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From The Militant, Vol. 12 No. 18, 3 May 1948, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
The Constituent Assembly of newly created India is soon to adopt a constitution. As was to be expected, the drafting committee dominated by the capitalist Congress Party is proposing a document which indicates its reactionary trend since it assumed power in August 1947.
In the March 6 issue of New Spark, fortnightly organ of the Bolshevik Leninist Party of India, Section of the Fourth International, K. Tilak briefly analyzes the Draft Constitution. Outstanding among its reactionary features, according to Tilak, are the following:
It proposes to constitute India as a “Sovereign Democratic Republic.” In the Resolution adopted by the Assembly in January 1947 (that is, before Britain’s withdrawal), these words were preceded by the word “Independent” – which is now dropped.
This indicates, says the Spark writer, the intention of the capitalists to remain as a Dominion within the British Empire, reneging on its whole traditional campaign for independence.
The Draft calls for the appointment of Governors of Provinces instead of their election, as originally provided by the Assembly.
“It is in relation to the Native States, however, that the Draft Constitution becomes openly antidemocratic and reactionary,” the writer concludes, “for it gives sanction to the autocratic regimes prevailing in these states.” The Draft Constitution makes no provision for elections there, so that “we can be certain that in all cases the Maharajahs will nominate at least 50% of these representatives.”
The Constitution thus gives formal “evidence of the open alliance that now exists of all vested interests in India (bourgeoisie, landlord-feudal interests, British imperialism) against the masses.”
As if to underline further this drift toward a police state – an Indian counter-part of the Chiang Kai-Shek regime in China, – repressive decrees are constantly being passed by the Congress government. The latest affects “liberty of expression,” to which the Draft Constitution gives lip-service. Bonds of 1,000 rupees and more are required to be posted by labor papers, if they are to continue publication.
Thus, the Indian Laborer, organ of the Madras Labor Union, the oldest existing registered trade union paper, has been forced to discontinue publication by this decree. In Calcutta, the CP’s journal Swadhinata has had to suspend publication for the same reason. Finally, the Trotskyist organ Poratam, in the Tamil dialect, was refused the right of publication by the Chief Presidency Magistrate in Madras, when the BLPI could not post the required bond. It is notable that the press laws on which the decree is based hail from the imperialist British administration of 1931.
The Socialist Party, running independent candidates for the first time against those of the Congress to which, it has been affiliated, scored a great success in the recent municipal contests in Bombay. 26. SP representatives were elected to 48 of the Congress and 5 Stalinists. In the working class areas the SP swept the field.
New Spark comments as follows on the results:
“The political level of the Bombay workers is perhaps the highest in India. It is only natural therefore that they should be among the first to be disillusioned in the bourgeois Congress. Turning away from Congress, they were not prepared to go to the CP, justifiably prejudiced as they are against the Stalinists for their role of treachery in the August (1942) struggle. The Bombay workers have therefore naturally turned to the other large party that has appeared before them as an alternative ... the elections becoming virtually a duel between the Congress and the SP.”
The Trotskyists contested only one of the seats and received 641 votes to 3,136 for the SP. Reformist in character, the SP leadership is breaking with the bourgeois Congress only under the pressure of the class struggle. The workers flock to it because they are attracted to socialism. “Should it fail to lead them forward,” the Spark concluded, “the workers will abandon the SP even as they have abandoned the Congress.”
Amarnath, Trotskyist leader of the B and C Mills workers, arrested and held in prison since the great Madras textile strike last year, has been freed after a campaign on his behalf by the Madras Labor Union.
A general strike gripped Rangoon, Burma early this month, according to the London Economist. It was directed mainly against British-owned companies, and was accompanied by demonstrations against the government of Thakin Nu, “dedicated in principle to national independence and socialism,” which demanded the expropriation of all foreign interests.
Although Britain has pulled out from Burma just as it has from India, its capitalists still own many of its rich national resources of rice, oil and tin. As in the larger country, a native government pledging lip-service to the people has taken over the reigns from the imperialists, while playing their game. But here, too, the masses are in action to force their leaders to act on their words. Socialism has become the watchword of the people of Asia fighting for their independence. Just as their native capitalists do in a negative sense, they very positively demonstrate in action Trotsky’s great theory of the “Permanent Revolution.”
On March 29, a National Conference was held in Paris representing Socialist Youth and International Communist (Trotskyist) Youth, to found the Revolutionary Youth Movement (MRJ). One of the immediate tasks decided upon was the construction of youth defense guards against de Gaullist and other reactionary attacks upon labor organizations.
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