sumit sarkar, modern india: 1885-1947

(1): great, telling quote-- 'We shall not subvert the British Empire by allowing the Bengali Baboo to discuss his own schools and drains' (Finance Member Evelyn Baring).

(1): in early 1880s, Indians had only 16 of the 900-odd posts in the Civil Service; until 1947, no Indian rose above the rank of Brigadier in the Army

(3): despite contradictions, we are dealing with the "irreversible historical fact of the entry of the masses into active political life."

(13): the early 1880s (under Ripon and Dufferin) saw attempt to expand the circle of collaborators beyond princes and zamindars to the educated middle-classes.

(16): Indian troops used in 1882 in Egypt, in Sudan against Mahdi in 1885-1886 and 1896, and in China against the Boxers in 1900.

(16): military expenditure as % of gov't budget: 41.9% in 1881-1882, 45% in 1891-1892, and 51,9% in 1904-1905

(16): army had become 1/3 white after 1857; before it was only 14%

(16): priceless--Wood on divide-and-rule: "I wish to have a different and rival spirit in different regiments, so that Sikh might fire into Hindoo, Goorkha into either, without any scruple in case of need."

(17): Land revenue as single biggest source of income--receipts increased despite devastating famines of 1890s.

(18): story of import duties, thanks to Lancashire pressure, and countervailing excise tax.

(19): Sarkar's argument is that, at least in part, shift to local government/devolution had to do with increasing financial pressures.

(20): two arms to process of constitutional reform, throughout:

1. rallying the moderates
2. divide-and-rule

(21): elected municipalities sharpened Hindu-Muslim tensions as early as 1886 in Punjab. "separate electorates inevitably hardened the lines of division"

(21): Sec. of State Hamilton on Hindu-Muslim: "...One hardly knows what to wish for; unity of ideas and action would be very dangerous politically; divergence of ideas and collision are administratively troublesome. Of the two the latter is the least risky, though it throws anxiety and responsibility upon those on the spot where the friction exists."

(23): white racism affected Indian political elites (civil service exams held abroad) and economic elites (unity of white business men against Indian competitors)

(24): key--colonial economy. Dutt's theory spoke of three phases, though Sarkar points out that this is highly schematic:

1. 1757 - 1813: direct plunder, E. India company monopoly trade, investment of surplus revenues in purchase of low priced Indian finished goods for export.
2. 1813 - 1858: classic age of industrial exploitation, as India became market for Manchester textiles and a source for raw materials.
3. 1858 - onwards: finance-imperialism began to entrench iteself through export of capital, British banks, export-import firms

(24-42): Sarkar discusses sevenfeatures of colonial economy

1. Drain of Wealth: Plassey solved problem of bringing bullion from England--inland trade and land revenue was to provide capital for 'investments'. Profits of military conquest in Bengal were used to buy goods for export. Need for unilateral transfer of funds to Britain was a constant. (e.g., Home Charges in 1901-1902 came to 17.3 million pounds, of which a third were railway interest; 3 million was debt; army was 4.3 million; stores purchase was 3 million; and pensions were 1 million.) Part of this is India's export suprlus, which was vital for UK's balance of payments (Britain still required heavy imports of agricultural products, while manufacturers were having a tough time finding markets. India gave UK a captive market; and India's export surplus counterbalanced British deficits). Drain theory has been criticized for exaggerating figures, since foreign trade/export surplus were only a small part of the national income; but Naoroji's main point was about potential surplus which could have been reinvested in a way that benefited India.
2. Deindustrialization: some discussion of the controversy over figures, but conclusion is that nationalists were not that incorrect.
3. Commercialization of Agriculture: faux modernization. Bulk of profits from the export boom were appropriated by foreign firms, and left the country. "Capitalist penetration helped consolidate established structures of exploitation." "The central fact was the built-in tendency of the entire system against significant advances in productive technology..." The riskiness of investment in agriculture (owing to fluctuating or declining prices) meant that anyone who accumulated some funds would turn towards trade, usury, or renting-out land.
4. Land Relations: Agrarian policies were moulded by competing priorities--need for more revenue, desire to encourage certain kinds of agricultural production, the need to retain allies, administrative convenience, and changing ideological assumptions. Permanent Settlement encouraged usuorious and feudal exploitation. Landed income remained parasitic in nature. In sum, "the direct producer was too oppressed to go in for improvements, while above him had developed a hierarchy of rentiers with no need to go in for enterpreneurial risks..."
5. Agricultural Production--British intervened directly only in Punjab, western UP, and parts of Madras (irrigation, etc.) But even here research has thrown doubt on whether this was beneficial. "Colonial structure constituted a 'built-in-depressro for India's agrarian economy." Disastrous famines in the 1870s, the late-1890s, and twenty years later influenza killed millions. Till 1921, population hardly increased. And taking crop output into mind, post-1921 saw a drop in per capita production!
6. Foreign Capital--Marx in 1853 vs. Marx in 1881: railways have proven 'useless to the Hindus'. Oriented to British commercial and strategic needs. Nor were there any multiplier effects, since machinery was imported. In general, tendency was towards creating 'capitalist enclaves'. In the 1870s, interest payments abroad regularly exceeded annual capital inflows.
7. Indian Capitalist Development--British presence inhibited this through tariff and excise, and also through a variety of structural constraints.

(34): E. Bengal (favourable ecology meant a mass of independent peasants) vs. W. Bengal (peasants were splitting into rich farmers and share-croppers--the 'moribund delta')--

(35): in sum--"what remained largely absent was any structural need to invest in direct agricultural production... there was little incentive to technical innovation given the existence of a numerous rural proletariat... Not modernity, but a consolidation of semi-feudal relations was therefore the hallmark of the colonial impact on our agrarian scene." [for Zamindars and rich peasants]

(41): w-class was 2.1 million in a population of 303 million, in 1911 (800,000 of these in plantations). Concentration, though, would give it a power in excess of its numbers.

(41): an indenture system more like slavery than like wage-labour

(42): Pax Britannica as myth

(49): Moplahs of Malabar, in which religious fanaticism has expressed anti-landlord and anti-foreign discontent. Targeted at Hindu upper caste Nmboodri and Nairs [take-home of this entire section is very much the flexibility of religious ideologies, see p. 73--though Sarkar talks of the uniquely millenarian character of Islam, on p. 50]

(56): caste movements tended to be connected with intermediate groups, in this period

(59): Hindu-Muslim communalism as a 'modern' phenomena--"communal riots" rare until the 1880s. Sprung from elite conflict over political openings, but there were structural roots re: communalism in the "masses" (Hindu peasants faced muslim landlords in Avadh and Alagarh, opposite in E. Bengal; in Punjab, Hindu moneylenders, in UP opposite.

(62): point about how, in opposition to EP Thompson, rather than fall back on a rich tradition of artisan radicalism, the Indian working class fell back on sectional loyalties, etc.

(64): Indian business groups remained overwhelmingly loyalist until the 1920s (and even after the 20s, as Sarkar shows, their opposition was sectional and marred by a conservatism re: the mass movement)

(65): Congress in 1886 lacked members from the 'Old Aristocracy'

(67): British attitude to education was lousy. First bill to make primary education compulsory was moved by Gokhale in 1911, and rejected by majority on the Imperial Council.

(75-76): revivalist movements, around this period, in both Islam and Hinduism can be seen as a source of future tension, as they sought a religious idiom that rejected existing sycretic traditions (even if implicitly)

(77): Aligarh got unusual amount of British patronage--Sayyid Ahmed's social basis was UP Muslim landlords

(77): important--UP Muslim separatism had its roots in a traditional elite which felt increasingly threatened by Hindu trader, moneylenders, and professional groups. A similar case in reverse, in the Punjab [a la Alavi]

(78): Wahabism against syncretism in rural areas--sometimes heroically anti-British. Interesting analogy made to puritanical Kuka sect among the Sikhs.

(79): Jamal al-Din al-Afghani vs. Sayyid Ahmed--real bone of contention was against Ahmed's subservience to the British. Afghani himself pleaded for Hind-Muslim unity

(81-82): 1870s saw, in sum, emergence of nascent nationalism. Most important factors were racism, and awareness of colonial sources of poverty, Sarkar is arguing

(86): nationalist critique of colonialism had three pillars:

1. drain of wealth through export surplus
2. destruction of handicrafts, and tariffs
3. excessive land revenue burdens

(87): nationalist critique, though, 'slurred-over' tensions in the the Indian society (no real mention of exploitation by Hindu zamindars, etc.)

(89): discrediting of Congress as 'safety-valve' theory. Dufferin hadn't really reacted to Hume; and anyway latter's persona lrole wasn't very significant.

(90): Gokhale in 1905 Presidential address could claim that educated were the natural leaders of the people.

(90): early Congress demands were ICS, discrimination, and civil rights-related

(92): highly elitist lifestyle of top Congress politicians--here noting that landholders, commerical magnates, and some industrialists were very much involved.

(94): Aligarh Muslims were very wary of elected councils, given their numerical inferiority

(97): 'extremism' emerged out of a critique of the moderate Congress that had been ongoing since the 1890s--for appealing to British public opinion, and for being a movement of the english-speaking elite. Took three main forms:

1. self-development through constructive work
2. mass mobilization for Swaraj through 'passive resistance'
3. revolutionary terrorism

(99): emergence of Harkishan Lal in Punjab, in 1890s

(99): emergence of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in Maharashtra--use of religious orthodoxy, trailblazer of critique of Congress moderation

(101): Curzon's despotic paternalism [this sets the conditions under which nationalism emerges, the argument is--more-or-less]

(103): annual death from plague was at one million, yearly. and this after the cycle of famines that ended in 1899-1900.

(104): all-white juries in multi-racial cases, which Curzon didn't end, of course

(104): Curzon--"I hope I am making no false or arrogant claim when I say that the highest ideal of truth is to a large extent a Western conception."

(107): Why partition of Bengal, in 1905--"the really important political motive at this time was a division among the predominantly Hindu politicians of West and East Bengal.... 'Bengal divided will pull in several different ways...'"

(110): Swadeshi erupted from July 1905--but problem remained Hindu revivalist language, and inability to formulate radical agrarian programme to take advantage of peasant discontent.

(111): three broad trends in Bengal, 1905-1908

1. 'constructive Swadeshi'
2. political Extremism (foreshadowing Gandhism, minus tax or no-rent--which was deemed harmful to zamindar communities)
3. terrorism

(115, 117): "the history... vividly illustrates limits of a movement with bourgeois aspirations, without bourgeois support."

(119): speculation/awareness of Russian revolution in Extremist journals, at this time

(121): the partition did have some support amongst upper and middle class Muslims, who opposed Swadeshi as E. Bengal promised them upward mobility

(122): paternalistic, 'good Zamindar' alternative proposed by R. Tagore, at this stage

(124): revolutionary terrorism as Swadeshi's most substantial legacy--but noting also its substantial social and political limitations, even while he's relatively enthusiastic about its efficacity

(127-128): Punjab in 1907 saw some discontent--including some signs of militnacy amongst the peasantry (which worried them, b/c it supplied 1/3 of Army). But died down after deportation of Lajpat Rai.

(131): spectre of the Russian Revolution, in Madras around this time

(133): important--Nationalists failed to concern themselves with labour conditions in Indian-owned factories, in contrast to foreign-owned.

(133): Tilak speeches 'remarkably free' of class-war tones, speaking in Bombay industrial area. even still, massive political strike when he was arrested in 1908--though agitation was short-lived.

(135-137): important--Surat Split in 1907. Most important factor for rigidity of Moderates in face of extremist pressures was the expectation of reforms, as Morley and the Liberals came to power in England.

(138-139): Minto-Morley discussion. Key point here is that the differences were less than the commonalities, in Sarkar's argument. Three major componentes to their policies (remained standard for the rest of colonial rule.

1. repression
2. concessions to moderates
3. divide and rule (typified by separate electorates).

(140): details of Indian Councils Act 1909 (along the lines of the above)

(140-141): key--this represented the success of the Aligarh group, which had pleaded for separate electorates in recognition of the Muslim contribution to the 'defence of the British Empire'. here were the origins of the ML and political separatism.

(142): ML founded in 1907--membership was only 400. there was a income minimum of Rs. 500! That it still had influence with Minto reveals British willingness to foster separatism.

(143-144): a 'Young Party' captured the ML in 1912, though, after George V took back partition of Bengal, and British foreign policy aggravated Muslims. This pushed it towards greater militancy, says Sarkar, which in turn led towards Khilafat and a period of Hindu-Muslim cooperation.

(149): war-time mobilization against British rule (terrorism, Ghadr movement, collaboration with Germans) was met with a "formidable battery of repressive measures." Defence of India Act 1915 most intense repression since 1857.

(150): Tilak and Gandhi support WWI, of course--in hope that reforms would be reward

(150): December 1915 sees Congress and ML unity, a series of minimum constitutional demands. Lucknow Pact in December 1916, where Congress accepted separate electorates and Muslims accepted under-representation.

(151): Home Rule Leagues, under Besant and Tilak, organized the only real agitational work at this time, though (Congress considered it out of its purview). Discussion groups, pamphlets, lecture tours--significant in their size and scope, Sarkar's arguing, not in their break with Moderate politics.

(153): Besant somersault in late-1917, when Montagu promised 'responsible government'

(155): chivalry/heroism of Ranas of Chitor (in Tagore's poems), circa 1905, when these were gross feudal exploiters and servile loyalists

(157): elite vs. popular communalism? (Bihar riots in 1917, where 50,000 Hindus attacked Muslim villages)

(158): intensity of caste was greater in south India and Maharashtra, which is why movements along caste lines acquired greater social and political importance here

(160): Nairs and Nambudris--matrileal families, etc.

(164): Urdu-Hindi question--populist/communal angle in all of this

(165): key--three major changes after WWI:

1. Montagu's constitutional reforms in August 1917, followed by Montagu-Chelmsford Report in 1918, and finally by the Government of India Act 1919 (which brought dyarchy, transfer of some functions to ministers of provincial governments which were 'responsible' to legislative assemblies).
2. emergence of Gandhi as leader of mass nationalism
3. important shifts in India's colonial economy

(166-167): against the liberal narrative, Sarkar very effectively points out that:

1. devolution had financial motives--shifted burden of local expenditure, and had been forced by war pressures and weaknesses.
2. dyarchy transferred departments with less political weight and little funds. this would discredit rather than empower the Indians who became ministers.
3. and communal representation and reservations were considerably extended. part of the need, of course, for a wider circle of Indian collaborators.

(168): important--the above is less controversial than the question of the relationship of reforms to 'mass politics'. unlike Cambridge school, Sarkar thinks it impossible to explain the post-war mass awakening of 1919-1922 from these piecemeal reforms (at most it extended voting rights to between 1 and 3 percent of the adult population).

(168-169): rather, the War affected India through massive recruitments (army was expanded to 1.2 million, thousands of Indians died in mismanaged and alien campaigns; basically compulsory recruitment--355,000 in the Punjab!), heavy taxes and war loans (300% increase in war expenditure), and inflation (as raw materials/grains were trucked out to sustain the war effort; as well as hoarding, etc.)

(168): and WWI was linked, therefore, to a two-fold expansion of the national movement:

1. to considerable sections of the peasantry
2. towards business groups

(169): private comment of Bombay Governor Lloyd--"Large quantities of valuable fodder are being exported from here to Mesopotomia by the Army... Lucky the Horniman Press.. have not tumbled to the fact that fodder is being exported while the Deccan starves."

(170): key--British couldn't afford to further alienate the rural areas, which were providing the bulk of recruits, so the axe of increased taxes had to fall on trade and industry (customs, import duty, income tax, supertax and excess profits duty)

(170): statistics on inflation, 1913-1923 (from 143 to 215, index 1873=100)

(170): adverse impact on peasantry, in particular--rich peasant paying more for basic goods, but his produce was not increasing in price (terms of trade); poor peasants getting fleeced, of course.

(171): business groups made of with super-profits: War demand, declining foreign competition, price-differential between raw materials and industrial goods, and stagnating real wages. substantial industrial expansion in this period.

(171-172): important--Indian capitalism made a real breakthrough in this period, in the cotton-textile industry of Bombay and Ahmedabad, as Lancashire competition slackened. Indian mill production surpassed Lancashire imports. British gov't policy also shifted towards Indian industrial development, motivated by

1. financial demands and
2. realization that a minimum of economic self-sufficiency was a strategic necessity

(173): there's also, though, the whole tiff over the exchange rate (set at 1s 6d by the Hilton-Young Commission, in 1926). British wanted to maintain a high ratio, but Indian business groups wanted a lower ratio of 1s 4d, e.g.. This was b/c high ratio made it:

1. easier to pay sterling expenditure for Home Charges
2. benefited Englishmen repatriating pensions or profits
3. stimulated import of Lancashire goods

(174): in sum, at this time, greater business involvement in nationalism was thus "in the logic of things." This was never going to be fullblown--there was considerable loyalism, too, motivated not least by their need for State support against labour unrest, as the working-class had been increasing in number, too (in December 1920 Chelmsford spoke of an 'epidemic strike fever')

(175): war and immediate post-war years mark the beginning of the Indian trade union movement.

(177): the source of uprising at this time was not just economic, Sarkar insists--part of a world-wide upsurge--anti-capitalist in developed countries, anti-imperialist in colonies and semi-colonies. Bolshevik spectre--Governor Willingdon describes Gandhi as one in May 1918, talks about UP agitation as Bolshevism, etc.

(178): Hindu-Muslim unity had been part of Gandhi's work in South Arica.

(179): in short, Gandhi's two-fold character:

1. drawing-in the masses
2. keeping mass activity strictly pegged down to forms pre-determined by the leader (above all non-violence)

(180): key point--Sarkar stressing that the perspective of "controlled mass participation" objectively fitted in with sentiments of socially-decisive Indians. social revolution was off the cards with Gandhi, and this proved acceptable to business groups, and better-off sections of the peasantry, both of whom stood to lose.

(180): third point about Gandhi, made here, is his obscurantism. a reaction to failures of colonization, of course, but never a solution--"live the simple life of a peasant."

(181): the Indian people always fashioned their own images of Gandhi--the 'role of rumor'

(182): point here also about the limits of peasant consciousness--represented still by a "savior from above" [though this isn't well-substantiated by the enormous variety of peasant upheaval in these and later years]

(186): Gandhi moderation--intervention in Ahmedabad dispute between mill-owners and their workers. workers assailed him for being a friend of the mill-owners, for riding in their cars, etc. He won a 35% wage-increase, after being stung by these taunts. But here was founded the Textile Labour Association of 1920, on the basis of the concept that owners were 'trustees' for workers, the interdependence of capital and labor. Gandhi, remember, would keep strictly aloof from the AITUC--fundamentally, his was a paternalistic message of "class peace"

(187): Rowlatt Act, March 1919--attempted to make war-time restrictions on civil liberties permanent. A bit to conciliate segment of white opinion that resented Montagu's liberal promises and the granting of dyarchy.

(188-189): a further change in leadership in the ML (Abdul Bari and Ansari, who hailed Gandhi as the 'interpid leader of India'). Ansari came out in favor of satyagraha against the Rowlatt Act. Congress was not in the picture; to be organized by the Satyagraha Saba.

(189): in short, patchy organizational work before the storm that arose in April 1919--"the biggest and most violent all-India upsurge since 1857. " Almost entirely urban, lower middle-class groups more important than workers--but an "elemental upheaval"

(190): O'Dwyer frightened by remarkable Hindu-Muslim-Sikh Unity in early 1919, in Punjab--this in a province noted for communal divisions (description of Hunter Commissions confirms this)

(191): April 13, 1919--Jallianwalla Bagh (Dyer's regret was that his ammunition had run out--went on, after it, with his job of 'producing a moral effect')

(191): Lahore virtually controlled by a People's Committee, between 11 and 14 April, 1919 (but not revolutionary)

(192): in the whole of Punjab, 4 whites killed, 1200 Indians dead.

(195): some controversy at Amristar Congress in December 1919, over how to treat the Motford Reforms (Moderate group split off, Gandhi was actually in favor of a resoluting thanking Montagu and promising cooperation with the councils, Tilak opposed--this would be totally reverssed by the next-year).

(196): Khilafat movement first calls for Non-Cooperation in November 1919. Both Gandhi and their leaders were eagerfor Hindu-Muslim unity. In June 1920, a formal programme was agreed--"victory of the radicals, now backed by Gandhi."Congress, depsite opposition from CR Das and Tilak and Motilal, agree by December 1920--apparently after they see poor election prospects. This is when Gandhi basically takes control of Congress, which becomes a real mass political party for the first time.

(200): Gandhi moderation--Gandhi skipped first AITUC session in October 1920 (Motilal Nehru, Vithalbhai Patel, Annie Besant, and Jinnah(!) were there). Didn't even send a message. The weapon of the political general strike would never be allowed to enter the armory of Non-Cooperation.

(204-206): Non-Cooperation upsurge of 1921-1922, in four phases (and Gandhi moderation):

1. January-March 1921, central emphasis on students leaving school
2. July 1921: radicalization, boycott of courts and visit of Prince of Wales (but not full-scale civil disobedience and non-payment of taxes)
3. November 1921: countrywide hartal and violent clashes in Bombay (Gandhi says 'Swaraj stung my nostrils')
4. November 1921-February 1922: gov't nearly brought to its knees. large-scale arrests, ban on meetings--country on brink of revolt. But Gandhi calls it off, after Chauri Chaura.

(207): the ec. boycott was successful, the value of imports of foreign cloth almost halved in this time.

(207): important--Business support brought about a qualitiative change in the Congress funds situation. Yet labor agitation kept the industrialists (not the merchants) ambivalent.

(207): Gandhi moderation--"Strikes do not fall within the plan of non-violent non-cooperation (Feb 1921)... In India we want no political strikes... We seek no to destroy capital and labour. We want to harness capital to our side. It would be folly to encourage sympathetic strikes. (June 1921).

(209): Gandhi moderation--no-revenue could be planned, after hesitation, for a raiyatwari area like Bardoli, but nor for a zamindari area where it would mean no-rent. Gandhi 'deprecated all attempts to create discord between landlords and tenants... for they had to join all forces in fighting against the most powerful zamindar, namely the Government."

(211): again, remarkable communal unity in the Punjab in 1921--to be lost, after 1922

(212): Gandhi moderation--discipline of non-violence fitted in perfectly with the interests of peasant-proprietors.

(212): Gandhi vs. Lenin, by Dange, which was symptomatic of an increasing current of critique of Gandhi's role.

(213): Non-Cooperation-Khilafat penetrated the South, too.

(216): again, the Mophlahs of Malabar--by far the most violent of the millenarian outbursts of 1921--a massive popular rebellion, with an inevitable communal aspect (much-exaggerated, though, says Sarkar). numerous 'Khilafat republics' were set up under various presidents. though hundreds of Hindus were killed, these figures are quite low considering that the 'fanatics' controlled an area inhabited by 400,000 Hindus for mohnths, many of whom were landlords and moneylenders. Central fact is its suppression--killed 2,500 rebels, with 45,000 prisoners. mas of British liberalism fell of completely. The Moplah Black Hole at Podanur, too.

(218): important--Communal unity in Bengal, too, between 1921 and 1922--possibly the greatest strength and unity in the entire history of the national movement in Bengal.

(221): Bengal burst Gandhi's bounds; Bihar embodied it (most solid work done there, said Gandhi)--could say Gandhi moderation.

(223): UP Congress leadership was partly more responsive to peasant outbursts than in Bihar, but probably because there the Avadh talukdar was loyalist. Even here a restraining role was evident. Nehru, interestingly, condemned this plebian outburst--Nehru had them put up their hands and turned over to police!

(225): Chauri Chaura, and Gandhi moderation--"a matter of shame" that British attempt to execute 172 people was not protested (eventually 19 were hanged, the rest transported). Only protest was by MN Roy. Nehru recalled that Gandhi's decision was resented; Gandhi's defence of decision cited non-violence, and the threat of the 'unruly element'. Bardoli resolution had noted that withdrawal of rent to Zamindars was contrary to Congress spirit.

(225-226): important--Sarkar is noting that Gandhi never did anything more than he claimed to believe in, and that the fizzling out of the movement when Gandhi demanded it speaks to its subjective weaknesses .

(227): swaraj for masses, not just for classes (Das)

(228): spinning qualification to enter Congress.

(230): Gandhi moderation--Gandhi refused to condemn the caste system in principle, even while he spoke about Harijan welfare (and didn't at all tackle the basic economic issues of landless and agricultural laborers that were the bulk of the untouchables).

(231-233): the politics of Council Entry

(233-234): important--unprecedented growth of Hindu and Muslim communalism was the most negative development after 1922. Sarkar points blame, first, at the very logic of participation in post-1919 political structure, which extended separate electorates. A built-in temptation for politicians working within the system to use sectional slogans. A second factor was spread of ecutation without employment opportunities--scramble for scarce resources fed it.

(235): ML revived, as Khilafat bodies petered away--Jinnah presided over Lahore session in 1924, which was the first to meet separately from Congress, and ML raised demand for federation and full provincial autonomy, danger of 'Hindu domination'

(235-237): rise of Hindu Mahsabha, etc.

(237): noting that Hindu Right didn't have a better record than the ML in terms of loyalism.

(237): key--by 1927 (Motilal Nehru depressed), the British were stiffening policy, now that post-war anti-imperialist upsurge had died down.

(238): important--economic contradictions sharpening. for elite-- again, tiff over exchange rate--Birla and Thakurdas found the FICCI, spokesperson of Indian bourgeoisie. for masses--no improvement in living standards in the 1920s--agricultural productivity stagnated, land revenue revisions in Bombay and Madras, working-class faced an employer offensive.

(240): Congress and Zamindars (and Gandhi moderation)--again, unresponsive to no-rent and to share-cropper efforts (evident in Bengal)

(243): Ambedkar in Madras, appears in 1920s

(244): noting that, net, 1922-1927 was period of decline, for labor.

(245): Gandhi moderation[!]--in Ahmedabad, 1925, urged workers not to embarass employers during depression: 'Faithful servants serve their masters even without pay.'

(246): Bombay proletariat won their mill-owners a suspension of the excise duty, after massive strikes in 1924 and 1925

(247): birth of Communist movement, from disgruntled nationalists (October 1920, founded in Tashkent)

(249): important--till Left turn at 6th Comintern Congress in 1928, Indian communist groups were working within the nationalist movement, even while being critical of Congress. Vanguard praised Gandhi, though after 1928 they spoke of him as a bourgeois mascot.

(250): CPI in 1959 said real founding was in 1925

(252-253): mid-late 1920s saw both Bose and Nehru turning left

(254): 1927-1937 in three phases:

1. offensive (1927-1931): beginning with all-white Simon Commission in 1927, to consider constitutional changes, national movement fought itself to a position of near-equality with Gandhi-Irwin pact of March 1931.
2. c-offensive (1931-1934): smashing of Congress, ostensibly
3. offensive (1934-1937): Congress rebound, with sweeping electoral triumph in March 1937 elections

(255): pattern of using princes against nationalism continues--giving Indians a strong Centre, but making sure that Central Assembly had a nominated and powerful princely contingent (coupled with continued 'divide and rule' agitation)

(256): ML lost in '37 elections to regional parties (Krishar-Praja and Unionist). important argument here is that failure of Congress (and failure of unity, ultimately) rested in the party's inability to develop a radical agrarian programme in Bengal and Punjab.

(258): depression hit middle-peasants the hardest (i.e., those with a surplus to sell), unlike post-1918, which had hurt poor peasants. this was reflected in patterns of mobilization in the 30's

(258): crucial--depression also brought about change in the pattern of British exploitation of India--until 1929, India had still been taking in 11% of British exports, her export-surplus with non-UK countries was crucial to Britain's balance of payments, and she was a site of British capital investment in extractive industries (mining, tea, and jute). now, though, as value of exports plummeted, Home Charges could only be met by massive exports of gold. this crisis, acutely felt by Lancashire, was behind the political counter-offensive [though this was a losing battle, he suggests--by the mid-30's, you wree starting to see a new kind of dependent Indian industrialization]

(260): crucial--with the depression, the 'national bourgeoisie came into its own. the weight of bourgeois groups in national politics expanded massively in the 30s.

(261): once again, though, peak point of labor militancy didn't coincide with nationalist upheaval (1928-29 was labor peak)

(261): wow--economic stagnation statistics. at 1938-1939 prices, per capita national income in 1916-1917 was 60.7 rupees, and in 1946-1947 it was 60.4!

(262): a last gasp at unity, 1927-1928--prospects seemed bring in 1927. Jinnah had persuaded some Muslim leaders to give up on separate electorates in exchange for guaranteed representation. Congress was close to agreeing, but alas: Hindu-communalist pressure from Punjab and Maharashtra pressured Congress into this not happening--the Nehru (drafted by Motilal, in 1928, at All-Parties Conference) report made concessions to the Mahsabha.

(263): Jinnah, in 1928, appears a striking activist for unity. Jinnah finally gave up, though, after being rebuffed, and in March 1929 put forward the 'Fourteen Points.' [Sarkar tries to underplay the significance of this failure, because there were deeper issues that would have made reconciliation difficult to sustain. But he acknowledges its importance]

(265): Princes, again, surface for the British at a time when the nationalist struggle threatens to erupt (after they had retreated in importance in the mid-1920s.

(265): Nehru report's basic conservatism, re: property

(267): Gandhi reprimanding Nehru on his incipient radicalism, in the late 20s (this was when he attended the meeting of the League Against Imperilaism, passed resolutions praising Sacco and Vanzetti, etc.)

(269): Bhagat Singh's transition to Marxism took place in context of massive labour upsurge, in 1928-1929

(271): huge strike in Bombay mills, 1928--which was met with a huge capitalist and government cuonter-offensive (Pathans employed as strike-breakers, leading to communal riots. A note of real alarm, and British alliance with the Indian capitalists against Indian workers)

(272): 1929 Meerut Conspiracy Case, in which trade union leadership was rounded up till 1933

(273-274): The suggestion here is that the labor movement was declining fast, but that the decline of Communists was due not to just this fact, but also to the larger Third Period strategy. No chance of links between communists and Congress, despite communist links in the trade union movement [all this said, it is unclear what the counterfactual is, here]

(274): Subhas Bose fails to defend peasants and sharecroppers during debate on Tenancy Bill in Bengal

(275): summary of Praja party and Unionist party base--and the weakness of Congress, giving in to communalism and agrarian conservatism

(279): the classic ambivalence of the national bourgeoisie--starting to come into their own, but terrified of their workers (and thus in need of the colonial state)

(281-283): key, Gandhi moderation--Gandhi as a break on the mass struggle in 1928-1929--not letting it erupt, opposing resolutions calling for complete independence (the roots of this, Sarkar argues, lay in the fact that the regions and social groups most active in this time were precisely those in which he had no base) But negotiations between Gandhi and Irwin would break down in December 1929.

(283): Nehru becomes President of Congress at Lahore in December 1929--says I am a socialist, lampoons 'trusteeship'. Yet, Sarkar notes, Gandhi was still "firmly in command" (in terms of resolutions passed, etc.). January 1930, however, Congress adopts tricolor. Move towards struggle.

(285-286): Gandhi plumps for salt march, which--unlike Nehru's proposal for a no-rent campaign--aligned perfectly well with Gandhi moderation (not socially divisive, but more symbolic)

(287-288): Ghaffar Khan's story--disciple of Gandhi by 1929. A striking example of unity in NWFP, where Hindu soldiers refuse to fire on Muslims.

(290): in short, though, communal unity of 1919-1922 was a "thing of the past" by 1930

(291): labor and the urban intelligentsia took a back seat this time; now business groups and large sections of the peasantry rose

(292): two phases, divided by September-October 1930

1. high point of bourgeois participation, and controlled peasant mobilization (successful boycott of cloth i mports, etc.)
   
2. decline in enthusiasm from urban merchants, alarm-signals from business groups--some portent of socially more dangerous forms.

(297): base of Gandhi controlled mass-movement was Gujarat (Anand, Borsad, Nadiad, Jambusr, Bardoli)

(302-303): Gandhi moderation--in areas where theere hadn't been previously estabilshed Gandhian centers, peasant mobilization could become quite militant. in sum, the pattern was same as the Swadeshi days--"the failure to develop any clear anti-zamindar or anti-moneylender programme, at a time when rural tensions where mounting."

(303): in Punjab, an urban Hindu trader bias, leaving Muslim and Sikh peasants in the lurch

(304): Congress had established a base among small landlords and better-off tenants through constructive work (even if big zamindars remained overwhelmingly loyalist)

(305): lower-class militancy led the enthusiasm of these elite groups to decline (Bihar group welcomed March 1931 truce)

(306): UP Congress was more radical--here there was a no-tax movement (both because Nehru was in leadership, and because zamindars in UP were demonstratively loyalist)

(307): in sum, given what has already been noted, Sarkar is arguing that the trend towards compromise was inevitable.

(308): Simon Commission submitted its report on May 1930

(309): again, at the Round Table Conference, the Hindu Mahshabha made impossible any agreement on minority representation. Jinnah was again ready to compromised with reserved seats, but they were unwilling to give up in Punjab and Bengal (Hindu zamindars were disproportionately powerful, remember, since universal suffrage was not being introduced)

(311): Why Gandhi-Irwin? "some evidence that the crucial role was played by business pressures."

(311): from March to December 1931, then, there was an uneasy truce. Broken by the second Civil Disobdedience movement in January 1932.

(312): Karachi Congress, March-April 1931 -- revealed the weaknesses of Left critics of Gandhi. Basically submitted to his will. Indication of weakness of the Left-no real alternative leadership emerged, and rural militancy remained entirely spontaneous. Communists were still in their Left-Sectarian phase, expelling Nehru from League Against Imperialists and feuding with Bose causing a split in AITUC

(313): 1931 was the moment to launch a no-rent, no-revenue campaign, but Congress had to hold back the peasantry to honor the pact

(314): assasination of Stevens by two schoolgirls

(315): pressures from below, on truce

(317): strongly pro-zamindar line taken by Congress, in Bihar

(319): maintaining the overvalued currency rate, and powers of Viceroy in matters of finance at the second session Round Table Conference (September-December 1931)

(320): Gandhi out-manuevered in December, had accepted parity with a variety of sectional interests. On 4 January second civil disobedience launches; British struck preemptively to break the movement before it got off the ground. Some 120,000 arrested in the first year.

(323): continued failure of Congress to champion a radical agrarian programme helped spur separatist Muslim peasant movements--this is where, in 1932, Maulana Bhasani enters the picture, demanding abolition of zamindari in Bengal

(325): peasant radicalism was increasingly seeking forms of expression outside of Congress proper

(326): important--while fighting the depression elsewhere with stimulus, it had spelt austerity for British India, of course

(327): critical juncture--with British pressure particularly intense 1932-1934, there was a realignment of business attitudes--arguing for less mass agitation, and towards Assembly and eventually ministerial participation. this was going to help Indian capitalists get over the split in their own ranks. [Gandhi's role in facilitating this is his ultimate legacy, I would add]

(328): Gandhi's obscurantism and moderation--attributing a Bihar earthquake in 1934 to the sins of caste Hindus. working now, more and more, on Harijan issues, but his stance was confined to social reform (delinked from economic demands--even though many Harijans were agricultural laborers).

(330): Gandhi moderation--Gandhi wrote a April 1934 letter to Birla, saying the reins of Congress should be in the hands of those who favor council-entry. this was a time, then, of the definite formation of a Congress Right (Gandhian constructive-workers combine with advocates of council-entry)

(331): When Gandhi called of Civil Disobedience in April 1933, Subhas Bose and Vithalbhai Patel repudiated his leadership.

(331-332): 1934-1935 marks the height of Nehru's interest in Marxism--encapsulated in his letters to his daughter. But he, "as always," draws back from a total breach with Gandhi. Did not approve of moves to start a socialist party.

(332): despite this, the CSP was started in May 1934--ideology ranged from radical nationalism to Marxian 'scientific socialism' (this was not a t all welcomed by the Right-leaning Congress)

(333): CSP contribution was mixed--on the one hand built up partly b/c of opportunism, on the other hand putting important issue s on the table (and built close links with the emerging Kisan Sabha movement)

(334): CSP was also sort of a bridge, by which radical nationalists passed onto the CPI (many communists also used the CSP as a front, as the CPI remained illegal from 1934 to 1942)

(335): by 1934, there was an upward tick in labor militancy and trade union work. It was this that was responsible for the CPI being banned in 1934. This didn't weaken the movement, though, because it was soon to come out of its sectarian phase (by 1935, 7th Comintern Congress had pushed a United Front perspective--there were also internal pressures, he's arguing)

(336): Gov't of India Act, 1935--the process that had begun with the Simon Commission of 1927 ended in the Govt of India Act, 1935 (from 1932 on, there was no real Indian participation in the making of the constitution). Virtually all sections of Indian public opinion criticized the Act as making very little progress over 1919 (dyarchy had been replaced by 'responsible government', and the electorate was expanded from 6.5 to 30 million. But governors retained discretionary powers, etc.).

(338): key--all signs were of a lurch to the Left. But in the end the Right was able to utilize the storm, and by 1937 Congress would be running in elections.

(340): even the Kissan Sabhas had trouble dealing with political implications of differentiation amongst the peasantry

(343-347): key--Nehru's addresses at Lucknow and Faizpur (April, December 1936) seem to mark height of Left influence (scientific socialism, condemning Italian and Japanese aggression, solidarity with Republican Spain). Domestic programme was radical, too. His working committee included three socialists. But the Left advance was "illusory and verbal" as regards the crucial decisions. Right-wing had consolidated itself--though they were alarmed by Nehru's Lucknow address, they responded strategically, noting that no real promises had been made. Right-wing would benefit immensely from a change in the attitudes of the old No-Chnagers (Vallabhai Patel, etc.). Gandhi moderation also was critical--didn't want to launch a mass strategy, b/c of strength of Left. Gandhi patches up quarrel in the working committee, and Nehru makes the concessions. Dropping of anti-zamindar demands from the Kisan manifesto, etc. [this is perhaps the most crucially negative role Gandhi plays throughout the whole freedom struggle]

(349): 1937 election results. Congress does very well; ML does terribly.

(350): Gandhi and Right-wing win motion re: office-entry after the elections

(352): and this Right shift thus explains the absence of major conflict between ministries and British officialdom from the taking of office till September 1939.

(353): important--with these elections, Muslims were decisively alienated--some argue particularly irked by pro-Hindu policy during these two years in power. Congress spurned coalition with ML (dismissed as a 'coterie of knights, Khan Bahadurs, Nawabs') in UP--which would prove portentous, as ML's revival was to be centered on this province.

(354): important--from the Lucknow session on (October 1937), though, the ML made a determined effort to build up a populist image. It accepted independence as a goal, recruited 100,000 members in the UP--and was able to obtain adherence of Unionist Sikander Hayat Khan and Krishak Praja leader Fazlul Haq (pushed into alliance with ML after failing to reach agreement with Congress) [Sarkar makes an important point, here--it's not as much Congress' failure to reach agreement with ML in 1937, as it is the failure to develop genuine agrarian radicalism that led to the communal divides of the 40s]

(355): ML was, in the late 30s, quite a sad spectacle--they accused Congress of pro-Hindu policy, but at least partly exaggerated (rejected Congress offer of an inquiry). They didn't have a clear programme. Jinnah in May 1938 insisted on being recognized as the sole representative of Muslims, which was entirely outlandish at any time before mid-1940s (at the very least) [in 1937 elections, only strong amongst Muslims in UP, Bombay, Madras--weak in Bengal, negligible in NWFP and Punjab, and failed to form gov't in Sindh]

(356): example of Congress conservatism leading to communalism--in NWFP, Khan Sb. lost support amongst peasants after failing to take adequate measures to reduce rural indebtedness; in N. and C. India, Hindu tinge to Congress populism (it was only in December 1938, that Mahsabha folks couldn't be in Congress; this had been the case for ML for longer time, as Azad used to complain)

(359): national capitalists in alliance with Congress in the late 1930s--foreign competition was a major threat to Indian capitalists (Unilever had displaced Godrej, etc.). More far-sighted of the bourgeoisie, it is being argued here, were ready to accept some measure of State direction [enter Vivek]

(361-363): more importantly, re: Labor and Agriculture--The Bombay Trade Dispute Act (November 1938) was terrible for the trade union movement--Gandhian trade union movement accepted it, of course. Subhas Bose made some private protests but didn't take a public stance. A conservative record re: agrarian issues, as well. Well short of moderate proposals made before coming into power.

(364): Kisan occupation of Bihar Assembly

(365): AIKS had its base in peasantry with some land, still

(366): Gandhi moderation--against Congress intervention in the affairs of Princely states, at first showing "exceptional rigidity" (some very limited attempts at "controlled mass struggle" in Rajkot, where there was little danger of agrarian radicalism. But failed)

(369): Gandhi moderation--refused to let Congress get involved in agitation in Hyderabad, in 1938

(370-371): not much disagreement in Left at this time re: staying in Congress, though attempts were made to have them adopt a more sympathetic stance toward popular demands (in private, Nehru and Bose expressed misgivings). Internationally, Left set the tone, thanks to Nehru in large part--many 'internationalist gestures'

(372): key juncture, Bose vs. Gandhi in early 1939--Bose elected president, but Gandhi and Congress right maneuvered to dismiss him (with the help of Gandhi--Nehru supported Gandhi, and the Left had been ambivalent re: support for Bose). Replaced by Gandhian right-winger Rajendra Prasad.

(375): by October 1939, Congress resigns from ministries, faced with Linlithgow's declaration of war [an element of luck, almost, given the immense problems they were having, in power]

(375): don't forget that Congress hostility to fascism had been far more trenchant and principled than the British--there were offers for full cooperation in the War Effort, dependent on certain minimum conditions

(376): Defence of India Ordinance came into force, restricting civil liberties (British had support of liberal and even left elements, especially after 1941)

(377): encouragement of the ML was an important aspect of war-time imperialist strategy

(378): ML really needed a positive platform after 1937--this was the context in which the Pakistan demand started to acquire importance, he's arguing (before it wasn't taken seriously--Iqbal's pres. address in 1930 was ambiguous wrt to partition)

(381-382): important--a weak Civil Disobedience campaign was run from 1940-1941--very limited and ineffective (sole issue was freedom of speech). [acc to Sarkar, this can be put down to Gandhi moderation--expressed concern about radicalism within movement].

(382): except for MN Roy, entire Left was behind the anti-war struggles until 1941--then division between CSP and CPI would emerge (the Nazi-Soviet Pact was an asset for Indian communists, remember).

(382): all told, though, no significant movement in the face of British repression

(383): Bose off to Germany

(383): weakness of national movement had economic roots, Sarkar is arguing--war brought gains rather than losses for substantial sections of the population (peasantry not hurt so bad, industrial development received a major stimulus)

(384): German invasion of Russia confronted CPI with very difficult choice--it took them six months to plump, in Jan 1942, for the war effort

(385-386): Cripps Mission was sponsored in 1942, after it was realized that some measures must be taken to placate Indian opinion--but plagued throughout, and torpedoed, by misunderstanding (Churchill's intransigence foremost among them--Cripps went considerably beyond what Churchill was willing to concede)

(388-389): August 1942, Quit India resolution was passed by the Bombay session of the AICC (some radicalism here in W. Committee resolution, though not coincidental, Sarkar is arguing, that the Communists were not out of the picture--Gandhi moderation)

(390): some disagreements over fasicsm and the desirability of Japanese rule, etc. (Bose vs. Nehru)

(391-392): key--British got much more than they bargained for--instead of Civil Disobedience a la 1932, there was the most militant outburst since 1857. Deeper factors underlay the popular mood, rel. to treatment of Indians in SE Asia after Japanese takeover; effects of blackmarket and food shortage profiteering; even some business may have come around to the movement, Sarkar is saying.

(394): three phases

1. urban revolt, till mid-August--hartals, strikes, clashes with police
2. mid-August till September--veritable peasant rebellion, in countryside
3. September on--weakened by repression, l. formidable phase, of terroristic activity

(395): White Terror

(396-397): short-lived and limited role of Labor

(397): students played very central role; peasantry were even more critical

(398): intensity of anti-foreign sentiment diluted internal class tensions, Sarkar is arguing

(399): Muslims, alas, were aloof from 1942 (NWFP was very weak, for example)

(400): capturing of police stations, setting up of national governments, running of people's courts, etc.

(404): in sum-- by the end of 1942, British had come out victorious in their confrontation with Indian nationalism--for the remaining two and a half years of the war, there was no serious political challenge. But their victory had come at the cost of serious repression, and required a ruthless use of force permissible only under war conditions. Wavell pointed out that it would be impossible to hold India after the war.

(405): Quit India and jail terms, afterwards, had the effect of wiping out the record of Congress ministries in office. Communists, on the other hand, branded as traitors

(406): details of 1943 man-made famine--aggravated by mismanagement and deliberate profiteering, etc.

(408): the ML advance--took full advantage of Congress suppression (installed ministries in Assam, Sind, Bengal, NWFP)

(409): Pakistan started to mean all sorts of things to Muslim peasants--in Bengal, Abdul Hashem was cultivating a radical image for the party.

(410): Muslim Bourgeoisie comes into the picture, backing the ML (Isapahani and Adamjee)

(411): INA--never meant much, military. Axis powers already in retreat by 1944

(411-413): CPI People's War line, and Adikhari Thesis on Pakistan (tried desperately to find progressives within the League--Abdul Hashem, for example). People's War was a mistake, but not a tragedy--legalization had its benefits, and the AITUC doubled between 1942 and 1944

(414): in short--above all, popular action made continuance of British rule untenable--fear of popular 'excesses', too, made Congress leaders cling to the path of negotiation and compromise. the limitations of the popular anti-imperialist movements made partition possible.

(415): Churchill the asshole--sent a telegram to ask why Gandhi hadn't died yet, etc.

(416): Gandhi-Jinnah talks in September 1944 unsuccessful

(416): key, ML position until August 1946 was actually quite weak--Khan Sb.'s ministry was restored in NWFP, the PUnjab Unionists broke with Jinnah in mid-1944, and the Nazimuddin Ministry fell in Bengal in March 1945. In Sind and Assam ML ministries existed on Congress sufferance. "little evidence that the League would be able to organize real mass sacntions..."

(417): Simla Conference, June-July 1945--Jinnah's intransigence torpedoed negotiations, as he asked for a communal veto in the Executive. Wavell granted Jinnah the veto; no attempt was made to call the League's bluff.

(417): Labor government entered, July 1945. But what was really changing was the objective situation--anti-imperialist wave (and Communist, in Europe) was sweeping the world. With a war-weary army and people, Britain would have to have retreated, whomever was in gov't.

(418): decisive shift in British attitude came about as a result of mass pressure in autumn and winter of 1945-1946--the trigger was the INA trials (November 1945), as well as use of Indian army units to restore French and Dutch colonial rule, all exacerbated by post-war problems of unemployment, high prices, food shortages (rations at 1,200 calories)

(420): Congress fighting with the CPI

(421): tricolor unity in anti INA trials (students tying together Congress, League, and Red Flags)

(422): question of non-violence/violence quite dynamic--many people at AICC session in September 1945 glorifying use of violence

(422): some talk of Pakistaan as an "Indian N. Ireland."

(423): February 1946, the Royal Indian Navy strikes--another example of joint-flag raising. remarkable scenes of intercomunal unity. involved 20,000 ratings, at its peak. CPI called for gen. strike in Bombay, 300,000 heeded. Two army battallions were needed to restore order, at the price of 228 civilian lives.

(425): Gandhi moderation--unequivocally hostile to the strike, a 'bad and unbecoming example'

(426): Congress decisively rejected mass confrontation--concentrated all their energies on fighting the elections. Patel in charge.

(426-427): Elections of 1946 marked by communal voting. Very limited franchise (10% in provinces, 1% for the C. Assembly), which had something to do with this. Congress did well; ML did incredibly well (won 86.6% of Muslim votes). But didn't win in Punjab (Unionists got power with Congress and Sikh support, despite winning less seats than ML--see p.434); Congress won in NWFP and Assam. Set up ministries in Bengal and Sindh, but depended on official support.

(427): report that while ML had the support of elite Muslims, Congress still had support of less well-to-do Muslims due to promise of ec. reforms (in any case, League claim to represent all Muslims was never really tested--not in elections, not in mass movements)

(428): Cabinet Mission, March-June 1946

(428): Wavell describing 'necessity to avoid mass movemetn which it is in the power of Congress to start'

(429): Strike wave in 1946 surpassed all previous records--Congress, of course, was uimpressed, worried about growing lack of discipline

(430): ML accepts Mission proposal (May 1946), but interprets it as a path to future sucession; Congress accepts with reservations. ML withdraws its acceptance in July 1946. Goes in for Direct Action Day.

(431): 'Labor situation is becoming increasingly dangerous... a more responsible gov't needed..."

(432): "communal holocaust" of Direct Action Day (16-19 August 1946)--4000 killed, 10,000 injured

(434): setting of stage in Punjab

(435): evidence of British passivity in face of the "communal inferno"

(435-436): ML obstructionism at the Centre (Congress-League coalition), as things approach their end. By early 1947, partition is on the mind.

(437): this is Gandhi's finest hour--"with undiminished courage decided to stake his all" in opposition to communalism.

(438): the counterfactual for Sarkar, though, is an alternative of militant mass struggle--which was the only thing that British dreaded. Communal divisions were periodically forgotten, when people were summoned to baricades (after August massacre in Calcutta, a tram strike the next January, etc.)

(442-445): Guerilla war in Telengana between July 1946 and October 1951--led by Communists (though urban Muslim population in Hyderabad was aloof). More than any other factor, this brought down the princely state of Hyderabad.

(447-448): deconstructing the myth of Mountbatten--responsible for break-neck speed, totally failed to prevent massacres in Punjab. code-name Plan Balkan.

(449): regional alternatives of non-communal dimensions--proposal for united Bengal, free Pathan state (to counter ML communal agitation in NWFP), etc. June 3 plan put paid to all these proposals, as provincial assemblies were given two choices.

(449): in NWFP, just 50.99% of 9.52% of the population decided to accede to Pakistan in a plebiscite (no universal franchise in the plebiscite!--and NWFP congress had boycotted it!)

(450): Quit Kashmir movement launched by Sheikh Abdullah against Hindu Maharaja--but then Maharaja acceded in October 1947

from "the darker nations: a people's history of the third world" by vijay prashad (part I)

(xvi): Thrown between these two major formations, the darker nations amassed as the Third World. Determined people struck out against colonialism to win their freedom. They demanded political equality on the world level. The main institution for this expression was the United Nations. From its inception in 1948, the United Nations played an enormous role for the bulk of the planet.
(xvii): THESIS: The Third World project came with a built-in flaw. The fight against the colonial and imperial forces enforced a unity among various political parties and across social classes. Widely popular social movements and political formations won freedom for the new nations, and then took power. Once in power, the unity that had been preserved at all costs became a liability. The working class and the peasantry in many of these movements had acceded to an alliance with the landlords and emergent industrial elites. Once the new nation came into their hands, the people believed, the new state would promote a socialist program. What they got instead was a compromise ideology called Arab Socialism, African Socialism, Sarvodaya, or NASAKOM that combined the promise of equality with the maintenance of social hierarchy. Rather than provide the means to create an entirely new society, these regimes protected the elites amongst the old social classes while producing the elements of social welfare for the people. Once in power, the old social classes exerted themselves, either through the offices of the military or the victorious people's party... By the 1970s, the new nations were no longer new... Internecine warfare, a failure to control the prices of primary commodities, an inability to overcome the suffocation of finance capital, and more led to a crisis in the budgets of much of the Third World... The assassination of the Third World led to the desiccation of the capacity of the state to act on behalf of the population, an end to making the case for a new international economic order, and a disavowal of the goals of socialism. Dominant classes that had once been tethered to the Third World agenda now cut loose... Atavisms of all kinds emerged to fill the space once taken up by various forms of socialism. Fundamentalist religion, race, and unreconstructed forms of class power emerged from under the wreckage of the Third World project.
(2): Among the darker nations, Paris is famous for two betrayals. The first came in 1801, when Napoleon Bonaparte sent General Victor Leclerc to crush the Haitian Revolution... The second betrayal came shortly after 1945, when a battered France, newly liberated by the Allies, sent its forces to suppress the Vietnamese, West Indians, and Africans who had once been its colonial subjects. Many of these regions had sent troops to fight for the liberation of France and indeed Europe, but they returned home empty-handed.
(4): [VIETNAM] In 1945-46, thousands of French troops returned to the Red River delta in Indochina, and Ho Chi Minh and his comrades retreaded to the highlands of the Viet Bac to regroup for an extended war of liberation. This war lasted for almost a decade. But the French had an ally in another ambivalent revolutionary. By 1952, the US government had already begun to pay for almost two-thirds of the battered French military treasury's expenses. The French had to deaprt after their army suffered an embarrassing defeat from the poorly equipped but highly motivated Viet Minh at the garrison town of Dien Bien Phu (1954).
(4-5): [ALGERIA] In 1945... the French paratroopers and air force used brutal force to disband the anticolonial Algerian Amis du Manifeste et de la Liberte (Friends of the Manifesto and Liberty), harass hundreds of thousands of people through the French policy of ratonnades, and kill tens of thousands of Algerians. This massacre provoked the formation of the FLN...
(5): [MADAGASCAR] And.. in 1947, when the people of Madagascar demanded their freedom...and rose in revolt, the French forces countered them with bloodthirsty violence and killed tens of thousands. The guerrilla war continued, until the French had to concede some power to the Malagasy people, but only after a decade of repression and deceit.
(6): Cesaire invokes the barbarity of Western Europe and the United States, only to stop and warn us, "I am not talking about Hitler, or the prison guard, or the adventurer, but about the 'decent fellow' across the way; not about the member of the SS, or the gangster, but about the respectable bourgeoisie."
(7): The First and Second Worlds fell out openly when US president Harry S. Truman announced his support for the anticommunist forces in Turkey and Greece (1946), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) helped the conservatives defeat the popular Communists in the Italian and French elections of 1957, the USSR forced the Eastern European states into its orbit, and the animosity attained dramatic proportions during the First World's blockade of Berlin in June 1948.
(7): Goran Therborn wrote, "The Cold War was a fundamentally unequal conflict, that was presented and experienced on both sides as being equal." The USSR and the United States portrayed each other as equivalent adversaries, although the former had an economic base that was far inferior to the latter.
(8): In 1941, both the United States and the USSR had populations of about 130 million, but whereas the United States lost upward of four hundred thousand troops in the war, the Soviets lost between twenty and thirty million troops and civilians.
(9-10): Yet the Second World had an attitude toward the former colonies that in some ways mimicked that of the First World. For the founding conference of the Cominform held in Poland in 1947, the Soviets did not invite even one Communist Party from the former colonized world, and certainly not the Chinese Party... The Soviets did not see the rest of the planet as a storehouse of resources, but neither did they see it as filled with people who had fought a strong anticolonial struggle and wanted to lead their own movements, craft their own history. In answer to the formation of NATO in 1949, the USSR had created the Warsaw Pact in 1955...
(10): While there has been much deserved attention to the role of Eleanor Roosevelent for the drafting of the human rights agenda at the SF meeting, the historical record tends to underplay the crucial role played by the twenty-nine Latin American states. Cuba sent thirty-year-old Guy Perez Cisneros as its representative, and he fought doggedly for an expansive interpretation of human rights, helped along the way by the Panamanian delegation, which offered the decisive draft declarations on education, work, health care, and social security.
(11): A central character in this story is Nehru, the prime minister of the Republic of India from 1947-1964... Nehru [reiterated] the main points of the third world platform: political independence, nonviolent international relations, and the cultivation of the United Nations as the principle institution for planetary justice.
(12): [A NEW NATIONALISM?] If European nationalism took as a given that a people (who are perhaps a "race") need to be organized by a state so that their nation can come into its own, the anticolonial nationalists mostly argued that the people (who are often far too diverse to classify one way or another) need to be free of colonial rule. The formerly colonized people have at least one thing in common: they are colonized. Nehru, Sukarno, and others who had been pushed by similar social processes developed an alternative "national" theory. For them, the nation had to be constructed out of two elements :the history of their struggles against colonialism, and their program for the creation of justice. Whereas there were several limitations to their program, it was clear that few of the movements that moved toward the Third World agenda came with a theory of the nation that based itself wholly or even largely on racial or monocultural grounds... Instead they had an internationalist ethos, one that looked outward to other anticolonial nations as their fellows. The Third World form of nationalism is thus better understood as an internationalist nationalism.
(14): [THESIS]: A small, almost minuscule class became brokers between the massive social upsurge across the planet from the 1910s to the 1950s channeling that energy into the organizations they led. This group of leaders (whether India's Nehru or Indonesia's Sukarno, Mexico's Lazaro Cardenas or Ghana's Nkrumah) elaborated a set of principles that both skewered the hypocrisy of imperial liberalism and promoted social change. On paper, the Third World gleamed. As the project met governance, it began to tarnish rapidly. One of the reasons for this is that the third World failed to seriously undermine the deep roots of the landed and financial gentry in the social and political worlds that had been governed from above by imperial powers and their satraps. Without a genuine social revolution, the Third World leadership began to rely on the landed and merchant classes for it political power. Capillaries of power that provided legitimacy to the colonial rulers often transformed themselves into avenues for the delivery of votes in the new democratic dispensation.... The class character of Third World leadership constrained its horizon, even as it inflamed the possibilities in its societies. The Third World, then, is not just the voice of the leaders or their political parties but also their opposition.
(16-17): Leopold II, the second king of modern Belgium, had transformed the medieval city during his long reign (1865-1909) into a modern wonder--with wide roads, proper sewers, and a magnificent urban display... For centuries the city had been known for its textiles, lace, and glassware, and it is this craft production that the city celebrated. But by 1927, the main source of wealth for Belgium and the city was not from the artisans but from Africa. It was Africa, particularly the Congo, that made Leopold II one of the richest people on the planet, and it enable the Belgian economy to become the sixth largest in the world.
(17): The Congo Free State... was eighty times the size of Belgium.
(17): If a worker did not work hard, the officer would cut off their hand; one district official received 1,308 hands in one day from his subordinates.
(18): To supply the emergent tire industry, Leopold II's Free State, therefore, sucked the life out of the rubber vines and murdered half the Congo's population in the process (between 1885 and 1908, the population declined from twenty million to ten million).
(18): The Foreign Office in London wrote a tepid note critical of the Belgians, and Leopold II's reply rightly accused the British of hypocrisy: much of the policies followed by the Belgians in the Congo had been standard for the English elsewhere. Indeed, Casement found that British companies in the Putamayo region between Colombia and Peru followed the same kinds of barbarism, the US-based United Fruit Company in Central America pillaged the dignity of the natives there, and in Portuguese Angola as well as French and German Cameroon, the companies used much the same kind of rubber plantation regime.
(19): Between 1876 and 1915, a handful of European imperial states controlled a full quarter of the globe's land, with Great Britain and France in possession of far more than Germany, Belgium, Italy, and the states of the Iberian peninsula (the United States directly controlled a small amount, but it held sway over all the Americas).
(19): In 1908, Leopold turned over the management of the Free State to the Belgian government, and the barbarism continued until the Belgians completed their rail system in 1914 that rationalized the removal of the Congo's minerals all the way to 1961 and beyond.
(19): The conveners of the 1927 League against Imperialism conference chose Brussels deliberately.
(20): Regardless of the Comintern's vacillation over alliances with the national bourgeoisie, the general support given to national liberation movements across Asia and Africa by the Russian Communists is clear... In early 1920, delegates from across the planet gathered in Moscow for the Second Congress of the Comintern, where they studied the condition of imperialism and debated the effectiveness of strategies to combat it. Two divergent lines grew out of the congress--whether to ally with the national bourgeoisie and treat nationalism as a transitional phase toward socialism, or reject the national bourgeoisie and forge an international working-class alliance for socialism against the illusions of nationality.
(21): The League against Imperialism was a direct attack on the League of Nations's preservation of imperialism in its mandate system. In April 1919, the Paris Peace Conference produced the League of Nations... The "interests" of the colonized had to be curtailed, the Covenant of the League noted, because the colonized were "peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world" (Article 22).
(22): While they planned to meet frequently, this did not happen for several reasons: the Comintern took a hard position against national liberation movements in 1927, with the view that these efforts would eventually betray the working class (the Comintern revised this line in 1935)...
(25): When the Ottoman Empire began to collapse, the peoples under its yoke mobilized for their freedom. The "Arab Revolt" on the Arabian Peninsula (1916-1932), in Egypt (1918-1919), in Iraq (1920-1922), in Syria and Lebanon (1925-1926), in Palestine (1936-1937), and elsewhere united the Arab people not just against the Ottomans and others but also on behalf of a united Arab nation.
(27-28): These regional formations had a wide appreciation for the universal struggle against imperialism, for the need for coordination and consultation toward a just world. The best evidence for this is the enthusiasm with which each of these groups, and most of the countries within them, embraced the United Nations. It could be argued that one of the reasons for the success of the United Nations in its first three decades, unlike that of the League of Nations, is that the states of the Third World saw it as their platform. It was from the United Nations's mantle that the states of Africa, America, and Asia could articulate their Third World agenda.
(29): [CRITIQUE OF COMINTERN--V. GOOD] The Soviets and the Comintern did squander much of the goodwill gained in the immediate aftermath of Brussels by their impulsive and distancing shifts in political line. During the league's foundation, the majority opinion of the Comintern was that the Communists should work in a broad front with national liberation movements. Because of this, the Kuomintang joined the Comintern to fund the conference, and both worked together for its success. Just after the Brussels meeting, however, the Kuomintang massacred more than five thousand Communists in Shanghai and elsewhere to prolong a civil war. That the Comintern had joined forces with the Kuomintang in Brussels is astounding, but in the nationalists' postconference violence lay the seeds of the league's destruction. This and other instances led the Comintern to denounce non-communist national liberation forces, including Nehru, Roger Baldwin, and Hatta. The problem with the league's line was that it was inflexible--it chose to work with the Kuomintang before Shanghai, much to the chagrin of the Chinese Communists, and it chose to abandon its relationship with the Indian and Indonesian freedom movements even though these two did not have the kind of antipathy to the Left as the Kuomintang. In places such as India and Indonesia, anticolonial nationalism, even if led by a relatively weak national bourgeoisie, had become a powerful social force that could not be sidestepped. The context of each setting, such as the internal class alignments, did not seem to bear on the Comintern's insistence on a homogeneous strategy for world revolution.
(31): In 1955, the island of Java bore the marks not only of its 300-year colonial heritage, but also its recent and victorious anticolonial struggle.... The cry of Siaaaap (Attention!) rang out in the streets not only to the Japanese occupiers but also the British who had replaced them, and the Dutch who watied in the wings to reclaim the island. In March 1946, when it appeared as if the British would not allow the Indonesians their independence, half a million residents of Bandung abandoned their city en masse, as they set fire to warehouses, homes, and government offices.
(32): ...[W]hat is still important about Bandung is that it allowed these leaders to meet together, celebrate the demise of formal colonialism, and pledge themselves to some measure of joint struggle against the forces of imperialism. Despite the infighting..., Bandung produced something: a belief that two-thirds of the world's people had the right to return to their own burned cities, cherish them, and rebuild them in their own image.
(35): The Partai Nasional Indonesia (PNI), like the Congress Party and the Kuomintang, had a grab bag ideology, rooted in an anticolonial ethos, but in favor of a vague nationalism that attracted all social classes. The middle class came on board because many of them had been discriminated against in terms of administrative jobs and humiliated by the colonial hierarchy. Already veterans in the struggle for justice, the working class and the peasantry would gradually move to the PNI as it became central to the freedom struggle. Unlike the Congress Party in India that had become a mass movement by the 1920s... and unlike the Vietnamese Communist Party whose mass base emerged through diligent organizational work..., the PNI looked very much like other urban, middle-class anticolonial organizations in palaces as diverse as Peru and the Gold Coast--it developed out of an idea and reflected the views of a narrow stratum, but is platoform would soon be adopted by many beyond its original circle...
(35): Frustrated by Sukarno's actions, the Dutch administration arrested him in 1931 and held him until the Japanese invasion of the archipelago in 1942... On August 17, 1945, two days after the Japanese surrender, Sukarno (and his associate Hatta) declared independence for Indonesia--a move delayed by the entry of British troops who had come to restore the islands to the Dutch.
(36): Sukarno stood for freedom and justice, but not necessarily for a gernal revolution...--hence the complicity of the Dutch and the PNI in the crackdown on the 1948 Communist rebellion in Madiun (which led to the execution and incarceration of scores of PKI cadre, and the suppression of the PKI in 1951-1952, when the government arrested fifteen thousand party members). Sukarno did put money into education and state industries, drawing some of the agenda from the Communists, who continued to recruit a mass party (by 1965, the PKI numbered three and a half million cadre and twenty million members in mass organizations). In 1965, at his last Independence Day ceremony before a US-backed coup ejected him, Sukarno stated, "We are now ofstering an anti-imperialist axis... He had moved closer to the Communists than he would have imagined when he first entered politics.
(38): The pro-First World states at Bandung shared at least one thing in common: they were ruled by weak national bourgeoisises that had militant mass movements within which threatened their own legitimacy and power [EXAMPLES GIVEN: Phillipines, regime of Roxas and Magsayay, challenged in Huk Rebellion of 1946-1954; Thailand, rocked by Communist insurgency in Malaysia that ran from 1948-1960; Pakistan, attempted coup by Pakistan Communist Party in 1951; Iraq, which at this time had the Arab land's largest communist party]
(40): Whatever the orientation of the states, they agreed that world peace required disarmament. During Europe's era of relative peace (1815-1914), the part of the planet under its control grew from a third to 85 percent, and Europe's military technology exerted itself on much of this newly conquered terrain.
(42): The IAEA... is a child of Bandung.
(46-47): Nowhere was the impact felt stronger than in Moscow... Nikita Krushchev and Nicolay Bulganin went on a major world tour... in 1956, the twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union rejected its earlier two-camp theory of the world... Some argue that the new leadership... had revised the previous commitment to the working class in the formerly colonized world and had now shifted its allgiance to the national bourgeoisie... Others contend that the policy is motivated less by any general theory of world revolution, and more by the invluence of the Chinese in the Third World.
(48): After Bandung, the US foreign policy establishment took a strong position against what it called "neutralism."
(53): The history of national liberation movements, Abdul-Rahman pointedout, often ignores the central role played by women in them, and in the liberation of women by the struggle. "The renaissance fo the Eastern woman has alwyas conincided with liberation movements," for liberation from imperialism meant that "women were emancipated from the fetters of social slavery and escaped from moral death." Within the confines allowed by imperialism, "women remained the victim of ignorance, isolation, and slavery."
(54): In 1919, Egyptian women of all classes took to the streets of Cairo to protest the British crackdown on demonstrations for a free Egypt... During the major mass protests in India in 1905, 1909, 1919, 1920-21, and 1930-31, women held the streets. Iran's constitutional movement saw women in public protest from 1907 to 1911, and again in 1919.
(56): Few of the new states that had experienced anticolonial struggles had a problem with universal adult franchise.
(59): On the more progressive side of national liberation, one finds many who argued that cultural traditions had ossified under the impact of patriarchy and feudal relations, and any opportunity to rederess this had been suffocated by imperialism's alliance with the old social classes, which benefited from misogyny and status.

india´s development:
I understand from P. Sainath that we rank eighth in the world in the number of our millionaires. And we stand 126th on the Human Development Index. I am glad to report that last year we were 127th. At this very fast rate of growth that we are now showing, we moved up from 127th to 126th position. This is the paradigm of our development process. In a democracy, every five years the masses determine who will rule this country. And they showed dramatically in the last elections that they knew how to keep their counsel and show who they wanted. We, my party and I, were the beneficiaries and we formed the government. Every five years, it is the masses who determine who will form the government. And in between those five years the classes determine what that government will do.
(...) It is a sustainable economic proposition, because our numbers are so vast, that there are perhaps 10 million Indians who are just as rich as the richest equivalent segment anywhere in the world or in any group of countries. There are about fifty million Indians who really are extraordinarily well off. That’s the population of the UK. But if you look at the 700 million Indians who are either not in the market or barely in the market, then the impact of the economic reforms process, which is so lauded by the CII, makes virtually no difference to their lives. That is why there is a complete disjunct between what the democratic processes are trying for in the short run and what those who have made an enormous success of our achievements in the last fifteen years deem to be, at least in the short run, their own requirements.
(...) So when you talk of a nine point two per cent growth rate, it becomes a statistical abstraction: 0.2 per cent of our people are growing at 9.92 per cent per annum. But there is a very large number, I don’t know how many, whose growth rate is perhaps down to 0.2 per cent. But certainly, the number of those who are at the lower end of the growth sector is very much larger than those who are at the higher end.
(...) There are comfort levels that you get from statistics — for instance, suddenly Arun Shourie, announcing in the NDA government that our poverty rates have fallen from 35 per cent to 22 per cent. He did it by changing the basis on which you estimate poverty. You cannot compare apples and oranges. The next national sample survey has shown that our poverty levels have actually increased. Are we going to be mesmerised by these statistics or understand that 700 million of our people are poor?
(...) So we have an Indira Awaas Yojana which will ensure that there will be a ‘jhuggi’ for every Indian round about the year 2200. We have the PM Gram Sadak Yojana which was supposed to complete all the gram sadak in seven years — we are in the eighth year. And where we are told that the education of 1000 may be covered, who knows only the education of 500 will be covered. And if you happen to be a tribal in Arunachal, you are told that because of your social custom you are to live in one hut atop a hill, we can’t provide you a road.
(...) I was always something of a leftist. But I became a complete Marxist only after the economic reforms. Because I see the extent to which the most important conception of Marx — that the relationship of any given class with the means of production determines the superstructure — holds.
(...) Coming to the cabinet, you see what happens. The minute suggestions are made as to what would perhaps benefit the people and what would benefit the classes, the tendency is to say that our great achievement is 9.2 per cent growth. Our great achievement is that Indian industrialists are buying Arcelor and Corus. That Time magazine thinks we are a great power.
(...) I have always wondered why this rate of growth and economic reforms process is dated to Manmohan Singh. Because actually it should be dated to L.K. Jha’s book Economic Strategy for the 80s. It is the decade in which we quickly recovered from agricultural depression and registered a double digit growth. At the beginning of the decade our biggest import was crude oil and after that it was edible oil. By the end of the decade we were exporters of several kinds of edible oil.
(...) Why is it that Nehru became successful with his Hindu rate of growth? The reason is that the Hindu rate of growth was five times what our pre-Hindu rate of growth was. From 1914 to 1947, the figures of which are available, the rate of growth of the Indian economy was 0.72 per cent. And we got the Hindu rate of growth which was five times that and it made a difference to the people. The minute you had solid land reforms, the people had their ‘zameen’. That is what Mother India was all about. People felt that they were involved in the process. All the political talk was: gareeb ke liye ham kya kar sakte hain.
(...) When I was the minister of petroleum, I used to walk surrounded by this media. I kept on telling them that petrol prices can do only three things — go up, go down or remain where they are. And it was all over the place. But try and get them to write two words about the 700 million Indians — absolutely impossible. And now with terrestrial television it is even worse. You have to be quarreling with your mother-in-law or hitting your daughter-in-law to be able to hit the headlines. It is impossible to get particularly the pink papers to focus on issues that affect the bulk of the people. And it is so easy to get them to focus on issues that are of high relevance to only one or two per cent of the people.