(c) Lok Awaz Publishers 1996. No Part of this Publication may be reproduced without prior written permission of the publisher.
A thorough-going anti-colonial revolution necessarily means ending the capitalist system and its democracy which has deprived people of their economic and political power. An anti-colonial revolution which is merely a matter of formal independence and not a social revolution has become anachronistic.
The entire experience from the time of the "transfer of power" to the Indian bourgeoisie in 1947, with the division of the Indian sub-continent, especially Bengal and Punjab, has proven that this has not led to deep going transformations. On the contrary, the bourgeoisie has completely obstructed the social revolution, It has been proven that it is capitalism that is the defender of the remnants of feudalism; it is capitalism that is protecting the imperialist and colonial interests; it is capitalism that is the motor behind the bourgeoisie in its globalisation of capital and production. Furthermore, it is capitalism that has caused disaster in the countryside, deepening the agrarian problems, and trampling underfoot the slogan of the patriotic forces of "land to the tiller".
Festering at the base of Indian society at this time are capitalism and the remnants of feudalism, with the superstructure of imperialism and colonial domination. This has made the conditions of life and work for the working class and the toiling masses extremely miserable. More than fifty per cent of the Indian people live in abysmal conditions of poverty, victims of malnutrition, ill health, illiteracy and every kind of disease. The Government of India's entire program of "poverty alleviation" has concentrated on juggling the figures to prove that the percentage of the Indian people living below the poverty line has been decreasing. Official figures now claim that it is less than 20 percent of the population. This juggling itself shows the callousness of the Indian state and its rulers, who define poverty levels on the basis of whether people receive a certain amount of calories a day. It distorts the reality that human beings cannot exist on the basis of a minimum amount of calories a day, It distorts the reality that human beings cannot exist on the basis of a minimum amount of staple food alone. They need other necessities to ensure against malnutrition such as pulses, vegetables, milk and meat; they need potable water, sanitation, health care, proper accommodation and clothes, and a clean, healthy, peaceful and stable environment conductive to living. They need education and culture, and the satisfaction of working for their ever-increasing material and cultural needs.
In India, wherein pulses remain the main form of proteins for the masses, the per capita production of pulses as well as its consumption has been steadily failing in the past 48 years. According to a report of the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad, only in 4 states of India, viz. Karnataka, UP, MP and Rajasthan, is the average intake of pulses above the recommended level of 40 grams a day. The average consumption of milk is 95 ml a day, less than two-thirds of the figure recommended. A study by the National Nutrition Monitoring Board (NNMB) of nutrition patterns inn the countryside shows that between 1975-79 and 1988-90, there was a drastic fall in consumption of pulses, roots and tubers, as well as a fall in consumption of millets and vegetables. The levels of consumption of everything except sugar and cereals were well below the recommended levels, both in 1975-79 and in 1988-1990. Even taking calories as the only measure of defining poverty, except for Punjab, Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, all other states have an average intake below the minimum level suggested to define poverty-2,280 Kcal/cu/day. The studies of the NNMB also show that 60 percent of pre-school children have a calorie intake less than the required level, a proportion higher than for adults.
What these studies do not reveal is the extent of the dehumanisation of our people that has been going on. In states like Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, millions of people are actually forced to eat wild leaves, poisonous roots and pulses with debilitating effects. It is no exaggeration to suggest that life is being steadily snuffed out of the majority of the Indian people. The number of poor are growing with the growth of capitalism; their poverty is increasing in intensity. All that is healthy in Indian society is also being eliminated along with life itself.
In the urban centres, wherein about 25 percent of the Indian people live, over half the population, the working population, live in bestial conditions of life, too difficult to describe. There is no sanitation, no clean drinking water. Back-breaking work in the factories and construction sites, with hardly any nourishment, send the men and women to early deaths, and rob the children at a tender age of their childhood. Estimates show that over 40 million children work for their living at pitiable wages in the most difficult and dangerous work, well before they enter their teens.
The official figures relating to per capita expenditure on health and education by the government show that taking the country as a whole, Rs. 59 is spent per capita on public health, and Rs. 268 on public education. Even these miserably low figures hide more than they reveal. The figures on health conceal that much of the expenditure is on restricting childbirth, on birth control programs. The figure on education buries the extremely low expenditure on primary and secondary education, to say nothing about the "brain drain" that takes place as educated persons head for what they perceive to be greener pastures abroad.
Capitalism has ensured that "development" is extremely skewed when comparing different regions, as well as when comparing the city with the countryside. It has ensured that the remnants of feudalism still torture our people. Agrarian relations in many parts of the country are still feudal, with the landlord the master of all he surveys, including the men, women and children who work for him. Primitive methods of agriculture coexist with the most modern methods, entirely dictated by the need of the bourgeoisie for maximum profits, and its need to protect the feudal relations. It preserves feudal relations to totally intensify capitalist exploitation, to deprive workers of even the "dignity" of being a wage-slave and to totally enslave the toiling masses. The bourgeoisie has kept the barbaric caste system, a system used by all exploiting classes to torture and humiliate men and women and keep them as a source for their pleasure. The policy of elite accommodation is used to maint! ain this system, to set people at logger-heads with one another and use the different communities as vote banks.
For the big industrial houses to keep their profits high, they must coordinate their system and subordinate it to their need for the globalisation of capital and production. This coordination is facilitated by the government. The concentration of capital and production in collaboration and competition with international finance capital is an act of highway robbery which is making the condition of the working class and the broad masses of the people even more onerous. Indian capitalism, a tool created by British colonial rule without which the British would not have survived in India even for a day, has retained all the features of colonialism and imperialism. It is the same in terms of its content as was left by the British colonialists in 1947. The land, labour and resources of the Indian people, of the different regions of India, are considered to be the private property of those who were created by British colonialism, the classes of capitalists and landlords and the feudal elements who collaborated with them. This has heightened the problem of national oppression, as foreign control of the economy has increased since the "transfer of power" in 1947.
It is not accidental that in its drive for maximum profits and to become a global power itself, the Indian bourgeoisie is demanding the opening up of the Indian economy to foreign capital, and the restructuring of the economy to suit the drive of the monopolies for globalisation. This is creating havoc in the Indian economy, wreaking fresh tragedies upon the workers, toiling peasants and others. Since 1990, lakhs of workers have been rendered jobless in the textile and engineering industries, in the coal and steel industries and in other sectors as a result of privatisation and the restructuring of the economy. The GATT treaty and the opening of India's doors to multinationals in agro-business is threatening the livelihood of the peasantry. Capitalism is leading to the ruination of small property owners in the towns and villages all over the country. The credit crunch and soaring interest rates have further accelerated the pace of this ruination of small and medium-scale businesses. Capitalism will lead to the further concentration of land and ruination of the peasantry, intensifying the problem of migration to the cities, the problems of unemployment, housing and anarchy within urban conditions.
At the other pole, in the five years since these reforms were initiated, the wealth of the biggest monopoly houses has grown by leaps and hounds. According to the Centre for Monitoring the Indian Economy, after-tax profits of 743 big Indian corporations (including 25 government-owned companies) increased by 63% in 1994-94, over and above an increase of 70% in the previous year. In other words, profits of these monopolies have multiplied by two and a half times in just two years. The concentration of capital and production is the order of the day, not the alleviation of the poverty of the masses nor the uplifting of society so as to fulfil the claims of all its members.
The system of political control established by the British remains fully intact. This has led to the increasing alienation of the nationalities and tribal peoples as well as to the sharpening of conflicts amongst the bourgeoisie for control of the central state. The central state is nothing but a colonial apparatus entrusted by the native and foreign interests to subjugate the nationalities and tribal peoples and to intensity the exploitation of the working class and toilers of the land.
The political parties in power constituting the ruling classes and their sponsors boast a lot about their policy objectives of doing this thing or that for the working class and the toiling masses. However, what is significant is that they are making no proposals to change the content of relations between people in the process of production. They make no proposals to create a democracy in which it is the people who are sovereign and everything is subordinate to them. They propose nothing concrete to put an end to capitalism, the remnants of feudalism, colonialism and imperialism, in sum, to put an end to the entire colonial legacy.
The political superstructure, the political structures and the political process of this capitalist base, in sum the existing political rule, is colonialist and imperialist. The colonisation of the Northeast and the forced annexation of this region is one such example. The colonisation of Kashmir and its forced partition and annexation is another. The forced annexation of various other regions, and the subjugation of all nationalities and tribal peoples shows the colonial character of the Indian state.
>From 1947 to date, capitalism has been expanding uncontrollably with the big industrial houses, the feudal forces and the colonial and imperialist interests ruling India. The entire plan for the post independence period, which goes by the name of "Nehruvian model of socialism" was put forth first by a group of leading industrialists in two volumes and popularly known as the Bombay Plan. This plan proposed how the Indian state should accumulate resources through taxation as well as deficit financing and inflation in order to build the base of Indian industry. It indicated which sectors should be left in the hands of the government, and for how long. It demanded that the government restrict competition from inside and outside India for a time through the scheme of licenses, in order that the big industrial houses would be free to grow at a fast rate. It put forth a scheme of distributing licenses amongst the big industrial houses as a means of refereeing the conflicts between them so that these conflicts would not consume them. It also expounded that the path of development proposed would as a consequence lead to the elimination of poverty and so on, which was given the status of policy objectives. This Bombay Plan was transformed into reality in every aspect that profited the big industrial houses, except that poverty has not been eliminated and the economy is not out of the crisis. It is not an independent self-reliant economy guaranteeing the wellbeing of all.
The modernisation program initiated by Indira Gandhi in 1980, and taken forward by Rajiv Gandhi in 1985, as well as the liberalisation and privatisation program that Narasimha Rao embarked upon in 1991, have all been at the dictate of the big industrial houses and in response to the demands of international finance capital, including the World Bank, the IMF and other institutions in their service. If we go deeply into it, at each stage, the bourgeoisie put forth that course which would extricate it from the crisis and ensure that the rate of profit would increase, no matter what the consequences for the Indian people.
The harsh reality is that this rule of the big industrial houses has been carried out through the army and police forces as well as goondas of all kind who operate at the bidding of the civilian governments. They also operate quite independently of them, at the direct disposal of the big capitalists and big landlords and political parties, as seen in the massacres following the destruction of the Babri Masjid, to name one recent example.
>From the smallest strike of workers to improve their conditions of work and life, or of peasants against the savage oppression by the landlords, the Indian people come into conflict with the brutal rule of the police forces. These forces carry out all kinds of atrocities against the workers and peasants, and the women and children, including rape and torture. They accumulate a lot of wealth themselves and in due course even emerge as capitalists, landlords, and politicians. Acting in many cases as the private armies of the capitalists and landlords, they harass on a daily basis the slum-dwellers and pavement dwellers, the small shopkeepers and vendors, collecting "tax" from them for the "privilege" of living in their hovels, or earning their living.
Apart from the regular police forces, there are a number of a para-military forces, such as the CRPF, the BSF, the Assam Rifles, the ITBP, the Central Industrial Security Force, and so on, which actually operate much like the Armed Forces. Their numbers and nomenclatures have swelled enormously over the four and half decades since 1947, parallel with the increasing resistance of the workers and peasants to the rule of the big bourgeoisie. Nagaland has been under the rule of the Armed Forces right from 1947, as have most of the other states of the North East. The same is the case with Kashmir, Punjab and other regions of India. Wherever the working masses have risen in revolt against the system, wherever this revolt has threatened the rule of the industrial houses, the armed forces have mercilessly suppressed the people.
What began in Telengana in 1947 to further the cause of the anti-feudal struggle and push for agrarian reform was crushed by the Indian army. It was a revolt of the peasantry led by the Communist revolutionaries for the victory of the democratic anti-feudal, anti-imperialist revolution. Beginning with the crushing of the Telengana struggle, hundreds and thousands of people have been killed, injured and jailed in these kinds of encounters alone since 1947. The crushing of all progressive uprisings and struggles of the working class and the toiling masses, or of the nationalities has emerged as the pattern, the norm over all of India since 1947.
Indian political rule can be described as a form of colonial rule of the big capitalists and big landlords created by British colonialism. With the use of the central state machinery, especially its armed forces, the entire area of India is subjugated and colonised for their benefit. Civilian governments are established in various states and in the Centre to give the impression that it is the Parliament and the state assemblies that rule. Today, civilian governments exist in all the states of the North East and in Punjab, and the Centre is also trying to install a civilian government in Kashmir. But these governments are nothing without the armed forces.
The bourgeoisie would rather not face the uprising of the people and be left to peacefully sort out the contradictions in its own ranks by wheeling and dealing in the Parliament and Assemblies, while passing laws to further its aims. It does and will resort to the use of armed might to crush the rebellion of the people as well as to eliminate any opposition to it from within, once other means fail. In other words, civilian rule is itself subordinate to the use of the armed forces, not the other way round. The Nagaland and Manipur Chief Ministers recently vehemently opposed the temporary pull-out of some CRPF battalions from their states, saying they could not rule without them!
The multi-party democracy, the elections that are routinely conducted, are merely a cloak for the brutal rule of the bourgeoisie in the form of the industrial houses and big landlords. They defend the capitalist system, the remnants of feudalism, colonialism and imperialism, that is the entire colonial legacy. The political parties which come to power at the Centre or in the states also play a role by providing this rule with legitimacy. Criminalisation, the fomenting of communal passions and the organising of communal violence, the organising of individual acts of terrorism as well as state terrorism, and the organising of diversions, are the weapons to settle the contradictions amongst the big industrial houses, to ensure the accommodation of this or that interest group, and to ensure that the masses of people remain subject to their rule and its tragic victims.
The rule of law in British colonial times was the rule of the colonialists and their Indian henchmen carried out through the police forces and British Indian Army as established in 1858. It was the rule of unbridled lawlessness as its content was colonial plunder. As long as the content remains plunder, this rule of law will remain in disrepute. Capitalist development in nineteenth century Europe ended feudal privilege and oppression, and paved the way for the rise of the nation-state and the rule of law of the bourgeoisie. Its aim was to outlaw feudal privilege and legalise bourgeois privilege based on private property. Indian capitalism grew as a tool of British colonialism in the first place. It did not outlaw feudal privilege, but used it to its own advantage. As capitalism in Europe and North America reached the stage of monopoly capitalism, it lost all its democratic and progressive character. It became thoroughly reactionary. It further used feudalism to its own advantage. Everything established on Indian soil was a hybrid, with capitalist development the key to promoting he feudal, colonial and imperialist interests as the most profitable thing to do for the Indian industrial houses. Neither colonial interest, nor feudal privilege, nor imperialist interference were eliminated.
Indian democracy and the rule of law have long since entered a deep crisis that can only be overcome with the deep-going transformation of society through revolution which is the order of the day. This crisis is the reflection of the sharpening of the contradictions between the exploited and the exploiters, and the contradictions within the ranks of the financial oligarchy and the bourgeoisie itself, which are being resolved through lawlessness and the criminalisation of the polity. This criminalisation has reached such levels that assassinations of the chieftains of industrial houses, political parties and governments have become a common affair, along with the wholesale slaughter of entire sections the people.
The Indian system needs to be renovated with a new system at the base, a system consistent with the aspirations of the working class and the toiling masses, in step with the aspirations of the working class and peoples of the world. Such a system would put the well-being the masses at the foundation of society, as the aim of the economy. Far from making this aim a policy objective, it will become the fundamental law of the land.
This new system will not only be modern, and the most up to date, it will also give rise to a confederal state in which all nations and tribal people will enjoy full equality and freedom. They will enjoy their right to self-determination up to and including secession, without which self-determination is reduced to a mere phrase. This new system will provide full opportunity to all the nations divided by colonialism to unite if they so desire. The new system will put a complete end to the colonial legacy and India will enter the family of nations as a most progressive force.
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