ON CHARACTER OF INDIAN SOCIETY.
Com. P.Jaswantha Rao.
Four decades have passed since the Communist Revolutionaries broke away from neo revisionism. One of the basic differences that demarcated CRs from the neo-revisionism was and still now is the assessment of the character of Indian society as semi-feudal and semi-colonial one. The neo-revisionists maintained that India is politically independent and capitalist with remnants of feudalism.
Even today many of the CRs maintain that India is a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. Yet there prevailed confusion about the understanding of semi-feudal and semi-colonial nature and its interrelation and operation. Because of this confusion time and again many questions are being raised about the character, its existence and operation. During these four decades many developments appeared in the Indian society. How to understand these changes? Have they affected the basic nature of Indian society?
The bourgeois propaganda machine has been spreading that feudalism was relegated to history and India is a capitalist country aspiring to become world power corroborating the aspirations of Indian big bourgeoisie which came off its age and is able to compete in the international market. Does the changes that occurred during the last four decades warrants such a conclusion?
When we discuss about the character of Indian society, we can not discuss feudalism and imperialism as separate entities. From the beginning they are interrelated.
When we look into the feudalism in India, we are aware that it differs from European feudalism in many respects. The Asiatic mode of production that prevailed in India before the advent of colonial conquest was destroyed by the British rule. On the other hand, the British reconstructed Indian society in such a fashion that it serves the colonial subjugation and plunder. With the introduction of railways, the British sowed the seeds of capitalist relations in India. At the same time in agrarian sector, which had no right of property in land, they imposed zamindari and ryotwari land tenure systems. In both the systems land was considered as private property and commodity and was placed in the hands of landlords. Thus the Indian feudal system was created and nurtured by the colonial power and acted as a conduit to siphon off wealth from rural India to colonial metropolis. It acted as the social base for the colonial power.
On the other hand, by creating Zamindari and other forms of intermediaries, the British created buffer tier between it and the people so as to insulate the colonial power from the direct onslaught on the people. When the wrath of the people threatens to bring down the zamindari, the colonial power intervened to suppress the revolt. Moreover, utilizing the feudal system it imposed upon India as its social base had helped colonialism in more than one way. One of the major benefits was the plunder that led to the accumulation of capital on a huge scale in Europe. This accumulated wealth from the colonies had played a major role in transforming the capitalism into its highest stage, imperialism.
Thus India was a colony and feudal society with capitalist relations scattered here and there under the British rule. In the process of development of mercantile capitalism into Imperialism, the British started some industries like cotton ginning, jute and textiles etc. In the course, the British rule gave birth to a local merchant class that thrived on supplying raw materials to industries and selling the British industrial products.
While the railways and other industries gave birth to the working class, it also created a middle class for its administrative needs. To meet these needs it introduced modern education which brought progressive and democratic ideas to the Indian people.
As the capitalist grows into imperialism, as the finance capitals gain upper hand on the economy, and as the world capitalist system mired in the crisis leading to the world war, Industrialization has accelerated with mercantile class turning into capitalists acting as compradors to British Bourgeoisie. Thus the capitalist development from the beginning was tied to imperialism with innumerable ties. And the Indian capitalist class was from its inception comprador in nature.
At the height of Indian people’s movement for national liberation, The British colonialists reached a compromise with the big bourgeoisie and the big land lords and turned over their rule to the later with the secret understanding that they basically kept the economic interests of the British colonialist intact.Consequently foreign investments have not only been safeguarded but have been allowed to grow with stupendous speed. Even though certain privileges of feudal princes and zamindars have been abolished, the feudal land system and in its wake feudal class and caste relations have not only been preserved as a whole but in some respects have been strengthened. Added to this has been the increasing dependence of the government on foreign aid. Economical independence has become a mirage. Thus India became a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society.
One may incline to call it as semi-capitalist. But it does not represent the reality. It is natural for the capitalist relations to constantly reproduce themselves and finally break from the shackles of feudalism by destroying it. But here imperialism had an important role. World over the imperialism has lost its progressive role and joined hands with every reactionary classes to perpetuate its hegemony and exploitation as the fear of being overthrown by the working class revolution overwhelmed it after the Paris Commune and the victory of great October revolution. As the Indian Feudal system was designed and nurtured by imperialism it acted as a faithful servant to imperialism. The capitalist relations in the agriculture were allowed to grow to the extent that it would facilitate the exploitation by the imperialism.
Hence capitalist relations in agriculture have no future of its own; its fate is sealed by imperialism. They could not grow on their own to the level of destroying the feudal society and develop the Indian Society into a capitalist one. Taking this reality into cognizance, we characterized it as semi-feudal as its overthrow only can move the Indian society on the path of progress.
After the transfer of power, The Indian ruling classes were forced to adopt certain anti-feudal measures under the pressure of anti-feudal heroic struggles waged by the Indian Peasantry. Prominent among them was heroic Telangana peasant armed struggle. The new Indian regime while drowned the peasant movements in blood, sought to sow illusions among the people. Mouthing the progressive slogans, the Nehru regime enacted Zamindari abolition act, tenancy protection act and later land ceiling act. But these acts were never implemented in the spirit of declared intentions. With innumerable in-built loopholes these gave sufficient scope for landlord sections to retain their hold on the vast tracts of land. Not a single acre land was given to landless poor except those lands which were occupied by the peasants in the course of their struggle.
This policy of duping the people continued for two decades. By 1967, the unrest among peasant masses grew and drawn them into struggles for land. Prominent among them were Naxalbari and Srikakulam struggles. While the congress government suppressed these movements with bullets, it also gave calls to distribute lands to the poor. It amended land ceiling laws and started to call them as land reforms. But the ruling classes had no intention of implementing the revolutionary land reforms that destroys the feudalism and redistribute the land on the basis of land to the tiller.The carrot and stick policy inherited from their colonial rulers was skillfully implemented by the Indian ruling classes.
At the same time the Indian ruling classes and their government adopted the green revolution strategy with all the directions and financial help from imperialism, particularly the US imperialism. This strategy aimed at preventing the revolution from the down trodden by increasing the yield of crops with infusion of technology known as High Yielding Varieties. Actually these HYVs are High Response Varieties’. They increase yields if only the inputs were correspondingly increased. These inputs include water, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and seeds. While the World Bank extended loans and grants to irrigation projects to create pockets of irrigated areas, MNC’s supplied their products such as fertilizers and pesticides and reaped profits. On the whole, the green revolution strategy served as a conduit for the foreign capital to penetrate into agriculture sector. Even by conservative estimates, nearly more than half of the income generated by the increased yields was pocketed by the MNCs.
As Com.T.Nagi Reddy explained in his statement “India Mortgaged”, the bourgeois and landlord government India has taken to the path of gradual transformation of landlord latifundia into bourgeois economy, with all its plans for the supply of seeds, fertilizers, use of pesticides, mechanization of agriculture, extensive funneling of state loans into the landlord economy with the help of immense aid from the international finance. As Lenin has explained this evolution into bourgeois-Junker-landlord economy….. , condemns the peasants to decades of most harrowing expropriation and bondage.
He further explained that, “this is what we are witnessing in our country today. The excruciating pain which the rural economy today is undergoing – the forceful eviction of small peasants and tenants, the growth of concentration of land, increase in the number of agricultural labour, the growing hegemony of upper castes over lower castes – are all symptoms of this growing disease.” He called upon Communist Revolutionaries to firmly oppose this transformation of Feudal Landlordism by supporting the fighting peasantry for the total liquidation of Feudal Landlordism.
The developments in later decades proved that Com.TN was correct.
The crisis in green revolution strategy as it expressed in its failure to sustain the continuous rise of productivity of crops led to wide spread unrest among the peasantry and rural masses. In the absence of genuine democratic and communist leadership, this unrest was channelised by the ruling class sections in late 1970 and 80s. The farmers leaders like Sarad Joshi, Tikayat sing, Nanjundaswamy etc had come on the scene to lead many a struggle. it is a well known fact that the social dynamic factor that contributed to the Khalistan movement in Punjab was the crisis in the green revolution.
The failure of green revolution landed the country in a severe crisis.
The crisis in green revolution strategy as it expressed in its failure to sustain the continuous rise of productivity of crops led to wide spread unrest among the peasantry and rural masses. In the absence of genuine democratic and communist leadership, this unrest was channelised by the ruling class sections in late 1970 and 80s. The farmers leaders like Sarad Joshi, Tikayat sing, Nanjundaswamy etc had come on the scene to lead many a struggle. it is a well known fact that the social dynamic factor that contributed to the Khalistan movement in Punjab was the crisis in the green revolution.
The failure of green revolution landed the country in a severe crisis.
During this period, the industrial base of the Indian society had been widened through of the adoption of public sector as the leader. As clearly observed by Marx in his writings, once the capitalist relations were introduced in a country like India which has all the potential to develop into a capitalist country, nothing could stop the reproduction of these capitalist relations. This gave rise national bourgeoisie mainly in the form of small scale industry. But imperialism with its strangulating hold on the Indian state had been either destroying these rising capitalist relations through uneven competition or adopting them to serve its monopoly interests. Numerous instances can be quoted here how the imperialism amalgamated the indigenous industries or destroyed them. Suffice it to say that as a result the Indian national bourgeoisie could not able to grow beyond certain stages and assert it in terms of its class interests. Thus the emerging capitalist relations in the industrial section were always remained in a deep crisis, living at the mercy of Indian big bourgeoisie and imperialism. On the other hand, the big bourgeoisie continue to be comprador in nature through myriad arrangement in the form joint ventures, technical and financial collaborations. Even though the value of assets and investments by the big bourgeoisie grew phenomenally, their dependence on imperialism also grew proportionally.
In the first half of 1980 decade, the Indian economy faced a severe all-round crisis and the Indian ruling classes turned to the imperialism to extricate them from the crisis. The imperialist financial institutions – World Bank and IMF – started dictating restructuring of Indian economy so as to increase the imperialist plunder many times. The loan taken from the IMF was paid back by the Indira Gandhi government not because the Indian economy had turned around but because of remittances made by the Indian workers toiling in gulf countries. While this was tom-tom as the success of the policies that were implemented, the crisis forced the Indian government to prostrate before their imperialist masters and PV Narasimha Rao’s government embarked on the New Economic policies as designed and dictated by imperialism.
The New Economic Policies had turned the agriculture into economically unviable activity for the poor and middle peasants. Some of these measures are hiking the rates of electricity, fertilizers and irrigation water. The effect of these set of policies was immediately felt by the vast peasant masses. The deep rooted malaise got expressed in the form of suicides by the peasants. The depth and extent of the crisis can be gauged by the very fact that the total number of suicides by farmers surpassed one and a half lakhs in the span of 8 years. Yet the Indian ruling classes and their political representatives were undaunted in their pursuit of the policies dictated by imperialism and started exhorting the virtues of implementation of second stage of economic reforms, particularly in agriculture, second stage of green revolution. This makes it clear that it was a deliberate policy and not an aberration. The aim of this strategy was to implement a set policy that turns the Indian agriculture into an appendage to the imperialist economy. The Indian agriculture shall produce to meet the commercial needs of the agribusiness MNCs and not to meet the needs of the Indian people. By pauperizing the poor and middle peasants through economic levers, the ruling classes intend to push the peasants into contact and/or corporate farming which in practice degrade the peasant to tied producer or farm land supervising the cultivation on behalf of the MNC. The slogan of intensive cultivation and mechanization of agriculture which led to green revolution and the country into an intractable crisis, continue to hold the field with addition of genetically modified seeds which are designed to perpetuate the dependence of agricultural production upon the MNCs for inevitable use of inputs. Thus the penetration of imperialist capital into agriculture will take place with full force.
The effect of these policies has led to the concentration of land in the hands of neo rich sections that amassed wealth by siphoning off the public funds. This concentration is not of the nature of capitalist relation. The land is being increasingly leased out to the peasants at exorbitant rent, which is nothing but extra economic coercion because otherwise land is not available to the peasant who had no other way of employment. The increasing number of rent farming indicates this.
Yes, the form of feudal exploitation had changed; but not the content. The vast masses of peasantry (which includes landless laborers, poor and middle peasants) were forced submit to the exploitation being deprived of means of production that is land. During the last four decades, with the penetration of imperialist capital, the peasant masses are burdened with the additional task of quenching thirst of imperialist sharks.
Hence, the agricultural sector has witnessed many changes, but continues to reel under feudal forms of exploitation and imperialist plunder. The intensity of exploitation had increased many folds withholding any progress of the Indian society towards independent capitalism and the Indian ruling classes along with the imperialism are maintaining status quo to safeguard their rule. Hence the Indian society continues to be semi-feudal in nature.
The new economic policies being implemented as part of globalization strategy of imperialism have brought vast changes in the industrial sector. In pursuit of maximizing profits the imperialism gobbled up the manufacturing sector in India often replacing the Indian big bourgeoisie. The basic sectors like iron and steel, coal, non-ferrous metal, power generation went into the hands of foreign monopoly capitalists. Even in the service sector telecommunications was taken over by the telecom MNCs and the public sector BSNL is up for sale. The most publicized infrastructure projects being implemented are all pocketed by the foreign companies in the name of joint ventures. Foreign capital has occupied commanding heights in the Indian economy. India became a happy hunting ground for every imperialist to plunder our national resources, human labour and financial sources at whatever rate they like. All the imperialist countries are competing with each other to increase their hold on our economy.
The Indian big bourgeoisie has grown; their assets grew at astronomical numbers; their industries grew in numbers. When we dissect each and every investment made by the big bourgeoisie, we will find they were tied with foreign capital with innumerable threads like financial, technical and corporate collaborations. And the foreign capitalist had the final say in running the industry. The big bourgeoisie claims itself as corporate entity, but in fact almost all the big bourgeois houses function as private limited companies in the form of Hindu undivided family; and thus they are in no way answerable to society; even they were not called for disclosing their profits. Despite apparent growth, the growth of Indian big bourgeoisie is stunted because of its comprador nature and it’s dependence on imperialism for its survival. The increase of imperialist hold on the Indian society denotes that it continues to be semi-colonial in nature.
The apparent changes that we are witnessing during the last four decades are brought into effect to meet the changing exploiting needs of imperialism and Indian big bourgeoisie. And thus have not intended to change its status as semi-colony.
Thus India continues as semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. Unless and until the Revolutionary Redistribution of Land basing on the LAND TO THE TILLER is implemented, the feudal relations and their existence will not disappear. Unless and until the imperialist capital was thrown out of the country with its allies, Indian society does progress an inch forward. Imperialism, Feudalism and bureaucratic comprador capitalism are decisive impediments for the progress of Indian Society into a democratic, self reliant and independent society. Only the success of New Democratic Revolution will guarantee such a transformation. It is the duty of Communist Revolutionaries to strive to build united party that provides leadership to the revolutionary strugglers of the Indian people.
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