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INDIA*
STORM
a Militant Pamphlet
KKK by Roger Silverman Available from World Books Mentmore I Price 75p inc. postage.
Published in May 1980, Roger Silverman's pamphlet "India—The Gathering Storm" laid bare the real background to the protracted crisis of Indian society and was the only commentary to predict in advance the failure of Indira Gandhi to reimpose state authority.
1 Mentmore Terrace London E8 3PN.
On top of everything else, thi entire civil service has been plunged into a state of cynical apathy by the insecurity of their position following repeated changes of government. The only decisive act of the new government was to embark on a wholesale purge of officials promoted and appointed by the previous Janata regime, and the restoration of the emergency bureaucrats. Dismissals, transfers and demotions have been carried through on a massive scale, thus undermining any sense of purpose and any continuity in the state apparatus.
In this situation, to take at face value the periodic threats of "tough measures" would be naive. In contrast to the hysterical ravings of the discredited opposition politicians, the Indian bourgeoisie proper is on the contrary gnashing its teeth and tearing out its hair at the "dithering" of their sole serious candidate for the role of a Bonaparte. Even before the cruel blow dealt them by the death of their chief watchdog and
dictator-aspirant, Sanjay Gandhi,
they were already muttering
darkly about their sharp sense of
disappointment. In June 1980, Indira was stung into reply, given in an interview to the magazine "New Delhi". To the pointed and rather cheeky question of the interviewer, speaking on behalf of the bourgeoisie, as to the reasons for her prolonged and uncharacteristic "dithering" , she gave a very revealing reply:
"If you are on a road, however bad it is, you can go ahead. But if you are caught in quicksands, you have to be very careful about your movements....The economy, the atmosphere...it is just like we are caught in quicksands. Anything we may do can make things worse. So we have to tread very slowly."
Mrs Gandhi's reply comes from the depths of her troubled soul. No more apt metaphor could be thought up by any Marxist than that the Indian bourgeoisie is trapped in a quagmire, in which any step they might take would make matters worse.
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The crisis of Congress (I) burst into the open within three months of its return to power, with the resignation of H.N. Bahuguna, a particularly astute capitalist politician who had slipped neatly in and out of every consecutive influential party at the appropriate moment. In the summer of 1979 he had spelled out explicitly the alarm of the bourgeoisie. Quoting the sordid catalogue of crisis-communal riots, atrocities against harijans, the "mounting wrath" of the working class, regionalism, secessionism, inflation, shortages, and above all the "recent revolt of security forces," he had declaimed: - "The country has reached the precipice, and courageous action is needed to pull it back from the brink. The
nation is facing a great peril
today."
Mr Bahuguna with this speech in the summer of 1979 rejoined Congress (I) and launched the stampede back to Mrs Gandhi's faction. It is therefore especially significant that this same ambitious arch-weathercock, within months of becoming General Secretary, resigned from the Party for the second time in three years, with loud denunciations of its leader, to form a new "democratic and socialist" alternative! The fact that so far no other prominent politicians have defected only proves once again that Bahuguna is a little more far-sighted than his contemporaries.
In emerging once again in January 1980 as the monolithic party of the Indian bourgeoisie, with a massive and unassailable majority in Parliament, Mrs Gandhi's party had not thereby conjured up a united and decisive leadership of her class, but on the contrary had only incorporated into the foundations of her own party all the fissures and contradictions and hesitation of the entire bourgeoisie, faced with an impossible task. The result is anarchy, a paralysis of the state, a void and a vacuum at the centre.
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Marxism had predicted with the rapid succession of contradictory regimes in the course of the last few years, that India was following Pakistan into the vicious circle of weak parliamentary regimes followed by weak bonapartist regimes, none of them capable of providing any way out of the tightening impasse. The problem today is that it is hard to decide whether the present regime is a weak parliamentary or a weak bonapartist regime: all that is beyond dispute is that it is weak!
Nominally, the trappings of a parliamentary democracy remain, at least in their ornamental function. But it is a fragile and transparent facade. No less than five top Cabinet posts remain vacant nearly a year after the formation of the government, as a result of the shrill factional squabbling between the different wings of her own party. Of those cabinet ministers at their posts today, the election to Parliament of one has been invalidated by the courts, another has been officially indicted for gross abuses of power during his ten-year rule as Punjab's Chief Minister, and yet another is clinically mad! Nepotism, blackmail and bribery have made any pretence at a parliamentary vote utterly discredited in the public eye.
On the level of the state assemblies, the situation is even more hilarious. To take a few examples from recent weeks alone, the speaker of the Kashmir state assembly was locked up in
his own rooms while the ruling party passed a vote of no
confidence in him, the state assembly of Uttar Pradesh was invaded by police and what were
described as "known criminals"
in order to eject the opposition
from the chamber, and the State
Cabinet of Andhra Pradesh did
not meet for months because the
Chief Minister, a man rivalling
Emperor Bokassa in his extrava-
gant corruption, could not com-
mand a majority inside his own
Cabinet. In the remote state of
Himachal Pradesh, state emplo-
yees have been on strike for months and have set up what they describe as a "parallel government." The best possible insight into the public reputation of parliamentary politics today can be gained from a recent interview with a famous bandit in Uttar Pradesh, a man known to have killed no less than 340 people in his younger and more active days, who has re-emerged into the limelight keen to contest Charan Singh's seat as the candidate of Congress (I). A political ally of Mrs Gandhi, he told reporters:
"I've grown too fat. It's a tough life out there. You have to walk too much....I think I will become a politician. There is a good future in politics."
If, however, we are to see the regime as essentially a bonapartist dictatorship, then we have to say it is one of the most effete and ridiculous in history. True, Mrs Gandhi has passed legislation which on paper, would seem to give her draconic powers: Preventive Detention Act, and a National Security Ordinance, which would be the envy of any bonapartist regime. But it is significant that these are ostensibly aimed, not at the workers,
but at "black marketeers" and "communal agitators" respecti-
vely. Characteristic howls of
protest have come from those
racketeers and communalists
without patrons within the Con-
gress (I), all hiding behind the
shrill cry: "Emergency!"
But attacks on the working
class have been conspicuously
ineffective. The regime tested the
water with decrees banning
strikes in two industrially devel-
oped states in the West of India,
Gujarat and Maharashtra. They
were not worth the paper they
were written on. In the case of
Maharashtra, India's leading in-
dustrial state, the period when the
decree was in operation coincided
with the worst-ever month for
strikes and lockouts in the state's
entire recorded history!
In May 1980, man-days lost in
Maharashtra reached 650,000,
and on 18th June more than 45,000 workers were currently affected by a total of 80 strikes, 24 lock-outs, and 166 related closures. Not surprisingly, the ordinance was hastily "withdrawn"
Recognising the futility of imposing a new emergency as such, the bourgeoisie has been engaged in the quest for the holy grail of a presidential Bonapartist constitution along the lines of that imposed in Sri Lanka by the UNP. But even the plans for the composition of such a constitution lack any system or perspective. Perfunctory calls for such a constitution are characteristically vague and half-hearted. The bourgeoisie is being dragged by events towards the attempt to impose such a solution, but it is proceeding hesitantly and without conviction. The death of Sanjay Gandhi further deepened the despondency of the bourgeoisie and accelerated the ruling party's crisis of confidence.
The securing of a predominant influence to Sanjay had been their overriding condition for Indira's return to power. He would stand guard over the interests of Big Business and act as a counterweight to any new populist adventures to the like of which Indira Gandhi had been alarmingly prone in the past.
By the time of his death in June 1980, Sanjay already wielded enormous power. He was openly referred to as "de facto Prime Minister" while his mother was assigned the more modest public relations role of "acting Foreign Minister"! Sanjay's death was redolent with an ironic symbolism. That a young man groomed to be dictator of the second most populous country on earth, should indulge in daily daredevil joy rides, speaks volumes of the
degree of his faith in the future of
Indian capitalism.
He might as well have played a
daily game of Russian Roulette!
His mother and the narrow clique
of businessmen and political
gangsters around him repeatedly
warned him of his irresponsibility
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Mahatma Gandhi
Father and daughter Mother and son
in constantly dicing with death,
gambling with their future.
But Sanjay's style of life and
death was typical of the outlook of
that whole stratum of nouveaux
riches upstart millionaires that
were the only people to have
gained anything from the post war
boom and the era of indepen-
dence with which it coincided.
These get-rich-quick whizz-kids'
meteoric rise to power and fortune
had been gained by their profi-
ciency in walking a tight-rope on
the narrow borders between
speculation and crime, milking
state funds (Sanjay's own Maruti
car project is a good example,
selling commodities short, indul-
ging in currency speculation and
black marketeering and generally racketeering in lucrative short term gambles, without a thought for long term investment and the development of India's home
market. 'Who cares, for tomorrow we may die?" was their motto, in their economic perspectives as much as in their personal lives, aping the most degenerate vices of Western capitalism in decay. Hence the exciting and dangerous hunt for quick thrills such as those provided by aerobatics, the ultimate playboy's sport.
The death of Sanjay Gandhi brought into sharp relief the real nature of India's ruling regime. The "world's biggest democracy" is in reality an uncrowned monarchy! Apart from a very brief interregnum under Shastri in the mid-'60s, and the disastrous Janata experiment, India has remained throughout the post-independence era under the rule of the Nehru dynasty. And just as Indira followed her father into the Prime Ministerial office, so it was naturally taken for granted that her son, Sanjay, was the accepted Crown Prince. And on his death, the only question that was asked was: should he be succeeded by his brother or his widow? The very idea of searching outside of his family for a successor did not seem to have occurred to anybody. Enormous
21
pressures have been brought to
bear on Sanjay's brother Rajiv to
don his mantle, in spite of the fact
that Rajiv has no political
ambitions and even less compe-
tence in politics than Sanjay.
The explanation to the conun-
drum why this should be so,
provides a key to understanding
the whole recent history of India,
and, far removed though it might
appear, is an eloquent tribute to
the validity of the law of
permanent revolution. In Sri
Lanka, there was a mass proleta-
rian party which, at least in its
aspirations, was revolutionary,
the only workers' party in any colonial country not crippled by Stalinist distortions and false schemas of "two stages". There
the proletariat was able to take its rightful place at the head of the national liberation struggle.
But the LSSP was unique. As in every other colonial country, the Communist Party of India, a country where the proletariat was substantially stronger than in its Southern offshore island, refused to accept its historic role.
In deference to Stalin's wartime alliance with British imperialism, the CPI actually sabotaged the liberation struggle and was used as a tool of imperialism. By default of the proletarian leadership, scope was left for the relatively developed national bourgeoisie of India to play the leading role at the head of the independence struggle. In doing so, however, it had to pay a heavy political tribute. It was obliged to challenge, not only imperialist rule, but also the age-old legacy of social backwardness, all the while awkwardly counter-balancing its radicalism with a philosophical pacifism, both of which were out of consonance with the real features of Indian capitalism.
Given the heterogeneity of India, comprising hundreds of nationalities and languages, thousands of castes, and a multiplicity of religions, it was necessary for the leading faction of the national bourgeoisie to present an all-India vision, overriding local and nat-
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22 ional particularism; to denounce those medieval relics which threatened to undermine the unity nascent capitalist India; launch a verbal crusade against Brahmin macy, communalism and Hindu bigotry. This democratic secular pseudo-socialist aura, combined with the pacifism adopted by a bourgeoisie already frightened of the power of the proletariat, lent to Congress a saintly guise, as personified by the ascetic figure of Gandhi. But even the nominal socialism of Gandhi and Nehru was enough to evoke an enormous hundreds of millions of oppressed throughout the sub-continent. Once in power, the bourgeoisie was incapable of carrying through to a conclusion even its own democratic revolution. Landlordism, superstition, witchcraft, caste, communal bigotry, illiteracy, bonded labour, mass epidemics, tribalism, national liguistic rivalries, and every other legacy of medievalism today in modern capitalist India: Today, on the eve of economic crisis, India's export industries (amounting to a dominant proportion of industrial output) squeezed by the recession and the beginning of new protectionist restrictions, winded by the inflation of oil prices, and other commodities, under-invested infra-structure of coal, steel and railways falling to pieces, all these ancient evils have floated back to the surface. How is India to hold together? That is the nightmare facing the bourgeoisie. The police and army are unreliable. The semi-fascist paramilitary gangs of the Hindu communalist RSS, resting upon narrow urban petit-bourgeois foundations, cannot find in the patchwork of India national secure foundations, and any attempt to promote their cause, (as was shown all too clearly during the Janata period) would only provoke a further movement towards national and communal disintegration. Like an impotent old man trying to recapture the excitement of his first romance, again and again the bourgeoisie is driven back to resuscitating the Gandhism, stale myth Nehru power to restore dynasty with its magic name. In continually resorting to the same device, playing on nostalgic memories of the days of Gandhi and Nehru, by holding aloft the banner of Indira in her 1971 vintage, when she was ranting against poverty, then of Indira (Mark II), the battle-axe of the Emergency and after, then of Sanjay, then of Rajiv-there has Sanjay's infant son could later play the decisive role!-the bourgeoisie are hiding in the shadow of a shadow of a shadow, muttering the echo of an echo of the ringing battle-cries of the 1940s. But those days are gone and the spell is fading fast.
No clearer indication of the rapid degeneration of the Indian bourgeoisie could be imagined than the decline in less than 35 "saint" to Sanjay Gandhi the Socialism or barbarism?
The Roman emperors at the time of the decline of their civilisation adopted a policy of "bread and circuses". The dwarfs in India today who are trying to dress themselves in their grand old togas, are attempting to expenditure of tens of millions of rupees on the Rohini space rocket, and on the air-conditioned sports complexes for the coming Asian Games, at a time of mass starvation.
In India today we see in the starkest possible terms, the real meaning of the choice offered by Marx and Engels in 1848: socialism or barbarism?
Lenin popularised the idea of communism with the formula: electrification "Communism = plus Soviet power." "Power cuts plus communal massacres" would give us by the same token a pretty good definition of barbarism! India is sliding fast into the abyss of barbarism. The failure of electric power affects every city, and Calcutta for whole periods suffers cuts of up to 12 hours a day, bringing industrial produc tion and all normal urban life to a standstill. The genocide in Assam and Tripura, the horrific caste atrocities of recent years and the latest police pogroms against the Muslim ghettoes, give a hint of the holocaust which threatens an India stuck in the quagmire of capitalism in its epoch of decay. If there had been in existence a revolutionary party, capable of through the superficial crust of outworn illusions to the real revolutionary motive force impelling hundreds of millions into action, and penetrating the brash bluster of capitalist politicians to reveal the hollowness behind their threats; a party that would not be content to abandon the masses to fight a million scattered and seperate struggles in isolation, but willing to link them together, draw the lessons event, raise the out of each workers' understanding of their own power, place itself at the vanguard of every battle, mobilise and co-ordinate their movements, make bold appeals to every new recruit to the class war, suffuse the consciousness of every worker with the common experience of other working people; then India would already be in the hands of the workers.
In the absence of such a Party, the vanguard of the proletariat has nevertheless been straining every muscle to break through the impasse towards a rational and harmonious society. That is the explanation for the ferment that has been raging within the Indian Labour movement for the last few years. It is this fighting mood which lies behind the split in the monolithic Communist Party in
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TWO ROADS FOR INDIA
Victims of communal massacres
Bombay workers on the picket line
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1964, the spawning of the Naxalite movement in 1969, the sprouting of new unions under the umbrella of CITU, the CP(M) affiliated trade union federation, the modest growth of the UTUC, the federation linked to the centrist Revolutionary Socialist Party (which stands nominally for the socialist revolution and an independent programme for the working class), the rapid develop ment of new and militant trade unions, some led by left dissidents from the CP(M) (A.K. Roy in the Dhanbad coalfields, Kuchelar in Madras) and others by plain gangster adventurers (Doctor Datta Samant in Bombay), and above all the formation of democratic workers' committees in certain key industrial areas, transcending the limits of bureaucratic trade union structures and uniting the workers, with elections and the right of recall, the closest possible scrutiny over their leaders' actions and strict control over the use of union funds.
Such bodies as the Swadeshi Workers' Front in the giant textile city of Kanpur and the Haryana Labour Union in Faridabad, a key industrial suburb of Delhi, mark a revolutionary break with the worst traditions of trade union bureaucratism in India, whereby unelected and self-appointed lawyers and "friends of the workers" have set themselves up as labour mediators who divide the workers and use them like toy soldiers in a vast game of power politics.
These new organisations guar-
antee the maximum democracy:
the workers exercise vigilant
control over their own trusted
officials. They have an appeal to
working people way beyond the
limits of the factory walls, and
inspire immense reserves of
enthusiasm. They represent in the
most concentrated form the
elemental drive of workers to
transform their own organisations
and decide their own destiny.
Born in a crucible of fire and
blood, these organisations will
remind conscious workers every-
where of the first lished in the early Russian revolution.
A year after the restoration of the Indira Gandhi regime, there has been no let-up of the movement of the working people, nor any accession of confidence to the ruling class. But this situation cannot last indefinitely. Even a titanic movement such as that of the Indian workers today must eventually blow itself out, unless it becomes transformed into a revolutionary struggle behind a clear-sighted leadership, for workers' power. As conditions deteriorate from month to month and year to year, the vast petit-bourgeoisie and lumpen proletariat, who represent a massive segment of Indian society, and who are still looking principally leftwards to the working class-the natural agency of social change-for a way out of their misery, will become increasingly impatient and embittered by the conservatism of the ossified bureaucracies at its head.
Soviets estabstages of the
Time is short!
The longer these bureaucrats succeed in constricting the labour movement in alliances with a rag-tag and bobtail of capitalist scoundrels posing as "progressive democrats" (there are at least half a dozen such parties scrambling today for legitimisation by the leaders of the Communist Parties); the longer they obstinately counterpose to a real alliance in action of the workers, harijans, peasants, and persecuted minori. ties, an accommodation at the top with capitalist parties which have exploited and betrayed their cause; the sooner will they fall prey to the seductive wiles of reaction. Whipped up into a frenzy of chauvinism, communal-
ism and sometimes secessionism, the pauperised middle class and the lumpen mobs starving in the teeming shanty-towns could ultimately pose a mortal danger.
The urgent task of the hour is to link together the militants of the existing workers' parties and trade unions behind a socialist programme. This would include the following points among them: workers' unity; denunciation of all capitalist parties, (above all those that call themselves "left"); the fusion of all trade unions into a single fighting body with full internal democracy; nationalisation of all enterprises employing more than twenty workers, with compensation strictly on the basis of proven need; workers' management of the economy and state through democratic workers' councils; workers' control at factory floor level to check abuses, wastage, and mismanagement; nationalisation of all plantations; division of large estates, on a basis to be determined by elected peasant committees, and the establishment of model collectives; unrestricted right of selfdetermination for all nationalities including the guaranteed right of secession, as an indispensable step towards the creation of a voluntary united socialist federation of the Indian sub-continent, combined with political opposition to secessionism as a trap and a blind alley; deterrent penalties against all national, linguistic, religious, caste or sex discrimination; committees to elect officers and negotiate conditions in the police and armed forces; the establishment of a workers' and peasants' militia.
Such a programme would be greeted with a resounding echo in the factories, on the farms, and in the slums and ghettoes. Armed with this programme, the workers could transform India from living hell to a paradise, and avoid the prospect of a terrible bloodbath. But time is short!
November 1980
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