Peter Taaffe: The Cheering has Stopped in India

(Militant No. 359, 10 June 1977, p. 7)

By Peter Taaffe

(Editor of Militant)

“Clenched fists and marching workers are back on the streets of Calcutta, the heart of West Bengal’s industrial belt,” reported Reuters news agency on 24^th May. A wave of strikes, sit-ins and demonstrations have swept India as the working class attempts to recapture what it lost under Mrs Gandhi’s brutal “Emergency”.

Bombay’s port, the biggest in the country, has been paralysed by strikes. Workers in Baroda have closed down the country’s biggest oil refinery because of a strike. Bargemen in Calcutta have brought jute production to a halt.

The ‘Economist’ remarks: “Even industrially backward Rajasthan” has been affected. In horror does the same journal report: “A growing form of intimidation peculiar to India is the gherao, in which workers surround an executive and refuse to let him move anywhere, even to the lavatory!!” (21^st May)

Strikes

Under Mrs Gandhi’s Emergency the working class and peasants suffered brutal repression and cuts in living standards. It saw its leaders sacked and arrested – some of them subjected to horrible tortures and murder (see ‘Militant’ 357). This resulted in a sharp drop in strikes. Thus in the first half of 1974, 31 million man days were lost through strikes and 17 million in the first half of 1975. But following the imposition of the Emergency in June 1975 the number of days lost was 4½ million – a drop of 74% compared to 1974!

At the same time the capitalists supported Mrs Gandhi’s government refusal to hand over the annual bonus of 8.3% paid as a right since the early 1970s. This was not a gift from the capitalists but a “deferred wage”. By linking its payment to “profitability” millions of workers were cheated of their bonus.

Such was the discontent that the Janata (People’s) Party promised in its election programme to restore the bonus and release all those workers’ leaders arrested under the Emergency. But the Indian working class have shown their distrust of the representatives of the capitalists and the landlords who lead the Janata Party. Refusing to wait on the government they have emulated the Spanish working class in 1936 and the Argentine working class in 1973 in using their power to force the reinstatement of those victimised during the Emergency.

Panic stricken by the newly displayed power of the working class, the “friends of labour” in the Janata have urged “patience” on the Indian working class. Thus Labour Minister Ravindra Varma on 28^th April made “an earnest appeal to workers of trade union organisations not to gherao.” He pondered philosophically: “As a student of Gandhian thought he has often wondered whether gheraos come under the category of purely non-violent action” (‘Decan Herald’).

But impervious to pious Gandhian teachings and besieged by massive price rises the Indian workers have moved to improve their miserable conditions. In so doing they have come into head on collision with the Janata government.

Already, barely two months after the election, the Janata leaders have been shown as the representatives of the same forces which sustained the Congress in the past. The present Prime Minister, Desai, broke from Mrs Gandhi in 1969 because he opposed the nationalisation of the banks! Moreover, many of those who in the past hailed Mrs Gandhi and her Emergency have begun to abandon her sinking ship to join Janata.

Some have wormed their way into positions as candidates in the forthcoming State Elections in twelve Northern States. “The Congress is dead, long live the Congress (under another name)” is their motto. An unseemly scramble for candidatures has already split Janata in a number of states. 10,000 “Janata” candidates filed nominations for less than 2,000 places!

After a short honeymoon period the Janata government will be forced to confront the workers and peasants. Its accession to power has coincided with a worsening economic situation. After a record harvest of 118 million tons of food grain this year it will probably drop to 110-12 million tons this year. Cotton output and oilseed production have also dropped. This in turn has pushed up prices with a 12% increase since March 1976 and worse to come. Price rises of this amount, with millions normally hovering between life and death, are a catastrophe for the workers and peasants. It is an automatic guarantee of great social upheavals.

In the course of this coming movement the parties of the Indian working class will be presented with a tremendous opportunity to lead a movement which could eradicate the scourge of landlordism and capitalism. Already the Communist Party (Marxist), which is the biggest workers’ party, is poised to win more seats than any other party – if not an overall majority – in the June Elections in West Bengal. This is despite the policies of the leaders of the CP(M) and not because of them.

They have tried desperately in the state elections to repeat their alliance with Janata in the March Elections. The CP(M) supported Janata and the Communist Party of India (CPI) supports Congress! At the same time Jyoti Basu has sought to “reassure businessmen and industrialists that any government which the Communist Party of India supported would be wholly responsible on economic affairs. Strikes would not be enocouraged.” (‘Times’ 27.5.75.)

Notwithstanding these reassurances from Basu, “Calcutta memsahibs who wring their hands in horror at the idea of a Marxist comeback – ‘The coolies will again get out of hand’ exclaimed one of them at the Calcutta Club – may refuse to be comforted.” (‘Observer’ 29.5.77.) Thus the scene is being set for a repeat of the tumultuous events of the late 1960s in West Bengal.

The election then of governments led by the CP(M) was taken as a signal for a movement which would have swept through the whole of India if the masses would have had at their head a leadership equal to their determination to put an end to the cause of all their misery. The peasants took over the land, workers occupied the factories. The Indian and foreign capitalists began to flee to other parts of India and abroad. If the CP(M) leaders had taken power the revolution would have spread like wildfire throughout the rest of India.

But Jyoti Basu’s recent statements and action show that the CP(M) have learnt nothing from the events of the last 15 years. They are doomed to repeat the disastrous experiences of the Popular Front – coalition with capitalists parties – between 1967 and 1969. But the rank and file of the CP(M) have begun to learn the lessons of this period. The upheavals within the CP(M) which were seen then will be repeated.

Already the shameful support given by the pro-Moscow CPI to the Emergency has resulted in large scale disaffection within the Party which has compelled the leadership to admit that perhaps they had been “mistaken”! The only hope for the Indian masses is that the rank and file of these parties, particularly the CP(M), can be re-armed with a real Marxist programme in time.

About 75 families control 80% of industry in India. It is this handful of parasites and foreign capital who condemn the sub-continent to backwardness and unspeakable misery. Land reform, the eradication of feudal and semi-feudal land relations, the solution of the unresolved national problems, the unification of the country and the development of industry along modern lines can only be achieved by eliminating the power and wealth of these 75 families by nationalising industry and giving land to the peasants.

Land Reform

The CP(M) leaders maintain that it is possible for the “progressive national capitalists” to ally themselves with the workers, peasants and middle classes – against the “agents of imperialism” – in the solution of these tasks. The bloody history of the last two decades speaks against this “theory”. The capitalists invest in land and the landlords invest in industry. Both are united through the banks which hold the mortgages and interests in the land and industry. Any serious land reforms would meet the resistance not only of the landlords but of the capitalists as well who very often are the same people.

Moreover, no land reform can be introduced in India without a mass movement of the peasantry. Even if they desired a land reform the capitalists are deathly afraid of setting in motion, or indentifying themselves with, a mass movement. Once the peasants are on the move how long would it be before the workers joined in with their own demands for the elimination of power and wealth of the capitalists?

It is a race against time in India. The Janata government will be incapable of holding the aroused working class and peasantry in check. And just as in 1975 when the frightened ruling class of India sought refuge behind the Emergency so also will they turn towards some “strongman” once it becomes clear that the present government cannot “hold the line”. A new dictator – this time probably openly based on the Army – will make Mrs Gandhi seem tame by comparison. But this is the threat which faces the Indian masses – probably in a matter of 3, 4 or 5 years – unless the socialist transformation of India can be effected.

Only the mighty Indian working class leading the peasants and all the oppressed behind them can drag India out of its poverty, backwardness and ignorance. And only a mass Marxist movement can supply them with the programme and policies capable of bringing this about and of establishing a Socialist Federation of the sub-continent.