For nearly 200 years, India was under British rule. Throughout these years the workers of India were exploited and oppressed and any attempt by them to resist was met with brutal suppression from the British ruling class. The mass shootings at Amritsar in 1919, Bombay in 1921, Calcutta in 1930, Cawnpore in 1931 and Karachi in 1935 are but a few instances of the treatment handed out to Indian workers by their British masters. As Lord Brentford said in 1925:
“ We did not conquer India for the benefit of the Indians . . . We conquered India by the sword, and by the sword we shall hold it.”
For many years the Indian workers have struggled against foreign oppression. Under leaders like Gandhi and Nehru they have striven for national independence. They have used hunger strikes, passive resistance, demonstrations, strikes' and other weapons in the struggle. They have been heroic. Now that they have had their much desired national independence for some short time, we can take a look at the situation and learn a few things.
When a foreign conqueror dominates a country, he either exterminates or subordinates the native population. If the conqueror ushers in capitalism and the people of the country are at a low stage of social development, there will be no place for them in the process of capitalist production. They will be thrust aside as were the Red Indians of America and the Maoris of New Zealand. If they are not exterminated, but are allowed to live side by side with people of a higher stage of social development, the rate of their own social development will be hastened. But, at first, such people do not fit into a system of factory production or commercial enterprise. If, on the other hand, the people of the country have arrived at a stage of development that makes it possible to exploit them, then they will be exploited. When the people of a foreign—capitalist—dominated country can be proletarianised, they will be absorbed into capitalist industry as it develops in their country.
A few of the local population, either because of the position they held before the foreign domination, or because they have been able to take advantage of some chance that the new capitalism offered, will constitute a native capitalist class. This minority will, in time, find itself hampered by the capitalists of the ruling power. These native capitalists will want to control their own system of taxation and to regulate their own tariffs. They will resent a large share of the proceeds of the exploitation of the workers going into the coffers of foreigners. They will resist the continued rule from some other part of the world. To resist successfully they must have the support of the majority of their working class countrymen. Hence, there is built a nationalist movement in which all those who consider that they have a common interest as nationals, will gather and struggle. This is what has happened in such countries as Egypt, Ireland and India. The years of cruel struggle in India have resulted in the achievement of national independence and the arrangement agreed to at the Commonwealth talks in London during April of this year.
What is the position of the workers in India now that this state of national independence has been achieved? Are they free from exploitation and oppression? Are their conditions of life improved? What have they gained from the struggle? We can see, what socialists have always seen, that “India for the Indians” has been a rallying cry to muster the workers under the banner of a group of native exploiters in an endeavour to throw off the yoke of the foreign ones. With the battle won, the workers find that they have got rid of one bunch of tyrants only to be subjugated to another one which speaks their own language and has their same coloured skin, and which can be as brutal and merciless as were the British.
David Raymond, writing about Nehru in Reynold's News (April 24th, 1949) sums up the matter briefly. He
says:
“So long as the fight was for independence it had an aim that united all, rich and poor, exploiter and exploited.”
He also says of Nehru that:
“He has many times written and spoken to the effect that India will not be free until her millions —many of them constantly on the verge of starvation—are free from exploitation by their landlords and by their own capitalists, whom he once described as 'quite amazingly backward'. "
Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru came to this country this year to negotiate an arrangement which will give the Indian capitalist class freedom to exploit Indian workers without interference from Whitehall, whilst at the same time conserving to them some of the advantages to be gained from being linked to the “British Commonwealth of Nations.” The Congress Party, which was the backbone of the Nationalist Movement, now forms the government of India, of which Nehru is the head.
The Congress Government in India today is continuing the beatings, shootings, wholesale imprisonment and brutal treatment of the native workers with as great ferocity as did the British. From the Trade Union Record, monthly bulletin of the All-India Trade Union Congress, we get information of the treatment handed out to Indian workers by Indian capitalists and their henchmen. In the issue for March, 1949, we read that,
“. . . Trade Union offices have been broken into, ransacked, records confiscated and the offices sealed . . .”"Besides the hundreds of Trade Union workers arrested during the last twelve months, more than 2,000 have been arrested during the last fortnight alone.”
Acts have been passed by the central and provincial governments which virtually deprive the workers of the right to strike. The government proposes to amend the Indian Trade Unions Act of 1926 in a manner that will withdraw the freedom to organise from many workers.
Continuously rising prices are giving rise to much discontent and a large number of strikes. Compulsory arbitration has been imposed but trade union officials have been arrested before, and even during, the arbitration proceedings. The same issue of the Trade Union Report states.
"More workers have been killed by bullets in the last one year and a half than in any other period of Indian history.”
In a previous issue of this bulletin, a report from Assam, the country of tea plantations, referring to the month of June, 1948, states,
“In the course of the last month more Trade Unionists have been put behind the prison bars in Assam than even within a year of the worst days of British rule.”
During those days of British rule we often heard of Indian workers being charged and beaten with lathis (bamboo sticks). We still learn of similar instances.
". . . when a deputation of the workers (of the Naivasal Mohamed Hussain Tannery works at Vaniambadi) started to go to the management to make representations they were severely lathi-charged. Twenty workers, including four office bearers of the Union, were arrested and beaten.”
The general situation is summed up in the following statement from the same source,
“During the last two years the Government has more than once displayed its desire to 'meet the legitimate demands of their employees and other workers’ with lathis, tear gas, bullets and jail.”
This position is not peculiar to India. Wherever a native ruling class has ousted a foreign one it has always been as eager as its predecessors to extract the maximum amount of wealth from the labours of its workers. It will be equally as ruthless in the process and often, being less experienced, will be more crude in its methods. For the workers, the remedy lies not in supporting one national section of the capitalist class against another, but in abolishing all exploiting classes, native and foreign.
There is one thing that emerges from these struggles within capitalism. Out of the turmoil between conflicting sections of the capitalist class and the striving of the workers for political elbow room, there develops the modern type of democratic government with an ever-widening franchise. Thus is formed within capitalism the weapons that the workers can use for its overthrow. When the working class realises the futility of supporting class society in any form, it will find that out of the welter of class conflict has emerged the instrument which can be used to wipe away class domination and privilege—the franchise.
We are often told by our fellow workers from different parts of the world, particularly by our coloured colleagues, that the Socialist solution is too remote. They cannot wait for the day when the workers of the world will overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. They are being ruthlessly exploited by foreign capitalists and subjected to brutal oppression. They need a speedy remedy. Their answer is contained in these extracts from an Indian Trade Union journal. No matter how the workers struggle within capitalism, they will remain an exploited and oppressed class. Socialism is not just the speediest remedy, it is the only remedy.
A slave is no less a slave when he has changed masters.
W. Waters
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