian Capitalist · Class and Congress on National Planning and Public Sector,

1930-47

45

The Politics of Survival: Peasant Organizations and the Left Wing in India, 1925-.46

80

BIPAN CHANDRA

Peasantry and National Integration

107

K.

A Look into the Peasant Struggles in Andhra Pradesh

145

SESHADRI

?,-M.S. .

NAMBOODIRI-

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Two Streams in India's Left Movement

PAD

' /· ,,· P,C. Josm / / ·· ,, /F

Reflections on Marxism lution in India

and Social

170

Revo-

179

I

JAIRUS BANAJI /MALENDUDE

The Comintern and I11dian Nationalism

213

Formation of Communist Party in Faridpur: A Case Study of. Communist in a Bengal- District

266

- -Mo-veme~t

ON DAMODARAN G. AomKARI

Philosophical Writings of Damodaran

299

N. C. SEKHAR

Damu, My Old Comrade

309

N.P.

.Memories of Damodaran

313

DAMODARAN

lnde.t

317

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The Formative Ideology of Jawaharlal Nehru S. GOPAL

In this paper I shall try to examine the ideology which Jawaharlal Nehru, over a long phase _of time up to 1947, formulated for himself and which influenced bis efforts during the later years when he was in a position to exercise some authority. It is not necessary to go into the well-worn questions as to whether individuals are of any concern in history and their thought and activity are worth study. It is sufficient that Jawaharlal Nehru was a significant and representative figure.· He played a role, deservedly or not, more vital than that of most other persons of bis generation in India; and though his mind was more convoluted and sophisticated than _most, he symbolized the thinking of a large number of his educated countrymen. If there appear to be so many cross-currents and contradictions in him, they were shared, to a lesser or greater degree, by the many who found in him their spokesman. The ambivalences of Nehru's ideology were to be embarrassing and even sometimes dangerous in the years after 1947 when they domjnated his thinking and that of the large number in India who followed his lead, because it necessarily meant a dilution of the thrust of policy. Looking back today at the ideology of Asian and African nationalism, with the integrated drive of Mao and the clearcut ideas of Frantz Fanon and AmiJcar Cabral before us, Nehru appears weak anij fumbling. His efforrs at formulating a coherent body of thought and practice seem halting, incomplete, and perhaps circumscribed by his class background. Even Gandhi, how- . ever lacking in some respects, has the advantage, even though he borrowed much from the West, of internationalizing all his thought and action in the Indian experience, whereas Nehru is always in a way the outsider. But this is where Nehru has suffered from the hindsight of the historian. To do him justice, it should be remembered that he was also the pioneer. So long as nationalism in

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National and Left Movements in India

colonial countries was the comfortable monopoly of only the middle class, there was no need to strive for a well-thought-out philosophy of action. They realized, without much close argument, what to demand or to concede, when to resist, where to push. But once nationalism became a heterogeneous social movement, this monopoly of the middle class was broken, and it became Nehru's burden to find for nationalism an ideology which would hold the various classes together. Denying himself the easy, because total, answer of Marxism, he had to work out a more untidy and complex analysis. If Nehru in the years before 1947, which is what I am concerned with in this paper, now appears shaky, hesitant and faltering, we should remind ourselves that most of the more clearsighted exponents of nationalist thought in Asia and Africa are, in a sense, standing on Nehru's shoulders. · Why, however, did Nehru, having come to Marxism, reject it in its completeness? The answer is a compound one, of personality, context and m~ntal attitudes. One of the deepest layers of his mind, which he never shed, was his romanticism. His emotions had to be stirred and involved before he could react; and this explains why there was little that was striking about him for nearly the first thirty years of his life. At school and at college, such academic promise as he had, he was anxious to shake off as soon as possible. As a young man he was bored and idle. He accepted the values and ambitions of his social class, and was quite at ease in the vapid society of Indian middle-class convention. The emotional~concern with nationalism is seen at Cambridge only in stray passages in letters to his father and clearly did not go very deep. In 1915, the internment of Annie Besant stirred him, but more because of his personal attachment to that lady rather than from intrinsic political commitment. Amritsar, arid Gandhi's satyagraha campaign which followed, were the turning-points. Nehru was revolted not so much by Dyer's action --for Dyer could be explained away as an individual aberration, a sick sadist-as by the widespread British support for Dyer. But even here the reaction, as we can see from his·comment years later, was typically Anglo-Saxon. ''This coldblooded approval of that deed shocked me greatly. It seemed absolutely immoral, . indecent; to use public school language, it was the height of bad form.'' It was because Gandhi appeared to be the only man on the Indian scene who was giving an effective reply to the brutality of

The Formative Ideology of Jawaharlal Nehru

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the British that Nehru was attracted to him. At first his acceptance of Gandhi was without reservation; but even later, when Nehru became capable of an unblinkered assessment, what held him throughout to the Mahatma's iside was a realization that Gandhi was basically a man of action, who coalesced in himself a number of vital trends in the politics of that time. Nehru thrilled in jailgoing, and there is, in his letters ana diaries of the early twenties, the glow of virginal suffering and self-indulgent sacrifice. Echoes of romantic poetry and precedents drawn from the Italian Risorgimento blend with a complacent absence of reflection. He was so excite~ __by the situation in which he found himself, so much in love with hardship deliberately sought, so self-consciously happy about the immediate context that he gave no thought to the further path or the long-term goal. He had made a cradle of emotional nationalism and rocked himself in it. Even in later years, after Nehru had nourished his int~llect ·to robustness, this streak of romanticism-almost better if it were unavailing-was never to be submerged in him. In the late twenties he informed a British official that his only ambition was to be buried in the foundations of free India. At Ahmadnagar fort in 1942, he noted in his diary a sentence of the Buddha, ''I would enter a blazing fire but I would not enter my home with my goal unattained''; and Nehru added that as he came across this sentence by chance, ''a thrill passed through me, almost an electric shock.'' · The romanticist element is prominent also in The Discovery of India. Written in one of the dark periods of Indian nationalism, it is an emotional comprehension of India's past, a stress on her continuous culture, vitality and staying power through all ups and downs. There was in this respect a reversion to his attitude in the early twenties when he had, on the lines of Gandhi's Hind Swaraj, · tended to idealize all things and thought Indian. Since then he had been exposed to the modern, scientific theories of the West; but beneath all these he now felt once more the tug of India especially as exemplified by Gandhi and Tagore. He still wanted to transform his country and bring it abreast of the 20th century; but with this aspiration was now combined a pride in what he regarded as India's achievement and a firm awareness of what he considered his true heritage. the Discovery of India does not compare as a literary achievement with the Autobiography; nor is

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National and Left Movements in India

its analysis of the past as vigorous and penetrating even as that in the Glimpses. In what was for him an astonishingly narrow nationalist tradition, he stuck together a version of India's cultural history derived from translations and historical surveys and studded · with testimonials from European observers. It was a throw-back, however sensitively formulated, to the cultural nationalism of the 19th century. It solved the dilemma of a person soaked in Western culture who wished to tum his back on that and find roots in his own country; for here were Western scholars themselves approving and applauding India's past. The Discovery was an escape into a largely imaginary conception of India's history, which enabled Nehru to keep his spirit afloat. Alongside this persistent romanticism was the ever-widening intellectual outlook.· To begin with, Nehru was just one more of the ordinary run of conforming nationalists, an unquestioning follower of the Mahatma, who accepted unthinkingly not only noncooperation but all the other teachings of Gandhi-khaddar, spinning, faith in God~and without even, at this time, Gandhi's ·sense of humour. He was, he claimed, as impatient to drive out the English from India as anyone else, but he had not, he said, till now discovered any new method of doing so except by the use of swadeshi. He did not agree with those who advocated violence. In the last· resort, he told his audience with incredible naivete, they would all come to the conclusion that they could win and retain swaraj only by wearing swadeshi cloth. When he became involved, by accident, in 1920, with the kisans of the UP, he had no clear ideas about peasant participation in politics. If this activity was important to him, it was because he found it satisfying psychologically; it gave Nehru the feeling that he was re-Indianizing himself and functioning in a wholly Indian situation. But he had made no study of economic and land problems, and had no econo·mic ideology to offer. He had no thought of providing a reyolutionary dimension to Indian nationalism, and he was certainly not thinking in terms of a peasant revolt. In fact, his whole influence was thrown on the side of moderation, in telling the kisans to be quiet and peaceful and to abide by whatever orders the officials might issue. Th.ere was even a touch of ''moral rearmament'' about his speeches, for often, after he had spoken, men got up to confess to looting and other violent crimes, knowing well that this would lead to their arrest. Nehru in the early

The Formative Ideology of Jawaharlal Nehru

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twenties glamorized the kisans and . . saw them as brave men uncontaminated by city life or textbook education; but he was bot deeply moved by their economic wretchedness. He saw in them a sturdy peasantry which could be the backbone of the nationalist movement, and he wished to enlist them for the political struggle as it was being waged by the Congress; but-and here no doubt his inertia was strengthened by the attitudes of Gandhi-he did not encourage the -coordination of these scattered outbursts against local misery and the development of a large-scale peasant upsurge. At this time Nehru had not considered ·carefully whether economic and social change should be part of, or even parallel to , the political revolt; and he accepted unthinkingly that economic issues should not hinder political activity and, till s~araj was attained, peasants should not complain about their economic disabilities. His idea of freedom was purely political-ridding the British of their control over the army, police and finance. 1'here was very little economic connotation. The contrast is clear between the kisan sabhas of the Congress and Mao's peasant associations in China a few years later. These associations did not undertake drastic land reforms but they at least attacked th~ social domination of the landlords. But it did not strike Nehru to take even such initial steps as setting up village schools and co-operatives or demanding even the minimum redressal of tenant wrong. But Nehru ·s political ideas too were in a narrow groove, an unformed mixture of anarchism and village government, of Gandhi and Bertrand Russell. Nehru at this time was a great believer in devolution and in as little centralization as possible. Swaraj was to him panchayat raj and he favoured giving these village councils considerable powers. Representative institutions and democracy as found in Western countries seemed to him to have proved failures. Orthodox socialism also did not give him much hope, while the war had shown that an all-powerful state was no lover of individual liberty. Life under socialism would be unacceptabl~ to him as it would prove joyless and soulless, regulated by bureaucracy to the minutest detail. Gradually, however, in the mid-twenties, self-education Jed to Nehru exercising his mind and speaking with a personal voice. He Qme to share the belief, which stemmed from 18th century Europe, in the perfectibility of man, and while events later dimmed this optimism they did not wholly erase it. The history of

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National and Left Movements in India

·humanity did not strike him as pleasant; yet Nehru thought it possible to see the silver lining of upward movement right through the long and dismal record.. This made it possible for him to fasten to India's future, in face of the aridity and primitivism which shrouded the present, the objective of a rational, educated and forward-looking society based on modernization, industrialization and a scientific temper. To this he added an acceptance, derived largely from the liberalism and non-conformity of Britain, of civil liberty as an absolute .value, to be safeguarded at any · cost. On top of all this, as a result of meetings with European communists, · a visit to the Soviet Union, and a reading ·of much contemporary writing, came a conversion to the Marxist interpretation of history. In this respect he regarded himself as a · full-blooded Marxist. He broadly believed that what mattered were not individuals or national peculiarities but impersonal world forces. One could only understand the past and face the future . with confidence if class conflicts and social struggles were taken into account. An appreciation of the interplay of economic interests, social relations and hegemonic ideas could alone pave the way for · effective action. Instead of merely condemning British imperialism as alien domination, as he had been wont to do, he gave new emphasis to the inter-linking of economics and politics, of capitalism; and imperialism and his quarrel now was not just with the foreign ruler but with systems. This approach was aided by Nehru's capacity to see beyond India and to place the national problem in the wider context. His patriotism was poised on the broader platform of internationalism. He was perhaps the first of the new growing band of futurologists in world affairs, and showed, even in the twenties, what can only be termed an astounding grasp of long-term trends. It was not just that he discerned the common element in the struggles against imperialism, of whatever shade, in various parts of the world,. · and awakened to a sympathy with China which was to be, for the rest of his life, the core of his pan-Asian feeling. Nehru foresaw that if the current alliance of Chinese parties held it would be the ·Communists and not the much larger Kuomintang who would determine the lines of the future; and he realized, at a time when Stalin's agents were dominating the Chinese Communist party, that in the long run there would be a major indigenous element in Chinese communism. A victory for Chinese nationalism, therefore,.

The Formative Ideology of Jawaharlal Nehru

7

would mean an alliance with the Soviet Union; and to such a continental bloc of Russia and China, Britain, even with the aid the efforts of the peasant unions to put pressure through ma~ mobilization were condemned and suppressed both at the party atid adminjstrative levels.45 In anger, Nehru wrote to G. B. ~t, the Chief Minister of U.P. : '' ... the Congress Ministries are teodjng ·to become counter-revolutionary. This is of course not a · conscious ·development, but when a choice has to be made the ilidjnation is in this direction. Apart from this the general ·attitude .is static;,.'48 · There are some indications that Gandhi's attitude towards the • aagiarian·question was beginning to change in the last phase ·or his . . life. On 9 June 1942, he,told Louis Fischer in answer to his question · ....What is your programme for the improvement of the lot of the peasantry?'' .that "'the peasants would take the -land. We would not liave to tell th~m · to take it. They would take it.'' _A nd when Fischer asked, ''Would the landlords b~ compensated?'', he replied: aNo; that would be fiscally impossible.'' ln another . in~erview two days later, Fischer asked: ''Well, how do you actually see· your ~ -p ending civil disobedience movement?''Gandhi replied: ''In the villages,. the peasants ~ill stop payin_g taxes. They will m_ake salt despite offici_al prohibition ....Their next step will be to sei~e. the liand. ~, '"'With violence?''· asked Fischer. Gand_hi replied: ''rheir inay .be 'violence~,,·but t~en again the landlords may cooperate .... ~~y ~i_ g~'i c~penite by fleeing.'' Fi_scher said that ·t4e landlords "might organize violent resistance. " 47 Gandhi's reply was: ''There · may be fi'rteen days of chaos but I think we could soon bring that under control.'' Did this mean, asked Fischer, that there must be "confiscation without compensation?'' Gandhi replied: ''Of course. It would be financially impossible for anybody· to compensate the -S. Gopal, p. 229; H.D. Malaviya, pp. 66-S9, R. Crane, , pp. 102-50; W. Hauser, p. 127. •R. Crane, pp. · 102-~8, 149, W. Hauser, pp. l lO-l l.-Ne•1ru, Selected Works, Vol. VIIJ, p. 365. cL. Fischer, pp. 42-43.

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Peasantry and .lvational Integration

landlords. ''48 Similarly, he told Mirabehn in jail that after independence zamindars' land would be taken by the state either through their voluntary surrender or through legislation and then distributed to the cultivators. 49 By 1946, be even acknowledged that there had always been class struggle in history and that it d to make implements. Untouchability was punished. Women were given the right to divorce. Many widow-remarriages took place. Night schools were organized. Political awakening was created. Cultural programmes elevated the level of people's consciousness. All these appear like romance. Though during all this period, the Congress did not do anything. they at least watched the happenings with mixed feeling of admiration and apprehension. Admiration because the Nizam whom they could not tackle was being properly dealt with, apprehension because once these forces succeed, they would take the revolution to its logical end. It will not stop with the Nizam. It would affect all vested interests which support the Congress. The Nizam was refusing to join the Indian Union and was dreaming of independent Hyderabad. Razakar atrocities in the cities became unbearable. Kazim Razvi, their leader and a megalomanic, turned the Nizam into · a puppet. He would deliver fiery speeches against the Indian Union and the Hindus. Terror was struck in the rest of the Hyderabad state, while in the liberated areas of Telengana people moved about without fear. . Sardar -P atel tried to negotiate with the Nizam for signing the Instrument of Accession, while Nizam under the control of razakars refused to yield. The razakar menace in the cities mounted, creating panic and mass exodus of people to the neighbouring Indian Union territories. During these days of shameful negotiation, K.M Munshi was sent as India's Agent-General under a stand-still agreement. Then came the police action on 13 September 1948, even before the stand-still agreement was in operation, since the situation became too tense. There was general welcome to the police action because, except in few areas where the Communist movement had liberated the people, the whole state was in the grip of terror. The razakar ·and the feudal elements mounted a reign of terror, plunder, pillaging, burning and raping, while the people had no experience in organizing a defence. So, when the Indian Army marched into the state, the Hindu population felt elated and the razakars and the Hyderabad army

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National and Left Movements in India •I

tried to put up a defence which looked more Pickwickian. In many places, the Hindus took vengeance against Muslims taking advantage of the presence of Indian Army. The pendulum swung in the opposite direction. In Telengana, no such communal action took place. The struggle was one of the poor against feudal exploitation and cruelty. There were Hindu deshmukhs as cruel as the Muslim deshmukhs. In fact Visnoor Ramachandra Reddy's son was chief of the razakars. When it came to property there was no discrimination between Hindus and Muslims. Once the Indian Army moved into the state, the position began to change inasmuch as the deshmukhs and landlords under its protection returned to their places and attempts were made to reverse the process of land distribution set in motion by the Communists. Fighting against the Nizam's forces and his razakar rowdy gangs was one thing and fighting the centralized and wellorganized Indian Army was another. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that police action was expedited because the Nizam was refusing to sign the Instrument of Accession, was promoting the razakar terror and negotiating with Pakistan. Arms were beinB smuggled through a mercenary called Sydney Carton. Mir Laik Ali, the Prime Minister of Hyderabad, declared that Hyderabad should have an independent status once British paramountcy ended. According to another perverted genius, .Sir C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer, the then diwan of Travancore State, the ]apse of British paramountcy in India conferred independence on the princely native states. Such was the confusing situation in Hyderabad because of the terrorism of the razakar-Arab gangsters who operated freely brandishing arms, using foul language against everyone who criticized them and spreading death and destruction in rural area. All these were compelling reasons for the Government of India to expedite ''police action'' even before the standstill agreement between Government of India and the Nizam's. Government lapsed. But more than that is the report on the situation in Telengana furnished by K.M. Munshi who came to Hyderabad as Agent-General. It was feared . that if things were allowed to drift in this fashion, the Nizam would not be able to control the spreading influence of the armed Communists and then the likelihood of this fire catching other areas in Indian Union cannot be underestimated, especially as arms were being collected and the peasants were getting organized in the neighbouring districts.

161

A Look into the Peasant Struggles in Andhra Pradesh

in Andhra. The Communist movement in Andhra anyway wa, ·very strong and deep-rooted. The White Paper on Hyderabad by the Communist Party of India in 1948 says: .

The growing Communist activity in the Razakar infested Hyde-: rabad is yet another menace to Indian Peace a_n d Security. In the first instance feudal Hyderabad with its glaring instances of maddening disparity between the privileged position of the hand-: ful at the top and the appalling poverty of the vast population provides a prolific source of Communism. Until recently Com~ munism developed in Hyderabad and in bordering Indian dominion areas as an anti-thesis is of the Razakar movement and clashes between the Razakars and the Communists were frequent occurrences. When the Indian Army marched into Hyderabad, there was gene~ ral ~elief and ecstacy among _the people but when it became known. that the army was used to restore the the status quo ante liberation. movement, the Communist Party had to do a great deal of very. serious thinking. Should the great gains that were achieved as a result of terrible sacrifices and very hard work, b~ allowed to be swept away by the bullying force of the Indian Army? There was no doul>t that the bourgeois landlord combine ·which Pandit Nehru's government was championing with the liberal use of socia,istic rhetoric . .. . was not going to permit .the experiment in Tel~ngana to become an object lesson for the peasantry elsewhere. . .. A large section of the Hindu population was at least neutral during the period of Communist uprising because to them it appeared as a rebellion against Muslim domination and as long as somebody was fighting it for them, it was a welcome thing. The Congressmen could not fight the Nizam but while the Communist fought the Nizam they were all vicariously happy. · With the_· Indian Army coming to take over the state, the position changed for all these neutral elements. They certainly were not for . the . . structural changes that the Communist movement was trying to· effect while the wiping away of the Muslim label on the feudal tyranny was an unavoidable concomitant. The basic contradic- · tion was between feudal tyranny and the poor peasantry. But the . Hindus -who were neutral saw the contradiction as majority Hindu '

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National and Left Movements in India

population fighting against minority Muslim despotism which did not permit the Hindus even a marginal share in the enjoyment of the fishes and Joaves of political office. Figure heads were there but substantially Hindus had no part in the palace politics of Nizam 's days. Now that the Indian Union brought the Nizam down bending on his rheumatic knees before the ''Iron man'' Sardar Patel they would have no nonsense of Communists walking away with the trophy. Hence, the Communist Party had to face a new situation. Should they continue the fight or _withdraw in view of the changed political set up? Withdrawal meant losing all that they had achieved, demoralization of the enthusiastic · cadre who were dreaming of building a new society. Continuance of the struggle meant §elf-destruction. Either way the horns of dilemma· on which they were tossed seemed to yield the same result. "fwo schools of thinking developed ·which were labelled as desperatism and defeatism. The reports of the various leaders of the party units of Huzurnagar, Suryapet etc., depict the act~al situation. They felt that the people now cannot stand the Indian army's onslaught and hence a gradual withdrawal must be made. Even Ravi Narayan Reddy and others advocated a withdrawal. But this was not appreciated at that time because the central party felt that this was a defeatist counsel. Even the· most rabid antiCommunists conceded the heroic role that the Party played. The second party congress of the ·Communist Party of India was held in February 1948 in Calcutta. P.C. Joshi was removed from leadership for having committed reformist mistakes and for having failed to take the Telengana revolutionary situation forward to greater hejghts leading to an Indian revolution. B.T. Ranadive ~ecame the Party Secretary and the call for armed struggle was given, despite certain counsel of caution given by some f ratemal delegates like ·Dadier from Yugoslavia and Sharky from Australia. The repercussions of this congress were not so great in places where the Communist movement was not a mass movement. In some parts · the movement to a large extent remained a debating society under the benign supervision ·of Pandit Nehru and hence people were not sufficiently informed of the brutalities. In other places, where there was no movement worth the name, nothing really ·happened. · But its repercussions in Andhra, Telengana, Kerala, and Bengal particularly, and in Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu were very poignant. The sacrifice was something unprece-

A Look into the Peasant Struggles in Andhra Pradesh .·

163

dented even during the freedom struggle. Hundreds were arrested, police terror ,vas let loose. Villages in Andhra and Telengana were pillaged, burnt and looted ·by the independent India's policemen. People including very old men and women were tortured and brutally killed for information regarding Communists who had gone underground atrocities worse than what the Razakars had committed. Firing took place inside the Central jails in Cuddalore and Salem where 20 people were killed. All these acts of unheard brutality remained unprotested because India was then ruled by national government and not by the British or the Nizam. All these happened in the years 1948-49, one year after India became independent and a few months after Hyderabad was liberated. As a result of this repression by one of the most highly centralized bureaucracy now legitimized as a national government, the revolutionary movement received a terrible setback. Bickerings and criticism started. People, [who advised the withdrawal of armed struggle as soon as police action was launched, began to desert the Party. Life became impossible in an atmosphere of mutual suspicion and distrust. Most people possessed arms also. The whole Andhra was thrown into utter confusion. 50,000 troops were pressed into action to comb out the Communists. People who were caught were shot dead and alibis were created that they died in encounters or were shot while trying to escape. To add ·to these, congressmen now began to go into villages propagating anti-Communist gospel. Vinoba Bhave also camped there and started his ''Bhoodan.'' 1he man who first gave the land for ''Bhoodan'' was one V. Ramachandran Reddy, brother-inlaw of Ravi Narayan Reddy. (In .fact this land was given away according to . the wishes of the father-in-law of Ravi Narayan _Reddy, who before his death expressed a wish that some land be donated to the poor to commemorate his memory. So Vinoba Bhave or no Vinoba Bhave the land would · have been donated.) Ravi Narayan Reddy himself had, during the struggle period, donated five hundred acres of land to the poor peasantry and this was more than the land his -t.?rother-in-law gave for Bhoodan? The peasant movement that grew into one of the most revolu. tionary struggle in India gradually subsided. Most leaders and cadre were put in jails. Vicious but powerful anti-Communist propaganda was unleashed to legitimize the bureaucratic high-handI

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edness. The Party itself became fractured as a result of ideological confusion. Chinese literature, .Mao's writings and Lenin's writings were traded freely to justify different positions. The geopolitical situation and logistics of the Telengana situation were such that a prolonged struggle to extend the activity would have been impossible. That also seems to have been the advice given by Stalin to a group of Communist leaders who escaped to Moscow to seek guidance there. For the first time, discussion on strategy and tactics, the models-Chinese or Russian-of revolution that is most suitable for India, etc., were on the party agenda. With changes in leadership, it was realized that Indian Revolution had to be Indian and not of either Russian type or Chinese type. It should not be thought that the struggle was in vain. It also should not be thought that, since leftist forces seemed to have disappeared in Andhra Pradesh (comprising Andhra and Tel !ngana), the whole movement died away unwept, unsung and unhonoured. The various land legislations, the tenancy acts, ceiling acts, acts abolishing feudal vestiges were_all traceable to the heroic struggles of Telengana and earlier struggles in Andhra. Slavery in Telengana was wiped out of existence, thoµgh a few vestiges in the form of bonded labour lingered on. It was also demonstrated to the government that the army was not the answer to the peasant unrest. In the subsequentelection in 1952, the Communist parties of both Andhra area and Telengana came out with great strength. The whole district of Nalgonda went to the Communists, Ravi Narayan Reddy having polled the maximum number of votes more than any other candidate in the country including Pandit Nehru. ' It is really paradoxical that a region which led such a historic struggle, a region that gave solid support to such a struggle should have today rejected the leftist path and become once again a cesspoo I of caste-oriented politics. Telengana struggle is a veritable mine from which lessons will always be drawn. The fact also remains that the Left in Andhra have received a terrible setback. This bas also to be explained. Wild guesses, conclusions based on intuition, criticism from the ''extremist'' left or the ''revisionist'' right do not reveal the whole truth. The fact remains that while the concrete facts of exploitation were present, people came to fight but that has not proved that they have been politically and ideologically prepared for

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taking the movement to great heights'. 1 he Telengana armed struggle would al,vays be a central issue in the important question of praxis. Nothing similar has occurred before. None can say what the future holds out. The experience is unique. The splintering of the Communist Movement in India was the price that the struggle had to pay while on a broader spectrum it did usher in a change in the all-India agrarian structure. It did hasten the formation of linguistic states. • It stimulated many cultural and literary expressions among the people in Andhra. A new wave of poetry, drama, folk art and music arose out of this glorious struggle. ''Telengana, a crore-dianiond-studded Veena,'' sang the poet Dasarathi (the population of Telengana was one ,crore at that time). Theory is as strong or as weak as the empirical facts on which it stands. One cannot twist hard facts to suit theory or to gain a point in polemics, because a revolutionary theory is a serious matter that would involve lives of people and the destiny of movements assiduously built and nurtured by tremendous sacrifices. Parties to polemics will invoke the sacrifices, no doubt, in retrospective wisdom. This was what happened after the Communist Party split, though the differences lay dormant during the days of uneasy unity as well. Bandying the writings of Mao and Lin Piao on protracted war and encircling urban areas · from villages, the Communist leaders began to argue about the ''Strategy and Tactics of the Indian Revolution,'' as the more organized and thorough going ''liberating'' Indian armies mostly composed of Gurkhas began to comb the jungles of Telengana to the accompaniment of the Congress leaders gleefully traversing the villages to restore status-quo ante. l ·he moderate leaders of Telengana, who pleaded that armed struggle becan1e no more valid in the face of the Indian army moving in as ''liberators,'' were dubbed as cowards and traitors. (Incidentally the Communist Party never makes a sparing use of such intemperate Iauguage and never expresses regrets after recognizjng the harm so done. Unlike the Bourbons they forget everything and like the Bourbons they do not seem to learn anything.) Should every Indian situation be always compared to historical situations elsewhere? Should the universe of discourse lie confined to the Russian model of ''Strike and Uprising'' or the Chinese model of ''prolonged civil war and new democracy''? This controversy went on as the guerilla bands began to gradually disintegrate. The all-India leadership under

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Ranadive would not budge an inch from its ultra-left position branding every plea for a strategic retreat as reformism and defeatism. As mentioned earlier, struggles within the four walls of well-fortified ceo.tral jails were to be waged .ignoring the obvious difference in power between unarmed and unprotected prisoners and wellarmed ruthless jail staff. Not an eye-lid was batted when detenus in Cuddalore and Salem were shot dead and in Vellore some were mortally injured. The very armed struggle in Telengana, which the people outside of Telengana praised during the Nizam's days, became now the target of attack by the people who said that Communists were out for violence and subversion. The way the spontaneo.us move[Jlent came up in Telengana and the retrospective incorporation of it in Ranadive's thesis of the Second Party Congress of 1948 have to be examined. It must be clearly understood that it was during the so-called Reformist Joshi phase that the Talengana movement, started initially under the Andhra Maha Sabha for better wages and abolition of other feudal practices, developed into a guerilla fight. The deshmukh-razakar cruelties and terrorism gave birth to such resistance and later their pusillanimity reinforced it. The unorganized mercenary gangs, many a time imported from neighbouring areas were no match to a determined and disciplined people's militia. Ravi Narayan Reddy and Baddam Yella Reddy realized the strength and the relative weakness after the Indian Army entered and so advocated a reversal to the usual non-insurrectionary methods of struggle. If th~ Second Party Congress had not taken place, one wonders if the subsequent decision to continue the armed struggles would have come about. The restrospective assessment by CPI (M), that the continuance of the struggle after police action was right, though armed revolution of the Chinese variety as adumbrated by Ranadive was untenable, is also an exercise in confusion and contradiction. The slogans on which the Telengana struggle was shored up were not relevant in Andhra area, because of the differences in land tenure in these areas and the differences in the nature of domination by the landed gentry over the peasants. Hence, when the people in Andhra were awakened to the barbaric methods of oppression prevalent in Telengana, they naturally sympathized with them and there was general support. Since the objective conditions in these areas were different the same tactics could not

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be extended beyond the Telengana region. This is precisely what · happened even in earlier str_uggles that were referred to in the beginning-like the one led by Alluri Sitaramaraju. The same is more or less the case with the experience of the Tebhaga struggle in Bengal and the struggles of Punappra, Ambalpuzha, and Vayalar in Kerala. The uneven development in the country goes against application of a uniform tactic. This is also the reason why the Srikakulam struggle, for all the glorious courage that was displayed, fails to spread and by virtue of its confinement to a restricted area gets isolated and thus crushed by . the centralized bureaucratic state machinery. Lies and slanders carried out in a systematic fashion legitimizes the whole process. A look at the assessment of situation by B.T. Ranadive at the time, shows the grandeur of imagination unwarranted by objective conditions. One should not become a victim of total cynicism and fail to see the revolutionary conditions welling up 1 but revolutionary wisdom at the same time demands a realistic assessment. I submit that it was lacking, as the following quotation would bear out: Out of this (capitalistic cr_isis and impossibility to solve it] has arisen the great struggles of the last eight months-the struggles of workers and peasants, stt1dent struggles against which most barbarous methods of repression were used .[Kerala, Andhra, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal], struggles which saw fascist terror against toilers.... In them ·a re being trained and steeled the new forces which are destined to overthrow the bourgeois rule. They reveal not only the rapid process of disillusionment, the rapid decline of the influence of the Congress, but also the glowing desperate determination and militancy of the masses. They often develop into. armed clashes in the face of terror. The terror-one-tenth of which would have formerly demoralised the fighters -now evokes only indignation and greater determination. How often have the leaders of the party, in recent struggle, estimated the power of resistance of the masses under terror [Coimbatore, Kerala], and thinking that all resistance is broken, have been surprised by the masses ·who have refused to yield to terror and decided to continue resistance? The partial struggle of present period the refore became wide

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battles, armed conflicts-miniature civil wars-and when they are organised on a.sufficiently big scale easily develop into political battles and throw up embryonic state forms [Telengana]such is the logic of the situation. Such is the skewed logic of the situation. Overestimation of the purest water characterizes the evaluation of the time. The repressive, terroristic, reactionary partner of bourgeois-feudalimperialist combine-the Congress under Nehru and his successors lasted for decades while the grand movements just evaporated. Between father and daughter, the people saw a hybrid of state so~ialism and incipient fascism. Thus, overestimation of the staying power and the expansibility of an upsurge led to disastrous results as the Telengana situation demonstrated. For years p~ople will go on discussing and debating but once the facts are grasped, the strength of a centralized bureaucracy, its resistance, its adaptability, its control over the institutions of legitimation are properly assessed, the revolutionary movements can progress without Quixotic adventurism that finally Jands them in a paradoxical and pitiable situation of being rejected by the very people for whose benefit they sacrificed so much. Go to Telengana, or to Srikakulam and find it out. The extremist groups constituting the '·'Marxist-Leninist'' party (with all its splinters) is critical of both the CPI and CPM formulation. The CPI agreeing with Narayan Reddy thesis that the struggle should have been withdrawn on the entry of the Indian Army is not much different, according to these groups, from the CPM line that the struggle was alright but it should be a partial struggle to defend the gains of the peasantry. They contend that there is no difference, in the final analysis, between the N izam and the Indian Union which took the place of Britis~ imperialism to which Nizam paid his homage. The fundamental character of the ruling class may not change but the nature of the struggle cannot be so simplistically understood. In the final analysis imperialism is a world phenomenon, but the struggles in different countries and different times are not the same. Even so, in the country ·of India's size, with its diversities of political rule and socio-economic developments, to consider the struggle against the Nizam and the struggle against the Indian Union as.one continUU'!) is over-simplistic. There is a need

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for tactical manoeuvrability that should characterize a revolutionary path. Revolution, as Chernyshevsky said, is not like the smooth pavement of N evsky Prospect. It is a zig-zag. It is a historical irony that in Andhra Pradesh militant movement like the Rampa Pituri, the Alluri Sitaram Raju's struggle, the Palnad no-tax campaign, anti-Zamindari struggles in Chellepalli, Munagla, Bobbili, the Telengana struggle, Srikakulam struggle, etc., reached a crescendo and fell. The fruits of these were reaped by others. The reactionary movements for a separate Telengana and a separate Andhra disrupted the political life and enabled the petty politicians to bargain for the fishes and loaves among themselves. The radicals have found themselves in a disarray.

Two Streams in India's Left Movement E.M.S. NAMBOODIRIPAD

I first met Damodaran 45 years ago. B~th of us had just come out of jail, . having left our studies in college-Damodaran in Calicut and myself in Trichur-and participated in the 1932-33 civil disobedience movement. He was, at that time, an ardent Gandhite both in his beliefs as well as in per~onal life. I was amused to find that not only did he not take tea or coffee but his daily food consisted of raw vegetables and coconuts. A few months later, he produced a short pamphlet under ·the title The Only Path wherein he explained the doctrine of Gandhism as the only solution for the ills from which India suffered. I too had begun as a Gandhite, but subsequently turned towards what was known as Nehruism. I had, in fact, produced a short biography of Nehru when I was in college, i.e. before I joined the civjl disobedience movement and went to jail. I used my 19 month stay in jail for an extensive study of the economics and politics of the revolutionary movement in India and abroad from which I had imbibed ideas of a vague kind of socialism. The contacts I had· established with revolutionaries who \, ere incarcerated in the jails of which I was an inmate also helped he process. I therefore disagreed with Damodaran but we were able to establish a working agreement. I contributed a pamphlet to the series Grameena Granthamala which, he planned to bring out. Damodaran's The Only Path (the first in the series) was followed by my Why Swaraj?, a brief explanation of the economics and politics of British exploitation and a call for Swaraj for the working people. A few months later, we formed the Kerala unit of the Congress Socialist Party of which I was an active functionary. The weekly Malayalam organ of the party started coming out with myself as editor and Damodaran as one of the contributors. This however was a brief collaboration between us in socialist journalism,. since he left Kerala in a few weeks for Varanasi where he

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joined the Kashi Vidyapith as a student. It did not take him long for getting contacts with the communist group in Varanasi and he soon became a communist. I, for my part, continued to work as a Congress Socialist, being one of the all-India Joint Secretaries of the party, but mostly confining my activities to Kerala. Together with my closest colleague and co_mrade, the late Krishna Pillai, I had, in the meanwhile, come into contact with the all-India leadership of the Communist Party. Having had extensive discussions with them lasting for quite a . few months, we (Pillai and me) agreed to work with them, though continuing to remain active functionaries of the Congress Socialist Party. I was thus drawn towards Communism not straight from Gandhism as Damodaran was, but via Congress Socialism. With my earlier left Congress and Congress Socialist background, it ~ook me quite some time to fully integrate myself into the Communist movement, though I had generally accepted the position accepted by the Communist Party on most national and international • issues. For Damodaran, on the other hand, the change-over from Gandhism to Communism was easier and more direct. Varanasi made him ardent a Communist as he had earlier been a Gandhite. The reason for the difference probably lies in the fact that he had a better academic mind than I had. I was more of an active participant in the day-to-day political movement and engaged myself in the study of such theoretical problems as are of direct use to the practical movement. The nationalisln of Gandhi being replaced by the left nati_onalism of Nehru, Bose, etc., the latter acquiring the. concrete shape of socialism, but still with its roots in the Congress; and finally Communism with its proletarian -international outlook-such was the path traversed by me. For Damodaran, on the other hand, it was either Gandhism or Communism. rfhough thus differing on the mode of transition from Gandhism to Communism, both of us ultimately came to Communism and that within four years of our first meeting. The two of us, together with the late Krishna Pillai and N.C. Sekhar, were the members of the first provisional Kerala unit of the Communist Party formed in the presence of Central Committee member, S.V. Ghate.

as

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The different paths traversed by the two of us in arriving at the point where we founded the Kerala unit of the Communist Party of India had·their impact on our subsequent life and work. On several occasions, we were in opposite camps in the undivided · Communist Party and when the Party got split, we were in the rival organizations which grew out of the split. It will be fruitful here to emphasize the fact that the two paths traversed by the two of us in our transition from Gandhism to Communism are illustrative of the two major streams which constitute India's left movement. _ It is true that like n1e and many other comrades, a large number of those who participated in the formation and activities of the Congress SociaJist Party subsequently became Communists. It is however equally true that probably a much larger number rejected this path and remained Congress Socialists. · For these Congress Socialists and several other left groups, radical nationalism was the main thing; socialism was good only to the extent to which it helped th.e m in their radical nationalist activities. They were cordial and friendly with the Communist movement in India and abroad so long as and to the extent to which such cooperation helped the development of the radical nationalist movement here. They however could not bring themselves to the idea that radical nationalism in one country cannot fulfil its mission in life unless it integrates itself with the world proletarian revolutionary movement which, in the thirties and forties had only a single country where it had become the ruling party-the USSR. Even such of them as had the least prejudices against Communism (like Jayaprakash Narayan for a couple of · years in _the latter half of the l930s) were in their heart of hearts unable to integrate themselves with the world revolutionary movement. They therefore became bitterly anti-Communist and anti-Soviet on critical occasions like the latter half of the Second World War and for quite some time after· independence. Depending on concrete historical conditions, however, they shed their anti-Communist and anti-Soviet prejudices and fully cooperated with the Communist movement not only in the thirties but sometimes in the forties, fifties and sixties and, above all, in the most recent period of the struggle against the emergency regime. The periods in which, and the issues on which, these friends

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clashed with the Communist movement would illustrate the nature of the conflict between them and the Communists. The Quit . India movement of 1942; the post-independence militant struggles including Telengana; some developments in the Socialist world such as the revolts in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia; the India-China border dispute-on every one. of these issues, the Communist movement came into bitter conflict with this section of the left movement. The point at issue on every one of these occasions, it can be seen, was whether the revolutionary movement in India should be ''loyal'' to the bourgeois-led national democratic movement and the bourgeois-landlord state of free India in opposition to the Socialist world and the international proletarian revolutionary movement. ''Loyalty to nationalism'' was an 4rticle of faith for them, making it obligatory for very radical nationalist to put into practice the doctrine, ''my country right or wrong.'' · The Communist movement, including that section of it which originally had· its moorings in the radical national movement, looked at the problem in a different way. It agreed that occasions may arise, issues may crop up, on which there is apparently a conflict between the two loyalties-to one's own · country and io the international revolutionary movement. This apparent conflict however cannot, and should not, be attempted to be resolved by subordinating one loyalty to the other. For, the conflict is not only apparent but temporary; behind it is the reality that the development of the revolutionary movement in one's own country arid that of the world revolutionary movement are mutually dependent and interconnected. The Communist movement therefore took certain risks and courted unpopularity, boldly decided to swim against the current of national feelings, on such occasions as the Quit India movement of 1942, the India-China border dispute, etc. flistory, it may be pointed out, has in fact fully confirmed the correctness of the position adopted by the Communist movement on every one of these • issues. Take, for instance, the Quit India movement of 1942, on which passions were roused against the Communist movement. Did the Communist movement do anything more than what a section of the top leadership of the Congress (including Jawaharlal Nehru and Abut Kalam Azad) bad pointed out to Gandhi when the latter was -{

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preparing the Congress and the country for a ''do and die'' struggle? It is on record that Nehru and Azad spent long hours with Gandhi, trying to convince him that a national .struggle of the magnitude envisaged by him at that stage would help German fascism and Japanese militarism; it would not mean India's emancipation from British rule but the replacement of the latter by the German and Japanese fascist rule. When they could not convince Gandhi of course, Nehru and Azad agreed to go along with him. That, however, does not in\ validate the argument advanced by them. The world and, along with it our own country, was spared the catastrophe apprehended .by them only because the Soviet and allied armed forces, supported by the revolutionary democratic movements throughout the world, were powerful enough to infiict a crushing defeat on world · fascism. The Communist movement therefore has nothing to be ashamed of-in having adhered to the last to .the position· originally adopted by such top leaders of national movement as Nehru and Azad. It is not suggested here that everything the Communists did during the anti-fascist phase of the Second World War was correct. -T he Communist Party itseif did do some self-criticism, pointing out the deviations from the correct line when it was put into

practice. . The fact however remains that the . freedom struggle in which .the Indian people were engaged was inseparably connected with the struggle against fascism in which the armed forces of the Soviet Union and its allies were an important element. The Comm.:anist movement in India and throughout the,world bad visualized the .world after the defeat offascism as one in which not only will the _·G erman, the Italian and the Japanese fascists and militarists will be defeated but, following their defeat, there would emerge such .a powerful freedom movement throughout the world that .jmperialism will be defeated in co-µntry after country. Is it not a fact that this forecast has come true; that, within two years of the end of the war, a host of Asian countries, including .those on the . Indian sub-continent, became free; that, following the freedom of these Asian countries, the African continent became a storm centre of Upheavals against which their imperialist overlords could µot stand for long ; that, in countries like Indo-

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.C hina where the imperialist overlords and their American patrons · · engaged themselves in a last ditch battle, the peoples concerned offered such resistance to their national enemy as has inspired the whole world? No unprejudiced student of history can be blind to the fact that, as had been confidently forecast by the Communists, the defeat of fascism in the Second World War did really lead to the freedom of almost two-thirds of humanity who were, for decades, being crushed under the jackboots of imperialism. Nor can it be denied that, if, as had been apprehended by the anti-imperialists including Nehru and Azad, the Second World War had ended in the victory of fascism, human history would have been turned back several centuries; India too would have shared the same fate. That is why, despite the deviations made here and ·there, and as has been acknowledged by the Communist leadership itself, the general line adopted by the movement to the Quit India struggle was fully justified. Take, again, the question of the India-China border dispute and the prolonged conflict between . the two countries foilowing that dispute. Here again, the Communist movement was attacked by the nationalists and, it may be added, a powerful section within the Communist movement itself. But, as in the case of the Quit India movement, in this too, history has confirmed the correctness of the line adopted by what was at one time called the ''pro-China'' section of the Indian Communist movement. T·he issue in dispute between the so-called ·''pro-China'' section of the Communist movement on the one ·band and almost all other political parties, incl_uding a . section of the Communist movement on the other, was whether the dispute should be resolved through negotiations· between the two countries, or through military means. Connected with this ·was the issue whether an attitude of give an:d take on the question of bo.r ders and other disputed issues was a ''betrayal of national interests'' as alleged against us, or whet~er this was the only statesmanlike attitude which can be adopted·by an.y country in the world in its dispute with other • countries. Once passions were allowed to die down and people had time for cool and calm consideration, it began to dawn on even the most rabid anti-China crusaders that the line adopted by them was suicidal. It is a matter of satisfaction that the first steps towards

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normalization of relations between the two countries have been taken and that the governments in the two countries are in a mood to restore their former relations of friendship and cooperation. It is not necessary to give other examples, since these two are enough to show that the proletarian international approach to problems adopted by the Communist movement does not negate the defence of the national interests. On the other hand, in the present-day context in which American imperialism and the agencies set up by it are increasingly endangering the freedom and sovereignty of every country in the world, a narrow bourgeois nationalist approach to problems would be detrimental to our national interests. · It should be noted that, apart fro:111 American imperialism directly intervening in the economic, political, military, educational and other spheres of national activity in our country, th~re are other powers like the West German, the Japanese and other monopolists as well as the big multinationals who are offering ''aid'' to the private as well as public sectors. Among those who are taken in by such ''offers'' are the left nationalists and the adherents of the socialist international-the very people who took up . . cudgels against the Communist movement in 1942, . ~urin·g the India-China dispute, etc. There is in fact no political party, mass organization or cultural and social group in India which is not international in the sense of having loyalty to and cooperating with other countries or groups of countries. The question is only the type of countries with whom you cooperate, the type of internationalism to which you _are loyal. On the one hand are the big businessmen and their hangers-on in the economic field, together with the politicians, the academi~ ciaos, the editors and journalists, etc. who would have India jump Qnto the bandwagon of imperialism; on the other are the left: democratic parties, the fighting mass organizations of the people, the groups and individuals who are interested _in the defence ·of the freedom and sovereignty of the nation as well as the progressive developmeni of its national economy along democratic lines. One has to make a choice between these two types of inter~ . nationalism. I personally have the satisfaction and pride that, though arriving at Communism via the path of Congress Socialism, I adopted the path of proletarian internationalism which, let it be once again

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emphasized, is_not a negation of genuine patriotism, patriotism of the common people in our country. . On every critical occasion on which the two streams of the left movement in India clashed with each other, such as the Quit India struggle of 1942, the India-China border dispute, etc., the Communist movement (the CPI{M) after the party was split), refused to toe the line of bourgeois nationalism. Furthermore, with deviations here and there, we have consistently adhered to the line of class struggle on questions of internal politics; never did we lower theflag of class struggle to become part of the bourgeois-led ''national stream.'' . While having no hesitation to cooperate with the ruling classes-,. their political parties and the government on issues on which they adopt a genuinely patriotic and democratic stand, . we have been consistent in the struggle against the basic class policies pursued by the ruling classes, their political parties and the government. We have never adopted any political line which is ''pro'' this or that political party of the ruling classes, but have always adopted the pro-working class, pro-working people stand. It may, in this context, be pointed out that, while remaining consistently Joyal to the principles of proletarian internationalism, we have refused to toe the line set by some big party in the international communist movement. Although denounced by the Soviet Party for our ''splitism at the instance of the Chinese'' and equally denounced by the Chinese Party for our alleged ''neo.revisionism, '' we have stood our ground, remaining loyal to the world socialist camp and the international revolutionary movement. We never allowed ourselves to become anti-Soviet or anti-China· always hailing and popularizing the socialist achievements of both, ';·tile of course criticizing what appeared to us to be wrong in the 1J01fcies pursued by their . leadership. This further confirms our claim that proletarian internationalism and genuine patriotism are not mutually contradictory but supplementary. Unfortunately, however, the bourgeois nationalist trend, represented in the early days by the Congress Socialist Party and its successors in later days, did not remain with these parties; they also affected the undivided Communist movement. While in relation to the Quit India movement of 1942, the entire Communist movement had remained united, in the subsequent phase, particularly after the outbreak of the India-China dispute, the

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Communist movement itself had to face the assault ·o r bourgeois nationalism. The split that took place in the Communist movement f ormalized in l964, and the further ~plit leading to the emergence of several Naxalite groups, show the extent of bourgeois nationalist influence inside the Communist movement. The result is that, while a section of the once-united Communist movement adopted the line of collaboration with the Congress, endorsing even the excesses of the emergency regime, another section went back to the line of the old terrorist movement which is sought to be glorified by nicknaming it as the Chinese path of armed struggle. There is no doubt at all that both these lines will end in a big fiasco. For, the defeat and further split of the Congress party; the ideological and political differences within the Janata; the great ferment that is gathering among the working people due to the class policies pursued earlier by the Congress and now by the Janata, etc. have created a situation in which the two streams in the left movement-the bourgeois-nationalist and the proletariat internationalist-can unite in a nation-wide movement for fulfilling the tasks of dismantling the authoritarian regime, for preserving and expanding the democratic rights of the people and for reversing the socio-economic policies pursued by the government. Neither the collaborationist line of the Right C. P., nor the negative line of renouncing united mass struggle adopted by the Naxalites can serve the purpose. The need therefore is the forging of the unity of left and democratic forces on the basis of a correct integration of genuine patriotism with proletarian internationalism.

•

Reflections on Marxism and Social Revolution in India• P.C. JOSHI

Marxism crowns the whole morenzent ·for intellectual and moral reform dia/ecticised in the contrast hetK·een popular and higher culture. It corresponds to the nexus of Protestant Reformation plus French Revolution. It is philosophy which is also politics and it is politics which is also philosophy. It is still passing through its popularising stage; to develop a core of independent intellectuals is no simple task but a long process with. actions and reactions, agreements und dissolutions and new formations, bot!, numerous and complex; ii is the creation of a subordinate social group, without historical initiative, which is constantly growing but in a disorganised maMer never being able to pass beyond a qualitative stage which always lies this side of the possession of State power, of real hegemony over all of society lvhich alone permits a certain organic equilibrium in the development of the intellectual group. Marxism itself has become "prejudice'' and '' superstition''; as it is, it is the popular aspect of modern historical thinking, but it contains within itself the princi- · pie for overcoming this. ANTONIO GRAMSCI, The Modern Prince and Other Writing~f, . International Publishers, New York, 1957, p. 87.

I

•This is a substantially revised and enlarged version of the paper first p11blished in Seminar, No. 178, June 1974. I recall with deep and poignant feelings the warm appreciation expressed for my paper by K. Damodaran. He gave . full moral support to the critique of both naked and subtle forms of dogmatism and anti-intellectualism in the Marxist movement. K. Damodaran was one of the few outstanding Marxists who showed immense respect for the intellectual approach and keen appreciation of its role in the struggle for socialism. He was also one of the few revolutionaries in India who regarded an unceasing battle of ideas based on serious study and research as an essential part of the Marxist approach to social and political transformation. He sincerely believed that socialism was another name for scientific politics. It is appropriate that this paper which aims at highlighting the Intellectual

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The present situation in India is conducive to an Indian cultural renewal, that is to say, to the development of new thought and culture which derives inspiration f~om all sources but is rooted · in India's own traditions and socia~ realities. As part of this very process of intellectual renewal, one can also sense a reawakening of interest in Marxism among the Indian intelligentsia today. In the current situation one discerns an intense questioning of established modes of thought and practice in all spheres. This is being attempted in the light of lessons from the history of India and other countries. No doubt there has not yet occurred a crystallization of new patterns of thought and practice. It is resisted by a powerful combinations of intellectual inertia and vested interests. Consequently, the break from old patterns and the creation of new ones is yet painfully slow. It should also be noted that in India, after independence, quantitatively the intelligentsia has increased enormously, but its qualitative impact is not yet commensurate to its size. The forces of anti-rationalism and obscurantism continue to exercise much greater influence on the intelligentsia than the. forces of reason and enlightenment. Against this background the more sensitive elements of the Indian nation are beginning to realize that the forces of unreason and ignorance cannot be fought effectively without . drawing upon the rich intellectual legacy of Marxism. This questioning mood is also pervading the sensitive elements among Marxists. -Marxist Establishment, however, is not at the head of this new ferment. Being immersed in the day-to-day tasks of the political movement it is not even alive to the full potentialities of a resurgence of Marxism as an intellectual force. This is because the traditional leaders of Marxist thought and

The

significance and role of Marxism is dedicated to the memory of K. Damodaran. He needs to be remembered as one who struggled all his life to Intellectualise politics by providing a bridge between scientific study and politics. I received comments and criticisms on this paper from a wide variety of persons including Marxist intellectuals and activists. I derived special benefit from the long critique by J\jit Roy published in Social Scientist, No. 26, September 1974 and also from the brief but sharp comment by E.M.S. Namboodiripad in Social Scientist, No. 25, August 1974. These comments do provide a corrective to the many gaps in my paper. But I am firmly of the view that neither B.M.S. nor Ajit Roy seem to apprecjate the complexity of the challenge facing Indian Marxists at the intellectual level for coping effectively with the challenges at the political level.

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practice have never treated thought and practice, intellectual activity and political activity, as parrallel, and mutually reinfore• ing movements. They have habitually considered the intellectual movement as subordinate to the political movement. This habit has r"esulted in their lack of perception of the potential of the Marxist intelligentsia as an important force for social transformation in present-day India. It may be noted that in the field of Marxism today one witnesses a queer situation. Both inside India and outside a renewal of interest in Marxism as a living and evolving world-view coexists with sharp reaction against the Stalinist1 distortions of Marxism. · The greatest revulsion is now being expressed against reducing Marxism into a sectarian and opportunist rationalization of the practice of political groups owing allegiance to Marxism. A painful realization can b~ discerned among a section of Marxists themselves that the scientific rigour and intellectual substance of Marxism has been underplayed by the Marxist movement. In fact, the Marxist political groups have been singularly unenthusiastic about spreading Marxism even among their own ranks. It is no wonder, therefore, that the cultural potential of Marxism was largely untapped in the past. In contrast. Marxism today has a new quality insofar as it is being rediscovered as a new mode of thought and consciousness and not merely as a political ideology. Let it be recalled that in India Marxism first spread as a political programme rather than as a new world-view or cultural movement. In this context it may be noted that in India, the historical sequence of the development of Marxist thought was reversed. In many J It

is important to note that Marxism which was the product of an industrial society underwent qualitative changes when it was transplanted into societies which were not yet industrially developed. In Russia Marxism turned into Stalinism and in China into Maoism. Some aspects of Stalinism represented a gross vulgarisation of Marxism, a break from the rational and humanist tradition of Marxism. This internal metamorphosis of Marxism brings out the significance of interaction between forms of conscious.. ness and conditions of social existence. Jf Ma.rxist theory is a force for bringing about a change in conditions of social existence, it is also necessary that conditions of social existence should in certain respects be ripe and favourable for receiving Marxist theory. Pre-industrial (and pre-capitalist) · conditions of social existence, therefore, force a d '. stortion in the theoretical consciousness itself as shown by the examples of Stalinism and also to some . extent by Maoism.

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/ developed countries Marxism emerged first as an intellectual force I before it gathered strength as a political force. Jn ex-colonial and r -semi-feudal countries like India, on the other hand, its emergence I , as a political force preceded its emergence as an intellectual force. So far as the older generation of Marxists is concerned they served both as promoters of Marxist thought and builders of a political movement. Bttt their role as · activists overshadowed their role as intellectuals. In fact, the Marxist as broad collectivity neither fully imbibed nor transmitted the entire philosophical and cultural legacy of Marx, Engels or even Lenin. The introduction of Marxis1n to most Marxists ~egan and often ended with the writings of J .V. Stalin. Consequently, the problem of integrating the _struggle for power with the endeavour for a cultural renewal or the problem of creating the cultural preconditions of the struggle for power was seldom posed in Indian Marxism as sharply as it was done in the writings of Marx, Engles, Lenin and later in the works of Gramsci and Mao Tse-tung. The failure even to pose this problem led to the incapacity to evolve a concept representing the unity of power and culture as Gramsci succeeded in doing through his notion of ''hegemony over civil society'' (Gramsci 1971 : 271). Marxists in India never showed the mental boldness of a Mao in recognizing the impact of ''spiritual things and social consciousness on social existence.'' 1 hey did not envisage that under certain circumstances ''the superstructure'' or ''the cultural -factors'' may play ''a principal and decisive role'' in the historical movement. (Mao Tse-t\_lng 1954: 41.) Thus in many backward countries like India the concept of politics as both the fruit and the seed of deeper critical consciousness did not develop as it did in some other countries. The narrow concept of politics involved thus a break from the . two-fold commitment of Marx viz. (i) to transform acti, ists (i.e. those engaged in the struggle for power) into intellectuals (i.e. into creators and disseminators of a new consciousness) and (ii) to :orient intellectuals towards political activism. By gi,,ing over.riding preponderance to the political task, Marxists in the early phases tended to underplay the intellectual role of activists as the theorists and ideologues of the mass movement. Indian Marxism had a significant growth during the pre-inde·pendence period.· But it did not fully develop as an intellectual force and movement in spite of its potentialities. Thinking people I

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have asked why Marxism did not ·take deep root in India in spite of a favourable objective situation. The causes of this phenomenon can partly . be traced to the failure to build up an independent theoretical base of Indian Marxism. The internal disunity and fragmentation of the political forces of Marxism in India since independence can also be traced mainly to the same factor. In other _w ords, the repeated setbacks of Indian Mar~ism in spite of a favourable social situation have their roots in the failure to combine, as Engels prescribed, the ~OJJom.ic and po·l iticat _st_i:uggles with the .theoretical (Lenin 196L:370). ·What -was lacking ·--- - -- struggle - - . was, therefore, an attempt to build up an Indian-Marxist intelligentsia n the basis of a d~ep exploration of India's intellectual heritage and of Indian social realities and traditions. A genuine Jndianness could never come either on the basis of mere quotatiqn. mongering_ __f!Ql!l_1yl~r~is~ pal_llp_hlets or of knowing more about 6tber countries than about one's own. Indianness could come only from a positive intellectual dialogue (and not ju~t polemics) with lndian ideologues representing different or opposite philosophical 'Orientation and intellectual perspectives. But Indian Marxists were slow in responding to this intellectual challenge. Why is the intellectual failure of Indian Marxism so pronounced both before and after independence? Why is it that India failed to create outstanding Marxist thinkers, and a b~dyJ of Marxist thought and theory suited to Indian conditions? ~by is it that 1 Indian i1arxism has been more derivative than original, more theological than scientific, more assertive than receptive, and more negative than positive? To raise these questions is _to draw .attention to the . new properties and characteristics ali~n to its original character which Marxism acquired under conditions of colonial and semi-feudal backwardness. This inner transformation of implanted Marxism is ultimately an affirmation of Marxian materialism itself. '' It is not the consciousness of men that determines !!teir b~g, but~ on the contra_ry, th~i.( ~ocial being determines their c~~cfou~n~ss,'' observes Marx (1970: 20-21). Marxism as a form of social consciousness thus cannot escape the inftuen_c e of the semimediaeval conditions of existence obtaining in a country like India. Further, in German Ideology 'Marx aptly remarked: ''Theory is fulfilled in a people insofar as it is ·the fulfilment of the needs of that people.... It is not enough for thought to · strive for realisation, reality must itself strive towards thought'. ' (K. Marx 1957: . . . ~

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51-52). The critical, activist and creative tendencies in Marxism have often been overwhelmed in India by conformist," fatalist 2 and mechanistic revision of Marxism itself. Martj~ts became hostile ·- to .. questi~ning and independent thinking which is so necess~ry for the construction of a-Marxisi-perspective on Indian problems. ·- It ·s hould be noted that the mental outlook which is fostered by conditions of backwardness in pre-industrial societies has the following basic ingredients: (i) the belief in the existence of a supernatural force directing the operation of nature and society; (ii) the assumption that the will of the ·supernatural is supreme and beyond human cortprehension; (iii) the control of man's · fate, therefore, lies outside human intervention; and (iv) the disturbance of the moral law by man's wickedness or ignorance is corrected by the appearance of Avataras or deliverers from epoch to epoch. In Western countries these basic ingredients of the traditional mental :_ outlook were questioned by the Renaissance, the Reformation, and ' the scientific revolution. In countries like India the traditional mental outlook denying the role of man in determining the~ourse -of_his own iife derived much greater strength from the unique characteristics of Hindu religion and caste. The masses in India were kept away not only from property and power but also from the means of enlightenment in a far more effective and pervasive way than in other countries of the world. Further, a thorough-going cultural revolution either within religion or outside religion representing a break from these premises of the traditional mental outlook was thwarted and delayed because of the ramifications of direct colonialism in India. The colonial intervention in the cultural sphere thwarted the cultural revoluti,,n directly by distorting the forms of the emerging consciousnesss. It also distorted cultural processes by thwarting economic growth and thus distorting the processes of class formation. It may be recalled that Marxism in the West was the product as well as the continuator of the critical spirit generated by the Enlightenment. It assumed the form · of a higher state of man's .

2Gramsci

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suggests how the fatalistic orientation is in a phase in the evolution of Marxist thought and practice in :many countries. It is even a source of self-assurance and cohesion of the political groups at a lower level of consciQUSness. To quote Gramsci, "fatalism is nothing other than the clothing worn by real and active wiU when in a weak position'' (1971: 337).

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critical self-consciousness, further affirming his heroic resolve to break decisively from the sense -of his own impotence created by fatalistic forms of religion. Emancipation from this fatalism enabled man to assume responsibility for his own fate~'Criti~ism_ _2f_~~!!s_io~ ~~_th~ pre~jse__o(_~l_l__~_riticism," asserted Marx, ''The criticism of religion disillusions man to make him think and act and shape his reality like a man who has been disillusioned and has come to reason, so that he will revolve round himself and therefore round his true sun. Religion is the illusory sun which revolvea round man as long as he does not revolve round himself. Marxism thus developed as a major ingredient of the critical, modern consciousness.. It marked a break from certain types of religious consciousness insofar as it awakened in man a new consciousness of his latent powers and unrealized potentialities. It was a major factor for liberating him from ''falseconsciousness''-from the pernicious influence of religious myths, superstitions and ideas about nature, and about man and society which were responsible for the darkness and passivity of the Middle Ages. According to this reasoning, man's ''false consciousness'' is a basic element in his exploitation and oppression in a class society. Marx, therefore, considers the liberation of man from this ''false consciousness'' as one of the most essential conditions for his emancipation from class exploitation. And this acquiring of a new consciousness is an intellectual or a cultural task which can be fulfilled only when the suffering humanity which works gets united with the working minority which thinks. ''Just as philosophy finds its material weapons in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its intellectual weapons in philqsophy,'' said Marx. Marxism in this way finds the chief ''enemy'' of the people in their own ignorance 3 and their chief weapon in their ''critical self-consciousness. '' The external enemy (i.e. the exploiting and ruling class) is therefore strong only to the extent that the oppressed classes have not first overcome their •'internal enemy'' (viz. their own ignorance or ''false consciousness''). By considering the development of a ''critical self-consciousness'' as the key aspect of a revolutionary programme, Marxism serves to combine a revoJu .. 3To

quote Marx: "Ignorance is a demon and we are afraid it will play as more than one tragedy; the greatest Greek poets were right when they represented it in the terrible .drama of the royal houses of Mycenae and Thebes as tragic fate'' (Karl Marx 1957 : 39).

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tionary spirit with a humanist orientation. It clearly demarcates itself from the primitive-anarchist doctrine of mass emancipation through more class hatred and class violence. It is committed to the conception of people being their own liberators through their enlightenment and struggle, instead of being liberated by any force, whether supernatural or superhuman, which is outside them. It is committed simultaneously to the view of the oppressed classes acquiring an intellectual and ethical superiority over the ruling classes. The versions of Marxism learnt by Marxist activities from . political pamphlets often involved a departure from the original Marxist positions. Such r~vision has implied that political practice is detached from the task of the development of ''theoretical consciousness." Consequently it is not m3.n's struggle based on a higher level of ''theoretical consciousness'' which emerges as the principal factor in the emancipation of the masses. From these versions their emancipation is expected to come as a ' 'natural'' outcome of the objective course of social evolution, as if without any conscious intervention on the part of man. And when such a ''miracle'' does not happen, the failure is not traced to the lower level of consciousness of those seeking emancipation but principally to the conspiracies and machinations of the class enemy. The revision of Marxism therefore implies an affirmation of a ''conspiracy theory'' of history. The erroneous th~oretical orientations of this ''pamphlet Marxism''' have seldom been identified by Marxist activists as one of the sources of their failure to intervene in processes of social change in India with greater effc!ctiveness. Seldom do they recognize that if a ''correct'' theoretical orientation releases social energy and transforms it into a revolutionary force, a ''wrong'' orientation •E.M.S. Namboodiripad has taken sharp exception to the use of the term ., pamphlet Marxism.' ' He feels t}:lat I am "making fun of Indian Marxists as .those who indulge themselves in "pamphlet Marxism' ' (E.M.S. Namboodiripad 1974: 59). My intention, however, was not to make fun of either the courageous group of early propagators of Marxism in India or of the tendency to ,vrite Marxist pamphlet. Pamphlet Marxism was used by me as a capsule term for attempts at simplifying Marxism in a manner . leading to fundamental revision of Marx's basic ideas. It is for this re1son that Engels in his well-known letter to Bio:: recommendej study of Marx's theory "from its original sources and not at second hand'' (Karl Marx 1964: 18).

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paralyses social initiative and thus undermines the active role of the people in the historical movement. It must be admitted that wrong theoretical positions by Marxist activists have been responsible in the past and also in the present for producing an escapist and perverse kind of mental outlook in the political movement, one of seeking short-cuts to social revolution. If the main relia11ce is implicitly or explicitly placed on spontaneous operation of ''laws'' of social development rather than on man's own conscious initiative and effort; if the masses are idealized and romanticized as a ready-made revolutionary force rather than as an unconscious entity yet to acquire critical self-consciousness; if the imported Marxist models of analysis are treated as ready-made intellectual ammunition for class war; if, instead of exposing Marxian theory to the light of Indian reality, a total blindness is developed towards those features of Indian social reality which do not readily fit into the given Marxian framework, then the creative tasko f the preparation . of theoretical tools for the a wakening of the masses to a new consciousness is relegated completely to the background. The process of preparing such tools or of creating the tool-makers is a Jong process, in which the tool-makers and their tools are tried and tested by people belonging to different social classes. They are rejected or accepted on · the basis of their positive contribution to awakening among the people the confidence in their own capacity to shape their own present and future. One can imagine how difficult is this task of constructing a theory or ideology relevant for the people in a country like India, for India has a long history of alienation of the theorists from the people, of the absence of a positive role among the people in creating an intelligentsia and of the intelligentsia in enlightening the people. This process, which is fundamentally ''bourgeois-democratic," had made significant headway in the West even before Marxism developed as an intellectual force. This proce"Ss was thwarted in India both by the internal factors (like ossified Brahnanism and the caste system) and exogenous factors (like the impact of colonial policies). The recent Indian experience after independence has also been one of oscillation between elitism (i.e. disregard for the role of the people in the development of culture) on the one hand and of populism (i.e. idealizing the people without accepting the obligation of enlightening them) on the other. And

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Indian Marxists like other political groups have also been guilty of this oscillation between elitism and populism. This has in effect meant the neglect of the task of imparting a new consciousness to the political movement. It is important to note that Marxism has itself been internalized in a qualitatively different way in areas of sharper break from the oo]onial and feudal past than in areas where the past exercises greater domination over the present in modes of thought and consciousness. This is borne out by a contrast between West Bengal and Kerala. In the latter Marxism itself ·made its first impact as a new cultural force as is suggested by E. M.S. Namboodiripad 's autobiography (1976). In West Bengal, on the other hand, both the evolution of modern forms of class struture and social consciousness were thwarted by a relatively more thorough-going colonialist d~stortion of the economy, society and culture. The new middle class which emerged in Bengal in the background of de-indt1strialization and pseudo-Westernization also threw up vulgarized forms of Marxism. In the aame of Marxism, forms of thought and practice developed having more affinity with hair-splitting religious theology or with nihilistic anarchism than with creative Marxism. 5 In the next section now we make a brief reference to those erroaeous theoretical positions accepted consciously or unconsciously by Indian Marxists which have led them toward belittling the role t>f social consciousness in historical movement. The first basic position is that of implicitly or explicitly treating ~'theory as subservient to practice. '' 8 Instead of the quality of SA critical review expressing similar ideas has been offered in recent years ~Y Asok Sen (1969 : 158-182) and Baudhayan Chattopadhyaya (1969: 205-62). Also see the recent attempts at re-evaluation of the Bengal renaissance {V.C. Joshi: 1975). . •Commenting on this Gramsci observes : ". .. . in the most recent elevelopment of the philosophy of praxis the exploration and refinement ef the concept of the unity of theory and practice is still only at an early stage. There still remain residues of mechanicism since people speak about theory as 'complement' or an 'accessory' or the handmaid of practice. It would seem right for this question too to be considered historically as an a~pect of the political question of the intellectuals'' 1971 : 334). Jn a footnote Gramsci further elaborates this point : "The notion of the subservience of theory to practice.· . . has been widespread in the Marxist movement, in forms as diverse as Stalin's formulation

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. practice being continuously revolutionized under the stimulus of a series of advances in theory, this anti-theoretical view does not allow practice to transcend the limits imposed on it by the outlook: and ideology of the dominant classes. For instance, if fatalism is not questioned first at the philosophical level, it unconsciously reasserts even in the practice of a new social force which believes that it stands liberated from fatalistic orientations and values but • in effect it is not. In other words, practice cannot become truly ''revolutionary'' unless it is stimulated by a ''revolutionary'' theory. To produce such a theory requires first the mastery of the intellectual tools created by the ruling classes in the previous periods of history. But this is not enough. It then involves the obJigatioa on the part of the emerging class to carry intellectual creativity tct a much higher level than ever achieved by the previous ruling classes. To become capable of coping with this theoretical challenge and of creating new intellectual perspectives is to achieve the first important victory over the ruling class. The second formulation related to the first is that which regards ''social history as an extension of natural history'' (Karl Marx, 1955). This premise has exercised a tremendous influence, evea though unconsciously, on the thinking and practice of most Marxist activists in India. This statement has been stretched in the directioa of over-determinism or the conception of inevitability of a particular course of evolution. Interpreted in this manner it misse~ completely the interaction of ''necessity'' and ''freedom'' in humaa affairs. The ''necessity'' of social evolution in a certa.in direction indicated by Marxian analysis does not preclude but presupposes vigorous social action. In other words, man's own effective or ineffective intervention is an essential element in the realization or non-realization of' 'necessity.'' The purpose of Marxian analysis therefore is not t9 imply that the course of historical movement ia predetermined. Such an implication would reduce Marxist materialism itself into a fatalistic doctrine. The revolutionary• character of Marxian analysis lies not in indicating the inel'itability of a certain direction of change but the possibility of it. Marxism ·seeks to utilize the knowledge of this possibility for stimulating social 'theory must serve practice' ''(Works, Vol. VI, p. 88) and Rosa Luxemberg's argument ''... . that theory only develops to the extent that the need for it ii created by the practice of the movement'' (Gramsci 1971 : 334, footnote 17).

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forces to realize it and make it a reality. According to Marx: ''Men make their own history, but they do not make (it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by the~selves but under circumstances directly encountered, given an~ transmitted from the past'' (Karl Marx 1955: 247). 1 he theoretical inadequacy of the statement that social history is an extension of natural history will become clear also from anc>ther angle . • The process of class formation can be viewed as a process of ''natural history'' insofar as man's interaction with nature is one of the major determinants of this process and therefore it is independent of man's will. But the formation of class consciousness, or the f orn1ation of ideological and political forces on the basis of classes, is not a natural-historical process independent of man's will but a social-historical process dependent on man's will. While there may be a certain broad uniformity characterizing the former in all countries in comparable epochs, the latter is characterized by great complexity, fluidity and even unpredictability. This is the reason "'hY Marxist thought evolved in one coµntry or in one historical epoch does not adequately grasp the new features .of the situation obtaining in the another country or in another historical epoch. The Marxist theorists have therefore to be continuously critical and creative in order to capture these new features of social reality in diverse environments and different historical periods. Let us consider another formulation, that ''the economic basis determines the social and ideological superstructure.'' The formulation can be found in all versions of ''pamphlet Marxism'' and in all popular expositions of historical materialism. This conceptio~ of subservience of the basis to the superstructure overlooks that the forces of change in the basis are developed and strengthene~ in the superstructure; that class conflicts (which are rooted in · the economic basis) are fought out at the level of superstructure as ideological and political conflicts. Thus, the development of a critical self-consciousness-which alone represents a force capable of bringing about a change in the economic basis-requires the prior destruction of some of the basic elements of the old superstructure. In other words· it requires the ·c reation of some of the basic elements of a new superstructure even before a revolutionary reconstitution of the economic basis has taken place and a new economic basis has emerged in place of the old. In fact, this process of th_ e destruction of some of the elements of the old superstructure and

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construction of new elements in their place not only occur prior to a change in· the old economic basis but is a precondition for generating the ·forces of change in the basis. The development of a critical intelligentsia as the maker and user of intellectual tools of a social revolution is one of such changes in the superstructure as occur prior to a wholesale change in the basis and even as a precondition for it. What is the right and what the wrong way of approaching the basis-superstructure relationship can be explored better if we do not lose sight of the basic difference in the Marxist perspective of resolving class conflict from either the liberal or the primitiveanarchist perspectives. Marxism neither denies c]ass conflicts nor does it idealize or romanticize them. As stated by Marx in the Communist Manifesto, class conflict has in the past either led to the ''revolutionary reconstitution of society'' or the ''mutual ruin of the contending classes.'' (Kar] Marx 1955: 34.) Marxism is committed to the conscious direction of class conflict so that it leads to the ''revolutionary reconstitution of society'' rather than to the ''mutual ruin of the contending classes.'' This can happen only if and when the class aspiring to be a ruling class emerges not just as a destructive force negating the past but as a constructive force carrying forward the best heritage of the past and thus transforming c]ass conflict into a way of achieving a higher form of civilization and culture. This the rising class can accomplish only when, in pursuing its own interest, it is seen as pursuing the interest of all exploited and oppressed classes. As Marx says: No class in civil society can play this part unless it can arouse, in itself and in the masses, a moment of enthusiasm in which it associates and mingles with society in genera], identifies itself with it, and is felt and recognised as general representative of this society. Its aims and interests must genuinely be the aims and interests of society itself, of which it becomes in fact the social head and heart. It is only in the name of general interests that a particular class claims general supremacy. (Karl Marx 1957: 54.) This view of developing the oppressed class as the ''general representative of society'' or of training it to become ''the social head and heart'' is in sharp conflict with the popular versions of

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class theory. The development of the concept of hegemony which Gramsci regards as ''a great philosophical advance as well as a politico-practical one'' (Gramsci 1971: 333) has yet to permeate the consciousness of Indian Marxist activists. In India it has been fashionable to quote Lenin 's well-known formulation that ''a Marxist is one who accepts not only the concept of class struggle but also of the dictatorship of the proletariat.'' But the Leninist conception of this dictatorship was never narrowly political.. The view that to become a ruling class in the political sphere, the new class should try to become a leading class in the theoretical and ethico-cultural spheres bas generally been remote from the interpretations of the dictatorship of the proletariat as prevalent in India. No wonder that the practice based on these theoretical interpretations has been pushing class conflict more towards the ''mutual ruin of the contending class'' than towards ''the revolutionary reconstitution of society.'' Let us explore further this Marxian concept of leadership in the . theoretical and ethico-cultural sphere. A class society is always full of conflicts of all kinds which create widespread social tensions and unrest. They serve as inflammable material for various kinds of social and political agitations. Not each one of these conflicts and not every ideological-political activity based on them has revolutionary significance. · And a political movement has to learn through trial and error, through advances and retreats, to distinguish between the truly revolutionary and the pseudo-revolutionary causes. 1',1:arxism which identifies the working class as a ''revolutionary'' force emph·asizes at the same time that this class is not born with . a ''revolutionary'' consciousness; it acquires this ''critical self-consciousness.'' And acquiring it means to learn to relate one's immediate interests to one's long-term interests. It means understanding the ''roots of one's misery,'' or, in other words, understanding the basic structure of society and its ''laws'' of motion with which are linked the long-term interests of the working class. To make theoretical enquiries into one's own problem leads the working class towards understanding its relation to other classes whose support is necessary for solving one's own problem. The narrower is one's view of one's own problem, the lesser the support from other classes. The wider is one's view of one's own problem the broader the scope for mobilizing other classes. A broad-based

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movement aimed at overthrowing the old social system therefore involves initially the creation of a wider theoretical consciousness, a new Weltanschauung which stirs the imagination of all suffering classes and galvanizes them into a revolutionary force. From this point of view it is understandable why Marx gave prime importance to the role of a class in the production process in determining its revolutionary (character. The working class alone derives its livelihood by social labour in the most advanced form of production which requires employment of a large labour force. It is therefore capable of organization and mobilization unlike the atomistic mass of peasatns which is unable to unite for collective action. The working class alone is capable of producing a surplus over and above its subsistence (via Marx's distinction between labour and labour power). The revolutionary potentia• Jities of this class therefore stand in sharp contrast to the reactionary character of those classes (like landlords, traders, usurers etc.) which are mere appropriators of the surplus; or to the limited revolutionary potential of those classes (like capitalists) whose conditions of existence do not allow the full mobilization of the surplus and therefore the full .release of the productive forces; or to the semi-revolutionary character of those (like peasants and artisans) whose conditions of existence keep the size of this surplus restricted to an absolutely low level. The working class alone is fully rooted in the productive process and has no roots in the structure of private property. It alone therefore represents a genuinely dynamic force in the economy and consequently a force capable of a consistently revolutionary role. II DISTORTIONS OF CLASS FORMATION AND OF IDEOLOGICAL AND POLITICAL FORMS

The implications of this Marxia~ view of class would become clear as we take account of the important features of class formation in· transitional societies like Indi~. Here the traditional economy has reached an advanced state of disintegration without, however, ·making the transition to an industrial economy characterized by a high level of development of production forces. One of the t~pical features of such economies is the proliferation at the top,

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middle and bottom of the class structure of such classes and social strata as do not have any positive relation to the process of production. They are a parasitic force in the economy and a corrupting or disintegrating force in the polity. Marx noted the existence of these classes in the economy and their pernicious ro'e in the polity in his analysis of the Class Struggle in France {l84850), in the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), and Engels did the same in his work on The Pe(lj·ant War in Germany, (1850). Mao Tse-tung has also noted similar features for China. One of the weaknesses of Indian Marxists has always been that in their class analysis of India they have missed all such crucial and distinctive features of class formation as have an important bearing on the peculiarities of Indian ideological and political development. Marx drew attention to the fact that ''capital's secondary modes of exploitation'' (Karl Marx 1955: 149) like speculation and usury were more predominant than the capitalist mode of production in France of 1848-50. This meant the stranglehold of a ''financial aristocracy'' over the economy which was obsessed by the ''mania'' to get rich-to get rich not by production but by pocketing the already available wealth of others'' (Karl Marx 1955: 142). Marx continues: Clashing every moment with bourgeois laws themselves, an unbridled assertion of unhealthy and dissolute appetites manifested itself, particularly at the top of bourgeois society-lusts wherein wealth derived from gambling naturally seeks its satisfaction, · where pleasure becomes debauched, where money, filth and blood commingle. The .financial aristocracy in its mode of acquisition as well as its pleasure is nothing but the rebirth of the lumpen proletariat on the heights of bourgeois sociery (Karl Marx 1955: 142). .. We quote this passage because .it sums up so well an important feature of the. class situation at the top of the class structure even in countries Jike India: And what is the lumpen proletariat? Engels observes: The lumpen proletariat, this sum of the depraved elements of all classes, which establishes its headquarters in the big cities,

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is the worst of all possible allies. The rabble is absolutely venal and absolutely brazen. If the French workers in every revolution, inscribed on the houses, Death to Thieves! and even shot some, they did it, not out of enthusiasm for property but because they rightly considered it necessary above all to keep that gang at a distance. Every leader of these workers who uses these scoundrels as guards or relies on them for support proves himself by this action alone a traitor to the movement (F. Engels 1956: 14). Mao in his analysis of classes in Chinese society (1939). noted the existence of vagrants as an important social category in the Chinese countryside and the cities. His observations on their role are extremel}' relevant. China's colonial and semi-colonial status has created a multitude of unemployed people both in the countryside and the cities. Denied any legitimate way of making a living many of them are forced to revert to illegitimate means, henc·e the rob. bers, the gangsters, beggars, prostitutes and all those who Jive upon superstitious practices. Lacking the constructive quality and given more to destruction than to construction, these people after joining the revolution become the source of the ideology of the roving insurgents and of anarchism among the ranks of the revolution. Therefore we should know how to remould them and forestall their destructiveness . . At the top, middle and lower levels of the state structure also there is an . over-expansion of unproductive or .semi-productive social strata connected with the vast governmental, semi-governmental and military establishments. In the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Karl Marx describes the wide ramifications of the state machine and its numerous forms of dominance over civil society. The following observations made for the French society are equally relevant for India today: This executive power with its enormous bureaucratic and military organisation, with its ingenious state machinery, em bracing wide strata, with a host of officials numbering half a million, besides an army of another half million, this appaling parasitic body,

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National and Left Movements in India

which enmeshes the body of French society like a net and chokes all its pores, sprang up in the days of the absolute monarchy, with the decay of the feudal system, which it helped to hasten. The seignoriaJ privileges of the landowners and towns became transformed into so many attributes of the state power, the feudal dignitaries into paid officials and the motley pattern of conflicting mediaeval plenary powers into the regulated plan of a state authority whose work is divided and centralised as in a factory .... Every common interest was straightaway severed f-rom society, counter-posed to it as a higher, general interest snatched from the activity of society's members themselves and made an object of government activity, from a bridge, a school house, and the communal property of village community to the railways, the national wealth and the national university of France.... AJI revolutions perfected this machine instead of smashing it. The parties that contended in turn for domination regarded the possession of this huge state edifice as the principal spoils of the victor. (Marx 1955: 332-33), Attention should also be 'focused on the educated social strata being created by the proliferating centres of higher education and research, serving as manufacturies of ill-trained, over-ambitious and unemployed or semi-employed youths. These social strata are denied a positive outlet f