Editorial: The Forgotten Man in India (1942)

Editorial from the May 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sir Stafford Cripps’ abortive negotiations with the Indian political leaders have had the incidental result of showing up the reality lying hidden behind the words and theories of the principal participants. Sir Stafford’s own attitude in the past has been that the Indian problem could be solved if only sincere and disinterested well-wishers were allowed to brush aside British vested interests and their prejudiced political advisers, and make direct approach to the Indian leaders. Under the threat of Japanese invasion he was allowed to offer what he considered to be a suitable scheme, but failed to overcome the opposition of the Hindoo and Moslem organisations or to reconcile their differences with each other. At the end he received from Nehru, leader of the Congress Party, the unkindest cut of all, the charge that whoever comes from the British Government “speaks the same accent as of old and treats us the same way” (Evening Standard, April 16th, 1942.) He also remarked of Cripps: —

“What he said was a repetition of the farrago of nonsense Amery has been uttering all these years”.—(“News-Chronicle,” April 13th, 1942.)

Such is the fate of those who aspire to solve Capitalism’s problems in a non-capitalist way.

Cripps, for his part, had characterised the counter-proposal put forward by Nehru as a form of government which would constitute an “absolute dictatorship of the majority,” providing no real safeguard for the protection of the Moslem and other minorities against the Congress Party.

The Moslem League shared this view. Its leader, Mr. Jinnah, is reported to have said that the Congress Party’s aim

“appeared to be to set up an irremovable Cabinet responsible to nobody but the majority. If such an adjustment was arrived at such a Cabinet would be a Fascist Grand Council and the Moslems and the other minorities would be entirely at the mercy of the Congress Raj.”—(“Manchester Guardian,” April 15th 1942.)

Nehru’s view, on the other hand, was that “Congress is the only party in India which could deliver the goods,” and he is reported to have told a Daily Express correspondent that Jinnah of the Moslem League is a “Fascist” (Daily Express, April 13th). The one part of the British offer that the Moslem League accepted with “gratification” was the clause empowering provinces to vote themselves out of the new United India if they wanted to do so, in order to escape Congress Party rule.

After due allowance is made for views being put forward during negotiations in an exaggerated and not fully considered form, the fact remains that Sir Stafford’s beliefs about the nature of the Indian problem and the way to solve it were proved wrong, as also were the Indian nationalists’ claim that there would be no problem if British rule disappeared. In a capitalist world the real underlying motives of conflict arise out of, or derive their intensity from, the vested interests of the different sections of the propertied class, whether British investors, Indian princes and landlords, or the Indian textile and other millionaires. All alike must plead guilty to the charge that the welfare of India’s workers and peasants are to them only a secondary consideration. The British rulers of India and most of the Indian Princes have to answer the statement made Mr Runganadhan, adviser to the Secretary of State for India, in a speech at a conference of educationalists on April 11th, 1942: —

“Out of 50.,000,000 children of school age fewer than 10,000,000 are attending school or receiving education of any kind, he said. Fewer than 10 per cent, of the total population of 400,000,000 are literate. Three out of every four of the 700,000 villages have no school.”—”Empire News,” April 12th, 1942.)

This is the condition of India after long years of their rule; and Congress Party rule offers little change except in name. When the capitalist-financed Congress Party protest that they are different in their attitude to the masses they have to explain, for example, why, when they governed Bombay in 1938, one of their first acts was to introduce a Trade Disputes Bill designed to fetter Indian trade unions. In the words of an Indian trade union journal, this Bill

“takes away the legitimate, constitutional and powerful weapons of the workers, namely, the strike, by declaring it illegal and therefore punishable in a large number of cases.”— (“Indian Labour Journal,” October 23rd 1938.)

And Gandhi, former Congress leader, has to explain why he, an advocate of non-resistance even against armed invasion, stated in 1938 that if strikers persisted in mass picketing of factories

“the owners of mills or other factories would be fully justified in invoking the assistance of the police.”—(“Indian Labour Journal,” August 21st, 1938.)

Whatever words the various leaders may use in attacking each other, they are all concerned at heart with maintaining landlordism and capitalism, and while capitalism remains, the lot of India’s poverty-stricken millions will be that of a dispossessed class struggling against landlords and factory owners to improve their miserable conditions. Gandhi, no less than the others, is committed to capitalism: —

“The duel between capitalists and labour, he says, is only between big words . . . Both are capitalists; one has consolidated his capital and used it intelligently ; the other squanders it recklessly. If you communists or anybody wish the destruction of capitalists we would be destroyed. What I really do want is a combination, mixing and uniting of the two.”—(“Indian Labour Journal,” July 8th, 1934.)

When we contemplate the political immaturity of the great majority of the Indian workers and peasants, the hold of religious superstitions and caste barriers, the consequent enormous influence of political and religious leaders, the strongly developed regionalism helped by religious differences and geographical factors, and not least the material for bitter class conflict between peasants and workers on the one hand and landlords and factory owners on the other, and between Princes, landlords and industrial and commercial interests themselves we are not being rashly-prophetic when we say that India governed by Indian property-owners’ parties contains the prospect of acute internal strife with the possibility of civil war like that in America in the sixties of last century, and the development of a “totalitarian” form of government. If the Indian masses continue to be pawns to be used by their masters’ political parties and religious groups one thing can be said with complete certainty, that the interests of the masses will continue to be forgotten. Our advice, given in reply to a question put by Indian workers interested in Socialism (Socialist Standard, June, 1932) bears repeating—

“Workers in India should unite on a basis of Socialist principles and organise for the establishment of Socialism. They should take what steps are necessary to secure a franchise for this purpose, but they should not unite with any other parties or give adherence to any other bodies, even those masquerading as pure, and simple franchise organisations, as by so doing they would lose independence.”

The well-being of the Indians does not lie with political and religious leaders, whether Indian or British, Japanese or Russian, but in their own single-minded efforts to understand and organise for Socialism. Their slogan, like that of Socialists everywhere, should be not “India for the Indians,” but “the world for the workers.”