India To-Day. (1931)

From the June 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

(Continued from May Issue.)

''India   is   now   one  of  the   eight  most important  industrial   areas   in   the  world" (Simon Report, page 23).                                 

India's industrial importance is the basis of the present strife there. The conditions of the workers in the industrial centres are admitted by all to be terrible, but endeavours are being made, with some success, to direct their discontent into a channel that will not interfere with the continued accumulation of the huge profits that are being made out of their industry. The Nationalists and the Imperialists each seek the support of the Indian worker for their particular brands of exploitation.

Connection with Western culture and Western markets has gradually taught the more fortunate of India's millions the essentials of capitalist enterprise. Native Indian capitalists have acquired large fortunes and have gradually taken a more and more important part in the exploitation of India's resources and of their fellow-countrymen, and they now thirst for unshackled political dominion.

India is predominantly an agricultural country, but its size and population are so huge that the industrial portion, though only just over 10 per cent. of the whole, has an important effect on world industrial relations. The total population is 319 millions, of which 32½ millions belong to the towns.

Bombay and Calcutta, each with a population of over a million, are at present the two principal industrial centres, but other towns are rapidly rising to challenge them in industrial importance.

Bombay is the greatest centre of cotton spinning and weaving in Asia, and the trade and industry of the city are now predominantly Indian. In fact, the pioneers of the textile manufacturing industry were Indians and the first mill was set up by an Indian. The textile industry was originally built upon yarn of low grade, as Lancashire monopolised the trade in higher quality cloths. China and the Far East had supplied India's market. Of recent years the Japanese have gradually captured this trade, mainly by means of the cheap products of their Chinese mills. The Bombay mills, therefore, turned over to the manufacture of cloth. In the new trade, factories also arose in the interior of India, at Ahmedabad, Sholapur, and Nagpur. These new factories offer serious competition to Bombay and tend to expand at its expense. As one writer puts it : "These conditions explain why Bombay, struggling for its life, is the centre of the industrial politics of India." It may be added that India is the largest single import market in the world for cotton textiles. Owing to the native and Japanese grip on the India market, the lifting of the boycott will not go far to restore Lancashire's lost trade.

Calcutta, in Bengal, is the centre of the jute industry. The Bengal production of jute is so great that India holds the virtual monopoly of this trade. Originally the trade was in the hands of Europeans, but most of the share capital of the jute mills is now in native hands. This is also true of the tea gardens of Assam and elsewhere, which were first established and developed by the British. They are now carried on side by side with many that are Indian-owned. In fact, all over India, commercial enterprise is failing more and more into Indian hands.

The iron and steel industry offers yet another important example of native progress. The native-owned Tata Iron and Steel Company, founded by J. N. Tata (a Bombay Parsee who made a fortune in the cotton mills of Bombay and Nagpur), built a steel city in the jungles of Northern India near the coalfields of Bengal and the port of Calcutta. The works produced at full pressure during the war, supplying the essential needs of India and the armies which fought in Egypt, East Africa, and Mesopotamia. Its products are exported to Pacific markets as far east as Japan. British and native steel now divide the home market, but native steel is steadily gaining.

From the above it will be seen that industrial progress is pushing forward rapidly in India and that its principal requirements are being met more and more by the products of native industry. This being so, the native manufacturers are offering greater opposition to the competition of foreign concerns, and more particularly the British competitor who seeks to use his political ascendancy to further his economic interests. Where the natives secure a tariff against the foreign importer, the British firms demand and obtain preferential treatment.

The Indian demand for dominion status or independence rests on the economic interests of the native capitalists. The basis of the British opposition has been briefly put by the Manchester Guardian as follows :—

There are two chief reasons why a self-regarding England may hesitate to relax her control over India. The first is that her influence in the East depends partly upon her power to summon troops and to draw resources from India in time of need. This power will vanish when India has Dominion status. The second is that Great Britain finds in India her best market, and that she has a thousand millions of capital invested there.—(December 30th, 1929.)

It will be noticed that the grounds for and against Indian independence have no connection whatever with the general well-being of India's millions, yet the protagonists on each side pour forth idealistic phrases by the shoal to induce the belief that the special interest of each is a movement for "spiritual and moral'' uplifting. The furtherance of capitalist exploitation has always been bolstered up with similar nebulous nonsense.

There are a multitude, of economic interests involved in India, some of which cut across each other. We can only mention a few of them to illustrate the complexity of Indian affairs.

The most important element is the native Indian manufacturer, faced by severe competition of the highly organised Eastern and Western industries, who demands protection. He sees Indian products being-shipped abroad, to return manufactured and sold in competition with his own goods.

Many native merchants have amassed considerable wealth and have built up extensive selling organisations in India. For long they have been dependent upon the agents of British firms. They now want freedom to make direct foreign connections and cut out the cost of and dependence upon .the middlemen.

Foreign firms, on the other hand (particularly Japanese and American), are establishing their own selling organisations in India and endeavouring to cut out the native merchant altogether. This, together with foreign competition and the development of hand weaving in the villages, supplied the enthusiasm for the boycott of foreign goods, and the sudden cult for village-made cloth, etc.

The educated Indians (the "intellectuals"), who have shared professorships, judgeships, etc., want to keep their lucrative connections. On the other hand, they see a tendency to open these professions to a larger group of people than formerly. Educated Indians (whose education has been obtained at considerable cost) find their number accumulating at a far greater rate than the openings for employment. Consequently, as a mass, they are changeable. Those who have security in the Government service want a continuance of the British occupation; those who cannot get a job, favour the other side; those who are in and out, divide their support accordingly. The recent constitutional reforms give more scope to this group and promise opportunities of a political career. On the other hand, some see in Indian self-government still greater opportunities for employment and advancement. This explains why they are probably the most vocal and most fickle element in Indian politics.

There is a large body of natives that act as agents for importing firms. Where there is little danger of the business being taken out of their hands by direct representatives, they favour a continuance of the old regime.

There are also, of course, the wealthy Indian Princes, who still draw enormous revenues from India and are dependent upon the British occupation for a continuance of their lazy and luxurious modes of living.

Another considerable element in the situation is the conflicting interests of British merchants themselves. The following quotation from No. 11 of "Studies in World Economy," issued by the Carnegie Endowment, will make the position clear:

The large British trading companies in India typically are influenced less by sentiments of nationality than by commercial considerations. Many of them claim to be, and are, strictly international in their trade policy and outlook. It is for this reason that considerations of profit rather than of nationality determine their actions. British officials have frequently called attention to the fact that American manufacturers often have been able to use British houses of established influence to promote the trade of American manufacturers because the American exporter was able to enlist the service of the British house by offering larger commissions, by sending auxiliary salesmen and technical experts, and, in general, by providing greater opportunity for profit than was furnished by manufacturing exporters in the United Kingdom. (Page 149.)

Over 70 per cent. of the Indian population draw their sustenance from the soil. The peasant problem, therefore, has a considerable influence in some directions on the course of affairs. The demands of the peasants for manufactures are few, but there are so many millions of peasants that the aggregate of these demands amounts to a considerable proportion of India's total needs. The vast majority of the peasants live in debt to the moneylender. Their household requirements are supplied by a shop or two in the village, whose owners frequently provide the first market for village produce and add to their earnings by moneylending. Rises in prices immediately affect their demand for goods owing to the fact that the "standard of living is at the very margin of subsistence " (page 158, "Studies in World Economy"). Their small holdings do not provide them with occupation for more than half their time, and consequently they provide the manufacturing districts with a floating supply of labour.

The peasants want their small supplies of manufactured goods at the lowest prices (the foreign product, as a rule), and they want to be free to sell their produce with out the restriction of export duties. In these ways their interests are opposed to Nationalism. On the other hand, they urgently want a reduction in taxation (particularly the removal of the salt tax), and the Nationalist movement for village-made cloth has enabled numbers of them to use their unoccupied time and supplement their meagre earnings by weaving. How little the peasant is really stirred by Nationalist aspirations may be gathered from the following remarks of Lajput Rai, a leading Indian Nationalist : —

The desire for political independence, the sense of shame and humiliation born of being a subject race, of being a political pariah, must, from the nature of things, be confined largely to the educated middle class. Even the mass could not be expected to take a very deep interest in the movement for political independence. Their ignorance, their illiteracy, but most of all the hard struggle they have to carry on for barest existence, prevents them from devoting time or thought to the question. Their time and thought are given to the fight against hunger and want, against disease and distress, against misery and wretchedness. They are easy to please. A slight act of kindness or of consideration makes them happy. They are easily confused on fundamental issues. (Young India, page 31.)

The group we have now to consider is the spectre that haunts the deliberations and celebrations of both Nationalists and Imperialists—the Indian working class. The Indian working class has arisen so recently and is still so much influenced by village associations, that clearness of outlook cannot be expected from it yet. The conditions under which the workers live and work resemble England in the middle of last century. Housing conditions are abominable; 70 per cent. of the tenements of Bombay are classified as single rooms. Their relations with their employers, both native and foreign, have been marked by disastrous strikes. The employers in their unrestricted desire to extract the utmost from the workers have made determined efforts to smash the unions, and there have been bitter conflicts in the. Bombay mills, the Tata Iron Works, on the railways, and elsewhere. As the smashing of the workers' organisations for defence involved too much, an effort is being made to convert them into harmless associations which will eternally bargain (and lose) with the employers—hence the attempt to introduce the Whitley idea into India.

The native Bombay employers have made huge fortunes out of their native workers and they do not want Indian Nationalism to interfere with the continued exploitation of the Indian worker. Their fellow native employers in other industries are at one with them on this point, and their henchmen, the educated professional men, etc. (Lajput Rai's "Middle Class"), are seeing to it that capitalist interests are protected in their programme for independence. The most advanced of the Nationalist programmes, where it refers to the workers, only aims at bringing Indian industrialism into line with modern methods adopted in the more advanced capitalist countries. 

Limitations of space compel us to curtail our further remarks, but before concluding we will quote from an illuminating reply of Gandhi's to a reception given him by the Trade Union of Ahmedabad. From this. it will be seen that Gandhi's sentimental outbursts  are  not born of particular interest in the  Indian worker : —

Your work is making you known throughout the world. The members of your Union are jealous of their rights and are prepared to lay down their lives for them, but their leaders, who guide them, have no ill-will against the capitalists. In their welfare and their power you see your own welfare and power. That is the secret of your strength. Outside people cannot understand your position. They have thought of capitalists and working men as exploiters and exploited. All capitalists, according to some, are born ogres. But there need be no such inherent antipathy between the two. It is an erroneous notion. If the capitalists are apt to be proud of their wealth, the working men are apt to be proud of their numerical strength. We are liable to be swayed and intoxicated by the same passions as the capitalists, and it must be our prayer that both may be free from that passion. I feel that no class war poisons the relations between the millowners and the working men in Ahmedabad. I hope and pray that the present cordial relations may be maintained between them.

. . . . . . . . 

But I do not want to deceive you. I must warn you that I do not bear any ill to the capitalists. I can think of doing them no harm. But I want, by means of suffering, to awaken them to their sense of duty, I want to melt their hearts and get them to render justice to their less fortunate brethren. They are human beings, and my appeal to them will not go in vain. The history of Japan reveals many an instance of self-sacrificing capitalists. — (The Indian Labour Review, April, 1931, p. 19.)

No wonder Bombay mill owners gave dinners to Gandhi !

The foregoing brief review of the position will give some idea of the welter of conflicting interests in India, but, apart from the peasants and workers, they are in agreement on one basic fact—that the Indian worker shall be exploited. The point of contention that is the centre of the turmoil is—Who shall be the exploiter?

To the Indian worker it matters not a jot whether he is exploited by Hindu, Moslem, or foreign capitalists. The Irish have secured a measure of independence, but the Irish worker is exploited just as of yore—only the exploitation has been more intensified. And so would it be with the Indian worker. The interests of the workers all over the world are identical, and opposed to the interests of the capitalists, national and international. When the Indian workers have learned this lesson, they will cease to be led into the blind alleys of Nationalist movements and will concentrate their attention upon the throwing off of capitalist domination, native and foreign.                                 

Gilmac.

50 Years Ago: A Denunciation of Nationalism (2002)

The 50 Years Ago column from the August 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Indian, M. N. Roy, who was at one time prominent in the Communist International, but later broke away and took a line of his own, recently wrote for the Manchester Guardian (21/6/52) an article “Asian Nationalism. Its Roots in Race Hatred.”

In it he puts the case that the Asiatic nationalist movements are not just movements to secure independence from the foreign governments that kept them in colonial subjection, for even after achieving independence they continue to preach the same anti-foreign doctrines as before. He quotes Mr. Nehru, Prime Minister of India, and advocate of Indian nationalism, as having admitted that he does not know what nationalism is:

“What exactly is nationalism? I do not know, and it is extremely difficult to define. In the case of a country under foreign domination it is easy to define what nationalism is. It is anti-foreign power. But in a free country it is something positive. Even so, I think that a large element of it is negative or anti-, and so sometimes we find that nationalism, which is a healthy force, becomes—maybe after liberation—unhealthy, retrogressive, reactionary, or expansive.”

Yet though Mr. Nehru could not define nationalism he went on to declare that it “warms the heart of every Asian” and that “any other force that may seek to function must define itself in terms of this nationalism.”

Mr. Roy says this is nonsense and that what Mr. Nehru’s explanation really means is that nationalism is “race hatred kept alive artificially.”

“Asian nationalism is an unmixed evil. It has not got the saving grace of a cultural and idealist origin as in the case of earlier European nationalism.”

Although Mr. Roy notices that between the wars European nationalism developed into fascism, and quotes the statement of the late Lord Acton that nationality sacrifices everything “to the imperative necessity of making the nation the mould and measure of the State,” he does not appreciate the simple fact that nationalism has been and is everywhere the form in which each capitalist group tries to carve out a place for itself in the world of warring capitalist states. If he did he would not be at all surprised that the politicians who have used nationalism to gain independence from a colonial power need it just as much afterwards in order to persuade the workers to go on fighting capitalism’s battles.

If it is an illusion to think that nations can be friendly in a capitalist world provided that they are all “independent” it is equally an illusion on the part of Mr. Roy to think that the Powers, great and small, could dispense with nationalism.

At least one thing Mr. Roy has correctly summed up. Discussing the disappointing results of national independence from the worker’s point of view, he says that when India and other countries achieved independence, “absolutely nothing changed except the personnel of the State machinery.”

(From an article by “H”, Socialist Standard, August 1952)

Notes by the Way: The Workers’ Share of the Product of Industry (1952)

The Notes by the Way Column from the August 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Workers’ Share of the Product of Industry

In the “ Times Review of Industry ” (April, 1952) Dr. L. Rostas examines the preliminary results of the 1948 Census of Production. One piece of information brought out by the Census of Production figures is the total value of the net output of workers in manufacturing, mining, building, etc., and the amount of wages and salaries paid.

The figures show that in 1948 the average net output per employee was £543. Wages represented 48.1 per cent, of that figure and salaries 11.8 per cent., so that wages and salaries together represented 59.9 per cent, of net output.

Dr. Rostas quotes for comparison the corresponding figures shown by the 1935 Census of Production, which was 60 per cent. While therefore the position in 1948 was almost identical with that in 1935 earlier figures showed that the workers' share had risen between 1906-7 and 1924. These figures were published in the Report of the Committee on Finance and Industry (1931, Page 312), and were 52 per cent. in 1906-7 and 55 per cent. in 1924.

The above figures relate to manufacturing industries, mining, building, etc., but do not include transport, finance, civil service, etc. The figures covering all workers are published each year in the Government booklet “ National Income and Expenditure.” For 1948 the division of the total national income (before deducting taxes on income) were: wages 45 per cent., salaries (largely clerks, shop assistants, etc.) 23 per cent., making a total of 68 per cent. In that year the pay of the armed forces represented 3 per cent., and Rent, Dividends and Interest 29 per cent.

The wages and salaries figure for 1951 is also 68 per cent, but in 1938 it was rather smaller, 61 per cent. The main reason why the later figures for wages and salaries have been higher than before the war is that owing to the fall of unemployment more workers have been receiving wages.

* * *

Increase of Output per Employee

Dr. Rostas also shows the increase of physical output per employee in the 13 years 1935 to 1948. Total output of manufacturing industry increased in the 13 years by about 32 per cent., but as the number of workers had increased by 25 per cent., the physical output per worker had increased by about 6 per cent. This is less than half of one per cent a year and is below the normal annual increase over long periods. Undoubtedly the rate of increase will have been somewhat larger in the years since 1948.

In the five years 1924 to 1929 it increased by 11.6 per cent., representing over 2 per cent. a year. (Report of Committee on Finance and Industry, 1931. Page 310.)

An elaborate inquiry by the economist Colin Clark covering the 80 years 1870 to 1950 shows that the product per worker increased by 76 per cent., or rather less than 1 per cent, a year. (Published in Review of Economic Progress, July-August, 1951, Brisbane. Australia.)

During the same period, 1870-1950. the amount produced per head of the population increased by a larger percentage than did the increase of output per worker. This was because a larger proportion of the population were employed in 1950 than in 1870. The amount produced per head of the population was a little over twice as much in 1950 as in 1870.

* * *

Innocents in Russia

Mr. Emrys Hughes, Labour M.P. for South Ayrshire, is best known for his near-pacifism and his constant efforts to get the world's governments to get together to avoid war. He recently visited Russia and published his observations in “ Forward." He has one advantage over many visitors to Russia that he speaks Russian and he claimed that nothing was done to prevent him from entering into conversation with people he met.

Nevertheless he does on one issue betray a certain amount of simplicity. Writing in “Forward” (3rd May, 1952) he claims that “the Communist Dictatorship not only survives but is generally accepted," and that “there is a stable government to which there is no discernible or organised opposition.”

Now Mr. Hughes knows that it is illegal in Russia to attempt to form any political party other than the Communist Party and that all journals and news reports are censored. If he were in Russia and tried to form a party like the one of which he is a member, or tried to make his customary pacifist speeches, or tried to publish a journal like “Forward," of which he was formerly editor, or tried to run as a Labour Party candidate, he would be breaking the law and would incur speedy and drastic penalties. Knowing all this he nevertheless can say that there is in Russia no discernible or organised opposition!

It may be correct that there is little opposition and that what underground opposition does exist is not organised, but when Mr. Hughes says that the opposition is not discernible he is being a little naive. Does he really expect anti-Communists in Russia to disclose themselves? If he had visited Germany under Hitler he would have found the same absence of individuals anxious to become “discerned” and consequently jailed.

Or to come nearer home, if Mr. Hughes had six months ago visited the anti-trade union establishments of Mr. Thomson of Dundee he would have failed to discern on that dictatorial individual's premises even the smallest sign of “ discernible and organised opposition.”

It is, of course, very difficult to tell what opposition exists under any dictatorship and perhaps later events may show that Mr. Hughes was as much misled about Russia in 1952 as was the British Ambassador in Russia in 1917 who was quite unaware until it broke out into open revolt that there was widespread opposition to the Czarist regime.

* * *

How to Muzzle the Press

In Russia the Government openly exercises a censorship on what news comes into the country and on the reports sent out by foreign journalists, and, of course, on what is printed in the Russian Press. Also there is the widespread Russian jamming of foreign broadcasts.

When challenged on the subject Mr. Stalin used the defence that whenever the censorship had been lifted the statements made about the members of the Russian Government by foreign reporters were such that the Russian people became "very indignant," and the censorship had to be re-introduced (Soviet Weekly, 15th May, 1947.) It is a very curious excuse in face of the way in which much of the Russian Government's own internal propaganda is designed to stir up popular indignation against foreigners.

However, a crude censorship is not the only way of preventing publication. It will be recalled how for months the events leading up to the abdication of Edward Vm (the Duke of Windsor) were kept out of the British Press though widely discussed in other countries. More recently we have seen how a request to the British Press not to publish an indiscreet statement made by Lord Alexander at a dinner at the Canada Club was generally observed. Here the reason given was that “security” was involved though in fact a very similar statement had been made by him shortly before and had been published. The Evening Standard (4/7/52) published a letter by Mr. Beverley Baxter saying that as the request not to publish was made by Lord Alexander on grounds of “security" the editors of the morning newspapers were right to accede to the request. The editor of the Evening Standard took the opposite line. He wrote:

"No question of security was involved. The editors were therefore wrong to accept a request for suppression on security grounds.”

A Denunciation of Nationalism

The  Indian, M. N. Roy, who was at one time prominent in the Communist International, but later broke away and took a line of his own, recently wrote for the Manchester Guardian (21/6/52) an article “Asian Nationalism. Its Roots in Race Hatred."

In it he puts the case that the Asiatic nationalist movements are not just movements to secure independence from the foreign governments that kept them in colonial subjection, for even after achieving independence they continue to preach the same anti-foreign doctrines as before. He quotes Mr. Nehru, Prime Minister of India, and advocate of Indian nationalism, as having admitted that he does not know what nationalism is:

“What exactly is nationalism? I do not know, and it is extremely difficult to define. In the case of a country under foreign domination it is easy to define what nationalism is. It is anti-foreign power. But in a free country it is something positive. Even so, I think that a large element of it is negative or anti-, and so sometimes we find that nationalism, which is a healthy force, becomes—maybe after liberation—unhealthy, retrogressive, reactionary, or expansive."

Yet though Mr. Nehru could not define nationalism he went on to declare that it “warms the heart of every Asian" and that “any other force that may seek to function must define itself in terms of this nationalism.” Mr. Roy says this is nonsense and that what Mr. Nehru's explanation really means is that nationalism is “race hatred kept alive artificially.”

“ Asia nationalism is an unmixed evil. It has not got the saving grace of a cultural and idealist origin as in the case of earlier European nationalism."

Although Mr. Roy notices that between the wars European nationalism developed into fascism, and quotes the statement of the late Lord Acton that nationality sacrifices everything “to the imperative necessity of making the nation the mould and measure of the State,” he does not appreciate the simple fact that nationalism has been and is everywhere the form in which each capitalist group tries to carve out a place for itself in the world of warring capitalist states. If he did he would not be at all surprised that the politicians who have used nationalism to gain independence from a colonial power need it just as much afterwards in order to persuade the workers to go on fighting capitalism’s battles.

If it is an illusion to think that nations can be friendly in a capitalist world provided that they are all “independent,” it is equally an illusion on the part of Mr. Roy to think that the Powers, great and small, could dispense with nationalism.

At least one thing Mr. Roy has correctly summed up. Discussing the disappointing results of national independence from the worker’s point of view, he says that when India and other countries achieved independence, “absolutely nothing changed except the personnel of the State machinery.”

On one thing we can put Mr. Roy right He says of the “reforming Liberals and the revolutionary Left in the Western countries” that disregarding the bitter experience and irony of history which had shown them nationalist movements starting with men like Mazzini and ending with regimes like Mussolini’s, they “vied with each other in patronising colonial nationalism.” Whatever the Liberals and Labourites did, the S.P.G.B. certainly did not fell into this error but always condemned nationalist propaganda whether at home or abroad, in Europe or in Asia.

Edgar Hardcastle

Blogger's Note:

The piece on M. N. Roy and the perniciousness of nationalism was previously posted on the blog as a standalone article in September 2011. I'm not sure what happened there. Maybe I copied it from the SPGB website, not knowing that it was part of a larger Notes by the Way column. No worries.

Editorial: The Ugly Reality of Indian Nationalism (1942)

Editorial from the November 1942 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received a request to give our support to a joint manifesto in favour of the Indian Nationalist movement, and the following resolution has been sent in reply to it : —

“We are not willing to give our support to a joint manifesto in conjunction with other political parties endorsing the Indian Nationalist movement. As Socialists we are opposed to the exploitation of the toilers either by foreign or native exploiters. As that exploitation can be ended only by the achievement of Socialism, through international working-class action, we are opposed to the Indian Nationalist movement which has capitalist aims and is not deserving of working-class support. We are also not prepared to associate with non-Socialist political parties.”

The Indian population consists of a small wealthy class at the top and a vast mass, numbering over two hundred millions, of poverty stricken workers and peasants at the bottom. If the Nationalist movement becomes successful an indication has already been given of what the mass of the population may expect from native rulers.

When for a short time the Congress Party was in control of the government of Bombay, the home of Indian industrial millionaires, they immediately took the opportunity to introduce a Trades Disputes Bill which made strikes illegal, thus taking away from the worker the only industrial weapon he can use against the exactions of employers. When Indian workers were on strike the real leader of the Congress Party, Gandhi, sided with the employers and forsook his much advertised peaceful persuasion principles to give his blessing to the use of force against workers who engaged in the picketing of factories. In all his agitation in India there has been one constant feature of Gandhi’s position : he has been a friend and supporter of Indian capitalists.

In the industrial centres of India, irrespective of the nationality of those in control of industry, working conditions are deplorable, wages are poor, and unemployment flourishes. This is true where the mill-owners are generally native Indians. Religious differences are exploited by local parasites who turn the worker’s attention from the real source of his misery to religious riots. The fact that British capitalists may also have used these religious differences to further their own ends does not absolve the Indian capitalists from responsibility for the economic conditions out of which the riots spring. The real core of the matter is the exploitation of the Indian workers and peasants.

The Nationalist movement is financed by Indian capitalists and, as only a small percentage of Indians are literate, its prominent officials are either capitalists themselves or intimately connected with the upper strata of wealthy people. As landlords, factory owners, and legislators they have shown they are as determined to live on the backs of the Indian toilers as are the British capitalists whom they wish to eliminate.

It is of no real consequence to the Indian worker whether he toils for the profit of an Indian or a British capitalist concern. His real problem is the fact that the means of production are controlled by a class that forces him to labour and suffer in greater or less degree the miseries suffered by his fellow toilers in other lands.

The present position in India is an indication of the differences that would split Indian society if Indians obtain control of their own affairs. One section there, including the Communists, is supporting the war and another section is opposing it. The different sectional interests of landlords, factory owners and traders will also be a fruitful source of strife. The struggle for markets against Chinese, Japanese and other international interests will add further fuel to the fire. And all the time the Indian worker will toil and suffer, his needs forgotten under the new regime, unless he asserts himself in the only direction that will serve his interests.

Many Indian workers and peasants attribute their miseries to foreign rule rather than to the private ownership of the means of production, but the Indian Nationalist movement will not help the Indian worker to emancipate himself from his subject condition. It draws support from wealthy Indian financiers and manufacturers who inflame national prejudice with the object of climbing upon the backs of the workers to positions of greater wealth and power. Too often have the workers’ aspirations for a better life been diverted into the chase after a national independence which has gained them only a different flag to wave over their misery.

The fact that we are opposed to the Indian Nationalist movement does not mean that we acquiesce in the brutal suppression of which the Indians have been victims. We are opposed to the capitalist system wherever it raises its ugly head, but we know that the solution to the workers’ subjective position under it is the same everywhere.

The only road to salvation for the Indian worker is the road to Socialism, and he must travel along that road in brotherly harmony with the members of his class throughout the world.

Executive Committee, S.P.G.B.

The Class Struggle in India (1949)

From the July 1949 issue of the Socialist Standard

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

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.”

The Voice of Indira (1975)

From the May 1975 issue of the Socialist Standard

India is a pretty grim place for the vast majority of its millions. It is good to note that they — at least some of them — retain a wry sense of humour. Which they demonstrate by using the above punning title for the radio station “Voice of India” and thereby show they know only too well that Mrs. Ghandi, with her Congress buddies, exercises a pervasive influence on the affairs of the sub-continent.

Her second name is as confusing as her first. She is not related to the Mahatma, “the naked fakir” as he was called in the days of the British Raj. He conducted the “Civil Disobedience” campaigns which helped to establish the movement which eventually brought the joys of independence to India. But when the goal was achieved and the British got out after the war (they couldn’t get out fast enough. The great diamond of the British crown was by then a hopeless burden, and Attlee’s government got out so fast that they almost made sure that there would be the most appalling massacres of Sikhs, Moslems, etc. to celebrate the coming of “freedom”), when this took place, Ghandi himself did not take over the reins. He was by then thoroughly disillusioned himself, and was shortly to be murdered. The boss of the show was then and up to his death (natural causes, this time), Pandit Nehru, Ghandi’s lieutenant, a wealthy darling of the British left and father of Indira, who in the fullness of time, inherited his wealth and power. And, of course, his impudent nerve in calling himself a socialist.

When we see how slowly the majority of workers the world over learn the facts of capitalist life and the need to end the system and establish a worldwide classless society in its place, we can take comfort in the fact that there must be magic in the very name of Socialism. Even if it is used up to now only to cloak the hideous reality of capitalism, there are many rulers who realize that the time has come to pay lip-service. (It’s true that the other side of the coin is that many workers, seeing what passes for Socialism or Communism, must shy away from the very idea. You can’t win ’em all.) One thing sure, is that many countries which masquerade as Socialist seem to prove their point by the most naked repression of the working class. A few years ago, when the Polish dockers in Danzig and Stettin were faced with sharp rises in prices of necessary commodities and decided that they simply had to go on strike, they were mown down by Communist tanks. More recently, when the workers of Cairo, realizing that after they had performed their deeds of heroism in the teeth of the wicked Israelis they were still living at the bottom of the social pyramid, decided to demonstrate in the streets, their guardian of Egyptian “socialism” President Sadat followed suit, sent the troops in and flung hundreds of workers in gaol. And Indira Ghandi shows that she is of the same vicious stuff. Despite the alleged gentleness of the Indian nature, and despite the fact that she had learnt her “socialism” and her "democracy” from her leftist father who in turn had learned it at Harrow — no starving peasant he — when the railwaymen found that the pressures were too great and the prices too high (it’s the same the whole world over) and decided to strike, Madam Prime Minister lost no time in using troops to flatten the strikers and bang those who fancied standing out into prison.

It should be noted that Mrs. Ghandi took this step in a country which is nominally a democracy and where freedoms including the right to strike are supposed to be taken for granted. In proper police states, there is no such pretence. The place for strikers is not the picket lines but the gaol or the cemetery. So after a long campaign for the glories of Ghandi’s Swaraj (home rule), and after much sacrifice in achieving it, the Indian workers, like so many others who have not appreciated the socialist warning about the trap that is nationalism, find that their own beloved native rulers treat them as badly as the hated imperialists (or even worse).

But perhaps the way the masses are now treated in India by their rulers can be best illustrated in all its horror by a matter concerned with cricket. A certain love of this game is one of the legacies which the British left behind them. When Test matches are played there are enormous crowds and thousands watching TV in shop windows, though it may well be that most of the millions in the villages, eking out subsistence, neither know nor care about cricket. But a worker in a dreadful town like Calcutta will find the prospect of a day watching a game played by white-flannelled players on green grass the equivalent of a package fortnight in Majorca. It is also relevant to mention that in the latest Test team there was only one player (and he the son of a groundsman) who was a normal worker. The rest were upper-class university types who could afford to belong to clubs and pay for clothes, bats etc.

During the winter India were playing a touring side from the West Indies. And at the same time large areas of the country were suffering from famine so that thousands were literally starving. This latter problem was up for debate in the Lokh Sabbah when something happened. The MPs in a body refused to consider the debate until they had got their allocation of Test match tickets (this is one of the perks with the job). One MP was quoted as saying: “We come for Test match tickets and you offer us famine.” The sheer brutality of this attitude is probably unparalleled anywhere as a public utterance. Marie Antoinette’s “Let them eat cake” is nothing at all — and she never even said it. But these MPs are elected ostensibly to look after the interests of the masses whom they allegedly represent. And the salaries that these heirs of Ghandi draw are incredible in any circumstances but utterly unbelievable in the context of peasants having an income of less than £100 a year to keep their families (some as little as £20 a year). The MPs draw £20,000 a year — plus Test match tickets. Imagination boggles at what Indira must get. Not that she needs the money. She’s all right, Pandit.

This is the pattern in all the countries where the glories of Independence have been won. The grab-all tactics of the Kenyan socialist Kenyatta and his family ought to be a scandal — but it is commonplace throughout black Africa. And as in India, the masses of workers who were duped into the struggle for nationalism, are rewarded with the merest pittance while their native rulers wax fat. Possibly with the issue of nationalism out of the way, the workers will begin to see a little light and think about the real issue, which is their class position in society.

L. E. Weidberg

50 Years Ago: A Red Herring (1981)

The 50 Years Ago column from the April 1981 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent election in St. George’s raises a few interesting questions.

In the first place, there seems little doubt that Tory, Labour and Liberals were allied in supporting the Conservative candidate against the Rothermere-Beaverbrook nominee. But the first question that strikes one is, Why all the bother and mud- slinging? What is behind the Rothermere-Beaverbrook attempt to run the Conservative Party? And, further, why the comparative unanimity between Conservatives, Liberals and Labour on the Indian Question? Is it all a game of bluff?

That Rothermere and Beaverbrook desire to wield the balance of power in the Conservative Party, and that. Winston Churchill (who up to the present seems always to have changed his political colours too late) desires the position of Prime Minister, may all be true, but yet not the main object behind the trouble.

Ireland was for decades a useful blind to keep the English workers from taking too close an interest in their own political circumstances. After Ireland had passed out of the picture, Russia stepped in, and now India is in the limelight. But in the meantime Liberal, Tory and Labour have been drawing closer together and the Labour Party have given ample evidence of their ability to steer accurately in the interests of capital. There is a danger of the workers getting restive and dissatisfied with the Labour Party’s meek acceptance of capitalist conditions. What better method then of heading off dangerous restiveness than by putting up a sham fight with a new brand of capitalist political parties. The hazier and more indefinite the object and programme, the larger the number of people likely to be attracted.

The way Gandhi has been manoeuvred into such a position that many of his followers are now repudiating him, suggests the nature of the bluff.

The Daily Mail and the Evening News have been publishing furious articles about the surrender to Gandhi, but Gandhi has now discovered that there are certain reservations relating to safeguards in the British Government’s agreement that were (purposely ?) not made clear to him at the time of signing.

In the meantime, mass protest meetings are being held in India by Hindus who threaten to withdraw their support from Gandhi if he agrees to certain demands of the Moslems. It looks very like the old game of “divide and conquer.”

To the worker the issues raised at St. George’s were of no concern, as the interests engaged were capitalist interests. Self-government for India, like self-government for Ireland, is only a question of which group of capitalists will rule. The dinners to Gandhi given by the rich Bombay mill-owners are suggestive of the meaning of Indian self-government to the mass of the population of India.

For over a century the population of India has been exploited for the benefit of European capitalists who broke up the old communal village system of production that had flourished there for ages. In the meantime, native capitalists have amassed wealth and own much of the recently developed instruments of modern production. The latter now want political domination in order to secure a greater share of the fruits of the labour of the Indian workers—hence the movement for self-government.

Indian working men and women are exploited in mills, mines and on the land, like their English brethren, and, like them also, their only salvation lies in the international movement for Socialism. In this movement no help is to be expected from Indian mill- owners nor from the parties in this country that are united in demanding the continuance of present conditions, whether they fly the colours of Tory, Liberal, Labour or United Empire Parties.

(Editorial from the April 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard.)

A Red Herring. (1931)

Editorial from the April 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

The recent election in St. George's raises a few interesting questions.

In the first place, there seems little doubt that Tory, Labour and Liberals were allied in supporting the Conservative candidate against the Rothermere-Beaverbrook nominee. But the first question that strikes one is, Why all the bother and mud-slinging? What is behind the Rothermere-Beaverbrook attempt to run the Conservative Party? And, further, why the comparative unanimity between Conservatives, Liberals and Labour on the Indian Question? Is it all a game of bluff?

That Rothermere and Beaverbrook desire to wield the balance of power in the Conservative Party, and that Winston Churchill (who up to the present seems always to have changed his political colours too late) desires the position of Prime Minister, may all be true, but yet not the main object behind the trouble.

Ireland was for decades a useful blind to keep the English workers from taking too close an interest in their own political circumstances. After Ireland had passed out of the picture, Russia stepped in, and now India is in the limelight. But in the meantime Liberal, Tory and Labour have been drawing closer together and the Labour Party have given ample evidence of their ability to steer accurately in the interests of capital. There is a danger of the workers getting restive and dissatisfied with the Labour Party's meek acceptance of capitalist conditions. What better method then of heading off dangerous restiveness than by putting up a sham fight with a new brand of capitalist political parties. The hazier and more indefinite the object and programme, the larger the number of people likely to be attracted.

The way Gandhi has been manoeuvred into such a position that many of his followers are now repudiating him, suggests the nature of the bluff.

The Daily Mail and the Evening News have been publishing furious articles about the surrender to Gandhi, but Gandhi has now discovered that there are certain reservations relating to safeguards in the British Government's agreement that were (purposely?) not made clear to him at the time of signing.

In the meantime, mass protest meetings are being held in India by Hindus who threaten to withdraw their support from Gandhi if he agrees to certain demands of the Moslems. It looks very like the old game of “divide and conquer."

To the worker the issues raised at St. George's were of no concern, as the interests engaged were capitalist interests. Self-government for India, like self-government for Ireland, is only a question of which group of capitalists will rule. The dinners to Gandhi given by the rich Bombay mill-owners are suggestive of the meaning of Indian self-government to the mass of the population of India.

For over a century the population of India has been exploited for the benefit of European capitalists who broke up the old communal village system of production that had flourished there for ages. In the meantime, native capitalists have amassed wealth and own much of the recently developed instruments of modern production. The latter now want political domination in order to secure a greater share of the fruits of the labour of the Indian workers—hence the movement for self-government.

Indian working men and women are exploited in mills, mines and on the land, like their English brethren, and, like them also, their only salvation lies in the international movement for Socialism. In this movement no help is to be expected from Indian mill-owners nor from the parties in this country that are united in demanding the continuance of present conditions, whether they fly the colours of Tory, Liberal, Labour or United Empire Parties.

Material World: India’s God Industry (2012)

The Material World Column from the May 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik praises Hindu nationalism but what is it?

Politicised Hinduism or ‘Hindutva’ has not attracted the same attention – outside India at least – as similar movements in Islam and Christianity. But it is no less remarkable. The social forces underlying Hindutva are analyzed by Meera Nanda in her books Prophets Looking Backward (Rutgers University Press, 2003) and The God Market (Random House India, 2009).

Invented ‘traditions’

What is happening in India may look like the revival of old traditions, but Nanda points out that many ‘traditions’ were invented quite recently. For example, a “brand new hybrid god” has been created by combining the head of the elephant god Ganesha with the features of the ape god Hanuman. A high school science teacher has recast Mariamman, who used to be the goddess of smallpox, as the goddess of AIDS.

New ceremonies have also proven popular – and money spinners for the priests who preside over them. Thus, many temples have installed “golden cars” – chariot-like vehicles in which an idol “is taken around the temple perimeter in a procession led by priests, musicians, elephants, etc.” Huge crowds watch re-enactments of the divine wedding between Meenakshi and Sundareshwara.

Ritual for the upper strata

In the early and mid-twentieth century it was common for educated Indians (if religious at all) to take pride in their “philosophical” approach to Hinduism, as opposed to the superstitious practice of the benighted masses, centred on idol worship, rituals, fasts and sacrifices. By contrast, the current fashion for religious ritual is strongest among the upper strata of society. A 2007 survey found that educated urban Indians are more – not less – religious than rural illiterates.

Why should this be? Part of the reason may well be simply that only the relatively well-off can afford the costs associated with ostentatious religious observance. By no means everyone, for instance, can afford to go off on long pilgrimages, though the numbers who do are still mind-boggling. (The Balaji temple at Tirupati was visited by over 23 million pilgrims in 2004.)

The state-temple-corporate complex

Whatever else it may be, the god industry in India is a big business with enormous political clout. Priests and gurus receive generous material support from the supposedly secular government, such as land and infrastructure for new temples, and ashrams and schools for training priests. In some provinces, priests are now paid directly by the government. All this is justified in the name of promoting culture, tourism and economic development.

Religious institutions also get financial support from leading Indian companies, prompting Nanda to speak of a “state-temple-corporate complex.” The privatisation of higher education has enabled the priests to make major inroads in this sector.

A game for everyone

The ideology of Hindutva, which fuses Hinduism with Indian nationalism, is associated most closely with the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party or, in English, Indian People’s Party) and its allies. It is, indeed, these forces that are most adept at exploiting religious sentiment to mobilize political support.

Since the late 1970s, however, the other main national party, the Indian National Congress, has increasingly compromised its original commitment to secularism and tried to use religion in its own interests. Even the ‘communists’ and other ‘leftists’ play the same game. Thus, in 2007 top officials of the Left Front government of West Bengal participated in a ceremony to bless land that they had forcibly taken from farmers in order to build a car factory for Tata Motors.

The atomic elephant

Hindutva also serves the great-power ambitions of the Indian state. The BJP stands for “a foreign policy driven by a nationalist agenda” and “a strong national defence” (www.bjp.org). The ‘Indian nation’ is imbued with sacred qualities, while ‘Greater India’ is conceived of as a Hindu realm extending over all of South Asia and much of Southeast Asia.  

When India conducted a successful nuclear test, idols of Ganesh appeared at festivals around the country with guns in the elephant’s hands and atomic orbits in place of the halo traditionally placed around his head. There was a plan to build a temple dedicated to Shakti, goddess of energy, at the site of the test explosion, but fear of radioactivity led to its abandonment.  

What about globalisation?

The rise of a religiously based Indian nationalism is at variance with the stereotype of globalisation as a process leading to cultural homogenisation, with American culture becoming global culture – the Macdonaldisation or Coca-Colonisation of the world. Let us note here that in the economic sphere the BJP enthusiastically embraces globalisation. The BJP, according to its website, favors “small government and free-market economic policies.”

The stereotype is vulnerable to criticism on several grounds. Globalisation facilitates the expansion not only of American or Western corporations, but also of sufficiently competitive companies based in other regions. That includes at least some Indian companies, as shown by Mittal’s takeover of East European steel mills. The same applies to the religion business: witness the success of various Indian guru-entrepreneurs in Western markets.

Nanda develops another interesting argument. She observes that during the early Nehruvian period of Indian independence (1947 – 1975), when Indian nationalism had real material content (a national development strategy based on a strong state sector, protectionism, etc.) religious nationalism was very weak. When economic nationalism was abandoned, religious nationalism rushed in to fill the ideological vacuum. That is, economic and religious-cultural nationalism are functional substitutes not complements.

Socialists do not take sides in the contest between national capitalism and global capitalism. We are not just against capitalist globalization but capitalism in all its various forms.

Stefan

50 Years Ago: The Ugly Reality of Indian Nationalism (1992)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 1992 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have received a request to give our support to a joint manifesto in favour of the Indian Nationalist movement, and the following resolution has been sent in reply to it:—

  We are not willing to give our support to a joint manifesto in conjunction with other political parties endorsing the Indian Nationalist movement. As Socialists we are opposed to the exploitation of the toilers either by foreign or native exploiters. As that exploitation can be ended only by the achievement of Socialism. through international working-class action, we are opposed to the Indian Nationalist movement which has capitalist aims and is not deserving of working-class support. We are also not prepared to associate with non-Socialist political parties.

(...)
The fact that we are opposed to the Indian Nationalist movement does not mean that we acquiesce in the brutal suppression of which the Indians have been victims. We are opposed to the capitalist system wherever it raises its ugly head, but we know that the solution to the workers’ subjective position under it is the same everywhere.

The only road to salvation for the Indian worker is the road to socialism, and he must travel along that road in brotherly harmony with the members of his class throughout the world.

[From a statement signed “Executive Committee, S.P.G.B”, Socialist Standard, November 1942.]

50 Years Ago: Indian A-Bomb (2015)

The 50 Years Ago column from the November 2015 issue of the Socialist Standard

The plain fact about the Indian government’s much publicised decision, several years ago, not to produce an atomic bomb is that it is too good to be true.

And so it is turning out.

India’s renunciation meant that some people thought of her as a country where human interests were put above those of narrow nationalism. India was held up as an example for the rest of the sabre-rattling world to follow.

This has never been consistent with the way India acted over, say Goa and Kashmir – incidents which made Delhi’s attitude to atomic weapons look suspiciously like one inspired by anything but humanitarianism.

In any case, the Indian government always made it clear that, if the international situation demanded it, they would make the Bomb. For a long time they have been working on the basics of a nuclear weapon – their separation plant near Bombay, which produces plutonium, has been working for over a year.

And now comes the news from New Delhi that the pressure from Indian military and political circles to make the Bomb is growing, and that (according to The Guardian of 27th September last) the first one may be exploded sometime next year.

The campaign in favour of an Indian Bomb, to go with the rest in the world, has gathered strength from recent events. Indian military men complain that Pakistan had the advantage of advanced American weapons in the fighting in Kashmir, and that the threat from China looms ever larger.

They also claim that the old argument, that the Bomb was too expensive, has been disproved. The estimated cost is now around £20 million. There is no record yet of anyone in India protesting at this sort of money being spent on weapons by a country which has such a chronic problem of hunger and disease.

Such considerations are irrelevant. The reasons for making the Bomb are always the same; one senior Indian officer summed them up: “. . . if national interests are at stake . . . we have no alternative but to go ahead.”

Everyone is familiar now with the argument of “national interests”. It is used to excuse any suffering, any atrocity, any betrayal. It is an argument which will be used by many nations if and when a global nuclear war ever starts.

It is only appropriate that we should be hearing the same argument now that India may be getting ready to go back on her word over atomic weapons. It is also appropriate that India, who has done so much to foster the idea that there are such things as oases of nobility among the murderous desert of capitalism, should herself expose the fallacy.

(from News in Review, Socialist Standard, November 1965)

De-globalisation (2017)

From the May 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

Is globalisation going into reverse?

A few years back we suggested (Material World, October 2008) that globalisation has lost impetus and may even have passed its zenith. Now, in the aftermath of Brexit and the inauguration of a protectionist American president, even the capitalist press talks about ‘de-globalisation’.  Some pundits (e.g.: Simon Nixon in The Wall Street Journal, 5 October 2016; Pierpaolo Barbieri in Foreign Affairs, 13 November 2016) still refer merely to a threat or possibility of de-globalisation, but others acknowledge that ‘de-globalisation is already in full swing’(Amotz Asa-El in MarketWatch, 31 August 2016).

De-globalisation, like globalisation, is a multi-dimensional process. In the economic sphere it means abandoning the goal of unified world markets in goods, services, labour and capital and tightening controls over transnational migration and international trade and investment. In the political sphere it means reasserting national sovereignty and weakening or even abolishing supranational institutions. These two aspects are closely connected. In particular, international agreements to unify markets at the global level (WTO) and in specific world regions (NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, etc.) have established shadowy committees of legal experts with the power to thwart attempts by national and subnational governments to regulate economic activity in the interests, say, of public health. Within a few days of assuming office Trump had withdrawn the United States from the TPP and announced that henceforth the US will rely on bilateral rather than multilateral trade agreements.

Is it inevitable?

For a long time many analysts viewed globalisation as an ‘objective’ reality that had to be accepted as inevitable and irreversible. Some still do. In a recent article Pankaj Ghemawat presents an informative critique of this view (‘Even in a digital world, globalisation is not inevitable’, The Harvard Business Review, 1 February). He argues that advocates of the ‘inevitability’ thesis exaggerate the impact of technological developments in transportation infrastructure (high-speed transnational rail links, the containerization of freight) and in IT and telecommunications (enabling speculators to conduct near-instantaneous financial transactions). He acknowledges that these developments facilitate globalisation, but is ‘unconvinced that [they] are sufficient, given everything else that is going on in the world, to drive globalisation forward’.

Governments have retained the capacity to exert a measure of control over globalising technologies. This is exemplified by the case of Singapore, which managed at least partly to thwart the speculators and insulate itself from the Asian financial crisis of 2008 by imposing controls over exchange rates and capital flows. It was able to defy the ‘Washington consensus’ in this way thanks to reforms instituted after the previous financial crisis in 1998.

The ‘inevitability’ thesis has also functioned as a mystification, helping to deter people with misgivings about globalisation from actively opposing it. In the final analysis, globalisation and de-globalisation depend on policies adopted individually or jointly by governments. 

Constraints

It might be if not impossible then at least extremely difficult to reverse globalisation if the process had reached a more advanced stage, with firmly established institutions of supranational governance. Embryonic institutions of this sort do exist in the bureaucracies of intergovernmental agencies like the UN, the WTO, the IMF and — at a regional level — the European Commission. However, these bureaucracies have always been susceptible to pressure from the governments that set them up and maintain them. Another constraint on globalisation has been the determination of some states — actual and potential members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation like Russia, China and Iran — to preserve full national sovereignty. We have never come anywhere close to a completely globalised world.

Many corporations operate in several countries, but that does not make them free-floating entities without a long-term attachment to any specific state. On the contrary, each corporation has a ‘home state’ where its headquarters is based. That is why General Motors is identified as an American corporation, Mitsubishi as Japanese, Volkswagen as German, Gazprom as Russian and so on. (A few corporations have two home states — for example, the Anglo-Dutch Royal Dutch Shell.)

It is often said that a corporation has no loyalty to the ‘national interest’ of its home state. No doubt that is true, and there is nothing new about it. But it is not the crucial point. The corporation does not exist to serve the state; rather, the state exists to serve the corporation. The state is loyal to ‘its’ corporations: it is always prepared to intervene on behalf of their interests abroad when asked to do so. That is a continuing material basis for strategic competition and even military conflicts between states.

The main impetus behind de-globalisation appears to be political rather than economic. In particular, politicians like Trump exploit the discontent of many workers with certain effects of the free (or freer) movement of capital and labour, such as the loss of jobs when factories are relocated to countries where labour is cheaper, wage competition with migrants and disorienting changes in the cultural environment as a result of rapid large-scale migration. Local capitalist interests are also threatened by globalisation, but this factor seems to have less impact.   

Backlash

Commentators worry that de-globalisation will heighten the risk of war, both conventional and nuclear. They point out that the last era of de-globalisation encompassed the two world wars and the unstable period between them. But there have also been quite a few wars during the recent seventy-year era of globalisation, with escalation to the nuclear level a real danger at various times.

Moreover, the division of the world into pro- and anti-globalisation states has itself become a major source of tension. In the context of the US presidential election and the confrontation between NATO and Russia, it was the arch-priestess of globalisation — Hillary Clinton — who beat the battle drums, while Trump, the de-globaliser, warned of the danger of nuclear war and called for improved relations.

De-globalisation may weaken the global awareness that we as a species have achieved, uneven and fragile as it may be — that is, awareness of humanity as a whole and of the Earth as its single home planet. This is a serious concern for anyone who aspires to world socialism, ecological rehabilitation and human survival.

But capitalist globalisation also does little to foster real global awareness. It has proven itself quite compatible with narrow nationalism and religious bigotry: globalism for the elites, nationalism and bigotry to divert and divide the masses. For example, the big Indian capitalists have highly globalised business operations but they all gladly backed Narendra Modi of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party for prime minister (even those of them who are not Hindu but Parsee).

The popular backlash against globalisation does have one positive aspect. It expresses a protest against the undemocratic character of supranational institutions — for example, the ‘democratic deficit’ in the European Union and the secrecy and unaccountability of the committees that oversee international economic relations. The socialism to which we aspire is democratic as well as global. Perhaps the backlash will create an opening for a new democratic globalism. 

Stefan