Lynn Walsh: Indian Continent – Ablaze

[Militant No. 47, March 1969, p. 1 and 2]

Lynn Walsh (Brighton Pavillion L.P.)

Last month’s elections in four Indian states underlined the deep crisis in the traditional parties and marked a move to the left in certain of the states. In West Bengal, India’s most important industrial state, the United Front dominated by the pro-Chinese Communist Party (C.P.I. (M)) swept into power with an overwhelming majority in the state parliament. A profound shudder was sent through the business world in both India and Britain – over half the £400 million British investments in India are in Calcutta.

The election results represent a devastating blow to Congress, the nationalist party which retained a virtual monopoly of power since independence until the last general elections in 1967. Congress is now a spent force in the country’s most industrialised state. But the United Front, which was deposed by the Central Government after only nine months of office following the 1967 elections, has returned stronger than ever before.

Congress was already undermined in 1967. In state after state the Congress governments or coalitions dominated by Congress were brought down by massive defections from Congress Party. The break up in the ruling party and the imposition of Presidential rule reflects the underlying crisis in society itself. In 1967- 68, for instance, the Indian economic growth rate rose by 9%, but at the same time output per head only just came up to the 1964-5 level. In a country where 70% work on the land, adequate food supplies still cannot be guaranteed. There has still been no radical land reform: small farmers struggle to survive on small, uneconomic plots, without the necessary fertilizers or implements, becoming all the time increasingly indebted to the rural money lenders whose normal rates of interest are anything above 40%. Millions of poor peasants are still fighting a losing battle against drought, famine and disease. The only solution that the official economists can offer to the problem of increasing production is increased investment in birth control.

The workers of Calcutta and the rest of West Bengal, taking the programme of the Communist Party at its face value, took the victory of the United Front as a signal to move into action against the employers. There have been a series of “Gheraos” – strikes, and other militant action (such as locking up the executives) until the workers’ demands are conceded. The working class of West Bengal, which has a long tradition of struggle, has long been ready to move. With complete stagnation of the system, and intolerable living conditions, and splits in the ruling class itself, all that is required is a bold lead from the Communist Party.

So far, however, the pro-Peking Communist Party has shown no sign of giving a revolutionary lead. Businessmen with capital at stake are very shaken (the Calcutta stock. exchange slumped after the result wiping out 15% of the gains made in the past year). But the more thinking representatives of big business are more sanguine: “The Communist success might make for more stable Government in West Bengal … it does not follow that this revolutionary party elected to power in a revolutionary state will plunge into revolutionary policies. The example of the Communists in Kerala is not one of extremism.” (Times 14. 2. 69.)

In other words, they understand the difference between what the socalled Communist leaders say and what they actually do. When they were in office before, the United Front put forward Mr. Ajoy Mukherjee, a former Congress luminary, now the leader of his own Bangla Congress, Party, in deference to those who considered his “Liberal image” would make the government acceptable to wider sections of the people. The United Front did not begin to face up to the problems before the Indian workers. In Kerala, in spite of lip-service to the revolution, the pro-Chinese communist government has become steadily more bogged down in the muddle, inefficiency and corruption which is inseparable from government on a capitalist basis.

At this moment, in Pakistan, where there have been continuous demonstrations against Ayub Khan’s regime for the past 3 months resulting in his “retirement” from the Presidency after 1970, the pro-Peking Communist Party has only just begun to take action. Only when Ayub Khan’s dictatorship is on its very last legs are the so-called communists prepared to take action which might prejudice the economic and defence pact between Ayub Khan’s dictatorship and the Chinese bureaucracy. Again, the tremendous response of the workers – 25.000 railway workers alone demonstrated last week and there were marches of over 100,000 – shows that the class is more than ready to move. The C.P. leaders, however, regard the workers as a tap which they can turn on and off to suit their opportunist policies.

The CPI(M) has put forward a programme which includes demands for wage increases, better conditions and opposition to lay-offs. The demands are undoubtedly in the immediate interests of the workers, but faced with a profound crisis in the system itself and investment strikes by big business, immediate reforms cannot provide a way forward for the Indian workers and peasants. Only by mobilising the enormous reserves of potential support behind a programme to smash the interests of rent. interest and profit, and to establish workers’ control and management of production and the state can provide a way forward. Without this the United Front Government will become hopelessly entangled in the morass of official capitalist politics. This would open the way for the ruling class to attempt to discredit the idea of communism itself and to drive wedges between different sections of the workers. Already, with the break-up of the Congress Party there has been a polarisation of the right wing forces in the reactionary and racist Jan Sang and Sikh Akalis Dal parties.

The mobilisation of the workers and peasants on a programme for the socialist transformation of society in just two states, such as Kerala and West Bengal, where there is a strong working class, could be the prelude to socialist revolution in the subcontinent, The split-away by a section of the CPI(M) – in reaction to the bankrupt policies of the CP leaders and in an attempt to build a base amongst the poor and landless peasants in the countryside – fails to face up to the real problems in India. It is precisely the tremendous strength of the workers in West Bengal and the other industrial concentration that makes India a key to revolutionary developments in Asia. A revolution in which the working class played a leading and conscious role and appealed to the workers of the West, would shake the whole world. Its repercussions would be as dramatic .as were those of the Russian Revolution of October 1917.