ON CHARACTER OF INDIAN SOCIETY.

 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 neo-revisionism was and still 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 the Indian big bourgeoisie which came off its age and is able to compete in the international market. Do the changes that occurred during the last four decades warrant such a conclusion?

When we discuss 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 British rule. On the other hand, the British reconstructed Indian society in such a fashion that it served 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 the 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 threatened 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 capitalism into its highest stage, imperialism.

Thus India was a colony and feudal society with capitalist relations scattered here and there under British rule. In the process of the development of mercantile capitalism into Imperialism, the British started some industries like cotton ginning, jute, textiles etc. In the course, British rule gave birth to a local merchant class that thrived on supplying raw materials to industries and selling 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 capitalism grew into imperialism, as the financial capitals gained the upper hand on the economy, and as the world capitalist system mired in the crisis leading to the world war, Industrialization accelerated with the 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 the Indian people’s movement for national liberation, The British colonialists reached a compromise with the big bourgeoisie and the big landlords and turned over their rule to the latter with the secret understanding that they basically kept the economic interests of the British colonialists 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. Economic independence has become a mirage. Thus India became a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society.

One may be inclined 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. The world over imperialism has lost its progressive role and joined hands with every reactionary class 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 the 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 agriculture were allowed to grow to the extent that it would facilitate the exploitation by 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 developing 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 the 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 the Zamindari Abolition Act, the 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 allowed landlord sections to retain their hold on the vast tracts of land. Not a single acre of 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 drew 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 land reforms. However, the ruling classes had no intention of implementing the revolutionary land reforms that destroys feudalism and redistribute the land based on 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 US imperialism. This strategy aimed at preventing the revolution from the downtrodden by increasing the yield of crops with the 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, MNCs supplied their products such as fertilizers and pesticides, and reaped profits. On the whole, the Green Revolution strategy served as a conduit for foreign capital to penetrate into the 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 of India has taken to the path of gradual transformation of landlord latifundia into the 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 that  the rural economy today is undergoing – the forceful eviction of small peasants and tenants, the growth of concentration of land, the increase in the number of agricultural labor, and 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 the green revolution strategy as it expressed in its failure to sustain the continuous rise of productivity of crops led to widespread unrest among the peasantry and rural masses. In the absence of genuinely democratic and communist leadership, this unrest was channelized by the ruling class sections in late 1970s 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 continues to be comprador in nature through myriad arrangement in the form of joint ventures, and 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 public funds. This concentration is not of the nature of capitalist relations. 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 peasants 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 the peasantry (which includes landless laborers, poor and middle peasants) were forced to submit to exploitation being deprived of the means of production that is land. During the last four decades, with the penetration of imperialist capital, the peasant masses have been 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 maintaining the status quo to safeguard their rule. Hence Indian society continues to be semi-feudal in nature.

The new economic policies being implemented as part of the globalization strategy of imperialism have brought vast changes in the industrial sector. In pursuit of maximizing profits 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, and 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 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 labor and financial resources 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 if they were not called for disclosing their profits. Despite apparent growth, the growth of the Indian big bourgeoisie is stunted because of its comprador nature and its dependence on imperialism for its survival. The increase of imperialist hold on 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 the Indian big bourgeoisie. And thus it has not intended to change its status as a semi-colony.

Thus India continues as a semi-feudal and semi-colonial society. Unless and until the Revolutionary Redistribution of Land based 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 to the progress of Indian Society into a democratic, self-reliant, and independent society. Only the success of the New Democratic Revolution will guarantee such a transformation. It is the duty of Communist Revolutionaries to strive to build a united party that provides leadership to the revolutionary struggles of the Indian people.

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INDIAN REVOLUTION - INDIAN COMMUNIST MOVEMENT.

  INDIAN REVOLUTION – INDIAN COMMUNIST MOVEMENT.

Almost a hundred years have passed since the formation of the Communist Party of India. Since its inception, the party has been subjected to repression. This repression was unleashed on the freedom-loving national revolutionaries as well as on the communist fighters who participated in the independence struggle with an anti-imperialist aim. They were implicated in the Peshawar, Lahore, Kanpur, and Meerut conspiracy cases. In the trial of the Kanpur and Meerut conspiracy cases, Communists had not concealed their ideals and causes. They declared that it was not at all a crime to wage the struggle for the liberation of the people of India from the imperialist shackles and to emancipate the toiling masses of workers, peasants, and weaker sections from economic, political and cultural exploitation. They voiced the necessity for the people to organize against feudalism, imperialism, and capitalism.

  We as communists, from 1925 to 1947, and then up to 1952, had built the movements of workers and peasants while participating in the independence movement. We have organized many a militant struggle of the working class. The middle-class employees and teachers got organized under our leadership. We organized the writers and artists with patriotic, democratic, and socialist aims. We fought for the rights of women and made them part of the movement for independence and peace. The communist party established itself as the party of the toiling people with the policies and slogans: oppose fascist war, protect socialism, oppose communalism and national chauvinism, and oppose the attempts of the imperialist, feudal, and capitalist forces to flare up communal, caste and regional clashes among the people.

 Until 1942, for two decades, the party through its hard and untiring work in the face of many repressions got itself identified as the third largest party in the country. It gained wide recognition among the people even amid internal struggles on the policies of the party. The people's movement had reached the level of armed resistance.

 The party worked with a concrete program against feudal ideology. It owned up and brought to light many social reformers and progressive writers. It showed the way for a new culture by promoting it on a wider scale the widow marriages. Social marriages as against the traditional form of marriage. It opposed child marriages and marriages against the will of the girls. It worked for gender equality. The communist party swam against the tide at a time when untouchability, caste discrimination, and blind faiths and practices were prevalent.

 The Communist Party educated the people on how to resist the feudal atrocities: if you do not have a stick in your hand even a goat will bite you; get yourselves armed and fight against caste oppression and communal attacks. It was the party that inculcated consciousness among the people and made them organize around the general slogans of independence, democracy, socialism, and world peace led the people’s movements, and built the organized people's resistance against imperialism and feudalism. The dedicated work without expecting anything in return personally and even laying down their own lives by thousands of party members and hundreds of party cadre were invaluable. We cannot forget the positive impact they have made on the society. The values and commitments established by that generation of communists continue to inspire and are worth emulating to us even today.

 The communist movement means the organizations and the agitations and struggles conducted by the organizations of patriots, democrats, workers, peasants, other toiling people in urban and rural areas, women, youth, students, children, writers, and artists as well as defying the atrocities committed by the exploiting classes and repression by the state. More than this the communist movement means the movement built through the life sacrificing work for a social cause.

 This was one phase. It was the best phase in the communist movement. But it could not march forward. Why it was so? True, it could not march ahead; faced setbacks. Yet the cause of communism is there standing tall before us. With the strength of this cause, we will review the history; learn lessons from it, and march forward.

  The defeat of fascism in the Second World War and the victory of peace-loving, democratic, and communist forces have brought many changes in the world. The victory of the Soviet Union; its reconstruction of the country from the destruction brought by the fascist war; the march of socialist construction; the coming to power of workers' parties in East Europe; the Chinese Revolution at the verge of victory; the rise of peasants and workers struggles in our country; the progress of the party in various sectors – all this had two types of influence on the party leadership and ranks. Subjective thinking had overtaken the dialectical materialist approach. The central leadership of the party led the worker's and peasants movements with two types of guidance. The differences in the political and ideological understandings of the leadership were the reason for this situation. There was a struggle on two or three understandings at the level of central leadership.

 We cannot forget the fact that the root cause for the split in the communist party was the differences in the assessment of the character of the bourgeoisie in India and the ideological differences that arose in the international communist movement. A friendly discussion on these issues can enable us to correct the mistakes in our understanding and show the way for our unity.

 Along with the above issue, there is another crucial issue: the confusion that prevailed in deciding the character of our society. At what stage we are now in the process of development of society from slave to semi-slave to feudal to the semi-feudal, capitalist, and socialist system? The communist movement is plagued with confusion and differences on this issue.

 The character of the big bourgeoisie in India and the process under which the power had come into its hands; its subservient relations with imperialism; the support of imperialism to feudalism and feudal landlords' support to imperialism help each other to withstand or not – does these questions remain as points of difference? Are not serious differences existing in the assessment of these issues?

 Who is the national bourgeoisie? Is it industrialist or big business? Is it the upper middle class and middle class that owns and earns private property? Has not lack of clarity on this issue led to disunity in the party?

 Has not the phenomenon manifested in the leadership of the party that was over-awed by the philosophical thinking of and qualities of the bourgeois leadership of the national movement, blunted our class orientation and the edge of our class struggle? Has not the role of our party as one of the leaders of a national movement been reduced? As a result of this, had not the basic classes of the party – rural toilers and urban workers – run behind the mirage of reforms by the exploiting government? Had not many alien theories raised their ugly heads due to abandoning dialectical and materialist principles in conducting class struggles? Has not the party’s mass base and hold not weakened? In the struggle of the proletariat, who stands by our side, and who takes the side of exploiting classes? Are we deciding on these questions based on class analysis? Are not our capabilities being lost because of alien class outlooks on this issue?

 Many communist sympathizers, well-wishers of the revolutionary movement, and even our adversaries think that personal ambitions, egos, and careerism are the reasons for the inability of communists to remain in one organization. Consequently, pessimism is being expressed. Are there no ideological, political, or organizational reasons for the spread of such tendencies?

 The communist party does not discuss the differences based on ideological principles and class struggles. The discussions are being focused on non-issues and secondary issues.

 Taking this as an advantage, some opportunist intellectuals who vulgarize communist ideas are mixing some progressive ideas with romanticism. They are spreading certain theories and ideas that are anti-Marxist and serve the interests of exploiting classes. They are trying to project themselves as the ‘guides for the misguided communists’. This is a prominent trend today. Our failure to be sufficiently cautious about these intellectuals who maintain close relations with the communists and move around spreading wrong interpretations of communist theories and the histories of class struggle. As a consequence, alien class theories, trends, and practices are creeping into the party and are creating impediments to the process of our development. These forces cannot destroy us, but they remain as hurdles for class struggles and the unity of class movements.

Keeping this whole situation in our view, where to begin our discussions? What are the ideological tenets to formulate clear-cut policies? We have to concentrate on these issues.

 What is the character of Indian society? What is the stage of the Indian revolution? There is a need for deeper and wider discussion on these issues. There is a need for discussions on the feudal and semi-feudal and colonial and semi-colonial characters. Is the understanding of the penetration of capital into the rural economy new? Is then the idea that the entry of capital into rural India would change the nature of Indian society being pushed forward? Then should the communist party adopt achieving socialism as its sole aim and work? If so, have we to change the understanding that imperialism, feudalism, and the comprador bourgeoisie have become the main impediments to the progress of the people of India?

 Then are we proposing to put aside our program of CPI (ML)? No, not at all. Our documents have to be tested in practice. If we let the documents remain as just documents and move in our way, will not our integrity towards our policies be questioned? So, we have to continue our practice based on our party’s documents. At the same time, we are placing the above questions and issues for discussion keeping in view the long-term perspective and the task of rallying and uniting forces on a broader scale. It is not unnatural if questions like: Is it correct to engage in academic discussions and is it necessary to open up Pandora’s Box now etc. to crop up. Yet it will cause no harm to the movement as long as we have enough convictions and commitment towards the cause and practice.

 The confusions being spread by the opportunist theoreticians and intellectuals have been influencing the genuine communists, and Marxist-Leninists and disheartening the well-wishers of the communist movement. So, the above issues are meant for wider discussion. Without keeping aside our practice, discussing the problems faced by the revolutionary movement dispassionately stands as a historic task and responsibility before all the communists today….

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