The Struggle tor Hegemony in India (1920-1947) Vol. I (1-920-1934)

The Struggle tor Hegemony in India (1920-1947) Vol. I (1-920-1934)
By Shashi Joshi
Sage Publications 1992. P.P. 356 Price Rs.325

A few years ago Bipan Chandra's "India's Struggle for Independence" marked a significant shift in modern Indian Historiography. Certain comments and concepts from the Italian Communist theorist Antonio Gramsci were employed to give a new perspective to the development of Indian freedom struggle which was now seen not as a number of parallel and conflicting movements (the "bourgeois" and the "truly mass") as seen in traditional Left writing of RP Dutt and others, but as one complete and integrated movement against the coloial British state.

The book under review carries the same perspective forward to specifically analyse the role of the communists during the freedom struggle. It tries to understand their role in the context of the colonial state and the nationalist Indian National Congress (INC) movement, which together form the other two axes of the Indian history of this period. Though conceived originally as a history of the Communist Party of India (CPI), it has turned out to be a critical new perspective on its theoretical premises, indeed the case for the very existence of the CPI is sought to be demolished in page after page of biting criticism.

The Framework

Following Gramsci and Chandra, the author has constructed the basic framework of the political history of India from 1920-1934 as that of the conflicting movements for hegemony between the contending forces as against the struggle for pure political power and dominance outlined by Lenin in his The State and Revolution. Hegemony is not imposed leadership but the winning over the consent of the people by the combatants, in this case the struggle for hegemony was between the colonial state and the indigenous nationalist movement and further within this movement between "the Left and the Right.

This shift in the terrain or the ground over which these actors fought over was made possible by the non absolutist nature of the colonial state in India, which was partly democratic and partly militarist. Ideology, therefore played an important role in the contest for supremacy, ideology treated not as a mere outcome of the economic processes as mechanistic Marxism as sought to show but as itself a reality.

The concept of hegemony can therefore be traced to Marx's famous dictum: Ideas become a material force when they grip the masses. This concept has more recently become synonymous with Gramsci. In the course of the present study Shashi Joshi has used Gramscian concepts in an altered, modified form in the context of an anti-colonial and not an anti-capitalist struggle. At the end of the study she concludes that: "Gramsci's conception of building counter hegemony cannot be performed by a Communist party as Gramsci continued to believe... In the light of this (Indian) experience Gramsci's theory of a hegemonic Communist party is inherently contradictory" (356).

According to Joshi the essential condition for the Left to triumph in the contest for ideological influence it was necessary that it cease to exist as an independent organisation, that it dissolve itself into the Indian national Congress and seek to transform it from within. "In our view the hegemony of the left in the colonial liberation movement in India did not call for any revision of sectarian ideas on the theory of the party a la Gramsci.

On the contrary, the Indian context required that no Communist Party be formed at all if the left-bloc was to remain together. In fact the continuous efforts to form a Communist party became the major obstacle in the path of left hegemony in India... What was required was a loosely joined and flexible left bloc in the National Congress and not a Bolshevik type Communist Party of the Working class" (34-35).

Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing fails like failure. Shashi Joshi's is a tribute to the success (of the INC, Gandhi and Nehru) and an indictment of the failure (of the CPI). It makes for an interesting and path-breaking study. It is another matter that she overstates her case.

Socialism from Below

The development of Indian Communism took place both "from above" and "from below". It was the dialectic between the two that has characterised much of the Indian communist debate over since its origins. In the early years (1920's) the two divergent views were personified by Lenin- MN Roy on one side and Dange- Singaravelu on the other. While the former saw nationalism essentially as a bourgeois ideology the latter saw Indian communism as the more radical wing of the nationalist movement

Lenin's prescription for the colonial world were anyway in relation to the actuality of the world revolution (page 42), which he thought would materialise, For him it was a purely conjectural problem (page 44). Therefore it is a misrepresentation of Lenin's thesis on colonialism to say that he was advising Indian Communists to co-operate with the national bourgeoisie, as opponents of the Royist line have maintained, Lenin's formulations of imperialism were, moreover, on the world economic plane and not on the concrete conditions of the colonial state and society.

His paradigm on the overthrow of the State was in the context of an Absolutist state like the Czarist one not the one of semi- hegemonic type as in India. .'Thus", Joshi summarises, "Leninism was not only irrelevant in Indian conditions but also misleading" 160).

About the development of Indian communism from below, the historian Sumit Sarkar has pointed out that despite repeated allegations of British officials and some later scholars that the whole movement was no more than a foreign conspiracy organised from Moscow, Indian Communism really sprang from roots within the nationalist movement itself, as disillusioned revolutionaries, Non- Cooperators, Khilafatists and labour and peasant activists sought new roads to political and social emancipation" (Modern India, page 247).

Joshi has reinforced these views by focusing vividly on the formative years of Indian Communism i.e., during and immediately after the Non co-operation movement (NCM). The initially scattered individuals and groups "in 1926-28 came 10 be organised as loose organisations within the National Congress" in the form of Worker's and peasant's Parties (WPPS)" (61).

Dange and MN Roy Came to represent the two opposing trends for the type of Communist Party to be formed -"for Dange, the WPP type party was an essential part of the left-wing in the Indian national Congress. , Roy on the other hand, argued fora conspiratorial, illegal party .His perspective was from the point of view of "capturing the leadership of the INC. His closeness to the Comintern and the awe he inspired because of his counter thesis to Lenin made him the accepted teacher of the emerging Communist movement.

Dange and Singaravelu, the promising nascent Indian Marxists could do nothing but follow him into the quagmire of sectarian thought. Their project of forming the Indian Socialist Labour Party of the Indian National Congress could never be begun. Their early efforts to evolve Indian socialism were scuttled at every step by Roy."

This and the chapter "To be or Not to be: Communist Party or WPP" are brilliant studies on the history of the CPI, Certainly the Indian roots of the Party were strong and had there been no intervention "from above" (Comintern, Roy), the story of Indian Communism would have followed an entirely different path. The dissolution of the WPPs sealed the fate of independent development, ironically expressed by the "corrected" Dange in 1931 "For us there can be no such thing as an independent attitude... For us Moscow is all truth" ( page 119).

Jawaharlal ' s Paradigm

This suicidal policy o the Communists to forge an alternative to the Indian National Congress hastened the success of the British policy of setting the two against each other especially since the end of the 1920's witnessed the tremendous garnering of strength for the socialists, the emergence of Nehru and Bose as national leaders, the massive strike wave and the expansion of radical and revolutionary politics.

The WPPs and the Congress movements seemed to be coming together towards forming a 'bloc'. Things were moving in the direction of Nehru's "paradigm of transforming the Congress from within, rather than counterpoising the left and nationalist movements. Nehru pleaded that 'To continue these two outlooks (nationalist and socialist) make them an organic whole is the problem of the Indian Socialist'. "A symbiosis occurred between his thought and political reality" (page 156) during this period.

At the same time his differences with Gandhi surfaced. While Jawaharlal castigated the Communists for their obsession with the industrial workers, he himself felt that Congress must develop into a vast peasant organisation (page 152). At the same time he was critical of Gandhi's non-acceptance of class struggle. Nehru popularised the idea of socialism, giving both the Indian National Congress an economic content and the youth an ideal. "Communists on the other hand vehemently denounced Nehru for his acceptance of non-violence" (page 180).

His efforts at evolving a new culture were bitterly run down and labelled petty- bourgeois. This rupture always characterised the relationship between Nehru and the Communists even when the latter revised their opinion of Nehru.

The Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) marked the radicalisation of the middle classes. The ground for this had been prepared earlier from 1928-30. How and why this occurred and what the role of socialist ideas and the former WPPs was in bringing this about is recounted exhaustively in the chapter on "Molecular Changes in Mass Ideology". The further radicalisation fostered by the CDM later led to the powerful rise of kisan sabhas, the Congress Socialist Party (CSP), theCPI, the AISF and the Progressive Writers' Association (PWA) in the mid-thirties.

The two chapters 'Of Strategies and Methods of Struggle' and "The politics of Nation and Class" highlight the Gandhian strategy of advancing through struggle and truce. While the Gandhian Congress advanced step by step the Indian Communists suffered from a self- inflicted alienation as they worked -up their "strategy" of wresting the masses from the INC by discrediting and attacking their leaders.

Even the evident reality of the success of the CDM (which the communists had prophesied would be betrayed by the compromising bourgeoisie, that is, 1he INC leadership) could not make them see the light. The Meerut Group ruefully observed "that the central issue of this period is the CDM and our attitude towards it, which resulted in .a certain divorce between the party and whatever sympathisers it had... that party's national revolutionary platform lost influence and was forgotten"

However, even the MCC detenus did not have the intellectual courage to question Comintern's policy of isolating themselves from the nationalist movement. At the most what was suggested was a change in tactics while the whole paradigm of leading an alternative movement was not questioned. This was the reason for the deep seated sectarianism that later characterised the Communists.

Roy in Transition

Special emphasis needs to be placed on the chapter "MN Roy, Indian Communist and the Third International". While recognising the opportunist role of Roy Joshi has also provided a glimpse into the evolution of Roy's thought from his counter-thesis on the colonial question to his positions which were close to Nehru in the 1930s when he began to collaborate closely with the INC in the manner of the WPPs. Though he never could transcend his basic paradigm (based on an alternative politics rather than the politics of transformation), reality itself forced him to recognise the fallacy of the course he had earlier espoused. This chapter makes absorbing reading.

"Struggle for Hegemony" is brilliantly written, painstaking research evident on every page. It has raised questions of fundamental importance which bear import in our times as much as they do for the past. For all those who feel socialist resurgence in still on the agenda, it must be realised that before a thought can come to terms with the world, it must first come to terms with itself and its own past. It must first clear the cobwebs of its own history Joshi has rendered yeoman's service in posing this Question at this most opportune moment.

Her study is also significant from another angle. Modem Indian historiography suffers from obsessive internalisation and lack of comparative studies of other colonial movements. This is sought to be partially overcome when Joshi seeks to present parallel developments in China and Vietnam in their liberation struggles. One wishes she had delved deeper into this aspect, in the absence of this comparative analysis, the study fails to place the Indian experience in the background of the general nature of anti imperialist movements, of which the Indian one was just one component, however "unique".

Having said this, one must turn to the chaff in the grain. Meticulous documentation notwithstanding the work is at best a partial study. Though it does not claim to be a 'complex portrayal' of colonial India's society and restricts itself to the ideological dimension even this is not exhaustive. An ideological movement as important as it was regressive: communalism has not been dealt with at all. Was it, especially after 1930s, the result of the Congress's insufficient attention to the Question of the peasantry? Did the slow, struggle -truce strategy itself contain the germs of such an ideology?

Far from even indicating any such questions the study seeks to critica11y lambast the Communists only while creating a halo around the INC, Gandhi and Nehru. There are no mistakes, no failures on their part. For instance, it is not thought pertinent to ask why the tremendous appeal of Nehru led a huge section of the youth to join the CPI and not the INC. Even those who worked in the CSP finally made a breach with the Congress. Jawaharlal himself was involved in personal rivalries with Subhas Base. This all-pervading disunity is ignored to focus only on the breach between the Communists and Nehru. Gandhi's un-theorised strategy is seen to be the only "correct" one. One is reminded of the idealist Hegel describing the historical as unfolding of the logical, thereby justifying former.

The whole study is unnecessarily harsh on the Communists who are always regarded as the lost ones. At places the text almost hinges on the nauseating while castigating them. The absolute category of "nation" employed in the study is an inversion of the communist use of "class". The style of writing in the form of "what should have happened" may be heuristically sound but the condescending advice of the writer at each and every step is awkward and jars the flow.

Again, one can appreciate Joshi's taking up cudgels against rival interpretations and indulging in polemics with other historiographical schools, but this need not hamper learnng from them. For instance, the subaltern school in recent years has made seminal contribution opening up new areas of research on subaltern groups.

It has tried to demystify the very notions of a homogeneous nationalist movement which Joshi accepts at its face- value, ignoring the various push-pulls and antagonisms within the movement, simplifying the relationships and advocating what was at best a potentially suitable path of action. Indeed the intervention "from above" (Comintern) was inevitable under the given conditions. Asking for its disappearance (which is what Joshi implies) is like asking for the history of modern India without intervention from international capitalism. At best potentialities can be indicated. Scathing indictment of those who tried to come to terms with a historically determined situation need not result from this. They were as much actors as they were its victims.

One, therefore, takes the book with a pinch of salt.

Bhupinder
01- 01- 1994
NTC