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From Socialist Appeal, Vol. 5 No. 2, 11 January 1941, p. 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
(The author of this article is a comrade from Ceylon who is now in England.)
LONDON (By Mail) – A few weeks ago, Pandit Nehru, chief disciple of Mahatama Gandhi, was sentenced to four years imprisonment, for asking his white masters for a little more of the pie: more opportunity for the black capitalist to exploit India.
Let us not weep or laugh, but try to understand, for while we support every move against British imperialism in India, we know at the same time that it is not the India bourgeoisie which is going to solve the problem of India. Ever since Nehru Was sentenced, middle-class intellectuals, democrats and the lackeys of Moscow in Great Britain have each in their own style emptied buckets full of sentiment on the cultured, ex-Cambridge Pandit. That Nehru has taken as his symbol in the struggle against British imperialism the pious goat of Gandhi, and not the hammer and sickle, seems to delight them.
Of course nothing has been said of the 4,000 militant workers and peasants who have been jailed in rat holes of prisons during the past few months. “Release Nehru and Britain stands to gain more” is the policy of the bourgeois lackeys. “First Nehru then we” is the policy of the Communist Party.
India, with a population of’ 353 millions, has an area of 1,808,000 square miles. The workers are distributed as follows: 66% in agriculture, 18% in trade, transport and industry, 7% in domestic service, 3% in public administration, 5% in unproductive occupations. Thus we are able to visualize the structure of India society. A small class at the top (about a million consisting of wealthy land owners, and others living on private incomes). Below them is the middle-class (15 millions composed of clerks, teachers and small businessmen, traders, students, and others). Then come the vast bulk of the hungry masses, in two categories: (a) 70 million peasant-cultivators and (b) workers of all other occupations. 90% of the people live, in villages, of which there are 700,000, Each village is a muddle of mud huts. Needless to say, the basis of the social structure is agriculture.
The total area of British India is 687 million acres. 22% of this land is totally unfit for cultivation, 13% is covered with forests (state owned), and 7% in current fallow. The land used for arable farming is 232 million acres, i.e. 35 per cent of the whole. 80% of the land cultivated is given to cereals, pulses (leguminous plants), and sugar (the latter chiefly for export). Dividing the total area of land cultivated by the number of cultivators, We get an average Of about 2½ acres per agriculturist. These holdings consist of isolated fragments.
The cardinal disability of the peasant is the existing division and distribution of land, along with the tremendous taxation imposed. The peasant is burdened with enormous taxes; one to the state, and the other to the landlord. Therefore the peasant who gets a salary of about eight shillings month pays about four shillings in the form of tax. As a result, all of them are heavily in debt, arid the debt was estimated at about $900 millions in 1937.
On the other hand are the landlords, Who between them hold about 75% of the agricultural land. There are two types: (1) Those who were put in possession of vast estates by the British as a matter of political expediency; (2) Those who have acquired ownership by purchase or otherwise during the last 100 years. More than five-sevenths of the cultivatable land is today in the hands of one-third of the landlords.
The industrial workers are composed of expropriated peasants. Nearly 50% of them work in the textile factories where the wages are 4 to 5 pence a day, for 12 to 14 hours work, in the mines they are paid 7 to 8 pence a day for 14 to 15 hours work. In industries like the TATA Works the wages are the same, and in the plantations they are no better. These low wages have put the workers, like the peasants, into heavy debt to the tune of several hundred millions of dollars. With the exception of an insignificant minority composed of the landlords, the princes and the white bourgeoisie, the average per capita income of the remainder of the population – nearly 348 millions out of 353 – works but at £4 16 shillings, a year, i.e. £24 per family of five.
With this despotic rule imposed on India by Britain, the Government of Churchill dares to speak of the loyalty of India to the Crown. On the other hand the Stalinists speak of a free India under Nehru and Gandhi, two marionettes who dangle from the strings of the mill owners. While we could ignore the wishful thinking of the fast-crumbling ruling clique in Britain, the treachery of the Comintern must be unmasked, if we are to avoid a more bloody massacre of the masses than in Spain.
The Indian National Congress which Nehru represents was from its inception a bourgeois movement. The expansion of British capital created in the process a class of Indian middlemen who grew rather rapidly and invested their wealth first in land, and later in industrial enterprises. The economic conflict arose between the imperialists and the rich landowning class with regard to revenue, and the policy of the British in heavily taxing the young native industries and upholding the monopoly of foreign capital. This resulted in the forming of the Indian National Congress.
The Congress knew that if they were to get any concessions from their British masters, they had to have the support of the masses: Therefore they maneuvered and struggled ceaselessly for two ultimately incompatible ends: (1) To gain ascendancy over the mass movement and (2) To win the revolutionary elements among both the workers and peasants over for Congress aims, and divert them from the economic struggle.
Thus the policy of Congress – (a) non-violent, non-cooperation; (b) boycott of British goods; (c) civil disobedience. The advocacy of non-violence was a method of holding back any revolutionary tendency of the masses, and protecting the property interests of the landowners. The boycott of British goods was of very great financial advantage to the mill owners, and as long as it remained a passive resistance movement no harm could come to the India bourgeois; but it was a powerful lever to use against the British. The outcome of this criminal policy has been, as is well known, a history of sell-outs and compromises against the millions of India.
It is obvious that the telescoped development of Indian capitalism, due to the presence of a ruthless master, does not permit the native capitalists to play even the role their counterparts played in the struggle against feudalism in Europe. India is left with only one road on which to travel, the road of permanent revolution; for only the industrial workers in alliance with the peasants can play the revolutionary role vital to the success of the Indian struggle.
There is, however, a very great significance in the recent events in India. We know that without mass pressure Congress would never have begun even individual civil disobedience. We know this also in advance: the second wave will hot have by far the peaceful, almost good-natured pious character, that the first has had. It will be more mature, more stubborn and harsh, for it will arise from the disillusionment of the workers and peasants in the policy of the Congress and their own initial venture.
The conclusion is inescapable. There is today in India the burning need of a program, an organization, a plan and a staff, under the banner of the revolutionary Marxism of Lenin and Trotsky: under the banner of the Fourth International.
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