The Writings of Bipan Chandra: The Making of Modern India (PDF)

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LVI YW ha oencitichun fA >aa ea LY. Rattle 4s2 2 De = Sigel ag Cy ea THE MAKING OF MODERN INDIA | FROM MARX TO GANDHI FT aE a vio ioe. With an IntroductionMedsADI TYA peeoe ae For more than half a century, Bipan Chandra has made unparalleled contribu- tion to the study of modern Indian history. He is renowned worldwide as an authority on the subject, with a lucid and accessible style that has made him one of the most widely read and influential historians of our times. Bipan Chandra’s writings have profoundly influenced our understanding of the emergence of modern India, as well as of contempo- rary concerns that have their roots in the colonial past. | The Writings of Bipan Chandra: The Making of Modern India is a definitive collection of essays which depicts Bipan Chandra’s range of interests. It presents his views and positions qualified after an engage- ment of over fifty years with Indepen- dent India. The essays present a long- term perspective of the emergence of nationalism and the Indian national movement, with special emphasis on its Gandhian phase, and the nature of Indian capitalism and its relationship with imperialism and the national movement. They identify specificities of the colonial structure, and trace the possible paths of economic transformation until indepen- dence. The volume includes a critical appraisal of the Indian Left, and a nuanced understanding of the idea of secularism and emergence of communal- ism in India. The introduction by Aditya Mukherjee is a fitting tribute from a former student and colleague. This volume is a celebra- ton of the singular scholarship of perhaps the greatest living chronicler of the Indian national movement and after. It will be invaluable for students, teachers and everyone interested in the history and idea of India. The Writings of Bipan Chandra BirpAN CHANDRA The Writings of Bipan Chandra ef The Making of Modern India From Marx to Gandhi with an Introduction by Aditya Mukherjee as Orient BlackSwan  Approval: Gah: 928465 cc NG.: Price: ‘we ) Melgiri” A boats eee Library Lay _ Bangalore THE WRITINGS OF BIPAN CHANDRA ORIENT BLACKSWAN PRIVATE LIMITED Registered Office 3-6-752 Himayatnagar, Hyderabad 500 029 (A.P.), INDIA e-mail: [email protected] Other Offices Bangalore, Bhopal, Bhubaneshwar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Ernakulam, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, New Delhi, Noida, Patna © Orient Blackswan Private Limited 2012 First published 2012 ISBN 978 81 250 4571 7 Typeset by Adobe Garamond Pro 10.5/13 by Eleven Arts, Delhi Printed in India at Yash Printographics, Noida Published by Orient Blackswan Private Limited 1/24 Asaf Ali Road New Delhi 110 002 e-mail: [email protected]  To. Dr Dinesh Talwar who has helped me to continue to read despite my suffering from macular degeneration of the eyes.  Na A ei! Fag : Page a €  CONTENTS List of Tables Publishers Acknowledgements Acknowledgements Xili Introduction by Aditya Mukherjee PART 1. The Long-term Dynamics: Gandhiji and the Indian —" National Movement. Jawaharlal Nehru in Historical Perspective. Gandhiji, Secularism and Communalism. Pre-Gandhian Roots of Gandhian-Era Politics Re KN A &. The Making of the Indian Nation PART 2. Colonialism and Modernisation 7. Karl Marx, His Theories of Asian Societies and Colonial Rule. Transformation from a Colonial to an 385 Independent Economy: A Case Study of India Economic Nationalism 442 Vili CONTENTS PART 3 10. Introduction to Bhagat Singh: Why I Am an Atheist 465 11. Fundamentalism and Communalism 472 12. Enlightened History 481 13. “The End of History?’: A Review 490 14. “The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy’: 496 A Review Bibliography 504 Index 513  ‘TABLES Impact of War on Indian Capitalist Activity 266 Relative Stagnation in Industrial Production 267 Industrial Production During Depression and Recession Years 270 Spurt in Industrial Production 271 Landholding Patterns, 1960-61 416 Viable Landholding Pattern, 1960-61 417 Indices of Growth, 1950-51 to 1983-84 428 Production of Selected Industries, 1950-51 to 1984-85 429 Rates of Domestic Savings and Fixed Capital Formation, 1951-52 to 1981-82 430 Gross and Net Aid Utilised, First Plan to Seventh Plan Period 433 Role of External Assistance in Five-Year Plans 434 External Debt and Debt Servicing, 1970-71 to 1984-85 434 Foreign Collaborations Approved, 1970-71 to 1985-86 435 Annual Rates of Growth of Basic and Capital Goods, 1950-51 to 1981-82 436 Annual Rates of Growth of Machinery and Metals, 1951-52 to 1982-83 436 8.12 Percentage Shares of Major Industry Groups in the Industrial Sector, 1956-1980 436 8.13 Total Research and Development Expenditure, 1965-66 to 1979-80 (at 1970-71 prices) 438 X TABLES 8.14 Region-wise Percentage Distribution of India’s Trade in 1971-72 and 1979-80 439 8.15 Changing Composition of Imports, 1951—56 to 1979-80 (in percentages) 439 8.16 Changing Composition of Exports, 1951—52 to 1979-80 (in percentages) 440  PUBLISHERS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A ll the essays in this volume have been reproduced with the kind permission of Professor Bipan Chandra. The publishers would like to state that publication details of some texts and sources and details of some tables cited in this volume could not be located, despite best efforts. Therefore, they have been reproduced as in the original.  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS am very thankful to Professor Aditya Mukherjee for writing the introduction to this volume. I would also like to thank Mr Antony Thomas for meticulous proof-reading of the manuscript. A large number of students, colleagues and friends helped me in the course of writing the different articles in this volume. Usha, my wife, helped me edit all these articles in their first appearance. Unfortunately, she is no longer there to see the publication of this volume. Delhi Bipan Chandra January 2012  Pad aa = " 1 <. ' i "ge eS ae ’ he ;. _ ; o hs » i 7 : ' 7 ‘ * : > Cn < ad - ‘ 4 i] se ; “4 ¢ a toe 7 : ’ : : a 2 = ~. _ ’ - > q 7. a z Ps : ‘ f v a - } i i ‘24 : - \ : » Lie  INTRODUCTION his collection of essays brings together some of the seminal works done over nearly half a century by Bipan Chandra, one of the foremost historians India has produced since independence. Since the mid-1960s Chandra has done path-breaking or path-changing works in areas as diverse as the emergence of nationalism in India,' the specificities of the colonial structure; the possible paths of transformation from the colonial to an independent structure;* the nature of the Indian capitalist class and its relationship with imperialism and the national movement;? the long-term strategic perspective of the Indian national movement, and particularly the theory and practice of the Gandhian phase of Indian nationalism;‘ a critical appraisal of the Indian Left? from the Communists to Jawaharlal Nehru; Marx's writings on Asian 'Bipan Chandra, Rise and Growth ofEconomic Nationalism in India, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1966. *Bipan Chandra, Essays on Colonialism, New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2009. 3Bipan Chandra, Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India, New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1979. ‘Bipan Chandra, Indian National Movement: The Long-Term Dynamics, New Delhi: Vikas, 1988 reprinted, Har-Anand, New Delhi, 2008. This important work was first presented as the Presidential Address to the Indian History Congress in 1985, and has been reproduced in this volume as “The Long-Term Dynamics: Gandhiji and the Indian National Movement’. > For example, ‘A Strategy in Crisis-The CPI Debate 1955-1956’, in /ndian Left Critical Appraisals, ed. Bipan Chandra, New Delhi: Vikas, 1983. XV1 ‘INTRODUCTION societies, the emergence and growth of communalism® in India; a re- evaluation of Bhagat Singh and the revolutionaries, making of India since independence;’ the JP movement and the Emergency,” and so on. Bipan Chandra’s intellectual enquiry was inseparably linked with his deep engagement with and commitment to participating actively in the process of social change in favour of the oppressed. In his student days at Stanford in the late 1940s, he was deeply influenced by Marxism and the Left movement. This made him shift from pursuing an engineering degree to becoming a student of economics and history. On his return to India, he became a part of the communist movement in the country. He saw his intellectual work as part of the process of trying to understand reality in order to be better equipped to change it. His study of colonialism and communalism, and developing a powerful critique of these forces, in particular intellectual trends which promoted them, emanated from his deep commitment to anti-imperialism and secularism. Similarly, his effort to correctly characterise the nature of the national movement and of the nation-state that it spawned, and his effort to learn from successful transformative movements reflected his desire to evaluate and arrive at an understanding of the main contradictions in society and help evolve appropriate objectives of social transformation and better methods of achieving them. This, so that futile, wrong battles were not fought or even if the correct objective was identified it was not sought to be achieved with methods, which were doomed to be failures. Bipan Chandra always was, and remains at eighty-four, an activist-scholar, and it is impossible to understand his scholarship if one does not understand his commitment to social transformation. What distinguishes Bipan Chandra from a large number of scholars that emerged among the Left, and ranks him among the tallest intellectuals within this tradition globally, is his refusal to surrender to any kind of dogma while pursuing his intellectual queries. While steering clear of and severely critiquing the colonial and communal orthodoxies, Chandra was careful not to become a victim of the orthodoxies of the °Chandra, Rise and Growth of Communalism in Modern India. ’Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee, /ndia Since Independence, New Delhi: Penguin, 2008. “Bipan Chandra, Jn the Name of Democracy: JP Movement and the Emergency, New Delhi: Penguin, 2003.  INTRODUCTION XVii Left. Leave alone surrender to the so-called ‘party line’ of the various communist parties in India he did not hesitate to question widely held orthodoxies within the global Left tradition, even while rooting himself firmly within it. It often meant he had to cut a lonely furrow, standing against the mainstream, abandoned, and sometimes even abused by his erstwhile ‘comrades’. As would be expected, from one who refused to be a prisoner to any dogma, Chandra had no hesitation in abandoning orthodoxies created around his own work. He readily re-evaluated his own formulations, often modifying and sometimes completely overthrowing them. It is this courage to stand by his own convictions against powerful currents, if necessary, which enabled Chandra to make major breakthroughs in the understanding of modern and contemporary India. Such has been the range and depth of Chandra’s writings in this area that an entire school of thought is now associated with his name. This is no mean achievement in an age when schools of thought almost always tend to be associated with universities or individuals in the Western ‘first’ world. A school of thought does not generally get established by the work of an individual. It requires a team effort. It is here that Chandra can boast of another major achievement. Over the decades he has created a team of scholars around him who have filled out, expanded, innovated on and amended the breakthroughs in ideas that he sparked off and have on occasion broken new ground. One example of the intellectual output of this team is the series of monographs that have appeared under his general editorship called the Sage Series in Modern Indian History. Much other work apart from the thirteen monographs that have so far appeared in the Series bears the imprint of the school of thought inspired by Bipan Chandra.’ *It may be in order to list the titles in the Sage Series to give an idea of the kind of work promoted by Bipan Chandra. Sucheta Mahajan, /ndependence and Partition: The Erosion of Colonial Power in India, Salil Misra, A Narrative of Communal Politics: Uttar Pradesh, 1937-39, Aditya Mukherjee, Imperialism, Nationalism and the Making of the Indian Capitalist Class, 1920-1947, Visalakshi Menon, From Movement to Government: The Congress in the United Provinces, 1937-42, Mridula Mukherjee, Peasants in India’s Non-Violent Revolution: Practice and Theory, Rakesh Batabyal, Communalism in Bengal: From Famine to Noakhali, 1943-47, Shri Krishan, Political Mobilisation and Identity in Western India, XV1ll_ = INTRODUCTION Scholars who rallied around Bipan Chandra on a common intellectual platform often joined hands with him on the plane of political and social activism as well. A good example of this was the formation and activities of the Delhi Historians’ Group with Chandra as its key inspiration. The group was formed in the first years of the new millennium to combat the massive efforts made by the Hindu communialists to attack secular and scientific history-writing in India and replace it with communal interpretations of history with the active support of the BJP-led NDA regime. This volume includes representative pieces from almost all the major areas of Bipan Chandra’s intellectual concern over the years. It also includes works which had not yet been published in their entirety. Unlike other collections of Bipan Chandra’s essays, including the landmark collection brought out by the same publisher in 1979 called Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India, this volume presents Bipan Chandra’s views as they are today. The 1979 volume called for yet another edition in 2010 after numerous reprints as it was a marker of the significant breaks made by Chandra at that time, some of which have stood the test of time till today. However, in many areas Chandra made considerable advances over his own position in 1979. This volume brings to the public Chandra’s views and positions tempered over time, changed and qualified after an engagement of more that half a century with modern and contemporary India. I will, in this introduction, attempt to provide a flavour of the nature of the breakthroughs made by Bipan Chandra by drawing from some of the essays in the collection. 1934-47, Tan Tai Yong, The Garrison State: The Military, Government and Society in Colonial Punjab, 1849-1947, Mridula Mukherjee, Colonializing Agriculture: The Myth of Punjab Exceptionalism, Gyanesh Kudaisya, Region, Nation, “Heartland”: Uttar Pradesh in India’s Body Politic, Pritish Acharya, National Movement and Politics in Orissa, 1920-29, D. N. Gupta, Communism and Nationalism in Colonial India, 1939-45, Chandi Prasad Nanda, Vocalizing Silence: Political Protests in Orissa, 1930-32, Raj Sekhar Basu, Nandanar’s Children, The Paraiyans’ Tryst with Destiny, Tamil Nadu 1850-1956. Apart from these publications in the series, the works of Mohinder Singh on the Akali Movement, Bikash Chandra on the growth of communal politics in Punjab, Neerja Singh on the Congress Right: Patel, Prasad and C. R., Amit Mishra on Mauritius and on the Indian Diaspora, to name a few, have been deeply influenced by Chandra.  INTRODUCTION XIX I The volume begins with an essay, which many, including myself, consider one of Bipan Chandra’s most important contributions. The essay, “The Long-term Dynamics: Gandhiji and the Indian National Movement encapsulates the fundamental advances that he made over the existing understanding (including his own earlier one) of the Indian National Movement and Gandhiji. If Chandra’s first major work'® liberated the early nationalist, or the Moderates as they were called then, from the description of being ‘mendicants’ who allegedly merely appealed to the colonial state to make concessions to their narrow class or caste interests, then this essay liberated the Gandhi-led national movement from the decades old stranglehold of being described as ‘bourgeois’, ‘class- collaborationist’, ‘non-revolutionary and even anti-revolutionary. In his magnum opus, referred to above as the first work, of which the concluding chapter titled ‘Economic Nationalism’ is included in this volume, Chandra demonstrates how the early nationalists far from being mendicants were among the first in the world to evolve a detailed economic critique of colonialism.’ Through intense intellectual activity over nearly half a century, using the press, pamphlets, books, speeches, etc., they destroyed the imperialist argument that colonialism was beneficial to the colony and demonstrated that India’s economic ills were a result of political subjugation. Over time they succeeded in eroding the imperialist ideological hegemony over the Indian people. ‘Thus, argues Chandra, they ‘laid strong and enduring foundations for the national movement to grow’ and, therefore, ‘deserve a high place among the makers of Modern India’. In his essay the ‘Long-term Dynamics’, Chandra challenges the various strands which denied the /egitimacy of the Indian national movement including of its mass phase under Gandhi. In greater or lesser degree, this denial is common to the colonial, neo-colonial and subaltern historiography as well as to some strands of the Left approach. ‘The national \See Chandra, Rise and Growth ofEconomic Nationalism in India. \'We will see later below how the early Indian intelligentsia made the same errors as Marx in 1853 and the early nationalists made a shift from Marx's erroneous formulations at that stage. XX INTRODUCTION movement is seen by these variously as representing narrow prescriptive groups (upper caste Hindus, babus, elites, bourgeoisie, landlords, brown sahebs, etc.) and not the Indian people. It is seen as not being genuinely anti-imperialist but compromising and sharing power with it or as some would put it ‘sharing a common discourse’ with colonialism. The ‘subaltern school’? taking the worst elements from the Left and the Right sees it as a movement that suppressed the real, popular urges of the Indian people with Gandhi being the major exponent of this strategy. Chandra, on the other hand, argues that the Indian National Movement led by the Indian National Congress was as much a people's struggle for liberation and had as much to offer to the world in terms of lessons in social transformation and bringing about change in the state structure as the ‘British, French, Russian, Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions. He maintains further that the ‘strategic practice of the Congress-led and Gandhi-guided national movement (has) a certain significance in world history’ being ‘the only actual historical example of a semi-democratic or democratic-type state structure being replaced or transformed, of the broadly Gramscian theoretical perspective of a war of position being successfully practiced’. This significance cannot be exaggerated: Gramsci saw this ‘as the only possible strategy’ for social transformation ‘in the developed countries of the west’. Chandra sees the Indian national movement, like any other national liberation struggle, as ‘a multi class movement which represented the anti-imperialist interests of all classes and strata. He argues that the strategy of the movement or the forms of struggle it adopted, were not to be seen in a class reductionist manner as they did not emerge out of the interest of any one class but were a function of the nature of the state that it sought to overthrow. A key aspect of the long-term strategy of the Indian national movement especially under Gandhian influence was what Chandra called S-T-S (Struggle-Truce-Struggle), that is, ‘phases of vigorous extra-legal mass movements’ were combined with phases of truce where the movement paused, regenerated itself through mass programmes like Gandhiji’s constructive work, so that the another phase of struggle could be launched at a higher level. The movement would "A school, which claims to give voice to the Indian poor, largely from the safe and sanitised environs of the First World.  INTRODUCTION XXi thus keep growing and strengthening itself in an upward spiraling circle till victory was achieved. Chandra argues that the movement adopted the S-T-S strategy not because it was ‘bourgeois’, and hence did not want a continuous struggle and kept retreating, but because it was suited to a multi-class, mass movement against the semi-democratic, semi-hegemonic British colonial state. Gandhiji himself had clarified that suspension of a movement did not mean surrender or compromise with imperialism. Chandra quotes him: ‘Suspension of civil disobedience does not mean suspension of war. The latter can only end when India has a constitution of her own making.’ Here Chandra makes a major break from his 1972 position where he described the Congress strategy as one of P-C-P (Pressure-Compromise-Pressure), a strategy which was non-revolutionary and suited the bourgeoisie.'” The choice of non-violence as a form of struggle, argues Chandra, also had nothing to do with any class bias in favour of the propertied classes as is often argued, but was a form which became necessary in a hegemonic struggle, ‘a struggle on the terrain of moral force’. Also, if the movement was to be a mass movement involving millions, including the poor, and nota guerilla movement or a movement led by a revolutionary army then non-violence would be the suitable form. A non-violent mass movement defying the government put the colonial state on the horns of a dilemma. If it suppressed the movement it lost ground on the moral-hegemonic terrain, being seen as using brutal power to suppress peaceful protestors, and if it did not suppress the movement it lost again as the state was seen as incapable of asserting its authority. Reiterating that the Indian national movement was a multi-class movement of all classes oppressed by imperialism, Chandra insists that there was no inherent class essence or a predetermined fixed class character of the movement. He does not agree ‘with those who equate nationalism with bourgeois ideology and maintain that all nationalism is per se bourgeois in essence....’ The Indian national movement, he argued, was open-ended and the ‘class consequences’ of the movement would ‘depend on the changing balance of political and ideological forces’. In other words, \3See Chandra, ‘Elements of Continuity and Change in Early Nationalist Activity’, in his Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India, Orient Longman, New Delhi, 1979. XXil INTRODUCTION the balance of class forces as it emerged in this multi-class movement would determine what would be the nature of class adjustment during the course of struggle among the classes with conflicting interests, which had come together in the common struggle against imperialism, just as it would determine the nature of the state born out of this movement. Chandra here makes a major departure from existing historiographical positions of all hues, including his own. Not only does he see the national movement as open-ended and capable of being transformed in a radical direction but he now sees Gandhiji as a brilliant leader of this popular movement who far from being bourgeois or non-revolutionary played a critical role in trying to ensure that the class adjustment that necessarily had to happen in a multi-class movement, happened increasingly in favour of the poor and oppressed. Gandhiji not only met all the three criteria Lenin’ had outlined for declaring a national liberation movement as revolutionary, i.e. (i) struggling against imperialism, (ii) politicising the masses and bringing them into mass movements and (iii) not opposing the Communists’ effort at educating and organising... the broad masses; he did much more. Gandhiji’s critical role in promoting the first two is now increasingly acknowledged. It is regarding the third criteria, Chandra argues, that not only did Gandhiji not prevent Communists from organising the masses, he created conditions favourable to the increase in Left ideological influence. In fact, Gandhiji himself increasingly moved in the Left direction. As Chandra argues, Gandhiji’s ‘popular ideological positions... and his dominant position in the national movement were quite favourable to the socialist ideological transformation’. His ideas and actions in favour of the oppressed and against injustice of any kind ‘created constant openings for any pro-poor, socially progressive ideology’. Interviews with a large number of Left leaders of the national movement from all over India conducted by Chandra and his team repeatedly confirmed the positive correlation between the spread of the national movement and the possibility of the emergence of the Left. It was another matter that many on the Left, rather than build on the Gandhian legacy, dissipated the advantage by positing themselves against it and even demonising it. Perhaps the tallest from among the Left who did not do so was Jawaharlal Nehru. '4See Chandra, ‘Lenin and the National Liberation Movements’, in his Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India.  INTRODUCTION XXiil As Bipan Chandra began to get a better grasp of Gandhiji, his position on Nehru also underwent a fundamental change. In an essay written in 1975”, Chandra argued that during 1933 to 1936 Nehru had reached the high water mark of his radicalism as a Marxist, where he showed the capacity to break out of the Gandhian framework into a revolutionary mould. But after 1936 his Marxist radicalism slowly watered down to a ‘mild form of Fabianism’ and he gradually surrendered to the ‘non- revolutionary’ Gandhian strategy. By 1986 Chandra had a totally different understanding of Gandhiji (as discussed above) and in a masterly piece on Nehru written in 1990, ‘Jawaharlal Nehru in Historical Perspective’ (included in this volume), he completely reassessed his evaluation of Nehru. Evidently an understanding of Gandhi was the key to an understanding of various aspects of the Indian national movement. Once one got the former right the rest seemed to fall in place readily. Chandra now characterised the shift in Nehru’s position as his abandonment of the sectarian, dogmatic Marxism of that period, which he termed Stalin-Marxism. The failure of the Stalin-Marxist position, which was beginning to marginalise the Left and the success of the Gramscian path of war of position pursued by Gandhi made Nehru re-evaluate the Gandhian strategy. He no longer saw the Congress as a structured bourgeois party but one which was not only capable of being transformed in the socialist direction but was actually gradually shifting left-wards. Chandra in this piece and elsewhere brilliantly details the process of Nehru gradually discovering Gandhi and as predicted by Gandhi beginning to speak his language over time. He also shows how Nehru was among the first in the world to break out of Stalin-Marxism, to emphasise (somewhat precociously) that while there could be no true democracy without socialism there would be no socialism without democracy. Nehru began to veer towards the position that socialism could not be brought about by coercion or force. The socialist transformation required societal consensus, the consent of the overwhelming majority of the people. To succeed, it had to be socialism by 95 per cent. Nehru was anticipating what later events were to validate and what was to be slowly accepted globally. In this very important comprehensive essay Chandra also tries to examine why Nehru, despite '5See Chandra, ‘Jawaharlal Nehru and the Indian Capitalist Class’, in his Nationalism and Colonialism in Modern India. XXIV _ INTRODUCTION his ‘gigantic’ achievements, failed to bring about in full measure the social transformation that he aimed at. In another essay in this volume, ‘Gandhiji, Secularism and Communalism’, Chandra rescues Gandhi from the pervasive and ill- informed attacks of a section of the ‘secularists’ who saw his secularism as weak or even conducive to the growth of communalism. Chandra, on the other hand, argues, ‘it was because of Gandhiji’s total opposition to communalism and strong commitment to secularism that both Hindu and Muslim communalists hated him and conducted a virulent campaign against him, leading in the end to his assassination by a communal fanatic’. Chandra demonstrates how Gandhiji had a holistic understanding of secularism encompassing all the four terms in which secularism has been defined in India and elsewhere. That is, for Gandhiji secularism meant separation of religion from politics; neutrality of the state towards all faiths or equal regard for all faiths including atheism; state treating all citizens as equal and not discriminating in favour or against anyone on the basis of his or her religion and finally, emerging specifically out of the Indian situation, secularism meant uniting the Indian people against colonialism, which meant secularism in India would involve unambiguous opposition to communalism. Chandra shows how Gandhiji’s repeated statements saying that for him there was ‘no politics devoid of religion’ or that ‘politics bereft of religion are a death trap because they kill the soul’ have been often misunderstood as his ‘secularism’ being in some ways compromised. He clarifies that Gandhiji ‘often used the word “religion” in two different senses: one in its denominational or sectarian sense, that is, in terms of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, etc., and the other in the traditional Indian sense of dharma, that is the moral code which guides a persons life and the social order.’ Almost every time he asserted that politics must be based on religion he clarified that what he meant was that it should be based on moral foundations, dharma. For example, in 1940 he reiterated, Yes, I still hold the view that I cannot conceive politics as divorced from religion.... Here religion does not mean sectarianism. It means a belief in ordered moral government of the universe... This religion transcends Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, etc.’  INTRODUCTION XXV However, realising that religion in a denominational sense was increasingly being used to promote communal politics, Gandhiji on numerous occasions began to explicitly make his position clear, leaving no room for any confusion. In August 1942, he stated, ‘Religion (now meaning in a denominational sense) is a personal matter which should have no place in politics.’ Again in November 1947 he warned, ‘Religion is a personal affair of each individual, it must not be mixed up with politics or national affairs.’ His warning in August 1947 has a contemporary relevance when he said the independent Indian state ‘was bound to be wholly secular’ and ‘no denominational educational institution in it should enjoy state patronage’. He also argued that the state was not to get involved in religious education, leaving it to religious institutions. The fact that Gandhiji often used imagery or idioms from Hindu mythology or scriptures has often been used by both his secular and Muslim communal critics to argue that he was catering to Hindu communalism. His use of the term Ramrajya to define what Swaraj in India would mean was the most cited example. Here again Gandhiji was being misrepresented. As Chandra shows, Gandhiji was certainly not using Ramrajya to mean Hindu vaj but as a just, humane, moral and egalitarian system of governance. He reassured his Muslim brethren “By Ramrajya I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean... Divine Raj, the Kingdom of God. For me Ram and Rahim are the same deity.’ He said that just as he used the concept of Ramrajya to reach the millions among the Hindus he would, when addressing Muslim audiences, use the concept of Khudai Raj to convey the same meaning. Chandra shows how Gandhiji’s secularism was based on an extremely firm ground and would brook no compromise on this front. In fact, the positions taken by him consistently could be a sterling example to his ‘secular’ critics till today. Gandhiji was totally committed to civil liberty, freedom of speech and expression, liberty of the press, etc., calling this ‘the breath of political and social life... the foundation of freedom. There is no room there for dilution or compromise. It is the water of life. I have never heard of water being diluted.’ Yet, he was to make one exception. He advocated the banning of literature spreading communal hatred. He said in 1936, ‘If I had the power I should taboo all literature calculated to promote communalism, fanaticism, and ill-will and hatred...’ More XXV1_ INTRODUCTION than half a century after independence, with all the powers one needed, secular India still permits communal poison being taught to tender minds, to children through schools texts, leave alone the rampant vicious communal propaganda permitted in the public sphere.'® The essay ends with a critical discussion on why Gandhiji, and indeed the Indian national movement as a whole, despite having a firm commitment to secularism, still failed to contain communalism and prevent the partition of the country. Of course, this was not to deny the massive success of the movement in ensuring that, despite the almost holocaust-like situation caused by the partition riots, India succeeded in a very short time to build a secular democratic state. Bipan Chandra’s presidential address to the Indian History Congress (Modern India Section) in 1970, ‘Colonialism and Modernization’, is included in this volume as it was a seminal piece written on colonialism in India which contributed substantially to the theory of colonialism available till then. In this essay, Chandra was perhaps the first to highlight the need to study colonialism as a ‘distinct social formation’ or a ‘colonial mode of production’. He argued that colonialism ‘dissolved the pre- capitalist mode of production but a new capitalist system did not follow’. Many elements of the old feudal structure continued but the structure that emerged was new, it was not the perpetuation of the old. What emerged, he argued, was a distinct structure. A few years later Hamza Alavi was to take this formulation forward brilliantly showing how the colonial structure was neither feudal nor capitalist and the colonial mode of production had its own distinct characteristics and laws of development.'’ Chandra, ‘Foreword by Bipan Chandra in Aditya Mukherjee, Mridula Mukherjee and Sucheta Mahajan, RSS School Texts and the Murder ofMahatma Gandhi: The Hindu Communal Project, New Delhi: Sage, 2008. 'See Hamza Alavi, ‘India and the Colonial Mode of Production’, Economic and Political Weekly, Special Number, August 1975 and Hamza Alavi, ‘Structure of Colonial Formations’, Economic and Political Weekly, Annual Number, March 1981, also see Jairus Banaji, ‘For a Theory of Colonial Mode of Production’, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 7, no. 52, 23 December 1972.  INTRODUCTION XXVii however, over time, preferred the formulation of ‘colonial social formation’ rather than ‘colonial mode of production’ for a number of reasons which he detailed elsewhere.'® Also, the essay forcefully makes the point that colonialism does not lead to development or modernisation. It does not lead to ‘partial modernization’ or ‘restricted growth’ either. Nor does it have any residual benefits, which could be beneficial for post-colonial development. Chandra, in this essay, was among the first, along with Andre Gunder Frank, to empirically demonstrate that whatever little spurts of growth the colony witnessed during the colonial period were not a result of colonialism but were a product of the breaks or the ‘loosening of the links’ from the colonial stranglehold, caused by various crises faced by the metropolitan countries such as the two World Wars and the Great Depression, when there was a snapping or a ‘loosening’ of the ties with colonialism. In fact, Chandra, from some of his earliest writings, has been emphasising the fact that colonialism was not the route or a transitional phase to the emergence of capitalism, industrialisation or modernisation. The overthrow of colonialism was necessary for the emergence of modern development. In this context Chandra’s critical evaluation of Marx’s understanding of colonialism is very relevant as here too the question of the role of colonialism in the rise of capitalist modernisation was a bone of contention. His essay ‘Karl Marx, his Theories of Asian Societies’ is one of the most comprehensive efforts to critically evaluate Marx's understanding of Asian societies, particularly India, within the broad context of Marx's overall method and approach. I shall draw attention here to some of the important implications of Marx’s writings on India regarding the impact of colonialism, which have been highlighted by Bipan Chandra in this essay. Chandra focuses on the underlying assumptions behind certain characterisations made by Marx regarding the impact of colonialism in India in two articles written in 1853. Though these were journalistic articles, which Marx published anonymously, and he himself had scant respect for such ‘continual newspaper muck’, which he wrote for cash '8See Bipan Chandra, ‘Colonialism: Some Basic Aspects’, in Essays on Colonialism, New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2009, pp. 8 ff. (The paper was originally published in 1989.) XXV1li INTRODUCTION and which was different from ‘purely scientific work’, yet some of the formulations in these articles were to exercise considerable influence for a long period of time. Perhaps the most well-known formulation was his statement: England has to fulfil a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating—the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in India. Chandra clarifies that both aspects of the double mission were seen to be positive in a historical sense by Marx. The apologists of colonialism misused this assessment. The ‘destructive’ aspect was positive because by ‘annihilation of the old Asiatic society’ colonialism was seen as clearing the way for the ‘regenerating’ aspects. The second positive aspect was the regenerating aspect where colonialism was seen as creating the possibility of the introduction of capitalism— the laying of the material foundations of Western Society in India’. British rule was, therefore, seen despite all its accompanying ‘filth’ and ‘swinishness’ and dragging the colonial people ‘through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation’, as still historically positive and even revolutionary. However, Chandra argues that these generalisations were based on certain fundamental assumptions. First, the notion of the destructive aspect being positive was critically linked to Marx’s understanding at that time of pre-colonial Indian (or Asian) society as having stagnated for centuries and as being immutable and incapable of breaking out of this stagnation by its own internal resources or contradictions. Second, the regenerating aspect was predicated upon Marx’s belief then that British capitalism would reproduce itself in India in the same capitalist form. If these two postulates of Marx were proven wrong then Chandra argues that the entire validity of Marx’s 1853 notion of the impact of colonialism would come to naught. Chandra then proceeds at length to show how both these assumptions were actually fallacious. The notion of Asiatic societies being static or changeless was historically untrue and was based on the material available to Marx, a lot of it being colonial sources. Similarly, colonialism, rather than producing the mirror image ofcapitalism in the colony was seen to produce its caricature or ‘its negative image’.  INTRODUCTION XXiX Moreover, Chandra clarifies that Marx never repeats the argument of the ‘regenerating’ effect of colonialism after his August 1853 article. Even in 1853 he was still only talking of British rule creating the conditions for regeneration, not regeneration itself; he was seeing the potential and not the real. He wrote, ‘England has broken down the entire framework of Indian society without any symptoms of reconstitution yet appearing.’ Also, Marx was simultaneously suggesting the need for the overthrow of colonialism for the rise of capitalism in the colony. “The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered by the British bourgeoisie... till the Hindoos themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether.’ Also, Chandra shows how Marx in his later writings moved away completely from the position that colonialism played a historically positive role. This was particularly after Marx and Engels studied ‘closely, concretely and in a sustained manner’ a colonial situation, viz. English colonialism in Ireland. Chandra argues that Marx now saw that the so- called new elements or positive features which emerged under colonial rule ‘were structured simultaneously with colonialism sometimes as its forms, sometimes as its agents through which it was structured and sometimes as its unintentional byproducts. In all cases they lose their positive, developmental qualities for they were parts of the overall underdeveloping colonial structure.’ For Marx now the only solution to the Irish social condition was the overthrow of British colonialism. It may be mentioned here that the modern Indian intelligentsia in the first half of the nineteenth century shared a perspective similar to Marx’s 1853 position where they saw British rule as creating the conditions for the modernisation for the Indian economy and polity. This was the reason why they opposed the 1857 revolt against the British. Significantly, the early Indian nationalists were to soon give up this position and by the late 1860s they began to see colonialism not as the route to capitalist modernisation but as the chief obstacle to the transition to capitalism. In fact, the early Indian nationalists were among the first in the world, decades before Hobson, Lenin or Rosa Luxemburg to evolve a multi-pronged, detailed and sophisticated critique of colonialism. It is perhaps an aspect of the persistence of the colonial mentality that this achievement of the Indian early nationalists (which shapes India’s destiny till today) remains virtually ignored XXX INTRODUCTION globally despite the definitive and monumental work produced by Bipan Chandra on the early nationalists as early as 1966.’° IV Once the issue of the necessity of the overthrow of colonialism for achieving modernisation was settled, the question that remained was to examine what historical forces would enable a successful overthrow of colonialism. Here again Chandra challenges an orthodoxy with a long established pedigree and widespread support, and in the process makes an advance over his own position in the 1970 presidential address discussed above. In a major essay written in 1989, included in this volume as ‘Colonial Rule, Transformation from a Colonial to an Independent Economy: A Case Study of India’, Chandra questions certain assumptions that were made by many Marxists beginning with the VIth Congress of the Comintern (Communist International) in 1928 and coming up to the recent writings of Dependency School thinkers and neo-Marxist world-system analysts like Paul Baran, Andre Gunder Frank, Samir Amin as well as other Marxists like Hamza Alavi, A. K. Bagchi and Prabhat Patnaik, whose pioneering scholarship he generously acknowledges. One basic assumption made by this school of thought, which Chandra termed the “Comintern-Baran-Frank (CBF) model’, was that ‘no independent economic development in an ex-colony is possible unless it makes a complete break with the world capitalist system and goes over to socialism. In fact... the more capitalism develops and penetrates the post colonial society, the greater the society’s under development’.”” Further, taking off from the 1928 Comintern view that the colonial bourgeoisie was incapable of being anti-imperialist, the CBF model argued that ‘the bourgeoisie of an ex-colony following the capitalist path (was) incapable of undertaking the task of independent development’. In sum then, if the post-colonial societies did not become socialist they were to inevitably resemble some version of a neo-colonial, dependent or peripheral economy. Bipan Chandra, Rise and Growth ofEconomic Nationalism. °Emphasis mine.  INTRODUCTION XXXi Citing primarily the Indian case, Chandra demonstrates how this basic assumption of the CBF does not work in all situations. He shows how the Indian bourgeoisie even in the colonial period had adopted an anti-imperialist stance and had grown substantially independently of metropolitan capital and had no reason to retreat from this position after independence. Further, he shows empirically how the post colonial Indian state with the support of the emergent dominant classes actually crafted out a multi-pronged strategy to successfully promote independent development. He also shows how in fact the Indian economy did succeed in developing independently and that too while remaining within the capitalist structure. The ready assumption of the CBF model that post colonial ‘bourgeois’ regimes, fearing revolutionary forces, were bound to make compromises with reactionary feudal forces and take shelter in ‘the lap of imperialism’ and foreign capital, was shown to be unfounded. Quite the contrary, India saw the virtual ending of ‘feudalism’ in the agrarian sector and the sharp weakening of the hold of foreign capital on the economy as a whole. This was a definite step away from the position that Chandra had himself maintained in 1970 where he was apprehensive that seeking a path of modernisation by post-colonial societies which was not based on socialism but an under-developed capitalism would be ‘constantly threatened by the back-sliding transition or “neo-colonialism”.’ The way out, he had then argued (somewhat in line with the CBF assumption), ‘does not lie in integration with the same world capitalism but in the effort to break “the vicious circle” by opting out of its sphere of influence’, into socialism. This is certainly not the last time that we shall see Chandra make advances over his own ideas. At eighty-four, after meeting his administrative responsibilities as the Chairman of the National Book Trust (which has been transformed under his active leadership) he is busy writing what promises to be the first really scholarly biography of Bhagat Singh. He is also writing his autobiography. After he finishes them there has been a long-standing demand among many of his friends, colleagues and students that he write the much-awaited definitive biography of Gandhiji. Equally pressing has been the demand that he lead a study of the ‘Rise and Growth of Casteism in India’ in the same manner that he XXX11 INTRODUCTION did the rise and growth of communalism in India. This would be in line with what is quintessentially Bipan Chandra: concentrate intellectual effort in the direction that appears to be the chief obstacle in social advancement. All power to Bipan Chandra and his like. They do not seem to make many of them any more. Delhi Aditya Mukherjee November 2011 PART ONE  ae Wits  — ONE= THE LONG-TERM Dynamics* Gandhiji and the Indian National Movement Preface his work, presented in an earlier version as Presidential Address to the Indian History Congress in 1985, represents the preliminary findings of collective research in India’s national liberation struggle in which I am currently engaged along with my colleagues Mridula Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee and the young scholar Sucheta Mahajan. In particular, the emphasis is on setting forth a framework for understanding the strategic discussion of the freedom struggle, especially during the period of Gandhi's leadership. Different phases of the struggle and its different forms—extra-legal mass movements on a scale unsurpassed in world history, constitutional activity, constructive and day-to-day political-ideological propaganda and agitation through the press, platform, literature and songs—are sought to be analysed within this strategic framework. This is also a discussion of certain other crucial aspects of the movement such as its ideological and programmatic dimensions, the role and significance of non-violence, the relationship between the leaders and the masses, its ideological and organisational open-endedness and the potentiality or its ideological transformation. *Originally published in Bipan Chandra, /ndian National Movement: The Long- term Dynamics, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1988. 4 THe WaritTiNGS OF BIPAN CHANDRA In addition to archival work, private papers, collected and selected works of Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajendra Prasad and other leaders, these findings are based on our ongoing interviews all over the country with over 1,500 persons who took active part in the freedom struggle from the village to the taluka, provincial and all-India levels or who worked as part of the colonial administrative apparatus, and we gratefully acknowledge their co-operation and hospitality. Many friends and students, apart from my co-workers, have contributed to the making of this study. In particular, I am thankful to Sashi Joshi, Bhagwan Josh, K. K. N. Kurup, V. Ramakrishna and Lalitha Ramakrishna, C. S. Krishna and Usha Krishna, Shantha Sinha, G. Rudrayya Chowdari, K. Gopalan Kutti, J. P.Rao, Keshavan Veluthat, Gangadharan Nambiar, A. Murali, V. Murali, Mohan Das, Rajendra Prasad, Narendra Panjwani, Miriam Dossal, Medha and Vijay Lele, Visalakshi Menon, Anthony Thomas and Gyanesh Kudaisya for helping us conduct interviews as well as providing us stimulus through discussion. I would also like to acknowledge a special debt to the late Arutla Ramachandra Reddy, a veteran of the Telengana struggle, who took us around the Telengana villages at the advanced age of 75. Our ideas have been formed over the years through intense discussions with S. Gopal, Romila Thapar, Mohit Sen, K. N. Panikkar, S. Bhattacharya, Kewal Varma, P. C. Joshi, Ravindar Kumar, V. N. Datta, Barun De, A. R. Desai, Lajpat Jagga, D. N. Gupta, Bikash Chandra, Sanjay Prasad, Sangeeta Singh and Ravi Vasudevan. Tam very thankful to the Directors of National Archives and of state archives at Madras, Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Bombay and Patna and the library staff of the JNU for extending their facilities. Of course, no research on the Indian national movement is today possible without the cooperation of the Director and staff of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library which has been extended to me and my co-workers in full measure. I am also very grateful to the Indian Council of Social Science Research without whose financial assistance the larger project, of which this short study is a part, would not have been possible. As in the case of my previous work, Usha, my wife, has participated actively in the making of the present one. New Delhi, 1988 BrrpAN CHANDRA  THE LONG-TERM DYNAMICS 5 Introduction and Preview Before I take up its long-term dynamics, we have to decide what was the Indian National Congress (INC). In my view the Congress was the leader of the popular anti-imperialist movement of the Indian people; and its activities in the main constituted this movement. The task of politicising, activising and mobilising the Indian masses was accepted by the Congress from the beginning but was basically undertaken after 1918. In the Gandhian era, the national movement derived its entire force from the militancy and self-sacrificing spirit of the masses. Starting out as the activity of the radical nationalist intelligentsia, the national movement later succeeded in mobilising the youth, the women, the urban petty bourgeoisie, the urban and rural poor, urban and rural artisans and large sections of the peasantry and small landlords. Despite its many weaknesses, the Congress became, and remained until independence, the symbol as well as the chief vehicle and organiser—and the representative—of the anti-imperialist or national liberation struggle.’ The movement led by the Congress was, with all its positive and negative features, the actual, historically existing anti- imperialist movement of the Indian people.’ It was in this movement that the historical energies and genius of the Indian people were incorporated, as is the case with any genuine mass movement. This point needs to be stressed because in recent years the neo-colonial schools of historians, continuing the tradition of the spokespersons 'We must distinguish between the pre-1947 Congress from the post-1947 Congress. After 1947, it gradually became a regular political party with a different character, class content, leadership pattern, etc. ?This aspect was well summed up in a preamble to the resolution on the national demand moved by Jayaprakash Narayan at the Tripuri Session of the Congress in March 1939: “The Congress has, for more than half a century, striven for the advancement of the people of India and it has represented the urge of the Indian people towards freedom and self-expression. During the past twenty years, it has engaged itself, on behalf of the masses of India, in a struggle against British imperialism and, through the suffering, discipline and sacrifice of the people, it has carried the nation a long way to independence, that is, its objective.’ Quoted in D. G. Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 5, New Delhi: Publication Division, 1969 reprint, p. 65. 6 THe WRITINGS OF BIPAN CHANDRA and ideologues of the colonial regime which flourished from the 1880s onwards, have shown almost a missionary zeal in denying the legitimacy of the actual national movement. They do so either by denying it an anti-imperialist character or by holding up against it actual or potential or ‘parallel’ anti-imperialist streams, declaring the actual movement to be ‘a fraud suppressing the real urges of the Indian people’. They find it impossible to accept that the Indian people and their leaders, via the Congress-led national movement, were as much engaged in fighting a national war as were the Irish, the Chinese since 1925, the Soviet people during 1917-21 and 1941-45, the British during 1939-45, or the French (resistance) from 1940—44, and were conscious of the fact.’ Therefore, these historians cannot also accept that the same categories of nation, class, motivation, mobilisation, ideology, etc. should be used to analyse the Indian national movement as are used to study these other movements. There were, of course, many other strands in India’s struggle for freedom: the revolutionary terrorists from 1897 to 1947; the Akali movement of the early 1920s; the Indian National Army during World War II; the state peoples’ movements; the various tribal peoples’ struggles, etc. Though many of them remained outside the organisational framework of the INC, there was no Chinese wall separating them from the Congress.‘ At no stage did these become alternatives to the mainstream of the national movement,’ nor were they ever quantitatively and qualitatively in the same class. It was the Congress-led movement in which millions upon millions of both sexes and all classes, castes, religions and regions, to a greater or lesser extent, participated. The Congress, being not just a party but a movement, incorporated within itself different political and ideological trends as well. *See, for example, Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 68. Ahmedabad: Navjivan Publishing House, pp. 240-41. Gandhi often used the simile of war to describe the character of the political activities of the Congress. ‘See, Bipan Chandra, et al., Economic and Political Weekly, 6 May 1984. >The only large-scale popular modern movements which may be said to have formed part of an alternative stream of politics (though not of anti-imperialist politics) were the communal and casteist movements which were not nationalist and which invariably, sooner or later, betrayed loyalist, pro-colonial tendencies. See my Communalism in Modern India, chapter 4, New Delhi: Vikas, 1984.  THE LONG-TERM DYNAMICS —_7 The study of the INC before 1947 has to be therefore at the heart or centre of the study of India’s anti-imperialist struggle, though it need not occupy the sole position.° I have argued here that the Indian national movement was not composed of just a string of ad-hoc movements and responses to British constitutional initiatives but had a specific and discernible strategy, forged above all by Gandhi. This strategy was based on a complex understanding of the colonial state in India—that it was different from a purely authoritarian or dictatorial state, that it was semi-hegemonic so far as it was based on the rule of law and a bureaucratic administrative structure, on civil institutions such as local government, legislatures, though without effective control over state power, an elaborate educational system and a modern press, and an extension of a degree of civil liberties in normal times. An understanding of the character of society, polity and political forces in Britain also went into the making of this strategy. The basic elements of this strategy can be represented in the formula Struggle-Truce-Struggle (at a higher plane) or S-T-S. In this strategy phases of extra-legal mass movements alternate with more ‘passive’ phases, during which political activity is carried on within the confines of the legal space, and the struggle proceeds through stages without losing its anti-imperialist edge or sight of the goal of complete independence at any stage. In this strategy, ideological struggle and popular consciousness and the political activity of the masses play central roles. This strategy bears close resemblance to the strategy of war of position as put forward and elaborated by Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist thinker. In fact, the Indian national movement was perhaps the only historical actualisation of Gramsci’s strategic vision. Our—mine and my co-workers’—analytical framework incorporates the theoretical advances made by Gramsci and under his influence by Marxists the world over. This framework also owes a lot to the understanding and perspectives of those who participated in the freedom struggle and who had clearly internalised its basic features without necessarily theorising it. As is made clear in the text, Gandhi was “Just as is the case with the study of the Bolshevik Party and Lenin in the Russian Revolution and the role of the Communist Party of China and Mao Ze Dong in the Chinese Revolution. 8 — THE WriTINGS OF BIPAN CHANDRA the fountainhead of the strategy, though previous leaders from Dadabhai Naoroji to Lokamanya Tilak had contributed to its evolution. Unlike Lenin and Mao Ze Dong, his two great contemporary strategists of revolu- tion, Gandhi was not given to putting forward theoretical formulations. But strewn among his writings and interviews, especially during the years 1933-42, are brilliant strategic formulations which combined with his concrete political activity add up to a coherent whole. Basic to Gandhian strategy was arousing and relying upon the energy and creativity of the masses and the cadre of the movement. Non-violence was also no personal fad or consequence of the ‘bourgeois character’ of the national movement. It was basic to the Gandhian strategy and its reliance upon massive mass movements. | have also drawn attention to the role that constitutional activity and constructive work play in this strategy, especially the capacity of the national movement to utilise the constitutional space without getting coopted, and the critical importance of constructive work, especially during the ‘passive’ phases, in establishing and maintaining contact with the masses and in absorbing the creative energies of the cadre. The national movement based itself from its beginnings in the 1880s on a critique of colonialism and colonialisation of Indian economy, a pro-poor orientation and a basic commitment to political and economic independence, modern economic development, secularism, democracy and civil liberties, and internalionalism and independent foreign policy. What is perhaps equally important, it constantly evolved in a left-ward direction under the impact of socialist ideas, individuals and groups. At the same time, as a whole, it remained despite contending trends under the hegemony of bourgeois or capitalist developmental perspective. But I have suggested that this was not inevitable. There were many features of the movement and its dominant leadership which created openings for the transformation of the movement towards socialist ideological hegemony. That this did not happen was the result of a complex of forces, including the failure of the left to grasp the character of the Gandhian strategy and ideological framework and to relate to them in a creative and meaningful manner, simultaneously absorbing, developing and transcending them, and thus failing to give the movement a socialist orientation. In conclusion, it is suggested that the experience of the Indian struggle, or rather national liberation revolution, and especially of its  THE LONG-TERM Dynamics 9 strategic practice, has a particular significance for movements for social transformation and changes in state structure in democratic, semi- democratic or democratic-type hegemonic states and societies. In that sense, it is comparable to the significance of the British, French, Russian, Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions. Ideological and Programmatic Dynamics The Indian national movement was basically the product of the central or primary contradiction of colonial India, the contradiction between colonialism and the interests of the Indian people. This was its material basis. Its primary long-term dynamic was provided by the fact that it arrived at, and based itself on, a correct grasp of this primary contradiction. On this basis and the basis of its perception of the common interests of the Indian people as also their social experience as a colonised people, it evolved an all-sided understanding of Indian realities and gradually generated, formed and crystallised a clear-cut anti-colonial ideology. It evolved a clear, scientific and firm understanding and analysis of colonialism and the primary contradiction of Indian society and made it visible to the Indian people. Already during the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the seed-time of Indian nationalism, the founding fathers of the national movement had worked out a clear understanding of the three modes of colonial surplus extraction or exploitation: (a) directly through taxation, plunder and large-scale employment of Englishmen; (6) unequal trade by making India a hinterland for the production and sale of raw materials and purchase of metropolitan manufactures; (c) investment of British-owned capital. In the drain theory they had evolved a powerful economic instrument for laying bare the overall mechanism of colonial surplus appropriation. They had further grasped that the essence of colonialism lay in the subordination of the Indian economy and society as a whole to the needs of the British economy and society, and that India’s colonial relationship was not an accident of history or a result of political policy but sprang rather from the very character of 10 ~=THE WaiTiINGS OF BIPAN CHANDRA British society and India’s subordination to it.’ This understanding of the complex economic mechanism of modern imperialism was further advanced after 1918 under the impact of the anti-imperialist mass movements and the spread of Marxist ideas. ‘The nationalist leadership also grasped that the central contradiction could be resolved only through the transformation (the Moderate belief) or overthrow of colonial economic relations. Moreover, at each stage of its development, it linked its political analysis to the analysis of colonialism. The anti-colonial world-view was further strengthened by the development of a foreign policy based on anti-colonialism in other parts of the world. Our interviews with freedom fighters show that this anti-colonial worldview was fully internalised by the lower-most cadre of the national movement as also by large segments of Indian people.* Thus, the They were perhaps the first—and certainly before Hobson or Lenin—to evolve a detailed economic critique of colonialism. ’That the peasants did indeed understand and appreciate nationalist ideas is clear from the report of the India League Delegation that toured the villages in 1932. Refuting the Simon Commission’s understanding that the masses in India were attracted not by ‘abstract political ideas’ but by the personalities of leaders like Gandhi, the India League Delegation noted: “The awakening in the villages is no doubt to a great extent due to personalities like Gandhi, Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Vallabhbhai Patel, Purshottamdas Tandon, Jawaharlal Nehru, Kelapan, and others. But these men have made their appeal on the basis of ideas and facts.... We tested for ourselves in a number of places the extent to which the villager has appreciated the issues, and understood the causes.... We found that the economic and social issues were very live ones. We heard about poverty, taxation, foreign exploitation, neglect of education and all the other factors that are at the back of India’s resistance. We found out that the villagers knew what the Congress stood for, and also that they had no illusion about the enormity of the task before the country.... We went on to talk about Swaraj and why they wanted it. We suggested in great detail that their condi- tions would be better if they had more schools, roads and other facilities, if their taxes were lightened and that to win Swaraj was merely a political business. We expected this to go down and to be told that the material improvements we suggested were all that they really wanted. Instead, an old man who was a working agriculturist himself, told us that Swaraj was a matter of self-respect, freedom and self-power. Also he felt quite sure that without “self-power” the conditions which we had mentioned would not be obtained.’ Report of the India League Delegation, reproduced as ‘Village Repression by British Rulers’, in Peasant Struggles in India, A. R. Desai, Bombay: Oxford University Press, 1979, pp. 305-6.  THE LONG-TERM DYNAMICS 11 primary contradiction provided the material or structural basis of the national movement and its grasping through the anti-colonial ideology its ideological basis. This opened the way to a firm and consistent anti-imperialist movement which could follow highly flexible tactics precisely because of its rootedness in and adherence to the anti-colonial principle. This also partly explains why the Indian national movement did not waver or surrender before imperialism as did the seemingly more militant movements like those of China from 1911 to 1927. It also made it difficult for colonial authorities to coopt it even when it was following extremely mild politics under the leadership of Dadabhai Naoroji, Ranade, Pherozeshah Mehta, Surendranath Banerjea and G. K. Gokhale.’ On the other hand, once the ideological basis of colonial rule was challenged and eroded, the rise of a militant anti-imperialist movement became inevitable and was a mere matter of time. In this context, the role of ideology as a basic element of the dynamics of any popular movement needs to be emphasised. The Base- Superstructure relationship and the political dynamics in the case of a movement are very different from those in a situation of static politics. The politics of the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution, or the popular national liberation movements of Asia, Africa and Latin America (say China, India, Vietnam, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Algeria, Cuba or Nicaragua) or the popular, national resistance movements of Yugoslavia, Italy or France or the Warsaw Ghetto or other countries of occupied Europe cannot be understood by applying the same tools as are used to analyse the factional politics of the reign of George the Third, or Tammany Hall, or Mayor Daley’s Chicago, Mr Reagan, Mrs Thatcher or present-day Bihar, Uttar Pradesh (UP) or Tamil Nadu (TN)—though it seems to us that the intellectual tools of Pareto, Mosca, and structuralism- functionalism have failed in a basic manner even in these cases. What is more important, ideology and ideological preparation are important in any form of popular, mass-based struggle; they are, however, of crucial importance in a hegemonic struggle (which is what we hope to show the Indian freedom struggle was), since the material resources 9On the other hand, the colonial authorities could not only easily conciliate and accept the political demands of the Muslim League in 1907 but even accept the class demands and thus quieten the militant peasants involved in the Indigo Revolt, the Pabna Uprising and the Deccan Agrarian Riots. 12 THE WritiNGS OF BIPAN CHANDRA play here a lesser role, and are, in any case, concentrated in the hands of the dominant side; and the people have, in any case, and first of all, to come to know who the enemy is, and what the central contradiction is. Moreover, passive support or opposition or voting for and against are one thing; but active opposition involving immense sacrifice cannot be offered only on the basis of exploitation or a sense or knowledge of exploitation. It requires strong, very strong ideological commitment. One reason why many scholars today fail to understand the role of ideology as a basic element of the anti-imperialist movements is the fact that in their own societies the area of common national interests has now been shrinking for decades. Consequently, nationalism has often been used in their societies as a mere ‘ideology’ or false consciousness or a form of ‘bamboozlement of the people—by the ruling classes and their ideologues. But in colonial societies, such common national interests did and do exist—because of and against colonialism or its heritage, because of the primary or central contradiction. Nationalist (or anti-imperialist or national liberationist) ideology is here a prime mover of history, for even the primary contradiction can be resolved and the people mobilised around it only on the basis of a nationalist, anti-colonial ideology. For the same reason, one does not take even the first step towards understanding an anti-colonial movement without studying, analysing and grasping the central contradiction and the nationalist, anti-colonial ideology. The basic weakness of the neo-colonial schools—and the reason they have to be characterised as neo-colonial—lies precisely in the fact that they ignore, if not deny, the central causative roles that the central contradiction and the anti-imperialist ideology play in the rise and development of the national liberation struggle of the colonial people, in this case the Indian people. Inevitably, they fall back on the contention ‘that Indian nationalism is a myth cloaking what is no more than faction, patronage and collaboration’. Along with the anti-colonial worldview, certain other ideological elements provided the programmatic dynamics of the Indian national movement. These constituted the broad socio-economic-political vision of the  THE LONG-TERM DyNAmMiCS 13 national leadership. Broadly speaking, this vision was that of bourgeois or capitalist, independent economic development and a secular, republican, democratic, civil libertarian political order, both the economic and political order to be based on principles of social equality. Interestingly, this vision was to remain unquestioned till 1947 (or even to this day); all questioning and controversy was to be confined to the capitalist character of the economic order. The nationalist movement was fully committed to parliamentary democracy and civil liberties.'° It provided the soil and climate in which these two could dig deep roots. From its foundation the INC was organised along democratic lines. From the beginning the nationalists fought every inch of the way against attacks by the colonial authorities on the freedom of the Press, speech and association and other civil liberties. One of the brightest spots in the record of the Congress Ministries during 1937-39 was the visible, massive extension of civil liberties. In fact, civil liberties and parliamentary democracy and the associated parliamentary practices were indigenised during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries not so much by the colonial regime as by the national movement and the nationalist intelligentsia. Civil liberties and democracy in their turn opened the way to the deepening of the social base of the national movement as well as to the evolution of a hegemonic strategy of anti- colonial struggle. Secularism was from the beginning made a basic constituent of the nationalist ideology and strong emphasis laid on Hindu-Muslim unity. Caste oppression was opposed and after 1920 abolition of untouch- ability made a basic constituent of the programme and political work of the national movement. The cause of women was taken up actively. ‘Highness and lowness’ in society was made a target of general attack. The multi-faceted diversity of the Indian people was fully recognised. That India was not yet a developed or structured nation, but a nation- in-the-making, was accepted and made the basis of ideological work and 'ONehru’s commitment to civil liberties is well known. Here is a quotation from Gandhi: ‘Civil liberty consistent with the observance of non-violence is the first step towards swaraj. It is the breath of political and social life. It is the foundation of freedom. There is no room there for dilution or compromise. It is the water oflife. I have never heard of water being diluted’, CWMG, vol. 69, p. 356. For his definition of civil liberty, see Ibid., p. 402. 14 ~=THe WaritinGs OF BIPAN CHANDRA agitation. The contribution of the objective process of the economic and administrative unification of India under colonial rule was clearly seen. In fact, one reason why the Moderates supported the continuation of British rule despite their sharp critique of economic colonialism was the desire that this process should not be interrupted. It was also grasped that common subjection to colonial rule provided the material and emotional basis for nation-making and that, since nation was not given as a prior datum to the national movement, one of the functions of the movement was to structure a nation through a common struggle against colonialism, that the political and ideological practices of the movement would play a crucial role in the process of nation-in-the-making. Furthermore, it was clearly understood that the objective of unifying the Indian people into a nation was to be realised by taking full account of regional, religious, caste, ethnic and linguistic differences. The cultural aspirations of the different linguistic groups were given full recognition. The Congress and the national movement were fully committed to the development of India on the basis of modern industry and agricul- ture. Moreover, they emphasised the objective of independent econo- mic development including independence from foreign capital, the creation of an independent capital goods sector and the foundation of independent science and technology. In the late 1930s, the objective of economic planning was widely and universally accepted. The ideological commitment to these objectives was further strengthened and not weakened during the Gandhian era, though it may be added that Gandhi's stand on large-scale industry has been grossly distorted. He repeatedly said that he was not opposed to modern large-scale industry so long as it augmented, and lightened the burden of, human labour and not displaced it and was owned by the state and not private capitalists." ''For example, at the end of 1938, thirty economists had a discussion with Gandhi on his economic philosophy. ‘Are you against large-scale production?’ they asked. Gandhi replied: ‘I never said that. This belief is one of the many superstitions about me. Half of my time goes in answering such things. But from scientists I expect better knowledge. Your question is based on loose newspaper reports and the like. What I am against is large-scale production of things villagers can produce without difficulty.’ ‘Do you think that cottage industries and big industries can be harmonized?’ they asked. ‘Yes,’ said Gandhi, ‘if they are planned so as to help the villages. Key industries, industries which the nation needs, may be centralized... Supposing the  THE LONG-TERM DYNAMICS 15 The world outlook of the Congress and the national movement was also a powerful aspect of the dynamics of Indian nationalism. Over the years, the nationalists evolved a policy of opposition to imperialism on a world scale, and of expressing and establishing solidarity with the anti-imperialist movements in other parts of the world. From the 1870s, they made an effort to establish solidarity with, and get the support of, the anti-imperialist sections of British public life and firmly established the notion that the Indians hated imperialism but not the British. (This principle of non-hatred of the colonising people was to provide a powerful moral underpinning to the national movement and make the members of the ruling apparatuses pay a high price in terms of their own self-image whenever they adopted ferocious measures to suppress the satyagrahas. \t also kept Indian nationalism firmly rooted to anti- imperialism without degenerating into ‘reverse’ racism of any kind.) They also established general links with the progressive anti-colonial and anti-capitalist forces of the world from Hyndman and the Labour Party’s left-wing to the International Socialist Congress, the League against Imperialism, the Soviet Union and the Comintern. The Congress took a clear-cut anti-Fascist stand in the 1930s and gave active support to the anti-Fascist struggles of Ethiopia, Spain, Czechoslovakia and the Jewish people and the national liberation struggle of the Arabs against British imperialism and the Chinese against Japanese imperialism. In the 1920s they asked Indian soldiers not to join British imperialism in suppressing the Chinese Revolution and in the 1930s repeatedly asked Indians to boycott Japanese goods. Basic to the dynamics of the national movement was the fact that from the beginning it adopted a pro-poor orientation and accepted and propagated a programme of reforms that was quite radical by contemporary standards and was basically oriented towards the people. Compulsory primary education, lowering of taxation on the poor and lower middle classes, state controlled paper-making and centralized it, I would expect it to protect all the paper that villages can make.’ CWMG, vol. 68, pp. 258-59. 16 THE WRITINGS OF BIPAN CHANDRA reduction of salt tax, land revenue and rent, debt relief and provision of cheap credit to the agriculturists, protection of tenant rights, workers’ right to a living wage and a shorter working day, higher wages for low- paid employees in the colonial bureaucracy including the policemen, defence of workers’ and peasants’ right to organise themselves, protection and promotion of village industries, eradication of the drink evil, improvement in the social position of women, including their right to work and education and to equal political rights, legal and social measures for abolition of untouchability, and reform of the machinery of law and order were some of the major reformist demands taken up by the nationalist movement. What is equally important, at no stage was the Congress content with its existing character. It went on continuously defining itself further and further in a radical direction in terms of the popular element. Increasingly, freedom was defined in socio-economic terms which went far beyond mere absence of foreign rule. By the late 1930s, the Indian national movement was one of the most radical national liberation movements. Starting with Dadabhai Naoroji, the pro-poor orientation was immensely strengthened with the coming of Gandhi and the growth of a powerful Left during the late 1920s and the 1930s. It found full reflection in the resolutions at Karachi, Lucknow and Faizpur and in the Election Manifestoes of 1936-37 and 1945-46 and a partial reflection in the economic and social reforms of the Congress Ministries. During the 1930s and the 1940s even the Congress right-wing was committed to basic changes in political and economic power. Even the anti-class war resolution passed by the Working Committee in 1934 stood on the ground of the Karachi resolution.'? Important in this respect was the development of Gandhi in a radical direction. His life work was, of course, always based on the alleviation of the plight of those ‘toiling and unemployed millions who do not even get a square meal a day and have to scratch along with a piece of stale (bread) and pinch of salt’.'* The entire edge of his constructive programme was directed against the poverty of the rural and urban masses. In 1933, he agreed with Nehru that ‘without a material revision of vested interests the condition of the masses can never be improved’, and that Tendulkar, Mahatma, vol. 3, p. 277. Gandhi, Socialism ofMy Conception, p. 255.  THE LONG-TERM DyNAMICS 17 ‘we should range ourselves with the progressive forces of the world’.'4 The most remarkable development was his shift towards agrarian radicalism. At the end of 1937, he said:!> Real socialism has been handed down to us by our ancestors who taught: “All land belongs to Gopal, where then is the boundary line? Man is the maker of the line and he can therefore unmake it.” Gopal literally means shepherd; it also means God. In modern language it mean the State, i.e., the people. That the land today does not belong to the people is too true. But the fault is not in the teaching. It is in us who have not lived up to it. I have no doubt that we can make as good an approach to it as is possible for any nation, not excluding Russia, and that without violence.... Land and all property is his who will work it. Unfortunately the workers are or have been kept ignorant of this simple fact. Similarly, in June 1942 Gandhi told Louis Fischer in answer to his question: ‘What is your programme for the improvement of the lot of the peasantry? that ‘the peasants would take the land. We would not have to tell them to take it. They would take it’. And when Fischer asked, “Would the landlords be compensated,’ he replied: “No. That would be fiscally impossible.’ Fischer asked: “Well, how do you actually see your impending civil disobedience movement?’ Gandhi replied: ‘In the villages, the peasants will stop paying taxes. They will make salt despite official prohibition.... Their next step will be to seize the land.’ “With violence?’ asked Fischer. Gandhi replied: “There may be violence, but then again the landlords may cooperate... They might cooperate by fleeing.’ Fischer said that the landlords ‘might organize violent resistance’. Gandhi's reply was: “There may be fifteen days of chaos, but I think we could soon bring that under control.’ Did this mean, asked Fischer, that there must be ‘confiscation without compensation?’ Gandhi replied: ‘Of course. It would be financially impossible for anybody to compensate the landlords.’'® 4“CWMG, vol. 55, p. 427. 'Tbid., vol. 64, p. 192. 'Ibid., vol. 76, pp. 437, 445-46. 18 THe WaritTiNGs OF BIPAN CHANDRA We may also point out that the basic and increasing radical commit- ment of Gandhi has not been properly understood by historians, as also some of his contemporary radicals, because his idiom was very different from that of the European Liberal-Labour radicals or the Marxists. But his followers had little difficulty in understanding what he was saying. Our interviews with grass-root Gandhian workers show that they followed Gandhi precisely because they saw a socio-economic and political radical in him.” In the 1930s and 1940s their major difference with the Socialists and Communists was not regarding their radical economic programme but on the question of non-violence. The pro-poor orientation imparted a dynamic cutting edge to the national movement in the hands of Nehru, Subhas, the Socialists, Com- munists and other left-wing elements who were a powerful, growing and basic constituent of the INC in the 1930s. To sum up: The anti-colonial ideology combined with the vision of a civil libertarian, democratic, secular, socially radical, economically developing, independent and united polity and the pro-poor radical orientation enabled the Congress to base the national movement on the masses and mass mobilisation and to give it the character of a popular, people’s movement. Strategy A very basic aspect of the dynamics of the national movement was the strategy it adopted in its struggle against colonial rule. The capacity of a people to struggle depends not only on the fact of exploitation and domination and on its comprehension by the people but also on the '’For example, interviews with Chhotubhai Gopalji Desai, Puni, Bardoli, Gujarat, 25-6-1985, and Chhotubhai Nathubhai Rathore, Khoj, Bardoli, Gujarat, 24-6-1985. Nehru was another radical who understood this. In his address at Lucknow in March 1936, Nehru feelingly referred to Gandhi's ‘passionate desire for Indian independence and the raising of our poverty-stricken masses which consumes him’. For further discussion, see S. Gopal, ed., Jawaharlal Nehru, Selected Works, vol. 7, p. 195.  THE LONG-TERM DYNAMICS 19 costs or the people's perception of the costs the struggle might involve and the strategy and tactics on which the struggle is based. Strategy is crucial to the development of the capacity to struggle; and a successful strategy must be, and must appear to be, feasible and effective and based on the capacity of the people to bear the cost. A focus on the over-all strategy of the Indian national movement has been lacking in almost all the existing studies of the movement, and it might thus appear that the Indian national movement had no strategy at all! We believe, however, that the weakness has been more in the perceptions of the historians than in the practice of the movement. The Indian national movement was not merely a conglomeration of different struggles or an amalgam of pragmatic politics but was based on a specific, though largely untheorised, strategy of struggle for a basic change in state power; and its various constituent struggles, phases, constitutional activities, constructive work, basic political decisions, forms of struggle, non-voilence, etc. were integral parts of this strategy. It is the historian’s task, we believe, to bring out and analyse this strategy and its basic elements, etc. and to examine the extent of its adequacy or inadequacy in terms of the achievement or the objectives of the movement. Though large elements of this strategy were evolved during the Moderate and Extremist phases of the movement, it was structured and came to fruition during the Gandhian phase of the movement and in Gandhi's political practice. We will, therefore, in our discussion on strategy, concentrate basically on this period. And because of Gandhi's dominant position as ‘the generalissimo’ of the movement, as he often described himself, the spotlight has to be turned on him. Both friends and foes have concentrated on his philosophy of life, but his philosophy of life had only a limited impact—it extended at the most to a few hundred thousand. But it is as a political leader whose political strategy and tactics and techniques of struggle moved millions into political action and were his basic contribution to Indian history—and perhaps world history—that he needs to be studied. Though a brilliant intellectual and thinker and a voluminous writer, he was, unlike his two major contemporaries, Lenin and Mao, not given to detailed theorising. His strategy and the strategy of the movement he led have therefore to be derived from a study of the actual movement and not from the written word, though sometimes his spoken and written word has shown us the way. For the same reason, our 20 ~~ THE WRITINGS OF BIPAN CHANDRA own study is based on the perception of the participants in the struggle via interviews with grass-roots, village- and taluka-level political workers as also with some who were already working at the time as district or provincial leaders. Two more general remarks. The nationalist strategy was based on the logic of the state against which it was directed and on its own logic as a mass movement. It was also the product of the specific history of a people and their psychology. It continuously evolved by critically incorporating the ongoing practice of the movement itself,’* and was constantly open to development in response to changes in the adversary’s strategy and tactics.'? Surprisingly, the contemporary or later left-wing critics of Gandhi have neither made an effort to understand this strategy, nor have they subjected it to a serious critique from the perspective of an alternative strategy. An effective critique of Gandhian leadership and its tactics at any specific period of time or its stand on particular political issues could have been made only if the critique extended to and was based on an understanding of the Gandhian strategy. Then alone could its strong and weak points have been understood and its historical effectivity seriously challenged or accepted. The neo-colonial historians also do not recognise the existence of any strategic perspective in the national movement, for the simple reason that their historiographic framework does not recognise the Indian national movement as a mass movement or ‘war’ against colonialism. Further, since they believe that the political initiative throughout emanated from the British, and the nationalists at each stage did nothing but respond to it, they cannot possibly conceive of the national movement as having a strategic design of its own. '*That he was not unaware of the specificity in time and space of his strategy is evident from what Gandhi told a Chinese delegation on the last day of December 1938: ‘I should love to be able to say to the Chinese definitely that their salvation lay only through non-violent technique. But then it is not for a person like me, who is outside the fight, to say to a people who are engaged in a life-and-death struggle, “Not this way, but that”. They would not be ready to take up the new method, and they would be unsettled in the old. My interference would only shake them and confuse their minds.’ CWMG, vol. 68, p. 262. Tbid., vol. 69, p. 60.  THE LONG-TERM DYNAMICS 21 ‘The nationalist strategy was based on a particular understanding of the specific nature and character of British rule and the colonial state and its policies. First of all, as we have already shown, the exploitative and dominational aspect of colonialism was fully grasped. But it was also realised that the colonial state was semi-hegemonic, semi-authoritarian in character. It was not like Hitler's Germany, or Tsarist Russia, or Chiang Kai-shek’s China, or Batista’s Cuba, or Samoza’s Nicaragua, or Portuguese Mozambique, or even French Algeria or Vietnam. Its character could perhaps be best described as legal authoritarianism. The colonial state was simultaneously hegemonic and suppressive, civil and ‘semi-fascist’.