MIA > Archive > Evelyn Roy
From International Press Correspondence, Vol. 2 No. 32/33, 5 May 1922, pp. 247–248.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
Public Domain: Marxists Internet Archive (2020). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
India, which during the past decade has been stirring uneasily from its slumbers, has awakened to full consciousness in the last two years. One has but to glance through any daily paper to witness the unusual prominence given to news of events in India in order to realize that this awakening extends to every phase of national existence – intellectual, social, economic and political. The age-long apathy of patient resignation and endurance has been broken, partly by the opening up of India to currents of world thought, due to such transcendent events as the imperialist war and the Russian Revolution, and partly by the desperate economic condition of the overwhelming mass of the people, whom centuries of exploitation have reduced to the last stages of wretchedness. The third and most significant factor in the awakening of India lies in the rapid industrialization of the country, which has been going on throughout the last two decades and which has resulted in the creation, along with a native and foreign capitalist class, of an industrial proletariat numbering about nine millions. It is the growing class-consciousness of the latter, brought about by the increased exploitation during the years of reckless war-profiteering, that is responsible not only for the unparalleled record of strikes, lockouts, various manifestations of mass action and the growth of trade-unionism within recent years, but also for the increasing intensity of the nationalist campaign for political independence.
The intimate relationship that exists between the nationalist struggle for Swaraj or Home Rule, and the labor movement for bettering the economic condition of the workers, is realized by few outside of India and even fewer inside. Mr. Gandhi, the saintly leader of the nationalist forces and apostle of non- resistance, could never have commanded the nationwide response of the masses, nor have terrified the British Raj into its present frenzied rage, had there not been behind his incoherent and badly-led movement the steady driving force and fighting spirit the Indian working-class. The power of organized labor has long made itself felt in England and the countries of Europe and America, and no sooner did the spectre begin to raise its head in India than the British rulers foresaw wherein lay the real danger to capitalistic imperialism. In the growth of trade-unionism, in the demands of the workers tor higher wages, fewer hours, better living conditions and a share in the profits of industry, backed up by the united action of the proletariat in prolonged strikes and bloody encounters with the police, the Viceroy of India and his coadjutors rightly read the real threat to British, rule. They hastily began to attempt the divorce of the economic from the political movement by the creation of Labor Arbitration Boards, by the introduction of Factory Acts, by nomination of Labor Members to the new Legislative Council and the appointment of Government Commissions to study the causes of labor unrest in India. But at the same time, they dissplayed their implacable hatred of the working-class by ordering out armed police and soldiery to quell every strike and to force the workers to capitulate to their employers. The labor movement, agitated by nationalist leaders, inevitably drifted into political channels; it became the willing instrument of politicians who called Hartals, national strikes and local ones, declared an economic boycott of British goods, organized their Non-Cooperation campaign against the Government and advanced extremist demands for Swaraj, because they were always sure of being supported in their action by at least one section of the population that stood ready to risk life and limb to obtain its demands, namely, the Indian working-class, with nothing to lose but its chains.
The huge, unwieldy mass of disaffected, discontented people in India which swells the ranks of the Nationalists, consisting of the rising bourgeoisie, Government servants, petty traders, ruined artisans, peasants and field and city proletariat, are held together by the slenderest thread of unity – the Nationalist Program, which calls for Swaraj or Home Rule; the righting of the Punjab wrongs of 1919, when several thousand people were massacred by machine-guns under the infamous Rowlatt Act, and the revision of the Treaty of Sèvres by the Allies so as to grant complete independence to and the restoration of Turkey. Upon this exceedingly vague program of conflicting and impossible demands, all classes were asked to unite and to fight the British Indian Government by the non-violent means of boycott, civil disobedience and non-cooperation. So chaotic a movement must long ago have fallen apart into its various component elements, had it not been for the saving grace of Mr. Gandhi’s personality, which contained a powerful appeal lor the Indian masses; for the policy of government persecutions, which took definite shape and reached its climax during the recent visit of the Prince of Wales, and for the awakened mass-energy of the workers and peasants determined to better their lot. The national Hartals or general strikes, which paralyzed the life of all the great cities visited by the Prince, together with the bloody conflicts which broke out between the striking workers and students organized into Volunteer Corps, and the police, forced the hands of the Government. All the prominent leaders of the Nationalist movement were arrested and convicted to from six month to two years’ imprisonment, with the exception of Mr. Gandhi. In addition, about ten thousand Indian Volunteers lie rotting in jails, the majority of whom are culled from the ranks of the workers.
The month of December witnessed two significant Congresses in the history of India, one the Second All-Indian Trade Union Congress at Jharria, in which about 20,000 worker-delegates participated, and the other at Ahmedabad, was the 16th Session of the Indian National Congress, the political organ of the Nationalists, attended by 6,000 accredited delegates. Both were closely watched by the Government. Both passed almost identical demands. The Trade Union Congress, besides advancing an economic program lfor the redress of workers’ grievances and the betterment of their miserable condition, declared that the only true cure for the workers’ ills lay in the attainment of Swaraj, and that this would be won through the action of the Indian working-class within ten years. The National Congress, forgetting or ignoring the economic grievances of its principal mainstay, the Indian workers and peasants promulgated the same vague political program as before; announced the adoption of non-violent civil disobedience to Government laws and orders as the immediate tactics to attain their demands, and elected Mr. Gandhi supreme arbiter of the national destinies, with power to name his successor in case of his arrest.
The recently-announced arrest of Mr. Gandhi comes as no surprise to those watching the current of events in India. The campaign of Civil Disobedience led quickly to violence, as was to be expected. The impoverished peasantry refused to pay rent and taxes; police and militia were promptly called out by the Government to enforce collections, and passive resistance quickly transformed itself into sanguinary struggles between the police and the people. Gandhi, whose vacillating tactics have more than once led the Congress Party to ridicule and disaster, renounced the policy of Civil Disobedience as premature, and called upon the rioters to repent and offer themselves to justice. His change of front came just in time to stop the warrant for his arrest issued by the Government – another unfortunate blunder in tactics, since he laid himself open to the charge advanced against the Ali Brothers, of trying to save himself. Again, as with the Ali Brothers, to clear himself of this imputation, Gandhi swung again to the left and sanctioned individual civil disobedience, which brought down the wrath of the authorities upon his head and resulted in his incarceration. The moment was opportune and had long been waited for by the Government, which had given the Mahatma a very long rope in the hope that he would end by hanging himself. To have arrested him two months earlier would have been to risk an open revolution; coming when it did, the country chafed and there were minor uprisings in every part, but these were easily put down. The Government felt firm ground beneath its feet before it gathered into jail the last Indian leader of national repute, who ranks undoubtedly first in actual influence and popularity among the masses. In spite of his “Himalayan mistakes”, Gandhi can never be accused of cowardice. His worst faults are bad judgment and lack of political acumen. He failed to comprehend the social forces with which he was playing, and until these are understood, the Indian movement will continue, as in the past, to be a series of false advances and precipitate retreats before an enemy too strong and astute for Indian political babes-in-the-woods to cope with.
Nevertheless, the arrest of Gandhi marks a temporary setback to the progress of the revolution in India. However badly, he has steered the unwieldy mass of Indian energy and opinion into one broad channel of ceaseless agitation against the existing system during the last two years. If his leadership was confused, it was because the movement itself was a chaos which bred confusion, though he has made blunders of first magnitude, he at the same time groped a way for the people out of the blind alley of political stagnation and government repression into the roaring tide of a national upheaval. The Indian movement is ready for a new leader because it is becoming every day more clarified, its inherent contradictions are becoming palpable even to its component parts, but this very clarification spells disintegration, unless some new leaders are hurled into the breach. The more conservative right wing of moderate Indian opinion is growing tired of the political handsprings of Gandhi and his followers. The extreme left wing, whose body consists of Indian labor, has seen its forces uselessly spent in a hopeless political contest with the bureaucracy for a Swaraj constantly postponed. In every affray with the armed forces of the Government, it has come off worsted, its best elements lie in jail. It too, grows tired of political rope-dancing, and will break away, unless some tangible economic program is advanced by the Congress leaders to rally labor in earnest to their cause. Like the Chartist Movement in England, which its Indian prototype in many ways resembles, what began as a great mass-movement towards political, social and economic revolution may end as a mediocre struggle of the disheartened workers to win, within the bonds of legalized trade-unionism, the right to a full meal a day and an old-age pension when Capitalism shall throw them on the scrapheap.
May there soon arise from the ranks of Indian labor, or from the intellectual proletariat at war with foreign rule, a class-conscious Gandhi who will crystallize the political confusion that reigns in the Indian movement by formulating a clear and definite program based upon the needs and aspirations of the overwhelming majority of the Indian people; by boldly raising the standard of the working-class, and by declaring that only through the energy and lives of the Indian proletariat and peasantry, can Swaraj ever be attained.
Last updated on 2 January 2020