Workers World Vol. 19, No. 12
March 22 – Why are the Western bourgeoisies, from Zurich to London to Washington, literally beside themselves with joy over the results of the Indian election which ousted the Indira Gandhi government and its ruling Congress Party?
Is it because, as they allege, of their attachment to “democracy”?
With the exception of the period of the Emergency Decree (June 1975 until the middle of this February [1977]), there was democracy, that is, bourgeois democracy, in India for well-nigh 30 years. Why was the Western bourgeoisie so unhappy with that democracy?
What was it so scornful, contemptuous, and downright imprudent towards it during all that period?
The arrogance and impudence of the U.S. ruling class towards that democracy was demonstrated in an unforgettable incident when the Indian Ambassador to the UN (the late Krishna Menon) in an interview on TV was so insolently treated that he angrily stopped the interview and walked out of the studio.
Almost universally the bourgeois press in the West characterized it as inefficient, corrupt, and unresponsive to popular will. It certainly was that. But that is not the reason why the former bourgeois democracy was so viciously attacked and the incoming one so endearingly welcomed.
Why, for instance, if they are so attached to bourgeois democracy, did they so viciously undermine and overthrow the democracy of Allende? Why are they trying so desperately to undermine similar bourgeois democracies in the island of Jamaica and elsewhere?
Democracy is not at all what concerns the financiers on Wall Street, Lombard Street, and the Bourse, or the bankers of Switzerland. What concerns them most and what they have been so diligently and assiduously working for all these many years is to bring about the “great turnaround” in Indian foreign policy of which we wrote earlier (Workers World, Feb. 11, 1977).
That is what endears them to the present “democrats.” They hope, and it is only a hope thus far, that the opposition which triumphed over the Gandhi regime will slowly but surely turn in a Western direction, make itself more amenable to the penetration of the transnational corporations (which is considerable even now), make Indian society more “open” for big business opportunities and “cultural” penetration from the Western capitalists, and reorient the economy and especially its foreign policy towards the Washington-London axis, and away from the USSR.
That’s the prospect which makes them so deliriously happy, a prospect that this country of more than 600 million people will be solidly in the corner of imperialist finance capital. But that, of course, remains to be seen. The coalition government that is likely to take over is bound to be shaky, at least in its initial stages, and it has still to reckon with the intractable economic problems of abysmal poverty of the masses and the wild demagogy which the bourgeois parties indulged in during the campaign.
But aside from its international aspects, there are also domestic factors crucial to an understanding of the significance of the humiliating defeat administered to the Gandhi regime and to the Congress Party which Gandhi and her cohorts headed.
The Congress Party, contrary to popular misconception, has always been a party of the big industrialists and landlords, regardless of its leftist demagogy. Its attitude towards the masses of workers and peasants has been in the classical tradition of protecting and defending the interests of the entrenched big business bourgeoisie and landholders while on occasion throwing small sops to the poor peasants, meager reforms to the workers after bitter struggle, and a smokescreen of leftist demagogy to win popular support. That’s the secret of why the Congress Party and the Gandhi regime in particular, as well as its predecessors, including Nehru, have been able to stay in office so long.
A unique feature of the Gandhi regime, as well as of those in many underdeveloped countries, is that after a period of acute class tensions and international pressures they assume a Bonapartist form. That is, faced by sharp antagonisms at home between the basic classes in society, they assume the position of arbiter and try to straddle the fence between the classes. At the same time, they base themselves solidly on the foundations of bourgeois private property and capitalist and landlord exploitation.
When the class struggle becomes more acute they veer now to the left, now to the right, and often they are left with no more support than the police, the military, and the governmental bureaucracy.
Often the Bonapartist regime under these circumstances becomes nothing more than a naked police dictatorship with only the police and the bureaucracy as fundamental props of social support. That is what happened to the Gandhi regime.
In her case, the military, so far as is known, has stood discreetly aside, leaving mainly the police and the governmental bureaucracy as her principal support.
The heavy support the party had gotten in the early years from the bourgeoisie began to erode several years ago. Actually, the big bourgeoisie was getting ready to pull the rug from under her administration in early 1975 when they sicced on her the very same opposition which has now become the victorious party in the parliamentary election.
But in early 1975 Gandhi and her cohorts were able to beat the right-wing reactionary elements who had combined (really conspired) to overthrow her regime through so-called non-violent methods, which in reality bordered on incitement to civil war. In response, Gandhi pulled in June 1975 what was in reality a counter-coup, outlawing the right-wing opposition and arresting its principal leaders.
In typical Bonapartist police dictatorship fashion, she tried to balance the repression against the right by also decreeing highly repressive measures aimed at workers, peasants, and students on the left. It is on them that the main burden of the Emergency Decrees fell, although little of this is mentioned in the bourgeois press. They’re concerned with the repression of the right-wing bourgeois opposition.
Gandhi thereafter instituted a series of “economic reforms” calculated to ingratiate herself with the bourgeoisie and to win back their confidence. She granted to them enormous concessions in taxation, investment policies, and other fields, and at the same time dealt heavy blows to the working class movement.
But the bourgeoisie would not be appeased. The very Cabinet which she relied upon, as can now be seen, was veering away from her. Her call for a general election was in reality not a decision based upon a calculation of electoral strength but because she knew darn well that her coalition was disintegrating and moving to the right. In a desperate move to hold on, she decided upon general elections.
What really happened was that the bourgeoisie pulled the rug out from under her completely. This is dramatically and graphically illustrated by the defection of one of her principal Cabinet members, Jagjivan Ram, now the founder of one of the two bourgeois parties opposing Gandhi and the Congress Party. The capitalist press does not bring out that this minister in her Cabinet has been in the governing circles in India almost since 1947 and that he approved of the Emergency Decrees, joined the dictatorial Cabinet in 1975, and only quit after the elections were announced and the Emergency Decrees lifted, never giving any explanation to his constituents of why he joined the Gandhi Cabinet, why he approved the repressive measures in the first place, or why he all of a sudden defected and was made a virtual national hero.
The truth of the matter is that his resignation only symbolizes the wholesale defection of the bourgeoisie from the Gandhi regime. This defection is politically concentrated in the form of the Janata Party and its allies who have won at the last count 289 seats and may, if predictions from the bourgeois press are correct, win an absolute majority without having to depend on any of its allies.
What is the Janata Party? It is said to be a disparate conglomeration of diverse political groups having in common only one great “uplifting” objective – democracy. Its only slogan is “democracy or dictatorship.”
But what is the class composition of Janata? It is a bourgeois conglomeration of ideologically diverse groupings but contains within it, in the words of the Washington Post (March 22), supporters of “industrialists and big landlords.”
The Wall Street Journal (same date) calls attention to the leading role of “free-enterprisers” and landlords. One of the principal organizations in the Janata Party is the Jan Sangh, an extreme ultra-rightist, neo-fascist, and outrageously chauvinist party supported by the big industrialists. The other groupings are bourgeois right-center organizations having as a left cover the Socialist Party.
Any socialist who can form a bloc with the rightists and neo-fascist organizations based on the single plank of ousting the Gandhi regime on the basis of “democracy versus dictatorship” is completely deceiving the masses. Only a renegade socialist or one who has never been a socialist except in words can possibly be part and parcel of such a coalition. The truth of the matter is that the Janata Party and Ram’s Congress for Democracy represent the defection of the bourgeoisie from the Congress Party and the Gandhi regime.
Most of the politicians who have governed in India on behalf of the exploiters have been returned to Parliament and very little has in reality changed. What has changed is the shift by big capital and their secret supporters in the U.S. to the Janata Party.
Why have they shifted away? During the period of the Emergency, the appeasement measures that the Gandhi regime enacted to please the big landowners and capitalists wee graciously received but found inadequate. They deeply appreciated the repressive law and order regime insofar as it carried out the repression of the workers and peasants, but for now no longer find the regime necessary for their needs.
There is also the question of the relationship with the Soviet Union. The Indian bourgeoisie is more fearful of the domestic consequences of a relationship with Moscow than of the diplomatic character of the relationship, particularly at a time of the upsurge of the class struggle.
In case of a sharp deterioration in the economic situation, the specter of communism which haunts India as it does the bourgeoisie everywhere makes a long-lasting alliance with the USSR a liability from a domestic point of view and continually urges them into the orbit of Western imperialism along with the sharp pressure of the penetration of finance capital.
No matter how moderate the policies of the Soviet leaders may be and no matter how much they may go out of their way to ingratiate themselves with the Indian bourgeois government, even when this impinges on the internal class struggle, Moscow still stands as a rallying point of revolutionary struggle which has been enhanced by its recent role in Africa, particularly Angola, and by the fact that it is the most powerful socialist counter-weight to imperialism.
So far as the working class organizations are concerned, they find themselves in a weakened position both by the nature of the repressive Emergency Decrees and the tragic policy of having collaborated with and then tailed the Congress Party and the Indira Gandhi regime in particular, hanging on to its coattails until Gandhi literally kicked them in the teeth.
Only then did the Communist Party of India (CPI) break with the regime, but their policy leaves so much to be desired that it literally is almost impossible for them to disentangle themselves from the regime and to make that clean break which is so essential for asserting any working-class independence.
For instance, an article by Sadhan Mukherjee in the U.S. Daily World of March 22, dated New Delhi, but obviously written before the elections, demonstrates how the CPI is grappling with the fundamental political approach of the Janata Party, which it of course characterizes as reactionary and “trying to take advantage of popular discontent.”
“The JP says that the crucial issue is ‘democracy vs. dictatorship.’ The Congress Party says the issue is ‘stability and a strong center.’ Neither one is correct.”
What is the correct one? “The real issue,” the writer says, “in the election is that the voters must ensure that democratic and progressive forces are in a position to influence national events. Elected representatives must be committed to act in the people’s interest as has been done by the CPI-led coalition in the southern state of Kerala for the past six and a half years” (which, by the way, has bourgeois elements in it, aside from the general political policy of the CPI – S.M.).
As can be seen from this excerpt, the main thrust of the bourgeois parties is to confuse the workers and the peasants and delude them to believe that the struggle is between “democracy” and “dictatorship.” This is what has to be answered first and foremost from a principled point of view, above all unveiling the profound theoretical deception involved in this absurd bourgeois counter-position.
There is now and always has been a dictatorship in India. It has been the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, whether under Nehru, Asti, or Gandhi. Democracy, this is, bourgeois democracy, is a form, one of the many different forms of the rule or dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The dictatorship of the bourgeoisie robs, exploits, pillages, and plunders the workers and peasants regardless of the form of the bourgeois state, whether it be bourgeois democratic, military, outright fascist, or monarchical.
So it must be explained to the workers and peasants that the proper counter-position to avoid exploitation and robbery of the poor is not merely a change in the form of the bourgeois state. No matter how democratic or repressive the form of state, it is still the state of the bourgeoisie – their dictatorship. To put an end to exploitation requires a proletarian dictatorship based upon proletarian democracy as against bourgeois democracy, which is a smokescreen for the rule of the financiers, industrialists, and landlords.
To avoid this question is to avoid the most essential means of enlightening the workers and winning their allegiance on the basis of what, in India in any case, is an obvious class truth to the workers even if not to the politicians in the working class parties. Of course, it matters a great deal to the workers and peasants whether the form of the bourgeois state is democratic or whether it is a Bonapartist police state, like the Gandhi regime. It matters even more to them if it is an outright fascist regime.
But a bourgeois democracy, important as it is for the workers, is only important because it gives them the opportunity to organize openly and take advantage of this type of bourgeois rule in order to strengthen their own position and undermine and if possible overthrow the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. All else in the long run is illusory.
“Under the emergency rule, the police and bureaucracy came to play the most important role,” wrote Mukherjee in the Daily World. Precisely! That is the Bonapartist character of the Gandhi regime reduced to its bare-bones role, making it absolutely impermissible for a working class party to have supported it in the first place. Only in the eventuality of U.S. and Western aggression, that is, in the struggle against imperialism, is it correct to support it – and then in a Leninist, critical way.
No matter how many democratic rights the workers win, no matter how many economic and political gains they make, if they are not oriented in the direction of proletarian class rule and the class character of the bourgeois dictatorship is not unmasked in all its nakedness and cruelty, the working class will ultimately have to face the crucial test of an outright fascist dictatorship – if they do not prepare for a proletarian revolution to meet the eventuality in the first place.
This generalization applies not only to the underdeveloped countries and those under neocolonial rule, but to the metropolitan, imperialist countries even more.
Last updated: 11 May 2026