FOREWORD TO THE 14th EDITION OF NEW WAVE

Tectonic shifts are taking place in the politics of India and the world. The resurgence of far right forces which began in the last decade has started to wane. In Brazil, the Bolsonaro government fell to the PT, in the USA the Republican Party lost to the Democrats, and saw Trump losing to Biden. In India, the right wing BJP is on the back foot with losses in important state elections, Rajasthan, Punjab, Delhi, and most recently Karnataka. These losses have weakened it to the point only a minority of states are today under the BJP government, or with a BJP led coalition. In 2018, a near majority of states had a BJP government or BJPled coalition government in India.At the heart of these setbacks are mass mobilizations, and public discontent over the misrule of the BJP and their economic policy. Even Modi and his ‘charisma’could not change this waning tide.

These changes did not just happen with a sudden random shift in consciousness, but were accompanied by mass mobilization and simmering discontent at the grassroots level. The social tensions and protests continue, with the wrestlers protest being the latest chink in Modi’s armour. The decline of Prime Minister Modi and the BJP’s power can be said to begin from the farmer’s agitation, the Trump presidency faced it’s first real challenge on the streets with BLM protests, and mobilizations and protest actions against the Bolsonaro regime played a critical role in bringing it down. However, in each of these cases, the defeats have only led to a final resolution, but to the ascendance of reformist bourgeois liberal parties, or centrist social democrat parties. In India it is the Congress party that is gaining at the BJP’s expense, while in Brazil the workers party, the same party which had overseen the brutal slum evictions to prepare for the FIFA world cup, is back in power. In the USA, the Biden presidency is retaining many Trump era laws, especially in the realm of immigration control. It is important to understand the fraudulent nature of these leaderships, especially now as we are facing the possibility of another period of upheaval. Analyzing the Prime Ministership of Jawahar Lal Nehru in this context reveals the politics of reformism, and exposes a false idol of liberalism, and his true intentions.

The war in Ukraine has had a global impact, with food inflation growing everywhere, hurting especially weak economies in Asia and Africa. The impact on oil supplies is seeing skyrocketing energy prices, it has been enough to push the most important European economy, Germany, into recession. It is having it’s impact on India and South Asia as well, pushing the periphery into chaos, yesterday it was Sri Lanka, today it is Pakistan. India cannot be immune to these tensions. In the fourteenth edition of our newsletter, we explore India’s position on the Ukraine war, and explore it’s impact. The war has tipped the world economy into crisis, shown most clearly in the form of the banking crisis, the article by Comrade Eduardo Almeida from Brazil gives an overview of the impending financial crisis.

Our criticism of Nehru

Introduction :

There are a few personalities in the world as divisive and impactful as India’s first Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru. For the right wing, he is a figure who is reviled and hated, for many leftists and especially among Indian liberals, he is a celebrated figure who is lauded for his democratic ideals. The image of Nehru as a naïve idealist who compromised his nation’s interests for his moral principles is an image that is often conjured up when speaking of Nehru, particularly over the question of how he handled the accession of the Kingdom of Kashmir. Less talked about is how he used military force decisively to annex Hyderabad and Goa to the Indian Republic, or how he presided over the mass incarceration of thousands of Indian Chinese, breaking the backbone of a two hundred year old community. It is important to understand the role of great people in history, as products of the material conditions and not simply as authors of history. Prime Minister Nehru’s decisive leadership was of great importance to the development of the Indian bourgeoisie, and of the Indian Republic itself. This is a legacy, that is not as clean or celebratory as the Liberals and their Stalinist cheerleaders would like it to be, and that most right wing historians are either in denial of, or have no awareness about.

Political context :

Among a large section of conservative and reactionary Hindus, Nehru has always been a hated figure, primarily for his policy on Kashmir, and being one of the figures blamed for compromising on the question of partition and the creation of Pakistan. In truth, their main grievance with Nehru is his secular stance on religious minorities, and the adoption of a mixed economic model, which relied on state capitalist enterprise, and five year plans.

Since the BJP came to power, propaganda against Nehru, and the old Congress leaders have acquired a new pitch. The popular conspiracy theory of blaming Nehru for Bose’s disappearance, had turned out false, and the entire movement to open the files on Bose fell apart. That did not stop them from attacking him however, shifting focus to ‘dynastic politics’, Nehru’s secularism and supposed ‘socialism’.

In reaction to right wing attacks, Indian liberals, who had always idealized Nehru, further entrenched in their support for him, and Indian Stalinists, having little to no critical understanding of the old Congress leaders, tailed the liberal’s position. The political context here, being the CPIM seeking an alliance with the Congress party at the national level, to regain it’s strength in the strategically important state of West Bengal, and oppose the BJP.

The Congress for its part, never abandoned Nehru as a central figure in it’s pantheon of leaders whose contributions are hyped up and glorified. Nehru is often cited with Gandhi as the central leadership of the Indian struggle, and in Congress inspired narratives of history, the Congress posits itself as the center of the Indian struggle for independence, and the ideas espoused by Nehru at the heart of the Indian republic. These ideas, being secularism, and socialism, and non alignment.

Nehru’s actions :

These hallmark policies of Nehru must be seen and understood in their specific material context, and not in a hazy idealistic manner.

The Indian bourgeoisie had managed to acquired three quarters of the territory of the British Raj, this included the bulk of India’s colonial industries, infrastructure, and coastline. However, world war two, the Bengal famine, and then partition left India in an impoverished state, not to mention the sustained exploitation under the British. The basis for the re-emergence of a powerful, sovereign Indian state was there, but offset by an economy where many vital sectors of the economy, such as banking, finance, industry, and certain agricultural sectors like tea, was still in foreign hands.

The Indian bourgeoisie entrusted the Congress party to work for it’s interests. First and foremost, this meant the consolidation of the boundaries of the Indian Republic, the annexation and integration of five hundred princely states, the largest of which were Kashmir, Junagadh, and Hyderabad. Secondly, it meant the creation of basic industries under state control, and a focus on industrialization, under protection from foreign capital, which was sought to be achieved through import substitution. Thirdly, it meant pacifying the threat of revolution, which first manifested itself in the naval uprising in 1946, and remained in the peasant uprisings in Hyderabad, Travancore, and worker’s strikes in Bombay and Calcutta. Fourthly, and lastly, it meant carving out a position for the Indian bourgeoisie in a world dominated by US imperialism and Stalinism, where it could be shielded from both.

On each of these counts, the Congress party under Nehru, succeeded.

Nehru’s prime ministership saw the territory of the Indian republic grow, with five hundred princely states, large and small, being annexed to the territory of the state. The right wing credits this achievement solely with Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, and Nehru’s role is either denied or diminished. While Patel was the Home Minister, Nehru had been elected Prime Minister, and with the exception of Kashmir which was contested with Pakistan, most of these states were taken over by a combination of coercion and diplomacy. The only state to attempt to stand out and hold out the longest was the kingdom of Hyderabad ruled by the Nizam. This too would fall to Indian forces in 1948 with operation Polo. What would follow is a massacre of muslims and pro-communist peasants, designed to crush the peasant led revolutionary movement in Telangana. In most cases, for the rulers of these mini states, accession to India under the terms offered, ensured a privileged position, privy purses, and survival in the face of potential revolutionary terror at the hands of masses who have had enough of the exploitative and autocratic rule. Kashmir, Hyderabad and Travancore, each had uprisings of workers and peasants within their kingdom, and in each case, the rulers responded brutally.

On the economic front, Nehru and his cabinet implemented the Bombay plan, which put India on the path of statism. The largest foreign owned bank in India, the Imperial bank, was nationalized and turned into what is today the largest bank in India (still under state ownership), the State Bank of India. Several new state owned companies were established in the energy sector, primarily Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Indian Oil Corporation (IOCL). The Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) was established in the steel sector and has today grown to be one of the largest steel manufacturers in the world. These steps did not constitute socialism, rather state capitalism of this type, only aided private capital, and the chief beneficiary was India’s rising indigenous capitalists based off Bombay. Protectionist measures helped preserve the large internal Indian market for Indian capitalists, at the cost of innovativeness, but this did not hurt early on. Nehru’s mixed economy still had a place for private capital, with state enterprises propping up private capital like a tea plantation worker carrying her British boss, a dynamic which has not changed fundamentally till today.

On the point of pacifying the threat of revolution, is where perhaps Nehru’s Prime ministership shone the most. The adoption of socialist rhetoric, welfarism, abolition of zamindari and in some cases directly crushing peasant rebellions (such as in Telengana), all contributed to blunting the revolutionary fervor of the masses which had been building up since the end of the second world war. The Stalinists led by the CPIM had initially denounced Nehru and the Congress as comprador, running dogs of imperialism. They had played a leading role in organizing the peasantry in the Telengana uprising against the Nizam, they had also led many militant worker’s strikes in Bombay and Calcutta. In 1957, when the state of Kerala went to elections, it was Nehru’s Congress government that had jailed most of the Communist party leadership to try and ensure their failure. The effort did not bear fruit, and Kerala had it’s first elected Communist government. This government lasted only two years before being dismissed in 1959.

Three years later in 1962, India would go to war with China, an event that would split the CPI and the communist movement as a whole. India’s defeat in the war with China, was arguably the darkest period of Nehru’s prime ministership, and the beginning of the modern era of Stalinist collaboration with the Congress government. The pro-nationalist wing of the CPI won out, and became the mainstream CPIM, the Maoist movement in India which was at it’s infancy at this time, was hounded out and cornered. In the fallout of the war, the Chinese community, primarily living in Eastern India and in the city of Calcutta was scapegoated. About twenty thousand were rounded up and put into a prison camp in Deuli Rajasthan, which had been previously used to house Italian POWs in world war 2. This chapter of Indian history has been left out of the history books, and barely talked about outside of the Chinese community, Nehru is never called out for this action, certainly not from anyone on the left, and liberals remain silent about it.

Despite the failure with China, Nehru had scored several foreign policy successes, ensuring the nascent Indian bourgeois republic would be shielded from cold war rivalries, while also extending it’s influence in a subtle and benign way. Under Nehru, India led the non-aligned movement, and became a leading player among newly decolonized nations, in this it acquired prestige among former colonial countries. During this period, India played a key role in diffusing tensions in the Korean peninsula towards the end of the Korean war, and played a decisive role in the Suez crisis, against British and French interests, aligning itself with both the Soviet Union and the United States, pursuing an anticolonial agenda. This would culminate in it’s seizure of Goa in 1961, without any political backlash from the leading powers of the world. The panchsheel (five principles of peaceful coexistence) between India and China, ensured the latter’s nullification as a revolutionary force against world capitalism. The Chinese Trotskyist Peng Shuzi had criticized the CCP on signing to the agreement, which was essentially a concession by revolutionary China to world capitalism. The war was a military defeat for India, but politically the Indian bourgeoisie consolidated, and drove the Communist Parties to capitulation before it.

Nehru today :

The vitriolic hatred of the Hindutva right against Nehru has blinded the present generation of Indians to Nehru’s legacy, and prevented a scientific Marxist understanding of the man from developing. To put Nehru in the context of Indian history, is to acknowledge his role in destroying the budding revolutionary consciousness of the Indian masses. He was the leader of the congress, when it colluded with the British government to destroy the naval uprising, where Sardar Patel, the so-called iron man of India, deceived the mutineering sailors into surrendering before the British. By crushing the Telengana uprising, and initiating the first large scale suppression of communists, he destroyed the second great revolutionary wave in the country. His economic policies, while incidentally beneficial to the working class and peasants, were primarily geared to propping up Indian capitalists, for which they are still benefitting to this day. The darker aspects of his past, are glossed over by liberals and the Stalinist left, such as the mass incarceration of Chinese, hushing up the massacre of rebellious peasants and muslims after the annexation of Hyderabad, and the censorship and suppression of dissident communists in the 50s.

These do not figure in the right wing attacks on Nehru, for whom such actions would be more than welcome, perhaps even celebrated, but it is convenient for them to make a scapegoat out of Nehru, and blame him for ‘socialism’, something Nehru never did, and adopting a secular stance towards India’s minorities, something that the congress has still retained. Nehru’s secularism had it’s flaws as well. In allowing the fullest freedom of religion, both to practice and preach, it allowed religion to further entrench itself in society, without any serious attempt to challenge religion’s hold over India society. The fact that today, the Hindutva right wing is ascendant and free to propagate its divisive agenda, is nothing but a clear failure of the secularism of Nehru and Congress. It was akin to a band aid to treat an infection that lay within the body.

As ineffective as this was, it is still too much for the Hindutva movement to accept, which seeks to turn India into a Hindu supremacist country, where non-hindus would be second class citizens, if even allowed to live at all. In practice, much of this is already achieved through communal divisions, and majoritarianism, which continued on under the Congress despite its secular rhetoric. The Mandal commission report laid bare the marginalization of muslims and Dalits in India, something Nehru’s policies did not address. For the forces of Hindutva, this state of affairs is desirable, and they wish to take it further.

In addition to this, the right wing, pro-market neoliberals who are mostly aligned with the BJP and the Hindutva parties, hate Nehru for his supposed ‘socialism’. The emphasis on statism and protectionism did not come from Nehru alone, but was a demand of the Indian bourgeoisie itself ! Private capital at the time, was not up to the task of large scale infrastructure projects, or financing, something which the state could handle better. Nehru’s implementation of five year plans, import substitution, and creation of large publicly owned corporations to spearhead India’s early industrialization had set it off on the course to develop a relatively independent capitalist economy. It was not alone in instituting such policies, EastAsian nations such as Taiwan, South Korea and Japan attempted such policies as well, in their post war reconstruction. Nehru was no maverick socialist nor an idealist, but a bourgeois leader responding to material conditions he faced. The critics of Nehru on the right have no conception of this, and are consequently blind to this reality.

Conclusion :

From this reading, one conclusion is inescapable, that Nehru was a representative of Indian capitalism, and a leading defender of it. His credentials as a democrat are what liberals shine upon in this period of reaction, where India is ruled by the reactionary Bharatiya Janata Party, aggressively promoting it’s Hindu majoritarian agenda, but for the working masses of India, Nehru was the leading figure who ensured the emancipation of the workers and peasants under a socialist revolution would be delayed indefinitely. His so-called ‘secularism’ was just a veneer to hide the true dynamics of Hindu majoritarianism, and casteism, which remain endemic in Indian society.

Nehru’s ‘socialism’ while beneficial to the working masses to an extent, was primarily oriented towards strengthening Indian capitalism. The need to provide welfare to the public, was borne of the need to ward off any revolutionary threat to the rule of the bourgeois class. Those in the left, swayed by adopting Nehru as a counter idol to the BJP’s cynical and dishonest use of Subhash Bose and Bhagat Singh, must know that he was no revolutionary. Nehru was an agent of democratic reaction, and a very successful one at that. His rule saw the deaths of thousands of revolutionary peasants in the Telengana uprising, the massacre of thousands of innocent muslims, the subjugation of the revolutionary movement in India, and the consolidation of bourgeois power. None of which should be celebrated. The victories earned through struggle, such as the abolition of zamindari, labour rights, and land reforms, owe much more to the struggles of the peasants and workers of India, than the supposed magnanimity of Nehru.

Nehru is a model of a liberal bourgeois misleader, whose ‘socialism’ was merely a tool to pacify the Indian working class, and whose real face was revealed in the brutal suppression of the Telengana uprising, and when nearly a hundred people were killed in the attempted pacification of the Samyukt Maharashtra movement. The fraud of pretending to be the friend of the worker by day, and scheming against him by night is the hallmark of most liberal bourgeois leaderships today, especially those pretending to lean left.