Fifty years ago this month Britain relinquished control over
the Indian subcontinent. It was the start of a thirty-year period in which
European imperial powers progressively withdrew from direct rule of their
overseas possessions.
It had been accepted as far back as 1833 that India would at
some stage advance to self-government. The British practice of granting former
colonies self-rule and Dominion status encouraged Indian nationalists to
believe that India would follow. In the meantime various measures of
"Indianisation" such as the Indian Councils Act of 1861 gave the
elite some say in the running of Indian affairs.
The Indian National Congress (subsequently abbreviated to
Congress), founded in 1885 by an anglicised elite, at first campaigned for
examinations for entry into the Indian Civil Service to be held in the
sub-continent as well as in Britain.They also pressed to have more elected
members on the legislative councils of the central and provincial governments
in India. Unrest arose among those who studied but failed to gain the positions
to which they aspired in government administration. But it was not until 1906
that Congress started to demand self-rule for India as a means of obtaining
more control over Indian affairs, and to gain access to government employment.
In common with other independence movements organised resistance to foreign
domination in India originated not with the peasant masses (although they were
subsequently mobilised to that end) but from classes educated in Western ways.
Westernised elite
British occupation of India, while destroying some native
industry, had stimulated the rise of a new class of native industrial and
commercial capitalists. The development of communications gave easier access to
markets and encouraged the commercial development of cotton, jute and other
non-edible cash crops produced for sale. Indians also entered professions such
as the law as a means of social advancement. These groups formed the backbone
of the nationalist movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
They advocated self-rule for India as a means of progressing their economic
class interests. Unable to meet free-trade competition, Indian industrialists
sought protection to exploit home market potential behind tariff barriers
against British trade. This policy split them away from the landed aristocracy
who had allied themselves with British rule in part as a protection against
rural unrest and uprisings.
The first world war brought with it far-reaching economic
and social change as the European colonial powers utilised their possessions
for the raw materials and manpower necessary to wage war. India provided
one-and-a-half million troops to defend the interests of British capitalists
and their experiences inevitably coloured their outlook. The war had an impact
on the price of goods and foodstuffs which rose faster than incomes. Further
hardship resulted from the increase of taxation on the peasantry.
At the end of the war the westernised elites began demanding
rewards for the sacrifices made. A number of reforms were enacted which
provided for direct elections to the legislatures. However the property and
education qualifications restricted the electorate to some seven million voters
only. i.e. three percent of the population. More importantly Britain retained
absolute control over key areas such as finance and the police. This was
clearly seen by the Indian nationalists as a sop by the British who hoped to
buy off their more radical demands. When it came to the push the British showed
how far they were prepared to go if necessary to defend their interests in
India. On 13 April 1919 a meeting of protest at British occupation was fired on
by British troops. The firing continued for ten minutes and only ceased when
the ammunition ran out. The Amritsar massacre left 400 dead and 1.200 injured.
Richer peasants
During the 1920s the nature and composition of Congress
changed. It became a mass party with a largely rural base. Membership fees were
deliberately kept low to encourage recruitment which proved very successful.
One police official reported that the old Congress intelligentsia had been
"swamped in a mass of semi-educated persons". In this period Congress
policies proved attractive to the richer peasants. These were people who owned
ten or more acres of land, and who grew cash crops and employed landless
peasants as wage labour. Their interests lay in proposed measures of land
reform intended to break up and redistribute the larger land holdings of the aristocracy.
It was the alliance of the industrialists and this potential class of
agricultural capitalists that made Congress the important force it was.
Gandhi's economic ideas did not threaten their interests. His espousal of
swadeshi— the use of things from one’s "own" country with neighbours
supplying economic wants—emphasised local production. It was a "buy
Indian" policy in which foreign goods were boycotted. Imports of British
cotton fell by more than half while Indian production and sales were unaffected.
He aimed at a revival of the traditional Indian village community—a return to
an idealised pre-capitalist past which proved attractive in a society
experiencing the disruptive extension of the cash economy and the contraction
of previously communally owned land.
Between 1921 and 1941 grain production per head fell by more
than a quarter. At the outbreak of the second world war the majority of Indians
had less to eat than their forebears. An analysis which blamed British rule,
rather than the economic organisation of society, for the poverty and suffering
the vast majority experienced won mass support and a willingness to make
sacrifices for their beliefs. Under the influence of Mohandas K. Gandhi the
new-style Congress put into effect a number of campaigns of non-co-operation
with the British authorities. Demonstrations, rioting and the burning of
symbols of oppression such as police stations took place. The deaths that
occurred during this period of unrest caused Gandhi to call off the campaign.
Congress renewed its campaign of civil disobedience in March 1930 when Gandhi
deliberately invited arrest by publicly breaking the government monopoly of the
production of salt. Many Congress members followed his example and in the 1930s
130,000 had served terms of imprisonment. In January 1932 the British
government outlawed Congress and imprisoned its leaders following the breakdown
of talks. Realising that civil disobedience was merely an annoyance to the
British, and that political power could be won through the ballot box, Congress
returned to contesting elections.This led to an increase in membership which
rose to 4.5 million in 1939, the majority coming from the ranks of rich
peasants and small and middle landlords.
Congress split over support for Britain on the outbreak of
war in 1939, the supporters of Gandhi instigating a "Quit India"
campaign which radicalised the independence movement and led to another banning
and jailing of 60,000 members. The subsequent revolt in the countryside took 80
battalions of British troops to put down and involved beatings, torture,
burning of property and collective fines.
Muslim businessmen
As a divisive measure the British had in 1905 encouraged the
formation of the Muslim League made up of aspiring Muslim businessmen fearful
that the majority Hindu population might swamp them and their interests. The
League now offered support and co-operation to the British, as a means of
advancing their interests, and furthering their particularist demands. It
became clear that the main question was how to grant independence without
dividing the country along religious lines. It was a question that failed to be
resolved. Negotiations became deadlocked and both Hindu and Muslim factions
used the hiatus in proceedings to whip up the fear and hatred which had for
years simmered beneath the surface of Indian life.
Coming to power in 1945 the British Labour Party had no
policy worked out regarding the Empire, a subject which had not been mentioned
in their election manifesto. Indeed at their 1943 Annual Conference a
resolution had been passed which declared that colonial peoples were not ready
for self-government. As a result they acted pragmatically in response to
circumstances. In India Wavell. the Viceroy, commented on the psychological effects
of revolts in French Indo-China (Vietnam) and in Indonesia which had produced a
situation "more dangerous than at any time in the past ninety years".
Influential public opinion in Britain was also changing and according to the
Times (18 September 1945) "the entire practice of the rule of one race by
another" was now "discredited".
By 1945 British economic interests in India were
considerably less than they had been. In 1900 British goods represented 69
percent of Indian imports but in 1945 the figure was less than 20 percent. In
1870 India had sent 53 percent of its exports to Britain while in 1945 only 28
percent of its exports were. Although still of some importance to the British
economy India did not play as important role as, for example, Malaya which was
a dollar-earner useful in the support of sterling. During the inter-war
depression the value of exports to India had fallen by half, foreign
penetration and import substitution contributing to the decline. On balance it
was no longer worth the cost of attempting to further delay the granting of
independence—better to pull out as gracefully as possible and try and maintain
links with a new leadership which still had some sympathy and respect for
things British.
Change of exploiters
Independence solved none of the problems resulting from
exploitation. Indian governments were wedded to the same set of priorities and
subject to the same constraints as any other capitalist government. Poverty in
the midst of a potential for plenty remains a running sore, exploitation and
massive disparities of wealth continue to exist, war with Pakistan claimed the
lives of those with no class interest in the outcome, environmental degradation
continues virtually unabated.
Improvements in agriculture (mainly due to the "Green
Revolution” which benefited the richer farmers who could finance the necessary
inputs) means that India is “self-sufficient" in food production. It also
means that India has suffered the "problem" of plenty since
independence. In 1968 for example there was a massive pile up of wheat in
Punjab and Haryana provinces where 200,000 tonnes of wheat worth Rs 180m lay
rotting in the open for lack of adequate storage facilities (Far Eastern
Economic Review, 27 June 1968.) In 1974 the province of West Bengal suffered
the worst famine since 1943—this time the cause was "not outright lack of
food, but that the poor have no money to buy it” (Observer 13 October 1974).
The larger farmers, hoping to profit by high prices, refused to pay landless
labourers in kind. It was said that the cash wages paid to some 20 million
"are so low that they cannot afford to buy rice at current prices"
(Times, 18 October 1974).
Great Britain's period of rule in India can be seen as a
period of arrested economic development, but the subsequent period of
"Five Year Plans" for economic self-sufficiency have only been
partially successful. Projected growth rates failed to materialise. Business
and industry now account for one-third of national income compared to 5 percent
in 1947. Of the 70 percent still engaged in agriculture, half suffer from
poverty and malnutrition and many have been subjected to harassment and
evictions to make way for commercial agriculture. The number of landless
labourers increased from 17 percent in 1961 to 26 percent of the population (37
percent of the rural labour force) in 1971 when Mrs Gandhi was campaigning on
the slogan "get rid of poverty". Reforms intended to put a ceiling on
the size of land-holdings have been subject to legal challenge and evasion by
subterfuge and have proved ineffective.
It can be seen in retrospect that independence for the vast
majority of the people of India has simply meant the exchange of one set of
exploiters for another. As we pointed out in this journal and elsewhere in the
years prior to 1947, independence would solve no peasant or working-class
problems, only the establishment of Socialism could do that. In 1935 we wrote "Now
is the time for those in India who really desire Socialism to strike a blow for
it by preparing the way for the genuine Socialist Party of India, which has yet
to be formed" (Socialist Standard, February 1935). Such a party now
exists, and we welcome our comrades in India and join with them in the work
that needs to be done before the system that exploits us all can be brought to
an end.
Gwynn Thomas
World Socialism Party
(India)
Email: wspindia@hotmail.com
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