The tryst with destiny that India began at the stroke of the midnight hour of 15th August, 1947, was the product of a long period of struggle, compounded with a decisive shift in the international political situation. Comrade Mao teaches us to analyse every change with an understanding that ‘external causes are the condition of change and internal causes are the basis of change’. The acute imperialist exploitation of the British Raj on the Indian masses gave rise to revolutionary storms in different parts of the territory under British control. Its manifestations were seen in the struggles of workers, peasants, and soldiers against British oppression. Be it the mass movement against trials of the Indian National Army, the uprising of the naval ratings and airmen, or the early days of the Telangana armed agrarian uprising, the British could no longer rule India in the way they did since 1757. Even the Congress under Gandhi-Nehru-Patel leadership was unable to execute their historical duty of containing upsurges by acting as a ‘safety-valve’.
Internationally, the second world war had decisively weakened most of the imperialist nations including Britain. Strong winds of anti-colonial struggles and waves of national liberation were sweeping the world with the USSR as a source of political, and ideological support. Post-1945, the weakened British Raj was finding it more and more difficult to maintain direct colonial rule through a standing army and bureaucracy. In this situation, India became an ‘independent’ member of the British commonwealth. However, the departure of the imperialists from India was not a complete severing of economic and political ties. Some British businesses were allowed to continue on Indian soil. Even the scars left by the partition on communal lines have only festered and continue to weaken the subcontinent. The emergent political power in India composed of the landlord and a dependent bourgeois class represented by Tata, Birla, etc., were directly sustained and controlled by imperialist forces.
In the initial years, these forces were exclusively British, gradually with the upper hand gained by US imperialism worldwide and the erosion of the Soviet socialist camp, different imperialist powers started exploiting the Indian people and resources through a combination of loans, aids, grants, and policy level impositions. A sovereign body representing the sovereign people of India remained and still remains a chimera. An awakening to life and freedom too remains elusive in this country of a handful of billionaires and a billion illiterate, unemployed, and starving humans.
However, things are forever moving. The nation has seen waves of revolutionary upsurge since 1947, most importantly the Naxalbari uprising. It gave an enduring blow to the Indian state albeit followed by periods of reaction. In the past decade, the grand old safety-valve had to give way to the ideologically fascist RSS that simply abstained from participating in the freedom struggle, having found its place at the feet of the British empire. One of their early ideologues pointed out Muslims, Christians, and Communists as the real enemies, not the British Raj. It is no wonder that these reactionary forces have received the boon of international finance capital today to intensify the exploitation and betrayal of the Indian people. The aggression on religious minorities, backward castes, Adivasis, and gender minorities is only getting worse with every passing day. ‘All of us, to whatever religion we may belong, are equally the children of India with equal rights, privileges and obligations.’- remains a distant dream.
Since the Indian market was opened in the early 90’s for globalised, unregulated (read liberalised), and private foreign investments, the overall social duties of the government in terms of education, healthcare, employment, agriculture, and public transport, have been neglected totally. Rural India is burdened with an acute agrarian crisis where the yield is reducing steadily, forcing lakhs of peasants to become informal labourers in the cities. With rapid contractualisation of jobs in the organised sector as well, the massive pool of workers is left without any kind of safety nets. With introduction of the farm laws and labour codes, the exploitation will only reach a fever pitch. Education and healthcare is in shambles, with policies like NEP designed to exclude the poor from getting education. Even in white collar jobs, contracts are becoming the new norm. Add the climate crisis into the mix, the picture becomes grimmer. Increased flooding in different parts of India is not just killing people but also changing livelihoods of farmers, fisherfolks, etc. on a permanent basis.
This general assault on the people has a particular character too, that of displacement, corporatisation, and militarisation. From Manipur to Maharashtra, Kashmir to Kerala, the Indian state is grabbing land from people under the pretext of fighting insurgency, the long-term cost of rampant mining/refining notwithstanding. The people however are fighting against this juggernaut. The Adivasis, the Dalits, the religious minorities, the peasants, the workers, everyone is fighting their own economic battle. Despite serious communal polarisation of the people thanks to a pliant media and the RSS’s decades of poisoning, unity blurring identity lines are still seen wherever the people are fighting the state. They are clinching success as well. Closer home the victory of the Devanahalli farmers fighting against land grab must be upheld. The need of the hour is a fighting unity of students-workers-peasants that will dismantle this structure in favour of a truly democratic one. That is when the soul of this multinational land, long suppressed, will find utterance.
