The 1961 census of India listed 1,652 languages, though a few languages have died out since then. The big six languages - Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi, Tamil and Urdu - are each spoken by more than 50 million people. A total of 122 languages are each spoken by more than one million people such as Malayalam in Kerala. English remains an official language. Even though less than 15% of Indians are Muslim India has the second (or perhaps third) highest population of Muslims in the world.
In March, 788 million Indians will be eligible to cast their ballots in the general election. For the Parliamentarian elections in 2009, about half the eligible voters went to the polls, which means that almost four hundred million people might vote for the 543 parliamentary seats this year. In 2009 there were 830,866 polling stations. To win a majority in the parliament one of the blocs must win 272 seats. In the last election, the Congress alone got 203 seats and the BJP won 117 seats. It is very unlikely for either of these parties to get the 272 seats by themselves.
The ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) is led by the Congress Party, founded in 1885. The UPA has been in power since 2004. It is a center-right alliance, oscillating between a firm commitment to neo-liberal economic policy and a mild form of social welfare. Neo-liberalism’s agenda includes privatization, which means that the government has been the auctioneer of important state assets – it was in this role that the UPA mired itself in a quicksand of corruption scandals. Led by the Gandhi dynasty (no relation to Mahatma Gandhi), the Congress as the leading force in the UPA has tried to emphasize its social welfare schemes to no avail. Its leader is Rahul Gandhi.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is part of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) which is a right-wing alliance that is driven entirely by the politics of the BJP and their politics of caste and Hinduism. The BJP has attempted to preach the gospel of the free market. Its standard-bearer is Narendra Modi, ex-chief minister of Gujarat. He says that Gujarat is a model for development, which is of course correct if “Gujarat” simply refers to its capitalist class; others have not fared well at all. Modi was the cheerleader for the 1999 anti-Christian pogrom in Dangs and the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom across the state.
The third coalition bloc is the Left Front which includes the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which is not to be confused by the The Communist Party of India (CPI) from which it split in 1964.(1) Needless, to say any adherence to the ideas of Marx have long passed into distant history. The CPI (M) has formed the state governments of West Bengal and Kerala although never the national government. No one outside the CPI(M) fantasy world, however, will be surprised to learn that business in Bengal and Kerala continued much as before, on sound capitalist lines, and the revolutionary “marxist" ministers deeds and sayings in a single day were too bourgeois for words. A CPI(M) campaign billboard in a Thrissur village in Kerala featured the picture of Virgin Mary (2). To be on the safe side with divine intervention, in Trichy, Tamil Nadu, members of the Democratic Youth Federation of India, the youth wing of CPI(M), petitioned a Hindu god, the Lord Ranganatha, with usual pooja items including jasmine garlands, coconuts and bananas, for his intervention in their campaign for certain reforms.(3) It is little wonder the CPI (M) has thrown up so many breakaways including the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Communist Party of India (Maoist), Marxist Communist Party of India, Communist Marxist Party and Party of Democratic Socialism to name only a few.
It is little wonder that the existence of a small group of Marxist socialists based in Calcutta should go unnoticed.
The World Socialist Party (India) re-joined the World Socialist Movement as a companion party, exactly 19 years after it initially did so. In common with the other parties of the WSM, the WSP (I) was formed as a revolutionary party opposed to Leninism, seeking to win control of the state by parliamentary means in order to abolish it and establish socialism on a worldwide scale, educating workers about the capitalist cause of their misery and the world socialist solution, and to help them organise towards universal ownership without the market and the state.
Founded in March 1995 in Calcutta by members of the Marxist International Correspondence Circle (May 1990) in collaboration with the Bengali language journal Lal Pataka group (a name inspired by Die Rote Fahn, the organ of the German Internationalist group, the Spartacus League) having broken away from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 1982. A fuller history of the gestation and birth of the WSP (India) can be read on their website.
In contrast to the CPI(M) this group came to understand that the history of the past hundred years has shown that the reformist movements around the world have increasingly grown reactionary by providing capitalism with a new lease of life by the entire capitalist media which has baffled the people as a whole. Above and beyond, the leftists and the Leninist Left have confused the workers who by actually defending capitalism. Measures which were once very necessary and useful have already more or less accomplished their tasks and grown old and intransigent. Thus, humanity has reached the “era of social revolution” but the revolution is yet to begin.
The World Socialist Party (India) maintains that it is a revolutionary party, committed to class struggle as the means of achieving its ends. That does not mean violence or civil war. The task of the socialists in the WSP(I) is to hasten the revolution by rousing class consciousness through education and organisation of the working class. The WSP(I) doesn’t allow its members to actively participate in religious rites. We need a change – a radical change at the foundation of society and the Indian socialists argue that the only way socialism will come about is for a majority of people, on a worldwide basis, to accept the superiority of this alternative social system. They favour achieving this objective through the use of elections, although aware att he present time its main function is as a propaganda group to try to raise consciousness. They believe that it is possible to make the transition from capitalism to the complete abolition of the state immediately that the majority decides to do it. There position is to say “Yes, we certainly require both knowledge and number to make a headway towards raising working class consciousness from its present stage as a class-in-itself to the class-for-itself.
Against those who disparage the democratic vote the WSP(I) cite Marx:
“The character of an election does not depend on this name but on the economics foundation, the economic interrelations of the voters, and as soon as the functions have ceased to be political, (1) government functions no longer exist, (2) distribution of general functions has become a routine matter which entails no domination, (3) elections loose their present political character… with collective ownership the so-called will of the people disappears and makes way for the genuine will of the co-operatives” (Notes on Bakunin’s Statehood and Anarchy)
As Binay Sarkar explains " 'revocably delegated socialist democracy', I mean not just a ballot and a vote to elect, nor just a 'right' to recall but more, a real content: participatory and decision-making democracy."
The WSP (I) are against any form of “united front”. The parties of the Left in particular(i) CPI, (ii) CPI (M), (iii) Socialist Unity Centre (India) have distorted Marxism in the name of Marxism. They are left-capitalist parties defending capitalism‟s left-wing by using/misusing Marxian phraseology.
Reflecting the fragmentation of the Left there exists an Indian trade union movement which has become expressions of particular political parties. There are as many unions as there are political parties with dozens trade union federations, divided along party lines. (4) The WSP (I) has taken up a position asserting that workers are fully able, in fact, abler than the “leaders” to understand their own class-interests if they are fully informed of their circumstances from local to global. And to be informed of what is happening around, and what has happened earlier, what they require is to meet in regular general assemblies, discuss and debate all that matters keeping ears and minds open and decide to take such steps as deemed useful. In case a strike is to be declared, they would need a strike committee to be formed of recallable delegates elected and mandated in the general assembly – thus retaining the ultimate control in their own hands. Where there are many rival trade union shops in a single factory or workplace operated by many capitalist political parties, a socialist worker can neither keep on supporting the one he is in, nor go on seeking membership of one after another or all at the same time, nor can he start his own “socialist” trade union instead. What he can, and should, do as immediate perspective, is to try to form a “political group” with like-minded fellow workers and campaign for a class-wide democratic unity. The greater political awareness of the working class towards socialism, and the greater their control over trade union activities, better might be their chances of retaining a larger proportions of the wealth (surplus product) they create. Socialist theory will then begin to be realised in socialist practice.
It is true that Marx did not draw up recipes for the cookshops of the future, but he did describe the basis of the society he thought was going to replace capitalism: “an association of free men, working with the means of production held in common” (chapter 1 of Capital); “a co-operative society based on the common ownership of the means of production” (Critique of the Gotha Programme); “abolition of private property”, “the Communistic abolition of buying and selling”, “the conversion of the functions of the State into a mere superintendence of production” (Communist Manifesto); “abolition of the wages system” (Value, Price and Profit). In short, a classless, stateless, moneyless, wageless society based on the common ownership of the means of production. In Wage Labour and Capital, Marx encapsulatd the condition of existence of capitalism: “… capital presupposes wage labour; wage labour presupposes capital. They condition the existence of each other; they reciprocally bring forth each other.”
The key point to understand is that capitalism, a system based upon the ruthless exploitation and
commodification of workers and the relentless rape of our planet. Working people are conditioned and are psychologically programmed to detest that which could potentially set them free. Workers are led to believe that economic servitude and wage slavery is freedom. Millions of human beings are transformed into sheep to toil in the world’s sweat shops. It is all done for the benefit of capitalists at the expense of society. Workers still believe in myths and fairy tales. They have misplaced hope and faith in phony leaders and bogus institutions that keep us servile and docile. Irrational faith requires nothing from us. Delusion has become the norm because too many of us are incapable of grappling with reality. We can and must do better or we are doomed.
(1)Interestingly, the British declared the CPI unlawful in 1934 making it legal in 1942. Unlawful for its nationalism perhaps. Lawful for its “internationalism” with Stalin joining Churchill and Roosevelt against Hitler.
(2) http://www.dailypioneer.com/state-editions/kochi/39616-whats-jesus-doing-at-kerala-marxists-exhibition.html
(3) http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-02-09/madurai/31041373_1_board-exams-rajagopuram-dyfi
(4) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_India
The Welcome Address by Toby Crowe,
Delivered on 2nd March 1995
Comrades and Friends,
Comrade Donnelly finished his inaugural address yesterday by saying how excited he was to be in Calcutta as a representative of the Socialist Party of Great Britain so I might as well begin in the same way by expressing my own excitement and pleasure at being present on this historical occasion. I am happy to say that the optimism and anticipation I felt before I flew here on Sunday have not grown any less since my arrival.
As you may know, the Socialist Party of Great Britain (to which I belong) was formed in June 1904, when this city was still the capital of British India and second city of the British Empire. I know you will not hold Britain‟s imperial past against me; after all, my own grandparents‟ grandparents at that time were railwaymen, seamen, farmhands and grocers, none of them part of the British capitalist class, and none of them therefore the recipients of the wealth taken from this country. Today, nevertheless 91 years later, it is a special pleasure for a British socialist to be able to witness the foundation of a party of the World Socialist Movement, with the World Socialist Movement‟s object and principles, in a country which our master once called their own.
From this encouraging start we as much as you look forward to seeing you grow. Today, as always, the Indian working class is being cheated – as your grandparents were by the British and your distant ancestors by the Moghuls. India too is no different from other countries in seeing the failure of reformism. The gross opportunism of politicians (and in Calcutta at the moment we can observe something of the C.P.I. (M)‟s methods for ourselves). Disillusion with politics is now widespread in the West, and must surely be so here too, because of Indians politicians‟ inability to solve any of the problems we can see around us.
Obviously then, the world‟s largest “democracy” has not brought a transfer of power to the working class and there is a lesson here for those outside this hall who did not know it already
(as all of us inside do): what they – the capitalists – call democracy (putting a cross on a ballot paper from time to time) is not enough. The ballot box is only the first step on the road to democracy; it is the means whereby democracy will be brought about. No more.
If the ballot box is not by itself the answer, what of that given by many economists and politicians, economic growth? I know that India has experienced economic growth since 1947 – this was easy to do, because the British capitalists used the country for their own purposes. It has taken an Indian capitalist class, the real winners from “Independence”, to create anything like any Indian industrial revolution. But what benefit has this growth brought you here in this hall? The wealth you produce sometimes goes into Indian hands, of course. But they are the hands of Indian capital. Before it was the hands of British capital. (And I say “sometimes goes into Indian hands”, as much of the wealth produced here is enjoyed by foreign investors in any case, capitalism being a global system) the hands which benefit are never yours.
So the ballot box? Not enough economic growth? No, thank you. What India needs is a new political and economic system relevant to India‟s past and present. It seems paradoxical, then, that this new system relevant to India is the same as that relevant to Great Britain, which is in many ways a very different country. But the working class suffers the same problems everywhere, irrespective of race, sex, language, colour and culture. For this reason the emancipation of the working class can come about only by our unity – there is no room for unity‟s enemies – communalism, superstition, racism, caste. The liberation which this unity alone can achieve is described in the founding statement we have just considered, and Comrade Donnelly and I are therefore glad to see its adoption and with it the adoption of the Object and Declaration of Principles of the World Socialist Movement.
Fifty years ago, India belonged to British capitalists. Now it belongs partly to Indian, partly still to foreign ones. It is our task to work towards that day (hopefully not too long in coming!) when both India and Great Britain belong to you, and to me. Until then, capitalism will continue in both countries (and in the rest of the world) to act just like India‟s own banyan tree: underneath it, nothing of any value or beauty will ever grow. We have to rip this infernal plant up by the roots, and begin to plant a new and better tree.
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