Indian independence: the challenge of today

supporting the naval mutiny in 1946

by D Raja
General Secretary, Communist Party of India

 On 15 August 1947 the people of India won their independence from colonial rule after a long historic struggle. The communists played a glorious role in this struggle.
 A group of committed, intellectually sharp and patriotic young people started coming together to build a nationwide organisation in the second decade of the 20th century. Their first big success was the foundation of the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) in 1920, which brought progressive and nationalist leaders of the working class together. The AITUC challenged the anti-worker policies of the British Raj and also politicised the workers on long-term political demands, including independence.
It was a time of significant global and domestic churning with the end of the First World War, the success of the Bolshevik Revolution led by Lenin in Russia and the arrival of Mahatma Gandhi on the Indian political scene. The communists took the onus of radicalising the agenda of the freedom movement by working both within and outside the Indian National Congress and gained significant successes that proved crucial for our country.
The Communist Party of India (CPI) was founded on 26 December 1925 in Kanpur. The coming together of communists from the length and breadth of the country became a very effective platform to push progressive demands and make them part of the freedom struggle. Maulana Hasrat Mohani, who was the Chair of the reception committee of the Kanpur Conference, was the first one to demand ‘complete independence’ from the British, marking a significant departure from the earlier demands of limited autonomy. Further, communists were also the first to demand a Constituent Assembly for our country.
The CPI took the lead in organising peasants through the All India Kisan Sabha, students through the All India Students’ Federation, writers and intellectuals through the Progressive Writers’ Association in 1936 and artists through the India Peoples’ Theatre Association in 1943.
Meanwhile, the British Government tried their best to crush the emerging communist movement but failed in the wake of the support communists received from the people and the role they were playing in the freedom struggle. All this culminated in what’s aptly called the ‘Last War of Indian Independence’, the Royal Indian Navy mutiny of 1946. Inspired by the Free Indian Army of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose and supported by the CPI, the sailors went on strike defying the orders of their British superiors. The CPI called a strike in their support in Bombay and hundreds of thousands joined in. Violence from the British started proving counter-productive and the foreign rulers were made to realise that their days in India were numbered and that people were no longer going to tolerate foreign yoke.
The CPI’s understanding of society and the agenda for their future endeared it to the most downtrodden in society. The communists went to the people explaining the nature of exploitation in factories and fields and mobilised them. At the Kanpur Conference itself, M Singaravelu Chettiar opposed the inhuman practice of ‘untouchability’ and the CPI became one of the frontrunners against the caste system. Equipped with the modern and scientific ideology of Marxism and with the rich contributions of social reformers, the CPI went ahead in mobilising women and took the lead in the struggle against patriarchy. The CPI’s idea of a free, egalitarian India, bereft of the hierarchies of class, caste and patriarchy moved millions of people and they joined the fight for justice and equality in society.
As we approach the eighth decade of independence and the centenary of our Party it is imperative to note what brought us closer to the people and what challenges lie ahead in our continuing and uncompromising struggle for the values we upheld and the society we dream of building – a classless, casteless nation ensuring social, political and economic justice for all our citizens.
The RSS [Hindu nationalist movement] was formed in the same year as the CPI. But their propaganda is bereft of positive values. Instead of fighting the British, the RSS identified minorities and communists as the enemy. The RSS and its leadership remained subservient to the British when communists were making supreme sacrifices and it was the RSS’ poisoning of the political environment that led to the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, leading to a ban on the RSS. After the ban was lifted, the RSS worked covertly and overtly towards the goals of a hierarchical, theocratic Hindu Rashtra [Hindu Nation] and many affiliated organisations in all fields of life have mushroomed around it that are collectively called the Sangh Parivar [RSS Family]. The ruling party, the BJP, is nothing but the political arm of the RSS and it harbours the same casteist, exploitative and misogynist ideology. How the CPI will take on this ideological challenge and reinstate a progressive, socialist agenda is the most important question that concerns us today.
Though we have a glorious history of fighting the British and then contributing significantly in the shaping of our nation after winning independence that should not be taken as a relic but as inspiration in moving ahead with struggles with increased vigour. Our task and concern has always been the same, the welfare of the people of India. When the people are reeling under RSS-BJP misrule and their divisive and communal ideology threatens to break our society, our task is to move closer to the people in their everyday lives.
 This is no mean task given the ascendancy of RSS-BJP and their arsenal of surveillance and misinformation. The RSS is infiltrating the bureaucracy and all wings of the State. This poses the threat of debasing our secular, democratic republic and to impose a theocratic Hindurashtra. As Dr Ambedkar [the architect of the Indian Constitution] warned we must save independence and our secular, democratic republic before such a calamity happens.
 We must remain ever vigilant to protect the values that we inherited from that great freedom movement. The Party should intensify its struggles and campaigns not only for the immediate demands but for our ultimate goal of establishing a socialist society in our country. 

 

Playing with fire in the Himalayas…

India is playing a dangerous game in the Himalayas. Indian attempts to encroach into Chinese territory were beaten back in a skirmish in which at least 20 Indian troops were killed and 120 more wounded this week.

In the past India followed the path of independence and established friendly relations with the Soviet Union and the people’s democracies in Asia and eastern Europe. Leaders such as Pandit Nehru and Indira Gandhi were pillars of the non-aligned movement. Now it’s led by Narendra Modi, the leader of the BJP, a front led by the secret Hindu nationalist RSS militia, a fascist bloc of high-castes, landlords and industrialists.

The BJP leaders replaced India's traditional policy with one of support for Israel and partnership with US imperialism. Some of them even talk of joining NATO now.

The Modi government claims it wants to make India “self-sufficient”. Modi says a self-sufficient India would be fully integrated with the world economy whilst not dependent on anyone in strategic areas. In practice, all this means is privatising the country’s natural resources for the benefit of foreign and Indian big business.

The Indian government has proved totally incapable of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic that is sweeping across the sub-continent. The mostly privatised health service cannot cope and at least an additional 150 million people have been rendered unemployed during the lockdown period.

The needs of millions upon millions of Indians who live in abject poverty are ignored by the government that seeks to establish authoritarian rule throughout the country.

Despite being the country's largest religious minority, India's Muslims are frequently subjected to violent attacks by Hindu fanatics, like the riots in Delhi last February that forced many Muslims to flee the capital in terror.

India’s corrupt ruling class hopes to divert the masses down the barren road of sectarian violence whilst they dream of riches to come by squandering billions on weapons in a drive to become America’s chief enforcer in the region.

The hidden hand of US imperialism clearly lies behind the latest Indian provocation in the Galwan Valley, like it did when it covertly backed Indian support for the Dalai Lama’s futile revolt in Tibet in 1959 and the border war of 1962. On both occasions the Americans did nothing and the Indians got a bloody nose. Let’s hope wiser counsel prevails in Delhi this time round.

…and on the Korean peninsula

Democratic Korea dramatically countered recent south Korean provocations by blowing up the empty north–south liaison office in the border town of Kaesong this week. This dramatic piece of street art was clearly intended to send a message to the Seoul regime that has resorted to old Cold War tricks along the de-militarised zone that divides the Korean peninsula.

Helium balloons carrying anti-communist propaganda leaflets have regularly been launched into the DPR Korea by what the puppet regime calls “defectors”. But everyone knows that these people, more accurately called “riff-raff” and “human scum” by the north, are agents of south Korean intelligence, which itself is but an arm of the CIA.

During the height of the Cold War the Americans and their local lackeys used balloons to drop dollars and propaganda across the armistice line drawn up at the end of the Korean war in 1953. Donald Trump’s summits with Kim Jong Un raised hopes of a new page in inter-Korean relations. But despite the fine words, the Americans have done nothing apart from stepping up their blockade of the DPRK.

An Indian spotlight on the communist world

by Robin McGregor

REVOLUTIONARY DEMOCRACY, Vol XXV, No 1, October 2019. £5.00 + £1.50 p&p from NCP Lit: PO Box 73, London SW11 2PQ.

This twice yearly Indian Marxist-Leninist journal has caught up with its publication schedule, with the October issue now available.

As is the custom, the first section is devoted to contemporary India. It begins with an article with the self-explanatory title of Obituary of a Liberal Democracy: Ushering in Hindu Rashtra. This is a depressing survey of the widespread electoral triumph of the incumbent Hindu-fascist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance, which won 353 seats out of the 545 seats in the Lok Sabha in the 2019 parliamentary elections. Following are two pieces that confirm the malign effects of BJP rule on India. The first is an account of the state of the Indian rural population, from figures provided by the official Indian statistical body (a second article on the urban working class will follow). In many respects the already low living standards in the countryside (where 72 per cent of the labour force live) are showing signs of decline. The second deplores the BJP’s recent budget, which falls far short of its election promises and is obsessed with attracting foreign investment.

The death of Tufail Abbas, a sometime member of the Communist Party of Pakistan and founder of Pakistan’s airline workers union, is marked not only by a number of tributes but by a translation of an extract from his autobiography that includes fascinating details of a trip to China in 1966 at the height of the Cultural Revolution.

The second section is concerned with materials from parties affiliated to the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organisations (ICMLPO). These include items about recent developments in Ecuador, Turkey’s military actions in Syria, and Bolivia. The latter, from the Revolutionary Communist Party of Bolivia, takes an extremely hostile view of Evo Morales whose Movement of Socialism (MAS) is accused of selling out almost as soon as it first came to power in 2006. If that were indeed the case one might wonder why there was any need to depose him last November.

Half this issue is taken up with archival materials of both theoretical and historical interest. The most recent one is a 2004 article from the Russian Communist Workers Party that condemns the economic policies of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation as a retreat back to Trotsky’s ‘market socialist’ theories. This ties in with the oldest piece, a 1926 article translated from Under the Banner of Marxism. Here we learn in great detail about the development of Karl Kautsky’s theories on imperialism in his various writings between 1898 and 1912. These theories, which had such a baleful influence in the German Social Democratic Party, later became widespread under different labels, which makes an understanding of them important today.

Pod Znamenem Marksizma to give Under the Banner of Marxism its proper name, was an important early Soviet philosophical journal published between 1922 and 1943. It would be useful to see other articles from this source that are not as well-known as they ought to be.

There is also a translation of an internal report made in 1947 for the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) on the recent history and activities of the Communist Party of India (CPI) just after India formally became independent. It includes the CPI’s views on the British Labour Party, the party’s views on the dangers of Japanese imperialism during the war, and its changing views on the establishment of the separate Muslim state of Pakistan.

We also have a 1952 article about political events in Poland in the run up to the 1948 foundation of the Polish United Workers Party with a merger between the communist Polish Workers Party and the Polish Socialist Party after many complex battles within the two parties.

 Two shorter pieces are a 1954 memoir of the Italian communist leader Palmiro Togliatti in 1935 which suggests that the standard Marxist definition of fascism as the “open terroristic dictatorship of reactionary finance capital” was Stalin’s own. This is followed by a prophetic 1956 letter to the General Secretary of the CPI arguing that Khruschev’s attacks on Stalin, were in fact an attack on Marxism-Leninism itself.

Just occasionally the translations could do with an extra polish but that should not deter readers who will find much of interest, even if the ICMLPO is not to everyone’s taste.