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CONTENTS
Vol. 13, No. 1: JanuaryMarch 1981
P. V. Panajape - Kulaks and Adivasis: The Formation of Classes in
Maharashtra
David Kennett - Economics, Imperialism, and Restorative
Revolution
Dipankar Gupta - Review of S. Banerjees In the Wake of Naxalbari
Pradip Sen - Prisoners of Conscience / Cinema Review
Shambhu Shaha - Some Images of Calcutta and Environs / Photos
David Selbourne - J.P. Narayan: A Political Morality Reexamined
T. G. Cannon - Review of M. Frandas Indias Rural Development
Anonymous - Indian Defense Forces and Arms Production
Martin Stuart-Fox - Socialist Construction and National Security in
Laos
BCAS/Critical AsianStudies
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Critical Asian Studies continues to be inspired by the statement of purpose
formulated in 1969 by its parent organization, the Committee of Concerned
Asian Scholars (CCAS). CCAS ceased to exist as an organization in 1979,
but the BCAS board decided in 1993 that the CCAS Statement of Purpose
should be published in our journal at least once a year.
We first came together in opposition to the brutal aggression of
the United States in Vietnam and to the complicity or silence of
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Asian studies bear responsibility for the consequences of their
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concerned about the present unwillingness of specialists to speak
out against the implications of an Asian policy committed to en-
suring American domination of much of Asia. We reject the le-
gitimacy of this aim, and attempt to change this policy. We
recognize that the present structure of the profession has often
perverted scholarship and alienated many people in the field.
The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars seeks to develop a
humane and knowledgeable understanding of Asian societies
and their efforts to maintain cultural integrity and to confront
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ize that to be students of other peoples, we must first understand
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CCAS wishes to create alternatives to the prevailing trends in
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provider of central resources for local chapters, and a commu-
nity for the development of anti-imperialist research.
Passed, 2830 March 1969
Boston, Massachusetts
Vol. 13, No. I/Jan.-Mar., 1981
Contents
Gail Omvedt 2 Introduction to Paranjape
P. V. Paranjape 3 Kulaks and Adivasis: The Fonnation of Classes in Maharashtra
David Kennett 22 Economics, Imperialism and Restorative Revolution
Dipankar Gupta 31 Review of S. Banerjee's In the Wake ofNaxalbari
PradipSen 32 "Prisoners of Conscience"/cinema review
35 Notice by the Editors and Address Change Fonn
Shambhu Shaha 36 Some Images of Calcutta and Environs/photos
David Selbourne 38 JP Narayan: A Political Morality Re-Examined
T. G. Cannon 50 Review ofM. Franda's India's Rural Development
, 'Anonymous" 53 Indian Defense Forces and Anns Production
58 Letters, continued from front cover
Martin Stuart-Fox 61 Socialist Construction and National Security in Laos
72 List of Books to Review
Staff
Editors
Ben Kerkvliet Joe Moore Bob Marks Bryant A very
(Honolulu, HI) (Canberra, Aust.) (Whittier, CA) (managing editor)
Editorial Board
Southeast Asia Northeast Asia East Asia South Asia
Nina Adams Frank Baldwin Steve Andors Ashok Bhargava
(Springfield, IL) (Tokyo, Japan) (Staten Is., NY) (Madison, WI)
Doug Allen HerbertBix Helen Chauncey Hassen Gardezi
(Orono, ME) (Tokyo, Japan) (Nanjing, China) (Sault Ste. Marie)
Noam Chomsky Bruce Cumings Gene Cooper Kathleen Gough
(Lexington, MA) (Seattle, W A) (Los Angeles, CA) (Vancouver, BC)
Richard Franke John Dower Richard Kagan Maria Mies
(Montclair, NJ) (Madison, WI) (St. Paul, MN) (The Hague, Neth.)
Lim MahHui Jon Halliday Victor Lippit Gail Omvedt
(Philadelphia, P A) (London, Eng.) (Riverside, CA) (Pone, India)
Ngo Vinh Long SugwonKang Angus McDonald Hari Sharma
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Joel Rocamora Gavan McCormack Victor Nee Joe Tharamangalam
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Christine White Rob Steven Carl Riskin
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Martha Winnacker Moss Roberts Mark Selden
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Vera Schwarcz Saundra Sturdevant
(Middletown, CT) (Berkeley, CA)
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Introduction to Paranjape
by Gail Omvedt
The following article is part of a longer project by Suhas
Paranjape. dealing with the historical development first of class
relations and then of class struggle in Dhule district, which lies
north of Bombay in the state of Maharashtra. The area involved
is small, but it might be pointed out that this is true of other
"vanguard" areas of class struggle in post-independence India,
such as Naxalbari and Srikakulam which were also areas popu
lated mainly by adivasis or tribals. Dhule differs from these in
combining adivasi militancy with developed capitalist farm
ing-and so perhaps is even more of a signal for the rising forms
of class struggle in India.
It is important for Bulletin readers to know that this article
does not originate from an academic background or out of
academic concerns. Suhas was for two years an activist in the
Shramik Sanghatana (Toilers' Union), an organization of ag
ricultural laborers and poor peasants based mainly among adi
vasis in Dhule. Most of the different "regions" described
here-Shahade, Talode, Nandurbar, Akkalkuwa-are talukas
of the district in which the Shramik Sanghatana is now organ
Izmg.
The Sanghatana itself was formed following a 1970 atroc
ity in which two adivasi agricultural laborers were killed by
kulaks firing on a famine-starved crowd which had gathered to
demand a share of the stored grain they themselves had har
vested. This "Patilwadi incident" was only one of countless
such clashes that are increasing in India in recent years. (These
are sometimes seen as a result of the' 'Green Revolution" but it
would be more accurate to say that both are an aspect of the
growing capitalist relations in agriculture which have slowly but
surely been shifting the main class contradiction from that of
peasant versus landlords to that of mainly low caste agricultural
laborers versus kulak farmers.) But it brought a wave of young
volunteers, new activists, to come to work in the area, and these
helped shape the adivasi militancy into the formation of a new
class organization. Fights over land and wages, violent battles
with the landowners, spontaneous "peoples' courts" to fight
kulak oppression and rape of women, efforts to smash alcohol
ism and other destructive habits within the adivasi community
itself, the formation of mazur samitis (laborers' committees) as
negotiating bodies and tarun mandals (youth leagues) as groups
of politically conscious adivasi youth, programs of political
education, the organization of an SO-mile march to protest
atrocities against dalits (untouchables), the formation of a
women's liberation organization by the adivasi women them
selves without a single middle class woman to take the lead-all
these have been part of the Shramik Sanghatana struggle. (One
aspect of this struggle has been dealt with in the Bulletin itself by
Maria Mies, "Indian Women and Leadership," Vol. 7, No. I,
1975; the song "Hey Indira" in the same issue is by an adivasi
Sanghatana activist.) Today it is the strongest mass organization
in the rural areas in Maharashtra and perhaps one of the strong
est in India as a whole.
All of this organizing has not taken place in a vacuum.
with Magowa, a Communist group that was formed in a period
of disillusionment with the traditional parties (the CPI and
CPM) and on the background of the N axalite revolt and its brutal
repression by the Indian state. The Magowa group had im
portant theoretical and political disagreements with the Naxa
lites, but they shared much of the critique of the parliamentarism
and bureaucratism of the established left. Beyond this, one of
the unique features of the group was a stress on the importance
of theort:tical development, and their journal opened with the
statement that "we will examine everything, even Marxism
itself, under a microscope."
The felt need for theory was itself a result of the experience
of confronting a mass reality that made many traditionally
accepted Marxist answers seem inadequate. For the activists of
the Shramik Sanghatana, the debate about the' 'mode of produc
tion in agriculture" was not simply an intriguing intellectual
exercise but one that had real implications for their work: is an
alliance with the "rich peasants" possible? All the traditional
Communists (including the Naxalites) have answered yes, on
the grounds that since "feudalism" was dominant, progressive
"bourgeois" trends could be part of a democratic front. For the
Shramik Sanghatana in contrast, the' 'rich peasant" (kulak) was
the actual class enemy they confronted, the power-holder in the
countryside. Similarly, the role of "caste"-type factors in the
fom1s of exploitation and of class struggle, the fact that the
kulaks were predominantly Gujars and the laborers predomi
nantly adivasi, forced them to go beyond the traditional Indian
Marxist tendency to neglect caste with the argument that "fun
damentally it's really a class struggle; if you unite on economic
issues then the social issues can be resolved." It is perhaps not
accidental that the one other political organization with a base
among adivasis in Dhule is the Satyashodhak Communist Party,
whose leader, Sharad Pati!, had split from the CPM on the
theme of combining "class-caste struggle." Paranjape takes a
somewhat different line in this article from Patil, but the atten
tion to caste is new for Indian Marxists and apparently was one
of the most controversial parts of the paper when an early
version was presented to the Peasants Seminar in London two
years ago. The fact is, however, that for those involved in rural
organizing in India, the need to deal with-and thus to theoreti
cally understand-the role of caste/community and the shifting
nature of different classes with the development of capitalist
farming has become almost a life-and-death matter.
Today the Magowa group has been dissolved and the
Shramik Sanghatana is functioning as a left mass organization
formally unconnected with any political group. But in the con
text of the heightening contradictions in today's India and the
daily growing threat of systematic repression, it is not enough to
be a strong locally based organization. The issue before the
Shramik Sanghatana activists is, as it always was, how and in
what way will they be part of an all-India revolutionary political
trend. In the name of seeking security in the face of repression
within a "big" party, and out of a sense of doubt about the very
possibility of theoretical analysis, some voices are being heard
calling for going into the fold of the traditional parliamentary
communist parties; others are urging that the theoretical and
practical innovations of Shramik Sanghatana must be fulfilled
and carried forward as part of an organized struggle to give a
new direction to the entire Indian movement. It is in the context
of debate on such political issues that theoretical contribu
tions-whether they are published in the Bulletin or else
'* Many of the activists of Shramik Sanghatana were connected where-have their real significance.
2
Kulaks and Adivasis
The Formation of Classes in Maharashtra
by P.v. Paranjape
The Khandesh Region: Pre-British Period
Dhule and Jalgaon districts make up the Khandesh region
of Maharashtra. Khandesh is bounded on the west by Gujarat,
in the east by the Vidarbha part of Maharashtra, in the south by
the Nashik district and the Marathwada part of Maharashtra and
in the north by Madhya Pradesh. The Tapi Basin that we are
concentrating upon lies in the north-west of Dhule district now
comprising talukas of Shahade, Talode and Nandurbar.
By the period of the later Moghuls, Khandesh had become
an important and covetable part of the Moghul empire. Euro
pean travellers of the late sixteenth century describe Khandesh
as a rich and well-peopled country yielding great abundance of
grain, cotton, wool and sugar with big markets for dry fruits. It
was during the first viceroyalty of Aurangzeb in Shahjahan's
time (the seventeenth century) that we find the first systematic,
recorded and centralized land revenue assessment being applied
to Khandesh. This assessment, known as the "Tankha" and
reorganized on a more lenient basis during Aurangzeb's second
viceroyalty was to serve as the nominal standard and the basic
departure point right up to British times.
In Khandesh, the west and north-west formed a very im
portant part. The seven divisions of Nandurbar district (includ
ing what today form the Shahade and Talode talukas) yielded a
yearly revenue of 125,000, while the 32 other divisions of
Khandesh yielded a yearly revenue of 76,000.
1
European
travellers mentioned the Kunbis, the Bhils and the Gond Adi
vasi* tribes as a main class of cultivators, 2 and Muslim records
show that the area north of the Tapi (Shahade-Talode region)
was exclusively peopled and tilled by the Adivasi (tribal) popu
lation.
3
Thus by the time of the late Moghuls theTapi Basin
plains north of the Tapi in what forms the Dhule district today4
were peopled and tilled by Adivasi but ruled by the Moghuls
through Adivasi chieftains, and Rajput, Muslim as well as
Maratha feudatories.
It is necessary to separate clearly the Adivasi "husband
men" and their non-Adivasi counterparts. The prosperity or
revenue of the north-west basin did not arise from an advance in
production on Adivasi-cultivated land. The crucial position of
Khandesh on trade-routes and the production of non-Adivasi
cultivators on the fertile plains appear to be at the root of the
3
prosperity. It seems that the Adivasis and their entire life formed
a relatively autonomous enclave in the region. It was the fertility
and production of the lands and the trade in Khandesh which
made it important that peace with the Adivasis be secured. The
Adivasis were tolerated on the land and they retained their own
rites and practices in regard to the land. The Bhil Adivasis who
form the largest part of the population of the north-west basin,
are believed to be a group of tribes occupying the whole area of
the Satpudas and its northern parts. The Bhil have been pressed
southwards
5
so that they occupy the large forest belt starting
from the Thane district in the west to the western parts of the
Vindhya mountains. The Adivasis ofthe basin thus form simul
taneously the fringe of this vast tribal area and a part of the larger
Moghul empire.
Since the late thirteenth century trade routes criss-crossing
the south and the north-east of the whole of Khandesh region
have developed, and by the fourteenth century the area had
become important enough to warrant a separate fiefdom and a
separate centre for administration. This administrative seat,
which was later to be of importance also during Moghul times,
was situated at Sultanpur-now a small village in the centre of
Shahade taluka. With the integration of the region into the larger
Moghul Empire, its stability and peace assured the development
of trade on an extensive scale. The road just south of the Tapi
River and following it became an important artery of this trade.
Gathering unto itself most of the export trade bound for Surat
from the Madhya Pradesh as well as the deeper Central Prov
* Adivasi is the word meaning original senlers which has come to be used by the
tribal population to identify itself.
\. Gazetteer a/the Bombay Presidency, Vol. XII, (Khandesh, Bombay,
1880) (hereafter GBP-XII), p. 248.
2. Ibid., p. 248; Gazetteer of the Territories under the Government of the
East India Company, Vol. I, (London: Edward Thorton, (854) (hereafter
EICG-I), pp. 258-259.
3. EICG-I, pp. 258-259.
4. GBP-XII, p. 82.
5. Ibid., pp. 80-83.
,
inces, Nandurbar became a town of importance, especially with
cotton fabrics, muslins of all kinds being exported to Persia,
Turkey, Moscow, Poland, Arabia, Cairo and other places. 6 As a
matter of fact, Khandesh had acquired such importance that
only a close relative of the Emperor could be granted viceroyalty
over it, and moreover, this viceroy had to be on the spot, in
Sultanpur. Due to the position of Khandesh, the feudatories who
held power there, and especially in the northwest basin, were of
varied castes-of Muslim, Maratha, Rajput origins along with
a few Adivasi chieftains. Because the feudal class wa<; so
divided among caste lines, it cou.ld not assert its class domi
nance to the same degree that it could in many other areas.
Pillage of Khandesh
Situated in a strategic position between Gujarat, Madhya
Pradesh and Maharashtra, Khandesh was an important nodal
link in the trade of the country. This position made it bear the
full brunt of the Moghul-Maratha wars and the later wars during
the decline and dissolution of Maratha rule.
Mobile raids of Moghul territory by the Marathas in the late
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were characteristic
of the method of warfare that the Marathas had evolved in their
home provinces. Their surprise raids undermined the massive,
slow-moving Imperial armies of the Moghuls. In fighting the
The only ones to have consistently and progressively
benefitted from the warfare were the British. Apart
from the campaigns actually fought and territory held
by the British, the Maratha campaigns also took their
toU: in their feuds the Maratha had become accus
tomed to and later were forced to accept British
help-but at a price.
Moghuls in the Sahyadris the Marathas drew forces from the
local peasantry, but outside their homeland the Marathas ap
peared as much a scourge of the local peasantry as of the Moghul
feudatories. Their exactions from the feudatories of the
Moghuls and the imposition of chauth* added only to the burden
of the peasantry, and their campaigns left the country ravaged.
By destroying the local administration and trade they contrib
uted to the disorganisation of the economy, with nothing else to
replace it in the earlier years. It needed but a few years of
below-average rainfall to bring on a famine, and come it surely
did. From the year 1702 to 1704 Khandesh was visited by
famine.
With the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 Moghul power,
already crumbling, began to give way and the conflict with the
Marathas intensified. The main battles with the Nizam-ul-Mulk.
were fought out across this area, and rights were ceded and
reimposed in rapid succession. By this 'time the Marathas had
also taken to employing massive armies and the conflict passed
north through Khandesh by the mid-century. During this period
the Maratha l.and-tenure was in force. Apart from the Tankha
settlement which formed the departure point, chauth and
sardeshmukhi were added. There were also a host of other
levies, too numerous to be described. These impositions the
Maratha rule added much to the burden of the local peasantry
caught between the warring powers.
7
Moreover, since at this
time the powers were competing for control in India, the Mara
thas did not consolidate an Empire. The foreign powers were
always around to offer aid, arms and soldiers, and dissident
feudatories always began with a strength acquired from them.
The presence of foreign powers and the competition among
them acted as the corrosive acid which ate into the Imperial
structures of the Marathas with devastating effects.
Bajirao II, the last Peshwa of the declining Maratha em
pire, acquired his Peshwepad in 1796 amidst a welter of rival
claimants, supporters and opponents. He was unable to stem, let
alone reverse, the tide of infeudation and the Maratha empire
broke up into two large, loosely defined warring camps whose
lines and constituents constantly changed. Punitive expeditions,
pillage and looting of rival territory became the order of the day.
One such feud which was to be of importance to Khandesh
was the feud between the Shindes of Gwalior and the Holkars of
Indore. The history of the feud and its complex relation with the
struggle for the Peshwepad is too complex to relate, nor is it the
object of our investigation. Suffice that Yeshwantrao and
Tukoji Holkar rebelled against the Poona regime in the course of
this feud and took to the Khandesh hills, from which they
reverted, ironically, to the oldest forms of Maratha warfare
against the Moghul Empire. Earlier rebels had succeeded in
inciting only the tribes of Kolis, but Yeshwantrao drafted into
his army a number ofBhil chieftains.
Came ,the inevitable famine in the wake of this disorder.
The severity of this famine of 1802-1803 compares only with
the terrible Durgadevi famine of 1639 which is said to have left
only a few thousand Adivasis alive. Although the Peshwa gov
ernment abolished import duties on grain and remitted revenue,
the halfuearted measures were of no avail, as illustrated by the
, 'reorganisation" of the land revenue system in 1804. The post
of mamlatdar, or revenue collector, had previously been con
ferred either to a salaried person or to a feudatory holder, but in
1804 this post was put up to auction for a period ofone year. The
post was to be reauctioned each year. The ruthlessness of the
bidders and the armed detachments of those who already had
"farmed" the post can be easily imagined.
Flight of Peasantry
The effects of this on the local peasantry were disastrous.
The famine and the "farming out" were the last straw laid on
the camel's back and the peasantry began to emigrate. The
non-tribal castes, many of whom were already immigrants from
other areas, often left for their "homelands." But the problem
was very different for the population north of the Tapi River and
the other regions bordering the hills. There, most of the popula
tion was tribal and they had no homeland to flee to. It was their
homeland that was being ravaged. Since they were hardly in a
position to stop the Maratha warring factions from traversing
their territory, they were forced to leave their lands and take to
the hills where they resumed their former ways of life. They
organized themselves into armed groups and carried out a war
* The chauth is a tax equalling one-fourth of the peasant's revenue.
6. Ibid., pp. 214,250.
7. Ibid., pp. 268-272.
4
fare exactly along the lines of the early Maratha period. They
struck the invading enemy wherever possible and plundered it.
The Maratha feudatories, who, in spite of their infighting,
considered the area their collective domain, looked upon the
tribal population and its revolt as pure banditry-much as the
Moghuls had looked upon the Marathas. Irritated, they resolved
to read the tribals a chapter in terror. In 1808 Balaji Laxman at
Kopargaon tempted from the hills a large body of Chandor
Bhils-and proceeded to surround and massacre them. Instead
of being cowed down, the Bhil revolt became fiercer and the
Marathas retaliated with cruel massacres at Chalisgaon, Dha
rangaon, Antur and a number of other places.
Such unsettled conditi9ns naturally fostered other forms of
brigandage as well. Most of the big feudal landowners drafted
into service private Kamataka and Arab mercenaries, many of
whom soon took to independent brigandage. Meanwhile Yesh
wantrao Holkar, who had been kept captive at Poona, escaped
and, in the words of the Gazetteer, "carried sword and fire
through Khandesh."8 He was actively helped by the chieftain
Jugar Naik of Chikhli to attack and devastate the Maratha
stronghold at Sultanpur. The warlike Pendharis and the Muslim
Tadvi Bhils carried an expedition across Khandesh from east to
west in 1816 and back again in 1817.
The only ones to have consistently and progressively bene
fitted from the warfare were the British. Apart from the cam
paigns actually fought and territory held by the British, the
Maratha campaigns also took their toll: in their feuds the Mara
tha had become accustomed to and later were forced to accept
British help-but at a price. Territory after territory passed into
British hands until in 1818, with the decisive defeat of the
Peshwa at Aste, the Maratha empire (including Khandesh)
became part of British territory. The whole social fabric of
Khandesh had been torn asunder. The laboring population had
fled. The Adivasi peasantry had withdrawn to the hills and the
province was full of marauding groups of plunderers. On their
entry the British were astounded at the sight that met their eyes.
Anarchy, chaos and desolation always announced their imperial
control but the scale astounded them and led Elphinstone to
remark that in their anarchy the conditions of Khandesh were
almost unexampled "even in Asia. "9
Return of "Order": British Colonization
Having acquired rights over this now desolate and armed
country, the British colonizers first set up a political and civil
apparatus to crush the resisting tribes and the armed gangs. In a
few years they had taken care of the bandit gangs of Arabs and
others. But crushing the resistance of the local tribal population
which was fighting for its homeland was quite another matter.
Right up to 1825, in continuous and ferocious campaigns, they
tried unsuccessfully to wipe out the resistance with armed force.
In 1825, however, the British, at the instance of Elphinstone,
then Governor of Bombay, put into effect a policy which was to
be much more fruitful. One edge of this dual policy consisted in
an effort to repopulate the area while assuring the Adivasi
population that they would not be pursued at gunpoint if the
Adivasis settled on land and paid the British Caesar his due in
taxes. The second edge of it was to draft into service a part of the
tribal population to participate in the work of suppression. To
this end three Bhil Agencies were formed and Agents were
posted at each to take care of the "benevolent" measures. A
5
The Tapi river flows east-west across the district
cutting the district into two almost equal halves. It forms a
basin from the beginning of the Shahade taluka which
broadens into a strip of extremely fertile plains of about
15 to 20 miles in width at its broadest. In the north ofthe
Shahade and Talode talukas, the plains end with a steep
rise of the Satpuda mountains which form ridge after
ridge of rising mountains. Most ofthe part ofAkkalkuwa
taluka which bounds the Talode taluka on the west is taken
up by the Satpudas with a relatively narrow strip of the
north-west basin included in its southern region. The
Nandurbar taluka lies to the south of the Tapi. Here the
plains end with a slow rise and increasingly rocky soil that
blend into the Sahyadri and Galna hills in the south-west.
The Nawapur taluka which bounds Nandurbar taluka to
the west lies entirely in this slowly rising part with a
sparse forest covering a large part.
The Bombay-Agra Road passes through the eastern
part of the district through Dhule and Shirpur and lies
along one of the old trade routes ofIndia. The Bombay
Delhi railway route passes through the Jalgaon district.
The Surat-Bhusaval Railway line follows the south bank of
the Tapi throughout the region. The village Prakashe
which lies at the confluence ofthe Tapi and the Gomai in
Shahade taluka was the important nodal link in earlier
days. From Prakashe through Shahade we have a route
which passes north through the Khetiye pass into the
Madhya Pradesh plains. We also now have a metalled
road (i.e. paved with broken rock) passing through
Akkalkuwa-Talode-Shahade-Shirpur following the north
bank ofthe Tapi on the Surat-Barhanpur highway.
Khandesh thus lies in the westernmost parts of the
whole cotton tract ofMaharashtra. It also forms a natural
boundary, for it is the beginning ofthe mountainous parts
of Madhya Pradesh once we leave Khandesh behind on
the Bombay-Agra Road. It is the first plains we meet as we
cross the Sahyadris and the Satpudas. It lies just south of
the great belt ofmountains andforests that girdles India,
and leads directly into the rich cotton tracts ofnorth-east
Maharashtra. The strip of land between the Akkalkuwa
and Talode talukas and the Tapi in the north, and between
the Nawapur and Nandurbar talukas and the Tapi in the
south now form part ofthe Gujarat region, the history of
which fact is connected with the building ofa huge dam on
the Tapi at Ukai in Gujarat and the consequent displace
ment ofhundreds ofAdivasis (tribals).
Bhil Corps was formed, albeit "with extreme difficulty." This
policy yielded substantial but slow results. By 1828 the Col
lector of Khandesh could report that "for the first time in 20
years the district has enjoyed six months of rest. "10
8. Ibid., p. 259.
9. Gazetteer of India, Maharashtra State, Dhulia District (revised edi
tion) (Bombay. 1974)(hereafterGMSD). p. 140.
10. Ibid., p. 154.
~
I
I
,
I
Sporadic outbursts still continued-not only among the
tribal population-such as the 1845 confrontation between the
Chikhli tribal chieftain and the British. Like the more famous
1857 uprising of disaffected feudatories and regal heads, the
Khandesh Bhils rebelled under Kajarsingh Naik., riding a tide of
peasant ferocity. The suppression of this revolt, just like the
suppression of the 1857 uprising, was to mark the end of a
decisive period. Having served its purpose, the Bhil Corps was
not called again for active service and was finally disbanded.
In Khandesh, the consolidation of political power was
important to the British because it represented the suppression
of an entire people up in arms. With much fanfare revenue
farming was abolished and previous Maratha assessments were
to fonn the nonn, wherever they were not clearly (sic!) unjust or
oppressive. In short, the British effected a fonnal abolition of
revenue farming while retaining all its ill effects. Nor did the
British adhere to the clause assuring that no new burden of
taxation would be imposed. According to class of land, dry crop
Borad. a village in Shahade (Photo by Gail Omvedt)
rates in Nandurbar were raised by 25 to 60 percent. As a result
tillage fell drastically in Nandurbar-and tillage of higher clas
ses of land fell most drastically. 11 Only in 1839-40 with a 30
percent reduction of rates did tillage in Khandesh begin to
improve, yet a systematic survey carried out by Captain Wing
ate in 1852 estimates that only 14 percent of the estimated arable
land was under tillage. About 25 percent of the villages stood
completely deserted.
The estimated tillage of 14 percent was an average for the
whole of Khandesh. The actual figures varied from 5 percent to
35 percent for the various sub-divisions. *More significantly, in
the north-west Tapi River basin it was considerably lower than
that for the rest of the province: the tillage figures varied from 7
to 9 percent. The settlement on land that took place up to the
1850s generally occurred in the Khandesh plains. To quote,
"the lands north of Taptee, once very populous and yielding a
large revenue, were almost uninhabited forest." 12
But this "forest" was not a forest in the real sense of the
word. It was an extremely fertile land now overgrown with
bushes and trees. It had only to be cleared with some labor to
become again with a few years of cultivation as rich in produce
as before. Thus while the rest of the Khandesh plains were
reaching some degree of cultivation, the north-west plains still
had the character of an open country awaiting settlement and
with an abundance of fertile land. This open country was not
being slowly reoccupied by the Adivasis. The Gazatteer of the
East India Company, in the relief it felt at having established
their law and order in the province, waxes lyrical over this
phenomenon, "the Bheels, from outcasts have become mem
bers of civil society, daily rising in respectability and becoming
useful and obedient subjects of the state." 13
With the abolition of Company rule in 1858 the process of
colonization reached yet another mark. The 'fifties also saw the
growth of demand for cotton and gave rise to the cotton boom
which reached its first peak in 1862-65. In 1860, the 1852
assessments were lowered. The British overhauled the Admini
strative machinery, enacted laws, and established sub
divisional civil courts. Railways began to be built and the main
Bombay-Chalisgaon:j: line was completed in the 'sixties. British
power spread into the very pores of Indian society to effectuate
and consolidate the process of colonization. The cotton boom of
the 'sixties did more than all the previous British attempts to
attract people to the land. Where offers of rent-free land and
With the metalling (rock-paving) of Satmala passes
and the regularization of traffic through these in the
wake of British takeover of most of Maharashtra, the
Bombay trade received a big boost. Very soon the
cotton boom set in and the small trader was completely
subordinated to the centralized chain of commercial
capital emanating from the offices of British cotton
agents in Bombay.
money for bullocks and implements had failed to attract anyone
to Khandesh, its rich soils now called forth an immigration
which outstripped the trickling streams before the 'fifties. In the
words of a visitor to the Talode taluka in 1864, ten years after his
first visit,
. . . I was hardly prepared for the change that has taken
place. Miles of high jungle, I might almost say forest, has
been cleared off, and places which gave cover to wild ani
mals such as nilgai and sambar. were now clothed with
luxuriant crops ofwheat and gram. 14
Tillage shot up from a bare 7% to 9% in 1852 to 72% in
Nandurbar, 60% for Shahade and 78% for Talode taluke in
* Administrative divisions were roughly equivalent to the present talUKIJs.
:j: Part of the now Bombay-Delhi Railway route.
Ii. GBP-XII, p. 381.
12. GBP-XII, p. 273.
13. EICG-I. p. 262.
14. Selections from the Records of the Bombay Government Papers Relat
ing to the Revision Survey Settlement of the Shahade Taluka of the Khandesh
Collectorate, Bombay, 1899 (hereafter RSS-ST), p. Ii.
6
1878.
15
Before the end of the century, "the whole of the area
[Talode taluka] is now, in effect, under good cultivation and the
absence of wild animals is conspicuous. Pasture land has given
way to cultivation, more than half of which is producing export
able crops. . . "16
Gujar immigration
It is in this period during and after the 1860s that we find
the specific mention of an immigrant population in the area. The
Gujars played an important role in the shaping of the land
relations of the north-west Tapi basin. The British Gazetteers
and reports refer to them as Guzars, Guzar Kunbis, Guzar Vanis
as well as a branch of the Leva (Reve) Patils. There is a
similarity between the several groups as well as certain distinc
tions. In tenns of caste, the Gujars-all Kunbis by caste-must
be clearly distinguished from the Reve Patils on the one hand
and from the Marwaris and Vanis of Gu jarat on the other. The
British practice of reducing the Gujars to the caste of the Reve
Patils does not stand historical scrutiny. Despite certain similar
ities between them the Gujars constitute a distinct community
which migrated to this region several centuries back (around the
14th century). Similarly the Gujars are also irreducible to the
Marwaris and Vanis of Gu jarat in spite of some money lending
and usurious practices on their part. Their immigration into the
area is quite different from the slow pace of settlement of the
Adivasis. The Adivasis looked upon land more as a means of
livelihood than as a source of gain. On the other hand the Gujar
Kunbi population, coming from a cultivating caste of the peas
antry with a fully developed sense of property, looked upon land
not only as a means of livelihood but also over and above that as
property and a means of gain. Therefore whereas the Adivasis
settled on land sufficient for their livelihood, immigrant Gujar
cultivators fenced in the largest available chunks of the most
fertile land.
Before the 1850s the only problem noted by the Gazetteers
is that of increasing tillage. It is only after the occupation ofland
by the immigrant Gu jar population that the Gazetteers began to
speak of a shortage of labor. Supported by British law and by
Adivasi lack of a sense of property, the Gujar population re
duced the Adivasis to near slavery through a combination of
cunning, usury and pure fraud. 17
Growth ofBondage
The condition ofthe Bhil cultivator in the northwest of
Khandesh is special. There the landholders are mostly Gujar
capitalists, not peasant proprietors, and the Bhils were for
merly contented to serve them for clothes and food, liquor
now and then, and a small sum of money whenever their
15. GBP-XII. pp. 330,409.417.
16. RSS-ST, p. II.
17. Report of the Deccan Riots CommiSSIOn. Appendix B; Action of the
Law and the Civil Courts on the Agricultural Debtor, 1876 (hereafter ORe). pp.
164-184. Also GBP-XII. pp. 197-200. Also DRC, pp. 334-336:
I have no hesitation in saying that false accounts and false bonds are the
rule. and not the exception in the dealings of the Gujar sowkar with the
unfortunate and ignorant Bheels. -Extract from Report to Government
No. 255 dated January 17. 1871. from Mr. A. Rogers. Revenue Commis
sioner. N.D.
18. GBP-XII. pp. 197-198.
children are married. Oflate the demandfor Bhillabour has
increased and wages have greatly risen. On the other hand,
the settlement oftheir disputes with their employers has been
transferred from the magistrate to the civil courts, and the
Gujar, by the ignorance and carelessness ofthe Bhil, has him
at his mercy. The Gujar agrees with the Bhil that the Bhil is to
till the Gujar's land and that they are to share the produce.
An advance is made to the Bhil to buy bullocks, and a bond is
drawn up with a premium of twenty-five percent. The Bhil
grows the crop and isfed by the Gujar. At the end ofthe year
the Gujar takes the crop and puts off the Bhil on the ground
that he has to pay for the bullocks. Next year the Bhil again
gets clothes and food and is told that he has something to pay.
He asks for a new settlement of his accounts, and as a
preliminary is sent for a new stamped paper. With afew soft
words, some money to buy a robe for his Wife, and a little
liquor, a new bond is made, the meaning of which the Bhil
does not understand, and he goes back to his work hopingfor
better luck next year. After struggling onfor a year or two he
determines to leave. Then hefinds that his partner, or mas
ter, has his acceptance for 20 (Rs.200) or more, that the
bullock he has toiled for is not his, and that he and all he has
are at his master's mercy. A decree is passed, and the Bhil' s
goods are seized and sold. Then his master offers him a
chance ofreturn and he serves for some time more. Again he
grows tired of his position, and refuses to work. The master
has still some outstanding debts, .and the threat of the civil
court again brings the Bhil to order. Thus things go onfrom
year to year. It is not uncommon for a Bhil, under pretense of
the transfer ofhis debt, to be handed over from one creditor
to another. A Bhil with a decree against him is worth more
than one whose debts are smaller. His mother's name is
entered in the bond, and as a Bhil will suffer anything rather
than disgrace his mother, the threat to send her to Dhulia Jail
is at any time enough to make the Bhil do whatever his master
wishes. IS
Two members ofYouth League. 1973 Wmvedt)
7
.,
This graphic Gazetteer description of the specific mode of
exploitation of the Bhil sharecropper brings out that, with the
coming of the shortage , " we have what on surface purports to
be a relationship of tenancy. But behind this facade lurks a
relationship of total servitude. What the Gujar kulak gets from it
is not a part of the produce or a share. He provides for the
subsistence of the Bhillaborer, the implements, the livestock
and the seed and he then appropriates the whole of the produce.
In addition we have the laborer handed over from one to another
under the pretext of transfer of the debt. The promise of sharing
the crop is only a ruse, a tactic, a carrot to lure the laborer in a
situation where labor is scarce and wages are high. It is neither a
relationship of wage-labor, though wage-labor is the context in
which it develops, nor is it a semi-feudal relationship. It is a
relationship of pue slavery at worst and semi-slavery at best.
There is another form of relationship betwen the laboring
population and the direct appropriation of its surplus labor. This
form, identified by the 1880 Gazetteer as labor-mortgage, al
ready was substantial by the 1880s, and was to form the crucial
relationship between them in later years.
About two to three per cent of the labouring population
in the east and about ten per cent in the west raise money by
mortgaging their Labour. These men are generally small
landholders, who by some folly or mishap have fallen hope
lessLy'in debt. Men who mortgage their Labour are known as
yearlies, saaldars, because their term ofservice lasts for one
or more years. Labour is generally mortgaged, either to
clear off old debts or to raise a sum of money to meet
marriage and other expenses. Sometimes a man mortgages
his own and his children's labour. The men who take labour
in mortgage are generally rich Landowners, deshmukhs,
patils and others who empLoy the mortgagees in fieldwork
and sometimes as messengers or duns, mahasulis. The
labour-mortgage bond, called an year deed, saaLkhat is on
stamped paper. Sometimes the mortgagor is advanced the
whole and sometimes only half ofthe sum agreed upon. The
common pLan is that the mortgagee, working soLely for his
[the landowner'sJ benefit, is supplied with food at the mort
gagee's cost. Under this form ofagreement a labourer takes
from three or four years to work off a debt of Rs.lOO.
OccasionaLLy the saaldar lives by himself and is bound to do
only a certain amount of work for his master. Under this
agreement the labourer supports himself and in two years
can work offa debt ofRs.1OO. They are willing workers and
generally do their share ofthe agreement freely and without
punishment. Sometimes they run away, andformerly, though
now they refuse to do so, the magistrates used to enforce the
bond. 19
The saaldari system, or the engagement of laborers by the
year, is found in a number of places, as is the use of a real or
fraudulent debt to secure this labor. What is remarkable is its
prevalence on as large a scale as ten percent of the laboring
population. This does not mean that relationships of tenancy did
not develop in the area. To the contrary, the Adivasis that had
begun to settle on land were mainly small holders. Their small
ness of holdings was sure to drive them into the clutches of the
moneylending kulaks, and a process of transfer of land into the
hands of the non-Adivasi kulaks was indeed taking place. 20
Most of these transfers occurred directly under the protec
tion of and with the active intervention of the legal system that
the British imposed. In 1859 separate judicial civil courts were
established for each sub-division. The former system whereby
the District Collector, who was also Magistrate, vested in him
self all rights to settle civil disputes was abandoned. Under Act
13 of the 1859 reform, a breach of a contract of service was
made a criminal offence. Act 8 made a provision for the impris
onment and the attachment and/or sale of the property of a
debtor. *It is these British Acts that provided the kulaks with the
weapon of terror that they needed against the Adivasis.
The statistics for the year 1870 show that in the whole of
the Bombay Presidency an average 7.3 percent of civil suits
'related to land." The highest percentage is found in Kanaraor
the northern part of present-day Kamataka (20.5%); Khandesh
is the lowest in the scale with only 0.7% "relating to land. "21
This would seem to indicate that the process of land transfer in
the latter TaLuka was one of the slowest. However if we compare
the figure for the arrests of debtors and attachments and/or sales
of "immovable property" we get a figure of 6 percent and 13
percent respectively!
The trend for these figures also graphically brings out a
crucial point. The kulaks were not interested in the arrest of
debtors as such. The highest percentage of suits in which the
arrest of debtors was secured by the suitors stands at 6 percent in
the tension-ridden year of 1870. It then shows a decrease to 1.4
percent in 1878. The actual arrest of debtors became less fre
quent because the threat of arrest had become an effective
instrument of terror and intimidation in the hand of the kulaks.
The second category of suits "relating to land" as identi
fied by the Deccan Riots Commission is one in which land was
directly involved as the. object of contention. The high propor
tion of such suits in Kanara or, immediately following it, in
Ratnagiri districts is rather an indication of a substantial section
of middle peasantry or poor peasantry conscious of its property
rights as well as resultant disputes among these sections. An
interesting highlight on this is the number of suits decided
ex -parte. * * Thus we find that in most of the districts in which the
proportion of suits "relating to land" is low the proportion of
ex-parte decisions is much higher than the average. Thus Khan
desh has a proportion of 72.4 percent of suits decided ex-parte
whereas the same figures for Kanara are 46.6 percent. 22 There is
evidence that the ex-parte figures were even much higher for the
northwest basin.
23
But more importantly it is the third category
* But it may be noted here that due to the latter Act it was not necessary for the
kulaks in the area to take land in mortgage, but any debt or pledge that the
smallholder could not execute could be used as an instrument to acquire land
through attachment and/or sale. This has created a very spurious appearance in
the juridical statistics.
** From or on onc side only.
19. Ibid., p. 199.
20. Ibid., pp. 196-7.
21. DRC, pp. 98-97; GBP-XII, p. 308.
22. DRC, pp. 96-97.
23. We beg to appeal statenU!fIlS showing the number ofsuits filed by Guwrs
and moneylenders against Bheets in the coun ofthe Sub-Judge at Nandurbar
during the years 1867, 1868, and 1869, and how they were disposed of, It
will be seen from this statement that of the 635 suits that came to inquiry
during those years, 612 were decided infavourofplaintiffs, and only 23 in
favor of Bheels, and that Bheels appeared to contest the claims brought
against them in 29 cases only. In 594 suits judgement went default against
Bheels. We rely on these figures in support ofour statement that the ordinary
8
Adivasi hut (Omvedt)
of attachment and/or sale of immovable property which is more
significant. While "suits relating to land" show a fluctuating
trend rising from 0.7% in 1870 to 1.4% in 1878, the figures for
attachment show an increase from 10% to about 30% from 1870
to 1878.
24
In these schemes, the kulak's use of usury was not
designed to accumulate money through the debt but rather to
secure labor on his land. Thus his transactions were mainly with
the laboring population and not in those areas where trading and
moneylending as such would be gainful. As graphically brought
out by one British official, in the case of the kulak,
The debt of the Bhil saaldar does not go on increasing
year after year. When the Guzar has got a bond up to two or
three hundred rupees he is satisfied, his chief object being to
secure the services of the man, which is done by holding out
the threat of imprisonment for breach of contract under Act 8
of 1859, and for debt through civil courts.
25
(emphasis in
original)
civil courts are not suitable tribunals for the decision of such claims . . .
- Letter dated Sept. 9, 1870 from Captain O. Probyn, Western Bheel Agent
& C. Pritchard Esq. First Collector to L. B. Ashbumer Esq. Collector and
Magistrate. From ORC, p. 102.
24. GBP-XII, p. 308.
25. ORC, p. 170.
26. EICG-1.
27. ORC, p. 172: Extract from a letter dated Aug. 31, 1870 from Captain
O. Probyn, Western Bheel Agent and Mr. C. Pritchard, First Collector.
28. ORC, pp. 164-167,172-3.
29. Ibid., p. 310.
30. Ibid.
The attitude of the British to this enslavement of the labor
ing population was not unmixed indignation. We find it men
tioned as an "encouraging point" that the Bhils (presumably
landless) took up service" under Gu jars. 26 But the dominant
theme in the 1870s is that "the Bhil Awtyas of these three
talukas are the slaves oftheir Guzar masters, forced to labour,
bought, sold, and transferred from one to another like so many
cattle." 27
The British held a double fear: on the one hand they feared
an emigration of the laboring population; on the other hand they
feared rebellion.
28
"In 1870 the pressure of Guzar money
lenders in the western district aroused much ill-feeling, and only
by the personal influence of Major Probyn, the Commandant of
the Bhil Corps, was a general rising prevented. "29 Two years
earlier the Bhils in Baglan, "growing discontented, committed
gang robberies, in many cases attacking the moneylenders'
houses. "30
These spectres and the Deccan Riots of 1875 led the British
to enact the Debt Relief Act of 1879. This did not check the
process of enslavement of the Adivasis or an alienation of land
from them. Instead of land mortgages, sale deeds that could be
tom up when the loan was repaid became common. Moreover a
reduction in interest could always be met by a spurious inflation
of the principal. Until 1907 the court did not even have the
power to go behind the bond and determine the real nature of the
transaction.
Closure of Forests
The British themselves took measures to relieve the area of
the problem of the .. shortage of labor" which lay at the roots of
9
Agricultural laborers and poor peasants in the Shramik Sanghatana office,
Shahade, 1973 (Omvedt)
the specific intensity and sharpness of the relationship between
the kulaks and laboring population. So long as the intensity of
the relationship did not create either an emigration of the labor
ing population or rebellion, the British were content that the
Bhils increasingly' 'took up service" under the kulaks.
The decisive act of the British which unwittingly changed
the situation was the closing of the forests. By the provisions of
chaters IV and II of the Forest Act (VII of 1878), 1612 square
miles of Khandesh were declared to be reserve forests and 714
square miles were declared protected forests. 31 In Shahade
subdivision 73 thousand acres of land were enclosed. The need
for such a measure arose from the 1860s when the Railways
were constructed and a further spurt was provided, first, by the
work of the Surat-Bhusavalline crossing Khandesh from east to
west just south of the Tapi, and secondly by the Dhule-Chalis
gaon line-both of which were completed in 1899-1900. The
area formerly imported timber, especially for the famous carts
of Talode. Now more and more of the timber cut down was used
within the area. In 1873 the movement of timber by rail inwards
to the district was 536 tons and the outward movement was a
meagre 10 tons. By 1878 the inward movement had fallen to 240
tons while the outward movement had leapt to 112 tons. 32
The effect of this development on the tribal population can
be easily seen. It amounted to an effective dispossession of the
Adivasis from the forests that were the basis of their existence.
The enclosure of the forests meant that they were to occupy the
forests only on sufferance, and frequently they were only left
with the right to pathways and waterways. Their right to game
and forest produce was severely restricted and this restriction
grew as the British needs grew. As the forests were cleared, they
were granted plots in the clearings but in lieu they had to
perform back-breaking "veth" or gratis forced labor for the
Forest Department. A register was maintained of all those who
lived by woodcutting. Each woodcutter was issued a wooden
"ticket" with a number. During the first year the system
worked well. In the second year there was such a rush and
pressure on the system that within the year tickets had to be
drastically reduced,33 and thereafter the Department gave up
these efforts and concentrated mainly on enforcing strict forest
supervision-i.e., a stricter and more effective dispossession of
the tribal population. The forests were thinned so extensively
that by 1930 the Department could distribute a huge section of
cleared fallows to a number of "plotkaris. "
In ever greater numbers the Adivasis were returning to the
plains of the Tapi. As they settled, they occupied both empty
land in the fertile plains and barren, hilly, koradvaha (un
irrigated) land. Tillage in the taluka reached its limit and new
immigrants had to take up tenancy, saaldari, or some form of
employment with the kulaks. The dispossession of the tribal
popUlation by the British thus eliminated the shortage of labor.
At least to 1898, however, no reserve army of labor had been
created. The proportion of share-croppers and tenants for Sha
hade taluka is given at 2.8 percent and the percentage oflaborers
(farm servants and field laborers) is given at 12.6 percent. 34
(However, this process of immigration developed very fast so
that by 1917 the corresponding figures were given as 35.2% and
39.7% respectively!35)
With the growth of usurious practices, land became con
centrated in the hands of the kulaks. The concentration of land
led to a series of peasant uprisings during the second half of the
nineteenth century, including the Santhal Rebellion and the
Deccan Riots. The British tried by legislation to stem the tide of
concentration by a new enactment, Act 6 of 1901. This act
amended section 73 of the Bombay Land Revenue Code (Act 5
of 1879) which explicitly recognized the right to sell, mortgage,
bequeath or otherwise to transfer land without limit. By the
amendment the Government of the day was empowered to make
certain lands non-transferable, i.e., not transferable without the
prior and special sanction of the collector. Adivasi land in the
northwest basin was brought under this' 'Navi-Shart" [literally,
"new tenure"]. This was quite an ineffective measure. All it
involved was tighter credit for the smallholder and some addi
tional trouble for the kulak and moneylender. Moreover the
collectors gave their sanction to transfers quite freely. How little
an impact it had is seen from a 1938 report which shows that the
entire tribal population of Shahade taluka held only 5.3 percent
of the land.
36
31. OPB-XII, p. 17. The demarcation of these was completed by 1879.
Note may be taken here of the fact that in the language spoken by the depart
ments, delimitation refers to the drawing up of a boundary on paper whereas
demarcation refers to actual detennination of these frontiers on the land itself.
32. Ibid., p. 216.
33. Ibid., p. 21.
34. Brahme, Sulabha, Upadhyaya and Ashok: Study ofEconomic Condi
tions ofAgricultural Labour in Dhulia District, Maharashtra (Poona: Shankar
Brahme Samaj Vidnyana Oranthalaya, 1975) (hereafter ECAL) , p. 35.
35. Ibid., p. 35.
36. Quoted from the Symington Report in a typed note on Land Alienation
among the Adivasis by S. D. Kulkarni (1975). The figure of 5.3% is obviously
very low, but what it does bring out is the fact that the Adivasis by the 20s held a
substantially low proportion of the land in the plains.
10
"Equality March" a/tribal women. Feb. 1978 (Omvedt)
The 1857 Revolt
The 1857 revolt was a very complex phenomenon.
What stands out clearly is the interlacing of two move
ments. While in most places it was led by revivalistfeudal
elements, at the same time the rapidity with which it
spread was definitely linked to an as yet inarticulate,
chaotic revolt ofthe poorer peasantry, and the oppressed
Adivasis.
In the Khandesh, the northern revolt was a signalfor
a mass revolt ofthe Adivasis called the Khandesh Bhit (or
Bheel) rebellion by the British. It was led by Khaja Naik
(or Kajeesingh Naik) along with Bheema Naik and
Mehvasia Naik. From 1831 to 1851, for twenty years
Khaja Naik had cooperated with the British and was in
charge of the security of 40 miles of mountainous roads
winding through the Sendhwa pass on the Bombay-Agra
Road. In 1851, he was sentenced to 10 years of confine
ment for the death ofa suspect in a robbery committed on
the road in his charge. In 1856 he was setfree expressly in
order to ensure the security of the Bombay-Agra Road.
Much to their amazement, the British found that, on
. 'some abuse" from an European officer, Khaja Naik led
his men on in armed revolt which soon spread to all parts
of Khandesh. The desperation and panic with which the
British reacted is apparent from the correspondence
about the Khandesh Bhit rebellion.
In trying to suppress this Adivasi rebellion the Brit
ish proved to be as ferocious as their predecessors-the
Marathas. The Gazetteers include extracts of letters
which say in proper form that, ..... sixty-two men were
taken prisoners out of which fifty-seven have been shot by
sentence of a Drum Beat Court Martial." ........ 72
male prisoners were also taken . .. ofthese 55 were tried
last evening by Drum Beat Court Martial and shot and the
rest similarly disposed of today (sic!). "
The Khandesh Bhil rebellion continued even after
the northern revolts were crushed. The source of its con
tinuance was mainly the ferocious and violent suppres
sion of the Adivasis. Finally, after a lot of exchange of
correspondence and debate, the Britishers on the spot
who were constantly advising an unconditional pardon
for the Naiks as the only way of suppressing the rebellion
won out. This had an immediate effect and the rebellion
was finally' 'suppressed:" strange suppression, indeed,
offering an unconditional and unilateral pardon to the
rebellious Naiks! But the characteristic lucidity of the
underlying analysis comes out:
"Taking into consideration the difficult and un
healthy country in which the Naiks had their headquarters
which render military operations against them almost
impracticable for the next ten months and knowing what
amount of misery these men, rendered desperate by the
loss oftheir families could inflict on the population resid
ing on the borders ofKhandesh before they could be killed
or apprehended, if they were allowed to remain united, I
was convinced no sacrifice could scarcely be too great if
their dispersion could be accomplished and I had little
doubt of breaking up the confederacy if Kajeesingh who
was the head ofit could be induced to submit."
In mid-1858 Khaja Naik dismissed his followers and
supporters and presented himself to the District Magis
trate at Dhule. By that time the northern revolt had also
been effectively crushed by the British and Khaja Naik
and his followers, facing isolation, gave up their hopes of
leading a general Adivasi revolt against the Britishfor the
time being. Thus ended the people's rebellion of the
Adivasis against the British. It took the cue of the 1857
revolt of the feudal chiefs when it began. Isolated by the
suppression of the 1857 revolt, it was forced to give in to
the British. But 1857 was to prove a much bigger land
mark in Indian history. It was also the end ofthe period of
a purely revivalist feudal leadership of the anti-imperi
alist struggle. It marked also the end of the rule of the
British East India Company and the beginning of the I
Crown rule.
I
II
I
,
Kulaks and Adivasis:
Some mention must be made here of the various
feudatory chiefs in the area. There were in the area at
various places a number offeudatories who held feudal
titles to huge tracts of land in the pre-British period. This
class had a mixed caste basis and counted among itself
Brahmins, Maratha Rawals, Muslim Bohras, Rajputs as
well as some Adivasi chieftains. After the enforcement of
British Land Administration, the erstwhile feudatories
were able to retain their land interests in the form of
revenue rights and land ownership. For the most part
their land was leased out to small-holding Adivasis and,
more importantly, to the emergent kulak class. Even ifwe
have so far singled out the Gujar caste, as typically
representative, the kulak class that was emerging in the
area was made up also ofthe Rajputs, Dakhani Marathas,
Gosavis and Kunbis belonging to the higher castes. The
contradiction that appeared between the Gujar kulaks
and the smallholding and landless Adivasi population in
the area appeared generally between all these sections of
kulaks and the smallholders, landless Adivasis. It was to
an extent softened, dependent on their specific caste char
acteristics, but came out in its sharpest form in the rela
tions between the Gujar kulaks and the smallholding and
landless Adivasi sections. In all these cases it will still be
found that the main form in which labor was secured was
mainly the saaldari system and/or spurious tenancy
graphically descrihed above.
The Adivasis formed about 77 percent of the total
population in Talode taluka and 53 percent of the total
population in Nandurbar taluka in 1875. * Only in Sha
hade taluka did the Adivasis constitute about 38 percent
of the total population. The popUlation classed by the
British as Kunbis which included the Gujars was 4.2%,
13.5%, and 24% respectively in Talode, Nandurbar and
Shahade talukas.
In both Talode and Nandurbar, along with the plains
we also have a substantial population returned from the
Satpudas in T alode and the offshoots of the Sahyadris in
southwest Nandurbar.lt is Shahade which brings out the
characteristics ofthe plain areas very well. Here we have
a Kunbi population of 24 percent along with nearly 16
percent of other cultivating castes (like the Rajputs,
Dakhanis, Malis, etc.) i.e., a total of 40 percent of the
population with only 30 percent Adivasis. The proportion
of the Brahmins and Vanis together was about four per
cent in these talukas.
* In 1875 the total population oiTalode. Nandurbar and Shahade talukas
was 30 thousand, 46 thousand and 41 thousand respectively.
* The jowar and bajra are, In comparison with wheat, both coarser types of
millet, the bread of which fonns the staple food in most of non-coastal
Maharashtra. The gram refers to chick-pea and other kinds of pulses.
37. GBP-XII, pp. 379-386,409-413,417-421.
Commercialization of Agriculture
The crop pattern for 1878 for the three talukas of Talode,
Nandurbar and Shahade and a comparison with the figures for
Khandesh as a whole are also instructive. The proportions of
area in all of Khandesh under jowar* and bajra were 25.4 and
30.2 percent, respectively. For Nandurbar, Talode and Shahade
they were 10.2 and 27.6, 18.2 and 23.4, and 17.0 and 22.3
percent respectively, consistently lower than the Khandesh fig
ures. By contrast the figure for wheat for Khandesh as a whole
was 6.7 percent, whereas for the three taLukas it was 20.4%,
25.4%, 30.5% respectively. Also for gram the Khandesh figure
was 1.7 percent, while for the three talukas it was 6.3%, 7.2%,
and 6.2% respectively. The only exception would seem to be
cotton; the Khandesh average being as much as 25.4 percent,
and the Nandurbar and Shahade talukas showing only 8.3%,
and 8.9% respectively. The area under cotton was negligible in
Talode taluka.
37
(The proportions of cotton appear relatively
low in the crop-area of the taluka as a whole because cotton
cultivation was concentrated mainly on the kulak lands in the
plains. The Adivasi poor peasantry had not taken to cotton
cultivation in the same way as its traditional Hindu counterpart
in the rest of Khandesh.) If we take into account that the Adivasi
poor peasantry in the area would be much more likely to have a
higher proportion of the coarse millets and pulses, then what we
can see very clearly is the extent of commercialization of kulak
production. Wheat, cotton and gram formed the main crops of
the kulak and accounted together for 35, 33 and 46 percent of the
total (including both the plains and the hilly regions) cropped
area in Nandurbar, Talode, and Shahade respectively.
From then till now wh'eat has been exported by the kulaks
to Bombay and the southern parts of Maharashtra. The traders
were generally from the big wholesale markets of Nandurbar
and Dhule. The trading structure was very rigidly centralized
and based itself mainly on the cotton trade. It was the cotton
trade which brought about and maintained this centralization.
With the metalling (rock-paving) of Satrnala passes and the
regularization of traffic through these in the wake of British
takeover of most of Maharashtra, the Bombay trade received a
big boost. Very soon the cotton boom set in and the small trader
was completely subordinated to the centralized chain of com
mercial capital emanating from the offices of British cotton
agents in Bombay, .
Through these international magnates the cham passed
downward. The big marketing centres of Dhule and Nandurbar
were entirely subordinated to the vagaries of the world market.
It is this chain which brought that pledging of crops six months
ahead of time through advances of money-the notorious
, 'jalap" which became an institution. It is through jalap that
even the poor peasant was then made to produce cotton for the
Lancashire Mills, and it is jalap that secured for the trader an
assured supply of cotton and guaranteed the high proportion of
cotton in the area. Trading in agricultural produce led in the
colonial period to moneylending as an essential component in
order to secure produce. The trading and moneylending ac
tivities needed to secure produce at the taluka level were mainly
in the hands of Marwari and Gujarat vanis (village money
lenders) as well as the few richest of Gu jars.
The development of commodity production led the kulaks
to borrow on an increasing scale to meet the expanding cash
needs. The need to repay these debts sharpened the drive to
12
secure land and labor and gave rise to a series of spurious and
real debt and share-cropping transactions between the kulaks
and the laboring population. Both these factors combined to
make Khandesh an area with a very high level of per capita debt.
This is borne out by the figures for 1929-30. The estimated debt
er Khandesh family at 685 Rs. was the highest in the Bombay
Presidency and was more than twice the presidency average of
324 Rs.38 Under it lurked two kinds of debts: the debts of the
kulak which were, so to say, truly integrated into the cycle of
usurious capital; and the debt of the laboring population in
which the cycle was subordinate to the chief aim of securing
labor and land. The concentration of land and the expansion and
extension of commodity production proceeded inexorably on
the basis of the relations formed in the early Briti:;h period.
To reiterate, then, the main class of direct exploiters in the
area was this class of kulaks that had cornered virtually all the
fertile land in the plains. They were linked to the former feuda
tory holders by tenancy relationships and to the trader money
lenders through their credit and marketing needs. The class of
middle peasantry was virtually non-existent in the fertile plains
and was confined to the surrounding fringe. The laboring popu
lation was mainly that of smallholders and, increasingly, land
less laborers. The smallholders were heavily in debt to the
kulaks and the relationship of the kulaks to the direct producers
on their lands was mainly that of labor-mortgage.
The Case of Shahade
So far our analysis has only brought forward the different
elements in the situation. What must also be done is to give an
historical analysis of the specific relations in one taluka of this
region. This is especially important if we anticipate at this point
the rapid growth of mechanization in the 1960s which the kulaks
accomplished.
The important elements that stand out in the case of the
Shahade taluka are the strategic position of the Khandesh re
gion, and the consequent crescendo of chaos that had such an
impact on Shahade. Thus the warring feudatories and the for
eign powers between them drove the Adivasi peasantry, which
was in the process of consolidation, off its lands. Thus Shahade
came to acquire the character of an open "settlers country"
although the land had already been brought under cultivation by
the Adivasis, but was now depopulated aI}d overgrown with
shrubwood.
This character of an open settlers' country also allowed the
kulaks in Shahade not only to acquire land but substantial
amounts of land. Thusfrom the beginning, the Shahade kulaks
formed a much more substantial part of the population as com
pared to other areas of Maharashtra, had larger holdings and
thus had independent strength with much less reliance on poorer
sections of the peasantry. This independent strength by contrast
also brings out the effect of the money lenders-traders on other
areas where the differentiation of the peasantry was not so
sharp. In those other areas, the development of a rich peasant
kulak was repressed economically, socially and politically by
the dominance of usury and trade; the differentiation was not
38. ECAL, p. 38.
substantial enough for the kulaks to acquire an independent
strength, and they, in their drive for power, were forced to
participate in movements which had much more the character of
broad peasant movements.
An equally important element, as we have seen, is the
nature of the immigrant population. The Gujars, who came from
a peasant-pastoral tradition, possessed a well developed sense
of pri vate property -and the contradictions one associates with
that consciousness. A peasant who succeeds in becoming richer
than average will frequently tum to the same forms of usury,
trading and other forms of bondage of the laborer as the usurer or
trader that he might have hated earlier. After a certain period of
"growth," it is difficult, looking solely at the economic charac
ter of his transactions, to distinguish him from any other usurer/
trader or feudatory holder being subordinated to capital. There
is, however, even at this level, an essential difference: his drive
is to accumulate land and labor and he acts in order to effectuate
the ownership of these into a possession (i.e., direct possession
of the labor process) as against a control of the production
process. He is thus at the same time creating the dispossession of
the direct producers.
The Shahade area was not on the list of officially
designated districts for the' 'green revolution, " but in
Shahade, as elsewhere, there was a change in the
relationship of the kulak-the "progressive farm
er"-and the State. The State spared no efforts to
concentrate all developmental activity on the needs of
those' 'progressive farmers."
The effect is also important from the point of view of the
class struggle. In the case of peasant struggles against the real
usurer-trader or the feudatory, the subordinated peasantry will
stri ve to consolidate and strengthen its "peasant'" character. A
struggle against the kulak who is taking over the possession of
the labor process, on the other hand, tends to consolidate and
strengthen the character of the subordinated peasantry as ag
riculturallaborer rather than as peasant.
Thus in spite of the constantly recurrent complaint show
ered on the panicking Bhi! agent, there was no spontaneous
peasant revolt of the Adivasis against the kulaks. (This is the
contrast to the Santhal rebellion or the Deccan Riots.) It is why
"labor-mortgage" became the main problem of the area, and it
is also why we can neither subsume the kulak, the usurer-trader,
and the feudatories under a single title "semi-feudal" landlord
nor submerge the distinctions between them when talking about
"the subordination to capital."
This is further related to the importance of caste in pre
capitalist India. At the "pure economic instance," an instance
drained of all the dregs of "ideology and politics," it would be
hard to identify a distinction between the kulaks, the usurer
trader and the feudatory holder. They are all subordinated to
13
capital. It begins to seem as if all of them are but single stages of
an ongoing process, forming a uniform class, at least at the
"economic" level. Caste has a definite role to play in this, not
simply because it has a "relative autonomy" vis-a-vis class
relations, but because caste is a necessary form of the social
relations of production in precapitalist India, just as much as the
commodity, that pure "economic" thing, is the form that social
relations take in capitalism. It is thus quite important to note that
caste acted as a very material category in the history of the
Khandesh region precisely because it was the precapitalist from
of the social relations of production. The relation of labor
mortgage was first formed and became dominant in the relations
betwen the Gu jars and the Adivasis. Later that relation became
generalized but only among the cultivating castes and the Adi
vasis generally. The emergence and generalization of these
relations also was mediated through caste relations which con
fined it to cultivating castes. Thus the linear viewpoint which
sees caste as an ideological factor external to the relation be
tween classes must first be discarded in order to be able to see the
complex relationship that caste as a material relationship ex
erted on the formation of classes in both precaptialist and later
India.
This does not at all mean that caste was not an ideological
relationship as well. In fact, what strikes the eye is the cultural,
ideological legitimation of violence, and "extra-economic"
coercion of the subordinated laboring population. (From the
standpoint of capitalism, this seems "abnormal" because capi
talism declares itself to be a realm of freedom. In the Shahade
region, it is not a legitimation of violence and extra-economic
coercion per se but only in connection with the Adivasis.
It may seem odd that tribal groups-Adivasis living out
side the margins of Hindu caste society -could be experiencing
caste forms of oppression. What has to be noted is the process
formation of castes. The subordination of the Adivasis and the
legitimation of the process has a distinct continuity with the
other dalit (oppressed) castes of India. Caste is a reality be
cause, not only did the kulak or the feudatory have power over
the labor of the dalits, but the village peasant castes as a whole
had a real right over the labor, especially where a freeholding
peasantry existed. It is not therefore at all surprising that the first
signs of spontaneous resistance of the laboring population ex
pressed itself in the 1920s as an Adivasi movement.
Lastly, it should not be forgotten that the foundation of this
subordination of the laboring Adivasis in the Shahade region
was based on imperialism. The Maratha internecine warfare,
the consequent chaos that gave the area the character of a
settlers' country, the famines which drove the Gujars to this
area, the legal enactments and their enforcement which made
possible the frauds, the usury, the spurious contracts and the
violent subordination of the Adivasis, the enclosure of forests
these and many other elements in the story bring out the crucial
nature of British imperialist power. 39
39. The southern strip of Akkalkuwa is as fertile as the Shahade region, yet
in the pre- independence period we tind the area tilled by smallholding Adivasis
almost exclusively, and instead of the cultivating castes it is mainly the usurers/
traders castes which hold the Adivasis in subordination. One may very well ask
why? The reason is that British control did not extend to this part of Akkalkuwa
during the influx of the cultivating castes-especially the Gujars. It is as late as
1921 that effective British control could be established. By that time, however,
the forest enclosure was nearly fifty years old, and progressive deforestation had
added to it. The land had already been occupied by Adivasis. It was then later,
under British protection, that the usurer/trader made his entry. Until very
recently he was not afteretfective possession of/and and labor. In fertility, in its
character as open country, this area had as much to offer as the Shahade region,
except British control! The kulak thus was made a hard fact by the presence of
British colonial rule.
14
The Kulak Is Set Free: 1947
The period after 1947 in India represents a period in which
the class of kulaks analyzed so far in this essay came to control
the entire local power stucture and used it effectively to carry
through their "green revolution." The period up to the 1960s, is
a period during which it consolidated its economic and political
class dominance. After the 1960s the area experienced the rapid
emergence and spread of mechanized agriculture.
Tenurial Reforms
The important phenomenon which took place immediately
after independence was the enactment of the Bombay Tenancy
and Agricultural Lands Act, 1948, subsequently amended in
1956. An assessment of the impact of this act on the agrarian
situation needs to take into account the differentiation within the
peasantry itself. The very well documented literature on the
ineffectiveness ofthis law and its implementation generally sees
the ineffectiveness only in terms of degree.
4o
The contention
here is its ineffectiveness is related to the system of tenancy
between large landowners and the poorer peasantry. The provi
sions for rights to resumption, for eviction after prior notice and
the number of loopholes in the law made it easy to circumvent
the law with regard to the poorer sections of the peasantry. The
law presupposes a heavy financial burden on plaintiffs, pro
longed legal procedures and at least a minimal degree of organi
zation for any aggrieved tenant to fight effectively; hence the
law is a barrier to the efforts of the poorer peasantry who wish to
acquire ownership over the land that they till. At the same time it
is equally true that the rich peasantry had acquired the financial
and political base and the necessary staying power to stand up to
the landowners. Thus the significance of the tenancy laws is not
that they were totally ineffective but that they were selective in
their operation. They presupposed and exacerbated the differen
tiation of the peasantry, freeing the rich peasantry and perpetu
ating tenancy relationships with the small peasantry.
In Shahade region the law served to clarify and consolidate
the class dominance of the kulaks. The big landowners with
feudal title to large stretches of land had mainly the kulaks as
tenants. Tenancy relationships with the small peasantry (which
includes the Adivasi and other depressed castes such as the
datit/untouchables) was at best subordinate. The Tenancy Laws
provided the kulaks with a significant increase in the profitabil
ity. The more the area held by the big moneylenders and land
owners was reduced under the reform, the more they took to the
emulation of kulak methods. Landowners were reduced to the
level of the rich peasantry and turned increasingly to the saldari
(year-laborer) in preference to tenancy. Small J]easantry were
dispossessed from whatever land the landowners managed to
keep by circumventing the provisions of the Tenancy Law. Thus
in its impact the Act simultaneously set free the rich peasantry,
consolidated its economic dominance by substantially increas
ing its profitability, created a pressure on the landowners to take
to wage-exploitation and also created another spurt and channel
of dispossession of the Adivasi and dalit small peasantry.
40. V. M. Dandekar and G. J. Khudanpur: Working of the Bombay
Tenancy Act. 1948 (Poona: Report of Investigation. Gokhale Institute of Politics
and Economics, 1957) (hereafter WBTA).
This process, starting from an already high degree of
concentration of land in the hands of the kulaks, has entirely
changed the tenancy relationships in the area. Just as the laws
made the rich peasants and the former landowners reluctant and
ill-disposed toward tenancy in preference to saldari, at the same
time it disposed the increasingly impoverished peasantry, hard
put to find means (bullocks, seed, etc.) for tilling a shrinking
area, to leasing out its lands!
In the first instance this land had generally been farmed out
to their own kith and kin. Now they turned to the peasants in
cases where the land, due to its proximity or fertility, was
especially attractive to the rich peasants. In other words the rich
peasant became a "tenant in reverse" to the impoverished
smallholder-a development of quite some significance to the
rich peasantry in their attempts to consolidate their position.
Land so leased, while not large in terms of area, is signifi
cant in terms of its location and quality. Today the main and
dominant form of the tenancy relationships in the fringe areas
around the plains is the extensive agreements of sharecropping
among the smaller peasantry while both the cases relating to a
small peasant tenant of a large holder and its reverse are mar
ginal.
Other Land Legislation
The Bombay Prevention of Fragmentation and Consolida
tion of Holdings Act of 1947 stands out in contrast with all the
efforts to protect the small holder. Under this Act the kulaks in
Shahade could truly consolidate their holdings, and convert
their holdings into unified tracts of fertile land, acquiring not
only the fragments intervening between their lands but also
contiguous land. Many of these transactions did not perhaps
15
Shramik Sanghatana cuntinJ<ent in Bombay march of workers and aJ<ricultural
laborers. 1975 (Omvedt)
dispossess the small peasant completely but invariably ousted
him from the fertile holdings and transferred him to remote,
fringe lands of low productivity. These exchanges, which were
not infrequently accompanied by fraudulent exchanges, invari
ably left the small peasant the loser in the transaction. It may be
remembered the "New Tenure" of 190 I enacted by the British
had provided at least a modicum of protection for the Adivasi
smallholder by making his or her land inalienable without the
prior authority of the District Authority. In 1948 the "New
Tenure" was abolished and the modicum of protection that it
afforded to Bhil and Naik Inami lands also disappeared. * The
removal of these nominal constraints on the transfer of land was
symptomatic of the series of legislation carried out by the Indian
State-legislation that was clearly a weapon in the hands of the
kulaks to establish their class dominance vis-a-vis the other
sections of the peasantry and the former landowning classes.
The land ceiling legislation brings out this case quite
clearly. Functioning within the constraints of Gandhian ideol
ogy, the ruling class was committed to preserving peasant
economy. This entailed the curbing of any extensive concentra
tion of land. The ceiling legislation, however, far surpasses
other land legislation in its ineffectiveness. Other pieces of land
legislation found direct support among the landholding popula
tion; they were supported by the kulaks and were used by them
in establishing and consolidating their dominance. But the land
ceilings legislation met organized and unified opposition from
both the kulaks as well as landowners with a feudal origin. As
with the selective ineffectiveness of the other land legislation
this totally ineffective land ceilings legislation highlights the
nature and consequences of the state power established after
independence.
*In 1948 the provisions of the 1947 act were extended to other kinds of land.
41. GMSD, pp. 572-599.
Credit, Fertilizers, Cooperatives and Communications
One of the prerequisites for the development of capitalist
agriculture is an appropriate infrastructural and institutional
base. The activities of the state in the post-independence period
were clearly related to developing that prerequisite. One such
need is for a network for marketing, communication and trans
port. In the British period the only major roads in the taluka
were the Burkanpur-Shahade-Akkalkuwa-Ankleshwar Road
and the Dhule-Dondaiche-Shahade-Khetia road. Even of these,
the latter crossed the Tapi River on a submersible bridge and the
region was cut off from the rest of Maharashtra during the
monsoon period. In 1957 the non-submersible Sarangkheda
bridge over the Tapi was completed and the taluka was open to
vehicular traffic throughout most of the year. (The River Go
mai, a tributary of the Tapi and normally a trickle of water, cut
the taluka in half during the monsoon.) The non-submersible
bridge-over the Gomai near Shahade was completed in 1966.
Throughout the period there was also extensive conversion of
cart roads to kucha (non-metalled) roads. By 1964 the nation
alized Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation was ply
ing its services on 20 routes covering a total of 1500 miles per
day in and around the taluka; and in 1964, twenty-three new
routes were added. At present almost all of the plain villages in
the taluka can be reached by road and, more importantly, they
are now connected directly to the southern Dhulia district and to
the rest of Maharashtra by a road that is open throughout the
year.
41
Hand in hand with this went the rationalization of the
marketing structure. In the British period there was no reg
ulated market in the region. The bulk of trading had to be done at
Dondaicha and Nandurbar which were in direct road and rail
contact with other parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat. The trade
of the taluka was mainly in the hands of a small number of
adatyas (brokers) who were agents of traders in the large cen
tres. The only regulated market during the British period was
restricted to cotton and its management was left to the tardy
initiative of an already overburdened Mamlatdari office. In
1949 a market yard was acquired and a market committee was
set up, although the local development only took place after the
opening of the Sarangkheda Bridge. A cooperative marketing
society was established that started with cotton and slowly
exteQded its activities to all marketable produce. This was
accompanied by the setting up of two submarket yards, a sea
sonal temporary yard and warehousing facilities extended by the
warehousing corporation at Shahade.
All these activities, fully backed and promoted by the
State, were crucial in the development of capitalism in ag
riculture in Shahade. The actions made little difference to the
poor peasants and their produce. Their produce was never
sufficient enough to take advantage of the increased means of
communication and the lowered transport costs. They remained
bound to the specific cycle of agricultural production and to
distress sales. It is for the rich peasant kulaks that these develop
ments proved crucial because it significantly reduced their trans
port costs, assured them of a marketing structure and facilities,
lowered their circulation cost and time, and therefore increased
their level of profitability.
The next programs in which the kulaks with the active and
full backing of the state carried through a continuous develop
ment were the cooperative movement, and the rationalization of
16
Table 1 Table 2
Percentage Distribution of Outstanding Debt Land Development Bank in Dhule District
According to Class of Cultivators and
Credit Agency in Dhule District
1957-58 1971-72 [*]
Borrowing members 14.36 25,257
Class of Cultivators
Share capital (Rs. lakhs) 1.67 65.24 [30.49]
Credit Agency Big Large Medium Small All Reserve (Rs. lakhs) 2.78 8.24 [3.86]
Loans Outstanding (Rs. lakhs) 24.48 288.21 [134.68]
Government 8.8% 13.3% 18.4% 13.2% 14.8%
Cooperative and
Commerical Banks 41.2 32.8 14.0 16.0 26.3 During 1971-72 the Bank advanced 680.981akhs as short term andRs. 154.63
Relatives 19.9 21.1 18.4 18.9 20.2
lakhs as medium term loans.
Landlords 4.3 5.0 4.8 0.9 4.6
Agricultural
Moneylenders 4.1 4.7 8.5 13.2 6.2
Professional
Moneylenders 17.9 18.6 32.5 34.0 23.6
Traders and
Commission
Agents, etc. 3.8 4.5 3.4 3.8 4.1
All Agencies 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%
Table 3
Note: The total cultivators covered in the survey were classified into decile
Agricultural Credit Societies in Dhule District
groups considering the size of landholding. The class of big culti vators refers to
the top 10 percent cultivators; large cultivators include the top three deciles,
medium cultivators the middle four deciles and small cultivators-the bottom 1957-58 1971-72 [*]
three deciles
Source:Jndia Rural Credit Survey. ( 1951) District Monograph, West Khandesh.
No. of Agricultural credit
societies 672 765
Membership (thousands) 48.60 110.75
Reserves (lakhs) 27.79 70.84 [33.10]
Working Capital (Rs. lakhs) 129.99 664.93 [310.70]
Table 4
District Central Cooperative Bank in Dhule District
1957-58 1971-72 [*]
No. of member societies 777 1598
Reserves (Rs. lakhs) 33.68 [15.74]
Working capital (Rs. lakhs) 118.78 884.67 [413.40]
Source: Socio-Economic Review and Statistical Abstract for Dhule District.
*The figures in brackets give the amounts in 1971-72 corrected for inflation
between 1957-58 and 1971-72, during which the consumer price index rose by
214%.
Tribal Women singing at village meeting (Omvedt)
17
TableS
Selected Information about Agriculture
Dhule District
1951 1961 1971
Population in '000 1060 1351 1662
Gross cropped area*
(000 hectares) 753 759 724
Percentage of gross irrigated area
to gross cropped area* 3.6 5.0 11.7
Percentage area under*
Wheat 5.4 4.5 6.6
Total cereals 63.0 54.7 53.7
Total pulses 11.8 13.2 15.9
Cotton 11.0 10.1 9.9
Oil seeds 12.1 19.1 17.0
Condiments & spices 0.8 1.8 1.5
Fruits & vegetables 0.3 0.3 0.7
Intensity of cropping* 108 113 109
Engines with pumps 884 3826 11157
Electric pumps 13 81 6651
Tractors 50 40 294
*Averagedover 1952-53-1953-54, 1960-61-1961-62, 1970-71-1971
72.
Source: District Census Handbooks, Socio-Economic Review & Statistical
Abstracts for Dhule district.
the credit structure. The two are closely linked. Ironically the
cooperative movement did not foster widespread cooperative
farming but its effect on the credit system has been extremely
significant, especially with its double edged impact on the
differentiation of the peasantry. On the one hand, the stream of
benefits flowing from cooperative credit largely bypassed the
poorer sections of the peasantry. What's worse, they have even
created new debt-bondages for them. Without the proper secur
ity, they are driven to the moneylender or the rich kulak. For
example, the Vividh Karyakari Sahakari Society (multipurpose
cooperative society) is a village-based organization widely
found in Maharashtra and expressly created for the small time
needs of cultivators. It is also under compulsion to help the
small peasant. This creates a curious situation. The small peas
ant may borrow some money. Unable to repay the loan, he or
she is advanced a sum of money to repay it and immediately
renew it. Thus on paper the loan is cancelled out each year,
which preserves the appearance that the VKS is "helping" the
small peasant. The twist is that the poor peasant now must pay in
perpetuity an annual interest on the loan-interest which be
comes funds available to the rich peasant. Thus through perma
nent loans and annual interest the poor peasants make credit
available to the kulak for incidental needs! As far back as 1951
the All India Rural Credit Survey indicated that most of the large
holders met nearly 40-50 percent of their credit requirements
from such Government or Banking channels. (See Table 2)
Cooperative credit has helped the kulak to break free from the
Table 6
The Progress of Agriculture
Shahade Taluka
1951 1961 1971
Population in '000 134.5 155.5 183.7
Gross cropped area*
(000 hectares) 85.2 93.4 84.3
Percentage ofgross irrigated area
to gross cropped area* 6.8% 8.1% 20.6%
Percentage area under
Wheat 11.2% 9.1% 10.3%
Total cereals 59.6 51.2 42.6
Total pulses 10.3 16.4 19.5
Cotton 18.4 9.2 12.4
Total oil seeds 8.6 17.8 19.0
Condiments & spices 1.8 3.5 2.8
Fruits & vegetables 0.5 0.6 1.5
Sugarcane 0.1 0.8 1.1
Intensity of cropping* 110 115 113
Engines with pumps 283 1008 2228
Electric pumps 1 50 801
Tractors 8 13 109**
*Averagedover 1952-53-1953-54,1960-61-1961-62,1970-71-1971
72.
* *The number of tractors in Shahade taluka was 136 according to the Livestock
Census, 1966.
Source: District Census Handbooks, Socio-Economic Review & Statistical
Abstracts for Dhule District.
need to borrow from private moneylenders and big landlord
sahookars. This does not mean that the kulak no longer takes
loans from them, but only that he does so at his convenience.
The tremendous expansion of cooperative credit between
1957-58 and 1971-72 is brought out by Tables 3 to 5. The
agricultural credit societies have more than doubled their mem
bership during this period. During the same period however the
total amount of capital with the societies has increased five
fold. Similarly as one goes up the chain, one finds that the
capital with banks such as the Dhule DCC Bank has increased a
phenomenal eight and one-halftimes. The Land Development
Bank, whose holdings also increased more rapidly than its
membership, was created with the express purpose of catering
to the long-term credit needs of the "cultivators" and was to be
instrumental in supplying credit for the purchase of mechanical
equipment by the Shahade kulaks in the 1970s.
42
Other parts of the cooperative movement also allowed the
rich peasants to centralize their resources and achieve an econ
omy of scale. The middle and poor peasants, if they participated
at all, could never be the backbone of the movement and their
participation was always dominated by the rich peasant. By
1964 and 1965 there were 12 fertilizer distributing cooperative
societies. (With the exception of Dhule this is the largest figure
for a taluka in the district.) Dairy and animal husbandry were the
other agricultural operations that became subordinated to the
cooperative movement. In Dhule, Shahade, and Shirpur talukas
61 Feeder societies collecting and supplying milk to the central
18
Table 7
Distribution ofMale Workers by Occupation
Sbahade Taluka
Distribution
Year Total Total Male of male earners (%)
Population Earners
Cultivators Agril. Others
Laborers
1951 1,34,552 37,200* 45.3* 36.6* 18.1*
1961 1,55,472 44,071** 41.6 40.8 17.6
1971 1,83,682 48,649 33.9 48.4 17.7
*Estimated
**The figures ofeamers for 1961 are adjusted to concepts as adopted in 1971
census.
Source: District Census Handbooks for 195 I, 1961, 1971.
cooperative dairies had been established by 1964. In addition,
the local milk producers' unions that were set up handled an
equivalent amount of milk. Khandsari societies were estab
lished that led to the development of sugarcane production and
the construction in 1972 of the Cooperative Sugar Factory. 43
Consolidation of Political Dominance:
The most important political developments in the area were
the constitution of the Maharashtra State in May 1960 and the
setting up of the Zilla Parishads (District Councils). Before the
creation of the Maharashtra State the "local self-government"
bodies were subordinate to the centralized bureaucracy of the
Bombay State. Local elected representatives had at best con
sultative voice and the effective control rested in the hands of the
bureaucracy. Nor did these bodies have either well-defined
function or control over funds. With the institution of the Zilla
Parishads, they acquired autonomous functions as well as con
trol over substantial funds. Part of the funds were fixed at a ratio
of the Gram Panchayat* collections and theof"est were provided
by the State bodies. The maintenance and development of all
except state and national highways came under its purview.
Primary, and later, secondary education outside the Municipal
areas came under its control. More important decisions affect
ing virtually all areas of agricultural development came before
the Zilla Parishads. Except for major irrigation works, all the
minor irrigation works, land conservation projects, etc., were
transferred to the ZPs. All specific development activity came
under the Block schemes with "gramsevaks"** in nearly every
village. Their purposes included the general advance of
mechanization, the distribution of fertilizers, setting up of seed
farms and even the distribution of scarce fuel resources with the
advent of the "energy crisis." They are notorious for their
Table 8
Conditions ofSaldars
Sbahade Taluka (1976)
(a) Duration ofEmployment (b) Amount ofLoan Taken
from the kulak
No. of years of No. of Loan Amount No. of
employment with saldars (Rs.) saldars
the same kulak
Upt02 201 Nil 126
3-5 261 Up to 100 70
6-10 70 101-300 146
11-15 26 301-500 75
Above 15 38 Above 500 23
Total 596 Total 440
*Does not include 156 saldars who have joined the service of the particular kulak
in the current year.
Source: Field Investigations carried out in 1976 in Shahade taluka.
nepotism and maneuvering but the notoriety generally refers to
cases of individuals. What is necessary is to point out that this
nepotism was the result of the competition of various contend
ing groups exclusively drawn from among the kulaks. This
result might have been expected from the nature of the functions
reserved for the ZPs. No matter which groups of kulaks came to
dominate the ZPs, it was surely the kulaks as a class who
benefitted from their activity. The development ofthe ZPs put in
the hands of the kulaks a weapon to selectively channel develop
ment to their area and their lands. Where previously the Public
Works Department and the local boards dominated by the
nominated officials of the bureaucracy generally dissipated their
meagre funds in feeble and general efforts at development, the
new bodies constantly expanded their area of control and their
funds. Selectively, ruthlessly and in open disregard for public
opinion, they channeled development to their own interests. It is
the struggle for control of these bodies and the flouting of all
norms of behavior once control has been acquired which have
earned them their notoriety.
The Shahade area was not on the list of officially designated
districts for the "green revolution," but in Shahade, as else
where, there was a change in the relationship of the kulak-the
"progressive farmer" -and the State. As the figures show, the
* Gram Panchayats are the elected village councils analogous to municipal
councils.
** Gramsevak - the word means 'those who serve the village.' They are the
lowest-rung village worker in the Development Blocks.
42. Ibid., p. 494.
43. Ibid., pp. 492-504.
19
A Bhit song group (Omvedt)
State spared no efforts to concentrate all developmental activity
on the needs of those "progressive farmers." Between 1961
and 1971, the percent gross irrigated area in Dhule district rose
from 5 percent to 11. 7 percent (as compared to a rise from 3.6
percent to 5.0 percent in the earlier decade). For the Shahade
taluka the figures are more striking; in the same decade, the
percent gross irrigated area rose from 8.1 percent to 20.6 per
cent (compared to a rise from 6.8 to 8.1 percent in the previous
decade [Tables 6 and 7]). This irrigation is used for crops like
wheat, sugarcane, spices and condiments, etc. Today almost all
the wheat grown in the Shahade plains is grown on irrigated land
while the overall share of cereals fell from 59.6 percent in 1951
to 42.6 percent in 1971. The area producing cash crops thus
increased; the acreage in pulses and oilseeds, for example, rose
from 10.3 percent and 8.6 percent to 19.5 percent and 19
percent respectively. Similarly, the percent area under the more
intensively cropped condiments, such as spices, fruits, vege
tables, sugarcane, etc. increased from a total 2.4 percent in 1951
to 5.4 percent in 1971.
These changes were in step with the increasing mechaniza
tion of agricultural production. The number of oil engines in
Dhule district shot up from 844 to 11,157 between 1951 and
1971, and electric pumps from 13 to 6,651 for the same period.
What is most remarkble, however, is the rise in the number of
tractors. They rose from 50 to 294 in the same period. (There is
some evidence indicating a degree of understatement in these
official figures.) Today it is estimated that more than 400
tractors ply in the taluka and we are also witnessing now the
influx of other agricultural machinery like wheat harvesters.
Other indications of the new affluence are the establishment of
the Tapi-Satpuda Sahakari Sugar Factory in 1972 (which had
approximately 1200 hectares of sugarcane in its command area
in Shahade taluka) , the increase in motorcycles, or the start of a
modem college. The kulaks, who have undisputed control of the
district and taluka bodies, have come to power.
The condition of the agricultural laborers in the area forms
a stark contrast to the kulak affluence. The percentage of culti
vators in the Shahade taluka has gone down from 45.3 percent in
1951 to 33.9 percent in 1971 while that of agricultural laborers
has risen from 36.6 percent to 48.4 percent in the same period.
The proportion of agricultural laborers in Shahade is highest for
any taluka in the district. Needless to say, most of the laborers
are Adivasis. A survey in 1974 reported that in the ten villages in
the taluka only a little above 25 percent of the agriCUltural
laborers lived above subsistence level (at 425 Rs./annum!) and
47 percent of the families reported current loans outstanding.
The proportion of literates in the general population of the
surveyed villages was about 43 percent for males and 20 percent
for females, while for the agricultural laborers alone it was
about 18 percent for males and two percent for females. 44
As we have seen, another significant change in the area is the
rationalization of the "saldari" contract. The force and vio
lence in this relation, which appeared so nakedly in the early
period, has now "disappeared" into the specific caste distinc
tions between the Adivasis and the kulaks. The threat of impris
onment is no longer necessary; the economic servility imposed
on the Adivasis by the loss of their communal property has
driven them to accept social servitude. Furthermore, the unem
ployment and underemployment among Adivasi laborers has
formed an army of reserve labor. Thus we see that in 1974 the
male laborers get work on an average only for 150 days per year,
the female laborers for 116 days per year. The proportion of
female laborers who get work for less than six months is around
80 percent and for the male laborers it is 68 percent.
A study of 21 villages from Shahade taluka carried out in
1976 included 596 saldars. Of those, 462 saldars were working
for less than five years with the same kulak. Only 38 saldars
were serving the same kulak for more than 15 years (see Table
8). Of the 440 saldars who worked for more than one year, 314
were in debt to the kulak. What this shows is that indebtedness
has surely not decreased but has definitely changed its function.
While earlier the debt was functioning to bond a saldar to a
kulak personally, today it serves mainly to deepen wage exploi
tation and to create a bondage to the kulak class as a whole. It is
this change also which makes possible a cohesive movement of
the laborers against the kulaks, but that development, far from
taking place on its own, has appeared as a spin-off of the
resistance of the Adivasis population to their various oppressors.
In any case, the result is the same: as the kulak has come to
power, so also has the laborers' movement to challenge the
kulak power. '*
Below: Shramik Sanghatana
44. ECAL, pp. 53,68-84, 148. activist with peasant.
20
V1DHARBHA
R.c 10
I
,
I
t
Handdrawn maps of Maharashtra (above) and Dhule
r
district supplied by P. V. Paranjape
A
P R.
'I-<::...
..1:;.,
21 ..s I
~ /
C ")
Review Essay
Economics, Imperialism and Restorative Revolution
by David Kennett
Few events have given rise to such a variety of historical
interpretation as the "Indian Mutiny" of 1857-58. Although the
chronology and incidents of the outbreak are almost unanim
ously agreed upon, there has been a continuing debate as to the
causes and nature of the revolt. The traditional interpretation has
depicted the uprising as the last hurrah of a feudal aristocracy
but recent Indian scholarship has seen it in terms of the "first
national war of independence," that is, the origin of the Indian
nationalist movement. Others have emphasized the religious
element, casting the struggle as one between the Hindu and
Muslim orthodoxies and the messianic aspirations of the East
India Company. Some contemporaries saw it as the result of a
plot hatched to further Russia's Imperial expansionism, a part of
a centuries-old drive for a warm water port. This paper reviews
one recent addition to this literature and offers some thoughts on
the mutiny viewed in the context of British economic imperial
ism and its changing shape in the nineteenth century.
Christopher Hibbert's recent book The Great Mutiny
India, 1857
1
can be regarded as a useful addition to the literature
but, because it pays scant attention to the economic history of
India prior to the revolt, it gets us no closer to an appropriate
interpretation of the complex economic, political and religious
elements that lay behind it. Mr. Hibbert is an accomplished and
popular author who relies almost exclusively on first-hand ac
counts in piecing together an history of the outbreak. His biblio
graphy is comprehensive and he has drawn productively on
previously unpublished personal papers and letters as well as the
more familiar reminiscences. Mr. Hibbert tries, as the dust
jacket tells us, to make one feel "he was at every occasion he
recounts. " One drawback of this kind of history is that only the
events experienced by those at hand, and perceived by them to
be relevant, find their way into the narrative. This problem-in
essence that of missing the woods because of the trees-is
compounded in this particular instance by a bias in the availabil
ity of sources. Practically all the numerous first-hand accounts
are of British authorship and the four notable exceptions are by
THE GREAT MUTINY-INDIA 1857 by Chris
topher Hibbert. New York: Viking Press, 1978.
Indians who for one reason or another felt their interests lay in
British success. This problem has dogged others before Mr.
Hibbert. Even Indian historians necessarily have drawn heavily
on the British sources, but in the best analyses the most serious
eye-witness distortion has been diminished by setting the events
in a detailed historical context. Hibbert's background is sketch
ily drawn, lacking both breadth and depth.
A second drawback is that the demands of "readability"
have led to a concentration on personalities and a neglect of
content. Some of the Indian leaders are described in consider
able personal detail, while their historical significance is skated
over. This particular flaw is best illustrated by example: Hibbert
gives us a considerable amount of detail on the habits, appear
ance, sexual preferences and tableware of Nana Sahib, an im
portant Indian figurehead and military leader in the uprising. To
set him in historical context, however, he is described as the
adoptive son of the' 'last Peshwa of Bithur. "2 In fact this really
is misleading the reader as to his importance. Nana Sahib was
indeed the adoptive son of the PeshwaBaji Rao II, and Baji Rao
was, up to his defeat in 1818, the first Minister of the Maratha
Kingdom, an hereditary office. Therefore he was probably the
most powerful Hindu prince in India. Following his defeat in the
Third Maratha War, however, he was exiled from his capital at
Poona, near Bombay, to Bithur in North Central India. Hence
describing him as the "Peshwa of Bithur" is about as accurate
as calling Napoleon "the Emperor of Elba. " This inaccuracy
understates the significance and potential of Nana, who was in
his historical context no local princeling but, in West India at
least, the heir to national leadership.
In general what Hibbert has produced is an anecdotal
account of the immediate events seen largely through British
I. Christopher Hibbert, The Great Mutiny-India 1857 (New York: The
Viking Press, 1978).
2. Ibid., p. 172.
22
eyes. Given these limits he has done a highly competent job but
the picture that he paints is one of a military revolt caused by
British insensitivity and quelled by British valour. The causes of
civil discontent are not well-examined, nor are they seen as the
consequence of British military and, most importantly, econ
omic policy. What is told is the story of a "Sepoy Rebellion"
rather than a popular revolt. Hibbert would have profited from
Benjamin Disraeli's opinion: "I humbly think that the question
of whether it is a mere military mutiny is one of primary
importance. . . . The decline and fall of empires are not affairs
of greased cartridges. Such results are occasioned by adequate
causes and by the accumulation of adequate causes. "3
/1 I I I I
KA1SHMI R
Indian Economic Development
To appreciate the accumulation of these causes we must
briefly trace the history of British involvement in India. The
English East India Company was founded by Royal Charter in
1603 and spent the first one hundred and fifty years ofexistence
as a trading concern, using sea-power occasionally to keep
routes open but confining its territorial interests to its factories
alone. In the 1750s however, competition with its French rival
became more intense and conflict in Europe led to conflict in
India. The attempt to eliminate French competition led to hostil
ities with the Nawab of Bengal whose forces were defeated by
the Company and its mercenaries at Plassey in 1757. This impres
sive stroke was consolidated at Buxar in 1765 by a defeat of the
Moghul Emperor's army and, as a result, the company received
the right to gather taxes in Bengal under the nominal suzerainty
of the Moghul Emperor. A storm of and extortion strip
ped the province, and expeditionary wars ofplunder were fought
in surrounding districts. The local economy collapsed and in
1786 the arriving Governor-General, Cornwallis, was appalled
to see half of Bengal "a jungle inhabited only by wild beasts."
I NOlA
in 1857
De States
External Borders
Map by David Kennett
23
Under his administration an attempt was made to stabilize the
province by creating out of the tax-gathering class an inter
mediate class-of aristocratic land-owners, the zamindars, to
whom hereditary title to the land was granted by the Company in
return for a fixed tax obligation.
This model of Whig aristocracy would, it was hoped,
provide stability and allow the Company to convert its tax
surplus into goods for export to Europe or the Far East. In China
they would be traded for silk and tea, the lUXury goods in high
demand in Britain and on the continent. Thus the system was
designed to produce a constant flow of oriental produce, largely
Indian manufactured goods, to Britain financed solely by the
land-taxes of Bengal. This system was articulated in 1793 in
defense of the Company's charter renewal and at that time the
net revenue of Bengal (after charges for administrative and other
costs) was anticipated to be about 1.35 million. This "invest
ment" would finance the purchase of Indian goods valued at
2.3 million in Europe (the bulk of which were cotton piece
goods but with some spice and saltpetre) and would also provide
a quarter of a million pounds for the purchase of opium for the
China trade. Annual profits were expected to be around 3
million. In fact, such profits were never realized. Between 1792
and 1808 the Company was forced to borrow a total of 21. 7
million.
Part of the problem could be traced directly to the disrup
tion of European trade in the Napoleonic wars, and corruption
and inefficiency in Company officers certainly contributed. It
became increasingly clear, however, that the model was pred
icated on an obsolete analysis of the structure and needs of the
British economy. Most of the surplus extracted from India was
to be remitted in the form of ,<otton textiles; but, the events of the
Industrial Revolution had made Britain the world's largest tex
tile exporter, and therefore unsuitable both as a market and
entrep6t for re-export. The situation for the Company was
deteriorating from the beginning of the century but after 1814
Indian exports collapsed. (Table I)
The changing structure of British industry and the chang
ing relative power of interest groups reflected in the ending of
the East India Company's trading monopoly in 1813 and the
opening of India to "free trade." India's function henceforward
was to be a consumer of manufactured goods rather than a
supplier, which had been its role in the opening two centuries of
Table I
Trade in Cotton, 1814-1835
India to Britain Britain to India
'000 piece goods 'OOOofYds.
1814 1266 818
1821 534 19,138
1828 422 42,822
1835 306 51,477
Source: Dutt, Economic History ofIndia, p. 108. s
trade with Britain. Furthermore, expansion of British territory
in India was urged by manufacturing classes interested in secur
ing wider export markets and material sources. Hence the ac
q uisition of the lands that comprised the Presidencies ofMadras,
Bombay and the area later known as the North-West Provinces
had an economic, as .well as the more usually emphasized
political, rationale.
The Bengal model of creating a landed aristocracy was not
followed in the newly conquered territories. Utilitarian thought
and David Ricardo's doctrine of differential rent had a profound
influence on Company ideas and the new policy sought to make
the peasant the basis of land taxation. In Madras and Bombay
this policy was put into practice and the tax-gathering class,
already enfeebled by internecine and anti-British wars, was
swept aside. Over-assessment and consequent impoverishment
of the ryots (peasants) kept the system from producing the stable
yeoman peasantry James Mill had envisaged in his initial con
ception of ryotwari taxation.
In the North-West Provinces a third system was intro
duced-one that relied on communally-held village property
(Mahal) as the taxing unit. Hence it sought neither to vest
property in the cultivator nor to create feudal magnates. The
policy dispossessed existing tax-farmers, increased the moneti
zation of the tenurial system, and effected a social revolution to
the advantage of no Indian group, except possibly money lend
ers. As Eric Stokes has noted, these singular developments. in
the NWP help account for the Mutiny in the area having as
sumed the flavor of a general rebellion.
6
Utilitarians, however, found comfort in the settlement.
John Stuart Mill, a lifelong Company employee, took pride that
"the blunder has been avoided of endowing a useless body of
great landlords with gifts from public revenue."7 Other ad
ministrators were more concerned that the new tenurial arrange
ments disrupted the status quo but failed to create a class of
allies, an intermediate elite. For example, Robertson, a lieuten
ant governor, called the new system in the NWP "a fearful
experiment." The new system would "so flatten the whole
surface of society as eventually to leave little of distinguishable
eminence between the ruling power and the cultivators of the
soil. "8
3. In a.speech to the Commons, July 27, 1857, reprinted in Embree,
Thomas, 1857 in India (Lexington: D. C. Heath, 1963).
4. William Barber, British Economic Thought and India (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1975), p. 112.
5. Romesh Dun, The Economic History of India in the Victorian Age
(London: Kegan Paul, 1903).
6. Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarian and India (Oxford: OUP, 1959),
p.II6.
7. J. S. Mill, Principles ofPolitical Economy, edited by Ashley, W. S.
(London, 1909), p. 325.
8. Cited in Stokes, p. 115. Also relevant in the Administrative Report for
the NWP of 1882. "It is now generally admitted that the proportion of rental left
to the proprietors by the (pre-mutiny) assessment . . . was less than was
absolutely necessary for (their) support. "
24
In short, between 1813 and 1840 the face of Indian society
was changed dramatically. The manufacturing industry on
which India's wealth had rested was destroyed. Dacca was acity
of 200,000 people when the British arrived; its population was
1/10 of that by 1840. Nor was this collapse wholly a result of
European technological dominance. The taxes o ~ British goods
entering India were one-third to one-quarter the level levied on
Indian goods for export to Britain. An historian reported to the
Select Parliamentary Committee of 1840:
India has suffered most unjustly in her trade with England by
reason of the outcry for free trade for England without
permitting to India afree trade herself. . . . India is as much
a manufacturing country as an agricultural one and he who
would seek to reduce her to that position seeks to lower her in
the scale of civilisation. 9
A Company witness at the same hearing claimed:
This Company has in various ways, encouraged and assisted
by our great manufacturing ingenuity, suceeded in convert
ing India from a manufacturing country into a country ex
porting raw materials. 10
This unequal pursuit of free trade was at the insistence of the
British manufacturing classes,. who saw no problem in man
ipulating tariff rates and trade policy to benefit the metropolis.
As Thomas Cope, a silk manufacturer, testified:
I certainly feel pity for the East Indian labourer but at the
same time I have a greater feeling for my ownfamity; I think
it is wrong to sacrifice the comforts ofmy family for the sake
of the East Indian labourer because his condition is worse
than mine. I I
Marx, in the period before the Mutiny, was one of few
critics who took a remotely sanguine view of British rule in
India. He wrote that the process of industrialization was the
inevitable consequence of the British presence. "When you
have once introduced machinery into the locomotion of a coun
try, which possesses iron and coals .. you are unable to withhold
it from its fabrication. " Furthermore political unity, a national
arm y, and the free press were all seen as aspects of the regenera
tive aspect of British dominion. Thus, though motivated by the
"vilest interests," England was "the unconscious tool of his
tory" in bringing about "India's social revolution." 12 The
possibility of long-term "undevelopment," of maintaining In
dia as an agricultural estate was anathematic to Marx's thought
at this time, though foremost in the East India Company's
strategy.
9. Martin Montgomery, cited in Dutt, p. 112.
10. Dutt, p. 125.
II. Ibid., p. 114.
12. Karl Marx, "The Future Results of British Rule in India." New York
Daily Tribune, July 22, 1853.
13. Thomas Babbington Macauley, Minute on Education, 1835, cited in
Sunderlal, Pandit, British Rule in India (Bombay: Popular Prakasham, 1972),
p. 153.
14. Sir Charles Trevelyan, evidence to Parliamentary Committee, 1840.
15. Major Ronaldson, Assistant to the Governor of Madras, to Parliamen
tary Committee of 1853.
Photo to right: Paddy, Tamilnadu (photographer unknown).
Reform and its Aftermath
The 1830s saw a brief flowering of a reform movement in
the British administration of India largely due to the liberal
policies of Bentinck (Governor-General 1828-36) and T.B.
Macauley, (the Law Member). The avowed purpose of reform
was to engage Indians more closely in government and to create
an Anglophile elite. "We must," wrote Macauley in 1835, "do
our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and
the millions we govern; a class of persons Indian in blood and
colour but English in taste and opinion. "13 Such a class would
serve the purpose of enhancing the stability of Company rule,
increasing the demand for British goods and appeasing the
growing group of missionary proponents in England. C. Treve
lyan in 1840 equated the growth of Christianity with acceptance
of British institutions. "Young men brought up in our semi
naries tum with contempt from the barbarous despotism under
which their ancestors groaned to the prospect of improving their
national institutions on the English model. "14
Two powerful reasons militated against the widespread
implementation of such reform. The first was that the promotion
of Indians in Company service would lessen the job opportunity
and power of British employees. Although James Mill had
much earlier accused the old colonial system in the Americas of
acting as a vast' 'system ofoutdoor relief' for the upper classes,
the same comment could well be made about his own creation in
India. The second concern was that education was prejudicial to
the long-term continuance of British control of India. As one
Company administrator remarked, "It is my experience that
[the educated Indians'] know ledge ofthe course of the history of
British India brings home to them the enormity of a vast country
like India lying under the heels of a handful of foreigners. ' '15
Consequently, advancement of Indians was negligible de
spite the "equal opportunity" clause of the 1833 Charter Act.
Hay Cameron reported that "not a single Native ... has been
placed in any better position in consequence of that clause. "16
By 1849 less than three thousand Indians were in government
service and "less than a thousand of them held any posts of
honour, trust and responsibility. " 17 All that remained of reform
was the policy of religious missionary activity, vigorously pro
moted by the Company to the detriment of its relationships with
traditional religious leaders, Hindu and Moslem alike, who
were threatened by a loss of their congregations. This activity
was seen by the religious orthodoxy as essentially the same as
humanitarian reform, such as the suppression of widow immo
lation, that have subsequently enjoyed wide support on human
istic grounds. The advancement of Christian converts in tenurial
disputes and military promotion also provoked much bit
terness.
18
Expansion and Annexation
The middle years of the nineteenth century have been
characterized as being "anti-imperialist" because they saw the
triumph of free trade policy in the conduct of Britain's overseas
trade. 19 This free trade was, however, of limited scope and was
accompanied by the dramatic expansion of British dominion
within India and the use of military power to influence the trade
and policy of sovereign states bordering on India and throughout
the Far East. Aggressive wars brought the frontier states of
Punjab, Sind and Assam into British India and military force
was used to impose terms or regimes favorable to British in
terests in China, Afghanistan and Burma. In all these three
states British policy suffered reverses as traditionalist regimes
sought to force out British trade or control. Burma expelled its
British Resident and pursued an independent policy until defeat
in the Second Burma War of 1852 restored British interests.
Afghanistan rose against the British resident and the puppet
regime in 1842 and dealt British military power its most crush
ing defeat of the middle century. China, seeking to free itself
from British commercial penetration and most specifically the
opium trade, attempted to deny Canton to British shipping but
the imbalance of naval power was so great that the resultant
Treaty of Nanjing guaranteed British access to five Chinese
ports and limited the import taxes that could be levied.
Within India the Company embarked on a policy of "mop
ping-up" by bringing under British rule sovereign Indian states.
This policy had been behind a series of treaties imposed upon
Indian rulers at the conclusion of wars since the beginning of the
century. It reached a climax under Dalhousie (Governor
General, 1848-1856) and has frequently been identified with
him personally, but in fact it was a general policy originating in
London.
Specifically, the Company claimed three rights: l) the
right to dispose at any time of any state that was of the Com
pany's creation in the course of conquest; 2) the right to escheat
any subsidiary state in the event of a lapse in the male line; and
3) the right to annex certain states in the case of misrule. This
policy left no Indian ruler with any feeling of secure tenure. It is
therefore of paramount significance that the leadership of the
rebellion of 1857 came, to a large degree, from members of the
princely class whose rights had been, in their estimation,
usurped by Dalhousie's policy. There is a considerable litera
ture on the legality of the British moves, principally as to
whether annexation was justified either by the precedent of
escheatment of domain in European feudal practice or by
clauses in the unequal treaties imposed militarily on Indian
princes. This begs the important question; in terms of Indian
practice, the British were seen to have broken trust. That re
sulted in an accumulation of aristocratic and popular resentment
that could not be appeased by European legalism. Worse, the
manner in which these annexations were performed further
alienated opinion because they constituted a return to the pillage
that accompanied the original imposition of British power.
Nana Sahib, the pretender to the Maratha Peshwaship, who
was denied his adopted father's title and pension, and the Rani
of lhansi, who attempted unsuccessfully to ensure the succes
sion of her late husband's adopted son, were Hindu leaders in
the revolt. The Moghul dynasty had been tolerated by the British
for some time but, when it appeared that the heirs of the aging
titular emperor, Bahadur Shah, would de denied inheritance,
this became a cause celebre and yielded a figurehead for
Moslem resistance.
Dalhousie's final act, on Company instructions and possi
bly against his own better judgment, was to annex the Kingdom
of Oudh. Oudh had been tied to Britain by treaty since the late
eighteenth century and was garrisoned by a force under British
officers, though paid for by the Nawab. It was a prosperous
manufacturing area and had provided many Company em
ployees with sizeable fortunes by dubious means and had been a
16. Sir Arthur Hay Cameron, Law Member of Governor General"s
Council to House of Lords, 1853.
17. Dutt, p. 189.
18. Sunderlal, p. 267.
19. See Bernard Semmell, Rise of Free Trade imperialism (Cambridge,
CUP, 1972).
Photo to left: Tamilnadu (photographer unknown).
26
repeated source of loans for the Company in times of financial
stress. The Company's agent in Oudh in 1785 was the recipient
of a salary of 22,000 per annum paid by the Nawab, (although
he repeatedly protested to the Company about the burden), and
he enjoyed from his trading and broking action a further income
of 40,000 per year-massive sums for the period.
The Nawabs of Oudh had displayed exemplary loyalty to
the British yet in 1856 Dalhousie annexed Oudh on the grounds
of misrule, justifying this largely by holding that the Nawab was
a debaucher. Some Indian sources claim that the real reason was
that the Nawab had been showing disturbing signs of an inde
pendent spirit. 20 Whatever the reason, the annexation went
ahead at the behest of the Company directors, and the Nawab
was exiled. Curiously the populace was not disarmed, nor were
the fortified points leveled. The annexation of Oudh threatened
the livelihood of the hereditary tax-farmers in that province,
who foresaw the probable creation of a revenue system based on
peasant or communal proprietorship. Furthermore, British rule
presented a challenge to the Moslem and Hindu religious com
munity. It was not coincidental that Oudh was the most long
lived of the revolutionary centers.
Military Discontent
By the year 1857 religious and aristocratic discontent had
spread widely throughout India, chiefly as a consequence of
British economic and military expansion. This deep-rooted re
sentment was the factor that transformed the revolt from a
military mutiny to a general rebellion in the North West Prov
inces. There had been mutinies before (at Vellore in 1806 and
Barrackpore in 1824) but, without popular support, they had
been short-lived affairs. It should also be noted that there had
been civilian uprisings too but they had been quickly crushed
with the full force of a loyal mercenary army. It was the
confluence of civil and military disaffection that gave 1857 its
unique character.
The British army in India in the 1850s consisted of some
280,000 men in direct employ and about 40,000 troops in native
armies under British officers. The total strength was thus about
6 to 7 times as great as Wellington's at Waterloo. Of this body
less than 40,000 were Europeans and these were the ultimate
defenders of European interests in a population of about 150
million. Officer quality was poor; native officers had to serve
their way up from the ranks on a rigid seniority basis alone and
were always junior to the most recently arrived British boy
officer. Discipline was poor and-a rarity for any nineteenth
century army-corporal punishment was not allowed.
Morale among enlisted men was not high in the 1850s.
There was a persistent suspicion among the Indian soldiers that
the British were in a complex plot to convert them forcibly to
Christianity. Compulsory church parades were common
20. Sunderlal, p. 257.
21. Ibid., p. 269. Also relevant is that Ross Mangles, Chairman of the East
India Company thought that' 'Providence has entrusted the Extensive Empire of
Hindustan to England in order that the banner ofChrist should wave triumphant
from one end of India to the other. Everyone must exert all his strength that there
may be no dilatoriness on any account in continuing in the country the grand
work of making all India Christian. (To the Commons, 1853).
22. Anson, Commander-in-Chief of British forces, was certain that the
grease was offensive (Minute, July 1857).
Photo to right: Harvesting. Tamilnadu.
place.
21
Many Hindu soldiers were rejected by their commu
nities following service in the Afghan War across the Indus, the
religious boundary of India. The General Enlistment Act of
1856 required all new recruits to be prepared to serve overseas, a
measure designed to ready the Indian army for service in
Burma, Malaya and ultimately China. Because of communal
ship-board food, this entailed automatic defilement for all
Hindus. Finally the recruitment pattern of the Bengal army was
shifting from high-caste Brahmins and Moslems from Oudh, the
army's traditional nursery, to the more warlike Sikhs and
Ghurkas from the frontier territories.
The immediate spark that ignited the military revolt was
the introduction of a new type of rifle cartridge whiCh was
greased with a mixture of pig and beef fat that was offensive to
both major religions. Although many accounts skirt the issue,
there can be no doubt as to the constitution of the grease
22
and,
since compulsory conversion is a short step from compulsory
church parades, sepoy fear of this eventuality cannot be re
garded as groundless. At the very least they faced rejection by
their communities, and considerable resistance to the cartridge
was unavoidable.
Tbe Events oftbe Mutiny
The military revolt began at Meerut, 30 miles northwest of
Delhi in May 1857 and spread rapidly to every sepoy canton in
the NWP and many in the Punjab, Bihar and Bengal. As a
general uprising, however, it was contained within the NWP
and Oudh. Within this area it developed.three foci. At Delhi a
gathering of disaffected sepoys and feudal levies from Rohil
kand sought to restore the authority of the Moghul Emperor.
Cawnpore (Kanpur) was a center for the Maratha revival of
Nana Sahib, though lying, of course, outside Maratha territory.
Luckndw (Lakhnau) was the focus of activity in Oudh where
sepoys joined local talukdars and religious leaders and con
ducted a general and prolonged struggle. Some coordination
27
Tamilnadu
existed between Tantia Tope, the chief general of Nana Sahib
and the forces fighting in Oudh but on the whole cooperation
and joint strategy was imperfect. The decision by Nana Sahib to
restrain forces in his area from supporting the Delhi regime and
declaring a separate war to restore the Maratha state certainly
contributed to the failure of the Moghul cause,
Part of this failure to cooperate can be ascribed to religious
differences although mixed contingents did play important roles
in all three theatres. The Delhi Emperor attempted to secure
cooperation and loyalty from Hindus by promising to ban all
beef slaughter once the British were expelled. Despite this,
there appears to have been considerable concern on the part of
Delhi Hindus that the Green Flag of the Moslem Holy War
would threaten them as well as the British, even though Bahadur
Shah expressly forbade jihad against Hindus.
In Oudh the struggle assumed some religious dimensions.
The Maulvi Ahmedullah Shah was leader of the assault on
Lucknow and declared jihad against the British. However, so
outraged were the dispossessed talukdars at the annexation of
the state, and the loss of their revenue rights, that class solidarity
over-rode religious difference.
The issue was in balance for a comparatively short time.
Delhi was retaken in September, and Lucknow in November.
Tantia Tope and the Rani Lakshmibai of Jhansi fought an
ongoing war for some eight months further and Rao Sahib,
Nana's nephew, attempted to spread the revolution in Maratha
country before abandoning the struggle in mid-1858. The out
come had been largely decided by the failure of the revolt in the
early states to spread beyond the NWP and Oudh.
The period of the Mutiny was marked by an astonishing
degree of violence and wanton bloodshed. The outbreak of the
revolt had been accompanied by the deaths of English women
and children at Meerut and Delhi and elsewhere. These events
were used for propaganda purposes and exaggerated beyond
measure; in this form they formed the justification for British
retaliation that was more sweeping, more premeditated and
directed largely at people more distant from the conflict. Hib
bert's book equivocates on these counts and leans to more
graphic description of the Indian atrocities against the English,
in common of course with most of his sources. Suffice it to say
that the level of unwarranted violence was so widespread as to
concern the government. As a minute of the Governor
General's Council reveals:
"The indiscriminate hanging, not only of persons of all
shades of gUilt but ofthose whose guilt was at the very least
doubtful, and the general burning and plunder of villages,
whereby the innocent as well as the guilty, without regard to
age or sex, were indiscriminately punished and, in some
cases, sacrificed, had deeply exasperated large commu
nities, no otherwise hostile to the government."n
Causes of Failure
Majumdar
24
cites the lack of a co-ordinated plan as the
chief cause of the revolt's failure and considers the 'individual
shortcomings of the Indian leadership to have been a further
contributory factor. It is certain that more cohesive action in the
early days of the revolt could have removed pockets of British
resistance that subsequently became centers of strength. More
over, it is probable that better generalship would have resulted
in victories in engagements where the revolutionaries had super
ior numbers and firepower. Such early successes might have
tipped the balance in the rebels' favor and, by encouraging
participation by those who were waiting to side with the winner,
could have led to the spread of the revolt beyond North Central
India.
It is, however, this failure of the rebellion to spread that
explains its fate. Ultimately British power would have won in
any regional outbreak; a revolt throughout India would have
been a different affair. As it was, Bengal was practically unaf
fected by the mutiny; the army remained loyal except for one
regiment, in itself curious since the troops were substantially the
same as those in the NWP, and had the same grievances down to
the greased cartridges. There was no popular support for the one
regiment that did mutiny, although the Bengal peasantry was
harshly oppressed and would, within two years, spontaneously
revolt en masse against the system of indigo cultivation. 25 What
is clear is that in Bengal the aristocracy (beneficiaries of the
Permanent Settlement) and the more affluent commercial
classes sided squarely with the British and afforded no lead
ership.
23. Minutes of 26th December, 1853, quoted in Majumdar, R. C. etalia,
"British Paramountcy and Indian Renaissance," (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya
Bhavan, 1963), p. 599.
24. Ibid., p. 640.
25. See Majumdar, for a lengthy discussion, pp. 914-953. Also see
Kathleen Gough, "Indian Peasant Uprisings," in Bulletin ofConcerned Asian
Scholars, Vol. 8, No.3, July-September, 1976, p. II.
28
At the other end of the Grand Trunk road lay the newly
acquired territories of Punjab and Sind. These territories had
been annexed in the bitterest of fighting only ten years before
and hence would have given British rule a severe jolt if they had
risen. Lawrence, then Chief Commissioner of the Punjab, con
sidered that a rising in the Punjab would have been the ruin of
the British cause. Troop mutinies were forestalled by disarming
and disbanding the sepoys, and the only rebellious regiment was
the 55th Native Infantry, the men of which were rounded up and
literally exterminated. This display of resolve apparently im
pressed the Sikh and Pathan chiefs, and money and men from
the area were decisive in the recapture of Delhi and the recon
quest of the NWP. The loyalty of the Sikhs to the British
throughout the mutiny was total, engendered, it seems, by a fear
of the reestablishment of Moghul rule; the Sikhs had been
discriminated against under Aurungzeb and even a personal
emissary from Bahadur Shah to the Sikh rajas failed to shake
their support.
In Southern India there were some disturbances but of a
local nature. The Bombay and Madras armies did not mutiny en
masse and any signs of disturbance were promptly and ruth
lessly dealt with. There was no armed popular revolt despite the
fact that the peasantry, particularly in Madras, were grievously
taxed. Again, there seems to have been a lack of leadership,
possibly because the ryotwari land settlements had destroyed
the petty aristocracy. In the "Native States" only smaller rulers
showed any commitment to expelling the British, and the great
power in the area, the Nizam of Hyderabad, cooperated totally
in the suppression of revolution; as a victim of Dalhousie's
annexations he might well have been expected to be less wholly
with the British.
The loyalty of the most powerful Indian ruler was decisive
in British success. Like the Nizam in the South, Sindhia of
Gwalior and Jang Bahadur of Nepal gave vital support. Sin
dhia's role was particularly crucial since his army revolted
against its British officers in June 1857. He succeeded in keep
ing it neutralized within his dominions for almost a year until the
larger issue was beyond doubt. The value of the native rulers to
the British was recognized after the revolt and the "break
water" policy of fostering intermediate rule gained favor.
The Nature of the Outbreak
The Revolt of 1857 is now known in India as the First
National War of Independence, a title that has been much
criticized as misleading. Most historians agree with Majumdar
that it was not the first outbreak of its kind, nor national (at least
in the sense that India today is a nation) nor directed toward
independence, and hence was "as complete a misnomer as the
Holy Roman Empire. "
It is clear that the unstable period produced by the initial
revolt of the sepoys gave an opportunity for the widespread civil
discontent to show itself. As has been related, the various
disaffected elements cooperated with each other in only the
loosest fashion, and theories connecting the outbreak with the
existence of a pre-arranged conspiracy are largely discredited;
this is chiefly because no evidence has emerged of conspiracy
beyond the circulation of chapatis, the significance of which
even those deeply involved in the revolt were at a loss to
explain. Moreover the breakdown of order gave the opportunity
for groups within India to seek to advance their own cause at the
expense of others:
" . . . There is unimpeachable evidence that people were
engaged in all sorts ofsubversive activities, and individuals,
classes and states were fighting with one another for their
own interests. "26
There was a sense of a common struggle to expel the
foreigners, but no sense of a nation status to replace British rule.
The unifying element was not nationalistic, but religious, con
centrating on the British insults to Hinduism and Islam, and
feudalistic, in that the latter period of the revolt was to a large
extent a struggle with the hereditary tax-farmers of Oudh and
their traditional retainers.
The picture of the rebellion as being the "dying groans of
an obsolete aristocracy" is more accurate than viewing it as
"the birth-pangs of a freedom movement." Yet, this, too, is an
oversimplification, for, though the later freedom movement
shared little with the mutiny in either methods or goals, the rise
of Hindu nationalism can be linked to the changes brought about
by the rising of 1857. Furthermore the revolt clearly illustrated
the fragility of British rule and the extent to which it rested on a
tenuous balance of arms and consent by Indians themselves.
Consequences
The events of 1857-58 precipitated some far-reaching
changes. The first result was the assumption of dominion in
India by the British Crown, thus ending 100 years of Company
rule. This was accompanied by assurances designed to pacify
some of the participants in the religious and social unrest that
had presaged the Mutiny. The most obvious of these were the
guarantees of religious freedom, so interpreted as to prevent the
passage of any liberal social legislation that offended Hindu
orthodoxy, and the new role afforded the remaining native
rulers. This essentially regressive policy reached its height
with the Royal Titles Act of 1876 which the Viceroy saw as "a
new policy by virtue of which the Crown of England should
henceforth be identified with the hopes, the aspirations, the
sympathies and the interests of a powerful native aristoc
racy. "27 In fact the power was only superficial but, as a result of
this form of government, nearly one half of the land area of India
up until independence was never ruled directly by the British.
Perversely this policy of retaining Indian rule became a difficult
obstacle on the road to nation status.
A second consequence was that the bloody events of the
mutiny created a wall of mistrust between the communities. This
was visible in civil life, where the British withdrew in arrogant
isolation, and in military affairs where measures were taken to
ensure there would be no repetition of the Mutiny. Troop dis
positions were changed, the European garrison increased, and
Indian regiments were denied the most modem weapons as a
security measure. Any lingering legacies of reform were forgot
ten and the policy of encouraging an Indian meritocracy lost in a
general fear of Indian advancement.
The Mutiny was interpreted by those who had criticized
Company economic policy as a vindication of their criticisms.
J. R. McCulloch had consistently urged the introduction of com
plete free trade in India and saw both the revolt and its failure as
26. Majumdar, p. 620.
27. Lord Lytton, Viceroy, proclamation 1876.
29
the result of the failure of the Company's development model.
India had remained backward because the bracing wind of free
trade had not been allowed to blow unrestricted and this had
fostered the backward-looking resentment that had caused the
Mutiny and the inefficiency that led to its defeat. "They [the
Indians] continue to be precisely what they were at Plassey." 28
Armed with such "clear evidence" of Company failure
and convinced it was the result of too little, not too much,
contact with a European economy, the Manchester lobby was
free to manipulate India to the benefit of British manufacturing.
Free trade became an almost religious doctrine; even the move
ment of food for famine relief was forbidden as representing an
unwarranted intrusion into the market mechanism. Deaths from
famine rose from 1.4 million in the first half of the century to 20
million in the last. The economic drain-money remitted to
England in "home charges" and salaries-rose annually. India
was charged in full for the Mutiny and bore many costs of the
war in China. Public works did increase; roads, railways and
canals were built to open up markets and material sources but
they ultimately served the cause of nationalism by integrating
the separate parts into a nation.
Finally the Mutiny had consequences beyond India. Along
with other military setbacks (Crimea, Afghanistan) it took the
wind out of British Imperial expansion and drew troops from the
Chinese theatre at a time when British seizure of the Chinese
mainland looked a possibility. 29 By the time circumstances for
such a venture presented themselves again, in the 1890s, the
balance of world power had shifted such that no one power
could be allowed to embark on such a project without the
interference of the others.
However, the pause in British expansion was short-lived
and probably owed more to the temporary triumph of informal
Imperialism in the Pax Britannica of the 1860s and 1870s than to
the Mutiny. By the 1880s the expansion began anew and in 1886
Burma was added to the Raj, fulfilling the Chinese Emperor's
prophetic letter to the Burmese King. "The English," he wrote,
"are accustomed to acting like the pipal tree, "30 referring to the
seed that is carried by a bird and grows unnoticed in cracks in
buildings until its roots tear the edifice apart.
From a small trading post in Calcutta the roots of British
imperialism had penetrated the whole surface of traditional
Indian society and brought its downfall; the Mutiny marked the
end of this phase in India itself and formed a reference point for
the eventual growth of Indian nationalism. *
I would like to thank Stephen Rousseas, Ashok Bhargava and the Editors of
this journal for helpful comments. Any remaining errors are my responsibility.
28. Barber, p. 222.
29. Sunderlal (p. 443) espouses the somewhat extreme view that the
independence of both China and Japan were saved by the Mutiny.
30. Cited in Majumdar et alia, p. III.
Market, Tami/TUJdu
30
Review
by Dipankar Gupta
Although several books and articles have already appeared
on the Naxalbari Movement, the book underreview by Sumanta
Banerjee carries a distinctive appeal which sets it apart from
other works on the subject. Not only does this book merit
attention because it is written by a person who was intimately
involved in the CPI(ML) movement, but also because it re
captures the spirit of the rebellious sixties when the ideological
crisis was deepened by the impasse at which established politi
cal structures had arrived.
What is distinctive about Banerjee's work is that he does
not proceed to rail against the N axalbari Movement nor does he
simply want to demonStrate that the uprising was ignited princi
pally by romantic adventurists, superficially acquainted with
Marxism. Though in sum his book would perhaps confirm such
a position, his method of approaching the subject gives one a
feel of the times when the movement developed and leads one to
appreciate better what situation the "Naxalites" were respond
ing to. This adds not only to the literary quality of the book, but
makes the reading of it a moving enterprise.
By making extensive use ofCharu Mazumdar's proscribed
works and speeches along with other unpublished internal docu
ments, the author presents a sympathetic portrayal of the leader
of the CPI(ML) movement. This adds yet another distinctive
quality to the book and it also speaks of the honesty with which
Banerjee has dealt with his subject. For it has become all too
commonplace to hear of other renowned partisans of the Naxa
lite movement claiming publicly that they had fought against the
so-called' 'Charu line" from the beginning, when, as Banerjee
has recorded, almost all of them had enthusiastically endorsed
the' 'Charu line" when it was formulated. History can never be
honestly understood if it is mutilated by post factum cover ups,
let alone distortions, and if the context in which certain events
occurred is smudged as in the works of many a latter day scholar
of the Naxillite movement, then Charu Mazumdar emerges a
wholly demented desperado which makes it impossible to com
prehend why he was able to swing such a large mass of people,
both inside and outside established communist parties,to his
line. Banerjee, on the other hand, moves in quite the opposite
direction. He does not deal with his material antiseptically but
with a great deal of involvement and that is why he is able to give
quite unabashedly the supremacy of the moment to Charu
Mazumdar, as the movement itself had done, and is, therefore,
able to impart to the reader a feel of the movement, sensing its
doom but revelling in the romance and in the clarity of its
objectives.
The book begins with an excellent culling from available
sources to show the utter ruthlessness of the Indian economic
and political system, without bringing advanced conceptual
categories into play. That is why perhaps it hits much harder.
Neither does his non-academic approach in any way dilute the
points he makes regarding the Indian economy and its evolu
tion, or of the cretins who controlled and still control state
IN THE WAKE OF NAXALBARI by Sumanta
Banerjee. Subarnarekha Publication, Calcutta,
India, 1980. Paperback. Rs.SO/-.
dence in independent India has also been achieved without the
cushioning effect such presentations usually have on the readers
via the use of analytical terms and teleological historical per
spectives. Such an approach brings one suddenly to the sensual
realization that history can be condensed if physical confronta
tion were to replace contemplative manipulative political
practice.
But while such a presentation has its advantages, it lends
itself to romanticist solutions, unless it is mediated by cold
scientific application of Marxism to concrete reality. The book,
in this sense, completely reflects the Naxalite movement. It
begins as the movement began, by a rejection of the political
deadwood that the left had acquired through pragmatic politics.
It poses as the movement did, the necessity of knowing one's
class enemies as they appear when their fortresses are threatened
and their supply lines lie in shambles. It is a passionate book, as
the movement was passionate, and, therefore, it is only when
the high tide of the movement is over, and correspondingly it is
only in the concluding sections of the book, that lessons are
learned and mistakes are admitted.
The tragic demoument of the Naxalite movement, it can be
said in hindsight, was invested in its very origins. While the
movement successfully orchestrated a wealth of popular (and
also populist) sentiments, it also succumbed wholesale to petty
bourgeois notions of martyrdom and exhibited an almost
juvenile delight in secrecy. These factors, as Banerjee details,
eventually began to substitute Marxism, and gradually de
veloped into an ersatz ideology which formed the core of the
motivational structure ofCPI(ML) partisans.
In the final analysis, it is redundant to make an objective
criticism of the Naxalite movement, for what appear in hind
sight to be egregious blunders were perhaps the very forces that
led to the appeal of the movement. But one can surely learn
lessons from the Naxalite movement, i.e. not with the objective
of gaining a negative experience, but with the purpose of fur
thering critical theory and practice. It is here that one cannot
help but be pained at the utter sterility of the Naxalite method of
"self criticism" that largely focused on the tactical and offen
sive measures undertaken by the CPI(ML). For, after all, the
bourgeois state does not rely simply on sheer physical coercion,
and, therefore, the overthrow of such a state is not purely, or
even primarily, a military matter. The failure of the CPI(ML)
members to rethink afresh their theoretical conceptualizations
regarding the Indian state and economy on the basis of which
then the question of tactics could be placed in its proper perspec
tive, indicates the lingering of the germinal strain of romanti
cism, much wrinkled and haggard, but still irresistible enough
to pre-empt them from seeking a creative and Marxist approach
towards the making of a socialist revolution. Because of the
close metaphorical relationship it bears with the movement,
Banerjee's book also fails to transcend these "romanticist"
parameters. This constitutes the only criticism that one might
* power. His vivid presentation of the cultural and ethical deca- make of this fascinating book.
31
Cinema Review
"Prisoners of Conscience"
by Pradip Sen
To those who have always believed in the myth of demo
cratic India, to those who thought that Indira Gandhi's
Emergency was a temporary aberration or a short detour, to
those who felt that under the Janata Party repression would
come to an end, to those who feel now that Mrs. Gandhi has
undergone a heartfelt change and will never re-impose her brand
of fascist distatorship-Prisoners of Conscience is a film they
ought to see.
Between 1967 and 1972, there were more than 32,000
political prisoners in Indian jails. Some of them had been
detained for more than five years, without trial, and had been
severely tortured. More than 5,000 political activists had been
shot or beaten to death in jails, in police custody and sometimes
even in their homes. During the period of Indira Gandhi's
"Emergency" rule, the figure of those arrested increased to
well over 10,000. This time the arrested were no longer only the
so-called "extremist" Naxalites, but all those in the political
opposition, ranging from the right wing Jan Sangh to the social
democrats like Georges Fernandes, who had opposed her
"Emergency" rule.
In 1977, Indira Gandhi was swept aside by the popular
anger of the masses against her dictatorial rule. The Janata
Party, put together by the aging Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan
and other anti-authoritarian forces, won on an anti-Indira ticket.
The Janata won on the principal platform of restoring political
democracy in India. They promised that all political prisoners,
including Naxalites, would be released unconditionally. By
1979, the Janata had reneged on many of its promises. Illegal
detention of Naxalites continued, while those who had been
detained during the "Emergency," like Georges Fernandes,
were released and even went on to become Ministers in the
Janata Government. For many Indians, restoration of the trap
pings of democracy like a free press and right to speech, etc. is
sufficient to sustain their confidence in Democratic India. Most
of them glibly refer to India as the "world's largest democ
racy." They are actually hurt when told that such events as the
burning of "low caste" landless peasants by landlords' gangs
are becoming a daily occurrence. With the return to power of
Indira Gandhi, some of them who had opposed her authoritarian
rule now philosophically assert that "democracy has taken its
course. "
At the same time, in the consciousness of the political left,
the link between democratic rights and the independence of the
nation as a whole has often been confused. Democracy is the
right to life for the working masses of the nation and therefore
32
the best guarantee for a nation's independence. Democratic and
patriotic struggles have become synonymous in the struggle to
bring about social change in India. Apologists for India's ruling
classes wish to relegate democracy to the confines of the pink
colored circular structure in New Delhi known as Parliament
House. That pink monstrosity and the monsters that rub bellies
in its corridors have made a mockery ofdemocracy in India. But
while India's politicians flourish in this and other colonial
edifices, India's peasants, workers, and middle class, including
small businessmen, suffer the brunt of the games they play in the
name of democracy.
Anand Patwardhan, a young Indian film-maker, has made
a 45 minute, black and white, documentary film on the demo
cratic rights of India's broad masses, with emphasis on the
plight and struggle of political prisoners in Indian jails. The
film, Prisoners of Conscience, is the result of a few years of
painstaking work done with limited funds and while dodging the
watchful eyes of the Indian state, both during the Emergency"
and after. It is an appeal to the democratic conscience of the
educated, urban Indian classes. While not being an explicit call
for armed struggle against the state, it is made to further the
struggle of those who are involved in bringing about fundamen
tal change in India. There is scope for building the broadest
possible unity in opposition to the authoritarianism of the state',
and Parwardhan has made this the cornerstone of his work.
Making political documentary films in India is a night
marish experience. Lack offunds, equipment, and the unhelpful
intervention of the film establishment prove frustrating for ac
tivist film-makers. Facing the propaganda onslaught of the
Indian state has become the major task of those who are attempt
ing to carry out education to counter the myths regarding India's
problems. These include problems like food shortage and popu
lation growth, defence needs and dependence on the superpow
ers, education and voting behavior, etc. Countering the prop
aganda offensive of the Films Division of India, Akashvani and
Doordarshan Radio and TV networks, is an uphill task, espe
cially since these government-controlled media have reached
out to practically every nook and comer of India. India's
peasantry continue to be the determining factor in the country's
political destiny. This fact is very well understood by Indira
Gandhi. The triumph of reaction, represented by her in the
recent elections, itself reflects the systematic propaganda bar
rage launched in the direction of the peasantry by her party .
Anand Patwardhan has confined his political work in this
film to the conscientizing of the urban population on the need to
bolster the struggle for democratic rights. Prisoners of Con
science is a bold attempt to fight against the lies the system in
India wishes to propagate on the issue of political prisoners. To
attempt to counter the influence of Indira Gandhi amongst the
peasantry would require a different approach, although it is all
part of the general struggle for democratic rights.
Films can be a means of cognition, a way of discovering
reality. In India, the majority of films are made to camouflage
reality. Consciously or unconsciously, they are all political
films, defending a certain set of beliefs and privileges, a certain
class position. Dev Anand makes political films and so does the
ex-CPI man K. A. Abbas. They are tear-jerking, sexist attempts
at presenting a rosy version of a stagnant and socially devastat
ing system. Their films have done a great service for Indira
Gandhi and her kind. Patwardhan's film turns the tables on
them, which is why it has been and continues to be used in
political combat. Initially the Board of Censors denied it a
certificate. The film was then shown to members of the Press as
well as several progressive intellectuals, who, during Janata
Party rule, did enjoy a limited degree offreedom. Theirpressure
resulted in a certificate being issued to the film. However this
only solved the legal problems. Distribution was another mat
ter. Theaters were out of the question, as was the govemment
controlled TV and 16mm circuits. So several prints were made
and given free of charge to civil liberties organizations who
undertook to show the film wherever they could, in schools,
colleges, unions, etc. Donations were collected from the audi
ence after each showing. Each screening was also preceded by
an introduction and followed by a discussion about the issues
raised by the film.
It is not enough to make "realistic" films. In Calcutta,
Louis Malle depicts the parasitism of the West Bengal
bourgeoisie and the sorry plight of the poor in the streets of
Calcutta. It shows India's working, poor people as defeated
worms wriggling in and out of an inhospitable soil. It is an
obstructionist film. It stands in the way of a genuine understand
ing of society and ofits transformation. Patwardhan also went to
Calcutta. He filmed the jails and he filmed recently released
political prisoners who are carrying on their work full of en
thusiasm. In one interview, conducted in clear view of one of
Calcutta's most notorious prisons, the Alipore Central Jail,
Patwardhan gives us a glimpse of the determination of the
revolutionaries who are continuing the struggle. The revolution
ary says, "our committees are functioning allover Bengal. We
have gathered all the democratic forces within our plat
form ... ". We learn that one of the revolutionaries gave birth
to a son in jail. The child was named "Biplap," or
"revolution. "
Prisoners of Conscience reflects reality, but it does not
immobilize its viewers with painful and frustrating scenes.
Parwardhan wishes to be a part of the changing reality. He films
towards the end a night shot of a seemingly unending stream of
processionists marching with torches, carrying banners that
condemn the state for its inhuman acts against political prison
ers. The sound track plays a song composed by prisoners of
Midnapore jail. The song says:
The dark night seems entiless; the rice jars are empty;
my eyes fill with tears; my heart is onfire.
How willI protect your dignity, my mother?
I can't stand it anymore, when I hear the mountains tremble
at the thundering march ofthe people's forces,
and the mansions ofthe rich are on fire!
Do not stop me mother,for I go to make the bright sun rise.
There are people who make films that show both the good
and the bad, the rich and the poor. Sometimes they are done with
extraordinary style. But they are passive testimonials; they do
not show the people the tools they can use in their daily lives, in
their battles to transform society. A true political revolutionary
film must raise consciousness (at whatever level). It must con
stitute, therefore, an act of rebellion; be a part of the general
movement of the masses, and not simply a leftist treatise on how
bad our lives are in the third world. Prisoners ofConscience is
such a film. It is real, authentic, rebellious and part of the
movement. It appeals for vigilance. It points its finger at the
enemy, such as the landlord on a horse, with a whip at his side,
over-seeing a field of bent-over toiling peasants. It points to the
33
lady, with the stylish wisp of white hair, arrogantly taking the
salute from a unit of shiningly armoured tank troops, while the
sound track plays' 'Sare lehan Se Achha, Hindhustan Hamara"
. "Better than the rest of the world, our India. ' ,
The film has certain weaknesses. Apart from the obvious
difficulties with cheap film stock, leading to jerky, non-fluid
transitions in certain sections, Patwardhan relies too much on
close-ups of the interviewees. He fails to give relief when he
interviews a new person. Suddenly the screen is filled with the
face of the interviewee and not much else. However, in one
particular sequence, when he interviews a husband-wife team of
activists of the CPI(ML), there is extraordinary warmth and
informality. At one point of the interview, the wife grabs the
microphone to make a point. And Anand himself is much
involved in the whole process of discussing and interviewing.
What the film seriously lacks is the involvement of the
personality of the common masses engaged in struggle. There
are good shots of actual incidents of people resisting the attacks
of the police during the "Emergency." There are, however, no
close-ups of the street fighters. Anonymous close-ups are im
portant in political documentaries. The unidentified faces of the
masses are of equal importance in projecting the strength of the
resistance, as the central protagonists of the struggle. The indi
vidual character as caught in an interview often tends towards
creating the bourgeois "star" role and takes away from the
importance of stressing the role of the ordinary people in such
movements. In this connection the film perhaps gives unneces
sary status to Mary Tyler, the British woman who was detained
in Indian jails for five years for her connections with the Naxa
lite movement. Of course, the embarrassment or fake sense of
patriotism that some Indian viewers project on seeing Mary
Tyler on the screen ("We don't need an English woman to tell
us what's wrong with our society") borders on the ridiculous.
Mary Tyler has had an important experience of Indian reality,
and it is well that this be documented. Sometimes, however, her
presence for extended periods tends to give her the "star" status
that is undesirable. No political activist or leading personality
should be projected at the expense of the anonymous masses.
Apart from a series of interviews where political prisoners
describe their experiences, drums, music and an understated
commentary are used to create a powerful though restrained
sound track. The songs used are revolutionary ones from vari
ous parts of India-in Telugu, Bengali and Hindi. Unfortu
nately only the Bengali one has been translated. Hearing the
diverse languages reinforces the central theme of the film-that
both the language of repression and the language of resistance
are universal. Repression must breed resistance. Virtually every
interview reinforces this message. Visually, too, scenes of
terror are followed by scenes of struggle, albeit symbolic.
As the film comes to a close, the clanging of an empty
metal begging bowl of a child on the street is transformed into
the loud clanging of prisoners hammering their own metal
dishes against prison bars. The struggle of the poor and that of
political activists behind bars is one.
Prisoners of Conscience needs to be shown widely and
activists in India should make it a part of their work to show such
movies as widely as possible. Outside India* the film should be
used as a reminder of the repression that the ruling class in India
is capable of unleashing on its own people. Showing these films
is part of the movement, for the film raises consciousness. It
asks the question: Who are the real extremists in India? *'
* The film is available in the U.S. from: Icarus Films, 200 Park Ave. South,
Rm. 1319, New York, N. Y. 10003 (Tel. No. 212-674-337S); and in Canada
from D.E.C. Films, 121 Avenue Rd., Toronto, Ontario, MSR 2G3 and from
I.P.A.N.A., P.O. Box 69646, Stn. "K," Vancouver, B.C., Canada VSK4W7
Surgriga (king
ofthe monkeys)
and Hanumon (mon
key warrior chief):
a painting ofthe
Madhubani region.
Notice
Response to our September 1980 fund appeal letter was
most gratifying and encouraging. As this is being prepared
(Feb., 1981), a total of 110 persons had donated nearly $3300.
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I've received the letter you sent to subscribers . ... Your
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Last year you announced that you're going to open a debate
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More specifically, the Bulletin has indeed been working on
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Fourth, it is important to note that progressive scholars
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The Editors
35
Some Images of
Calcutta and Environs
36
Photographer:
Shambhu Shaha
I
f
i
I
,
37
JPNarayan
A Political Morality Re-Examined
by David Selbourne
In the wake of JP's death and the flurry of ill-informed
judgments which followed it, his critics pronounced his life and
thought to have been vacillating and indecisive; 1 at worst, a
confused individualist and even a crypto-"fascist," at best a
well-intentioned but impractical idealist. In my own book, An
Eye to India, I described his politics as "naive and impassioned,
popular and populist" and the Bihar movement, which he led in
1974-1975, as a "mass-movement which must be called eva
nescent, and whose evanescence was to be proved subsequently
by its rapid evaporation. "2 Of his concept of "Total Revolu
tion," I wrote that it was "neither total nor a revolution. "3
But reconsideration of his life and work has changed my
view. The trajectory of JP's thought, from his"American"
Marxism of the 1920s, to the founding of the Congress Socialist
Party in 1934, to his espousal of Sarvodaya* and the Bhoodan
movement, * to the politics of the "Total Revolution," and
finally to the protest against Emergency rule which led to the
founding and debacle of the J anata Party, was not as erratic as
his critics make it out to be. Indeed, the closer and more patient
the examination the more consistent it appears; and it certainly
does not represent a' 'zig-zag course of celebration, "4 as one of
the post-mortems of JP put it.
To begin with, it is a politics of protest, against the British
Raj, capitalist exploitation, political tyranny, Indian establish
ment privilege and corruption, against violence, Congress mis
government, and arbitrary and authoritarian Emergency rule.
And behind the protests stood certain determinate and coherent
political notions which I will discuss later.
Of course, it was characteristic of such a politics of protest
that he often overstated his own case, while understating or
mistaking that of his opponents. Thus, when he asked in 1949,
"Does Socialism merely mean solving the problems of bread
and butter? Has it only an economic content?" and answered' 'I
refuse to accept this view," 5 he was conveniently ignoring the
fact that many socialists refuse to accept this view also. The
premise on which the rhetorical questions were based was a
false one. But behind the false premise, the rhetorical question
and the categorical answer, there lurks-as usual with IP's
discourses-a crucial issue, which holds the long evolution of
his thought together: namely, how to achieve political equality,
moral progress and economic emancipation together, without
sacrificing anyone of them to another. JP's belief in the attain
ability of such an elusive goal may have been utopian, but his
commitment to it was a consistent and unshaken feature of his
political theory and practice.
Of course, it was the same man who attacked Gandhi as a
'bourgeois leader' and upbraided him for his politics of 'class
collaboration' in 1935, and who was urging India twenty years
later to tum back to Gandhi for its true social and moral princi
ples. But the supposed 'vacillation' was more apparent than
real, since between the first and second positions stood the great
watershed of JP' s own carefully rationalized disillusion with the
example of the Soviet Union. Indeed, JP's 1956correspondence
with Ajoy Ghosh of the Communist Party ofIndia (CPl) , on the
issues of power and freedom, democracy and socialism, state
and citizen, places him squarely and precisely in the center of
the first Cold War's ideological turmoil, as it impinged on India.
The positions he took up express a familiar recoil from a coer
cive and bureaucratic system of power which, in the name of
freedom and equality, is held to crush the former in order to
achieve the latter.
This dilemma is as old as the Himalayas, or almost; and
though the Cold War promoted and cynically profited from this
debate, and from the genuine-as well as faked-moral an
guish to which it gave rise, it was nevertheless a real issue.
Moreover, there is no philosopher, and certainly no longer any
socialist, who can afford to conceal from her or himself the fact
that, however the terms 'freedom' and 'equality' may be de
fined or blatantly misused, the issue will not be resolved by
dogmatic pronouncements, whether from right or left.
For the questions of who shall hold power, and how that
power will be held, whether in a "democratic" or a "socialist"
or a "democratic socialist" state, rightly take precedence over
most other political questions. More particularly, the issue of
whether the "dictatorship of the proletariat" or, say, the "na
tionalization of the means of production, distribution and ex
change, " leads to greater political equality and economic demo
cracy, or to new forms of exploitation of working people, is a
question not merely to engage the minds of senile "petit
bourgeois" libertarians, but those of every socialist and com
munist who is still capable of thinking.
One early consequence of the way IP faced up to this kind
of moral problem was his public self-questioning of 1948,
* Sarvodaya: "communal warfare."
** Bhoodan movement: The "Land Gift" movement which sought to encour
age the voluntary surrender ofland by landowners for redistribution to the poor.
38
which in outline indicated the direction of what was to be a fixed
preoccupation: "Is everything due to economic inequalities? Is
capitalism the only evil? Can we entirely depend upon class
struggle?"6 The negative answer which JP gave to all three
questions was later to become increasingly common ground
among progressive thinkers the world over, and rightly so.
Socialism, as 1P put it then, will "never be full and com
plete without democracy." 7 And 1P's great strength over his
adversaries on right and left was that this position was sustained
by an intellectually coherent conception of what he meant by
"democracy" within the terms of his political theory, unlike the
cynical anti-socialist who so often hides behind false moraliz
ings about the sanctity of "individual freedom, " while meaning
nothing more by it than the right to benefit from the sufferings
and deprivations of others, in a political and economic system
which defends this right by force and intimidation.
The fact that he had started this "long process of question
ing" as a result of the Russian purges, as he put it in 1957, and
that he ironically described himself four years earlier as a former
"worshipper at the shrine of the goddess dialectical material
ism"8 is thus less important for its Cold War terminology than
for its substance and its implications. * But there were other
related issues too, which 1P raised in this period, above all,
questions of the relationship between economic and political
democracy, and between centralized and decentralized power.
And however much a critic may object to the political vocabu
lary of1P's debate with himself, his moral concern with "demo
cracy" distinguishes him qualitatively from those Indian poli
ticians of the ruling class who claim a monopoly of democratic
and socialist virtue for themselves; while they, at the same time,
defend the status quo with the Central Reserve Police and
powers of preventive detention. Furthermore, whether one likes
his conclusions or not, 1P had the moral and intellectual cour
age, which many socialists entirely lack, to question openly the
foundations of his own belief.
"Here and Now"
In 1958, 1P held the view that "Bhoodan is a great mass
movement of conversion . . . It attacks and corrects here and
now the system of exploitation and inequality. It teaches men to
share what they have, with their fellow men."9 He was wrong;
it did no such thing. But once more, behind these utopian
accents are deeper truths. There are also the persisting echoes of
a socialist commitment which I do not believe he ever set
aside. **
* I hold this view despite JP's frequent equation of Marxism with Communism,
and Communism with totalitarianism. equations which were and are merely
Cold War commonplaces; while to confuse "materialism" as a philosophical
world-view with "materialism" as a form of consumerism, in the way that JP
began to do. was simply crass.
** His was a commitment which India's Congress leaders from Jawaharlal
Nehru to Indira Gandhi, to say nothing of Sanjay Gandhi. could never have
emulated in theory or in practice, even if they had wished to. Instead, they
merely borrowed for cosmetic reasons parts of his political program, from the
Fourteen Points in 1953-which included the abolition of the privy purses and
bank nationalization-to the Gujarat and Bihar slogans of 1974-75, some of
which reappeared in the Twenty Points of the Emergency's false prospectus.
Moreover, in the urgency ofthis search for "mass conver
sion" only a very shallow, or deeply prejudiced, political ana
lyst would find merely the symptoms of a demagogic populism,
even if such elements are clearly present. Much more important
is the strong sense of an overriding political and moral impera
tive built upon the ruins of his regrets, which once more he
grossly overstated: "the communists have not even tried to live
up to the ideal of brotherhood in their own societies." 10 In
addition, such language contains a characteristic demand which
is at the opposite pole to the brutal impatience of Emergency
rule: that solutions be found to the real problems of real human
beings, here and now, and not in the Indian hereafter.
I believe, too, that it was precisely the consistent and
principled subordination of self to this moral imperative im
posed on him by the bitter condition of the Indian people, which
brought him into conflict with the other Sarvodaya leaders, in
particular Vinoba Bhave-the true exponent of political ambi
guity and moral vacillation-during the dispute about the meth
ods and direction of the Bihar movement. Thus because 1P was,
and remained, a socialist in his convictions he struggled all his
life (before, during and after his specific commitment to Sarvo
daya) not just to express and embody, guru-like, an abstractly
moral aspiration, but to intervene practically in the political
process.
It is for this reason that I think Minoo Masani was wrong,
and superficial, to argue that 1P "rejected Marxism because it
did not answer the question: "Why should man be good, or why
should anyone be good?" and that "from then on there was no
looking back." II Instead, in this long intellectual and political
journey, IP bore all his ideas forward-Marxist, socialist,
Gandhian-into his courageous challenge, in 1974, to the full
panoply of corrupt class and state power under the rule of
Congress. And it was exactly because he struggled to wed
sometimes irreconcilable notions together, in an organic and
responsive philosophy with which to guide direct political
action, that he was bound to collide with a succession of com
placent dogmatists incapable of doing other than maintain en
trenched positions much narrower than his own.12 To say,
I. E.g. C. N. Chitta Ranjan. ainstream. New Delhi, 20.10.79, p. 7.
2. David Selboume. An Eye to India. Harmondsworth, 1977, pp. 24-25.
3. David Selboume, "State and Ideology in India"; Monthly Review.
New York, December 1979. p. 31; reprinted Mainstream. 15.3.80, p. 17.
4. C.N. Chitta Ranjan. op. cit.. p. 7.
5. At the Seventh Conference of the Socialist Party in 1949. quoted in V.
Nargolkar, lP's Crusade for Revolution. New Delhi, 1975, p. 45.
6. Ibid., p. 41.
7. Ibid., p. 42: cf. " ... Just as we had to taste the ashes of indepen
dence, so future generations may have to taste the ashes of socialism ..." J. P.
Narayan, ibid .. p. 62.
8. J. P. Narayan, Freedom First. Sept. 1952, quo Minoo Masani. En
counter. December 1975, p. 17.
9. Qu. Nargolkar. op. cit., p. 59 (my emphasis).
10. J. P. Narayan, Three Basic Problems ofFree India. London, 1964, p.
37 (my emphasis).
II. Minoo Masani, op. cit., p. 17.
12. C. N. Chitta Ranjan, op. cit., p. 7. This is just as true of the self
righteous defenders of inactivity in the Sarvodaya movement, as it is of those
who pretend. for polemical purposes, that the Bhoodan campaign was
"launched actually to help the rural vested interests fight back and paralyze the
massive agrarian unrest that had begun to be evident in many parts of the
country. "
39
therefore, that JP was "an individualist groping for his political
metier' '13 now seems to me to do him a substantial injustice, to
undervalue JP's personal commitment to the moral and political
imperative of which I have spoken. Moreover, it was not so
much JP who failed-despite his strong sense of failure-as
some of the movements and causes he espoused; which is quite a
different matter.
"People's Partyless Democracy"
I said earlier that JP had a fully worked-out and intellectu
ally coherent conception of what "democracy" meant to him.
But it cannot, in my view, be understood without the awareness
that it embodied the two cardinal aspects of his thought which I
so far covered: his recoil from "statism," grounded in his
reading of the Soviet experience, and his drive to find an
immediately effective political means for a real transformation
of the people's conditions.
His democratic theory, whose scope far exceeds the range
of its critics, is logically a theory of decentralized power. Given
his legitimate disgust with the political corruption and misgov
ernment which has characterized independent India's rule by
Congress, it is equally logically a theory of "partyless" ad
ministration. For him, "party" was synonymous on the one
hand with bureaucratic elitism in the Soviet Union and, on the
other, with corrupt place-seeking in India; and these two re
sponses converge in his notions of what "democracy" ought to
be. The first of these responses was expressed by JP, with the
full banality of Cold War rhetoric, in 1952, when he asserted
that' 'in the kingdom ofdialectical materialism, fear makes men
conform, and the Party takes the place of God." 14 Moreover,
his political career-despite the fact that in 1934 he was a
moving force in the foundation of the Congress Socialist Party ,
and in the creation of Janata in 1977-was throughout marked
by a suspicion of party. Thus, I think that his refusal in 1974 to
set up a new political party which might embody the mass forces
being unleashed by the Bihar movement was fully in accord
with his deeper political convictions.
Certainly, as far as the Indian experience is concerned,
JP's unease with party is comprehensible. If by "party" is
meant the organized and principled expression of ideologically
coherent socio-political interests and policies, it is arguable that
post-independence ruling-class India has never had a party at
all, only agglomerations.
Yet in JP's conception of a "partyless democracy,"
"partylessness" is not really the principal feature. Like Rous
seau, JP counterposed "formal representative democracy" with
what he sometimes called "people's democracy," a term char
acteristically borrowed from a communist provenance, but dis
tinct from communist usage. It denoted his sense that the former
type of democracy, in its exclusion (except at times of election)
of true participation by the people and of accountability to them
of their "representatives," is largely an illusion. He plainly
believed that "government by consent ... is not an adequate
enough concept. " Instead, as he put it in 1961 in his little book
Swaraj for the People, he had in mind "government by par
ticipation" - "government brought as near the people as
possible. "1S
It was this latter idea which, as we shall see later, made him
dangerous to entrenched power and vested interest. The people,
he argued, had been "left out of the democratic way of life."
They had "no stake" in a tepresentative democracy "even
though they had the vote"; and "though Swaraj came, it had not
come to them," but only "the very thin layer of the educated
middle class. " "It is not the abstract virtues of democracy that
so excite us," JP continued, but' 'the concrete fruits of democ
racy in terms of the people's welfare. "16
Thus, again like Rousseau, JP in his democratic model
seeks to discover and embody the popular will, logically by
passing the politics of state, party and faction, in search of the
elusive principle of "true" or "real" democracy: the philos
opher's stone, Lok Shakti, which democratic thinkers have
sought since the word was invented. It is thus entirely consistent
that JP should have been attracted to the notion of gram s.abha,
in which the "collective will" of village India could be aroused,
village by village, as the sage of Geneva had dreamed was
possible two hundred years before him. The "entire adult mem
bership ofthe community" would gather in a "collective body"
and would constitute, or reconstitute, the "groundfloor of the
noble edifice of democracy. " 17
Moreover, JP was to carry forward such dangerous notions
into the heart of the Bihar movement nearly fifteen years later.
As he poured scorn in 1974 on the abuse of democratic institu
tions in India, he once more made the classical democratic de
mands, impossible to meet without a prior revolution: for the
pre-selection of candidates not by parties but by people's com
mittees, for the accountability of the elected to the electors, and
for the right of the latter to recall the former. Furthermore,
undercutting the forms and norms of bourgeois liberal democ
racy, he struggled in Rousseauist terms towards a "new conven
tion, " and the embodiment of the idea of the' 'General Will" in
the proposition that' 'all elections should be determined as far as
possible by consensus. ' , 18 Here he comes as close as he ever did
to the Social Contract, in an Indian translation.
"Is India Democratic?"
And yet consistent as they are, there is a contradiction in
JP's views on democracy in India, which comes near to wreck
ing the whole structure of his thought. It is a contradiction which
reflects his own ambivalence on the subject; an ambivalence
which is not present-in this form, at any rate-in the thought
of Rousseau himself. Is India a democratic country, or is it not?
And if it is, but imperfectly so, is it necessary to replace or
merely to amend the particular forms which its "democracy"
tekes? And if it is necessary merely to amend what is essentially
democratic, what need then of a "total revolution"?
There is no satisfactory answer to these questions in JP's
thought. Thus he says that "Indian democracy rests on a very
narrow base"; 19 that he wants' 'the reform and reconstruction"
of Indian political institutions to make them "more demo
cratic"2o; that India needs "a more stable, popular and satisfy
13. Ibid.
14. J. P. Narayan in Freedom First. Sept. 1952. quo Minoo Masani,
Encounter. Dec. 1974, p. 17.
15. J. P.Narayan,SwarajforthePeople. Varanasi,I96I,p.3.
16. Ibid., pp. 1-3.
17. Ibid., p. II.
18. Qu. Nargolkar, op. cit., p. 182.
19. J. P. Narayan,SwarajforthePeople. p. 2 (my emphasis).
20. Ibid., Introduction [po I] (my emphasis).
40
ing form of democracy";21 and he is opposed in 1974, as we
have seen, to "the abuse of democratic power and democratic
institutions." In each case the argument rests on the premise
that, however flawed, there is democracy in India; it is merely
not democratic enough.
On this premise, at least, the term "total revolution" is an
extravagant one, and the need for such a "total revolution" is
not made out. It seems, prima facie. that we have a politics
which will preserve, not inaugurate, Indian democracy, while
extending its range by the introduction of certain safeguards for
the people. Put in its most extreme and contradictory para
phrase, the "total revolution" would have to be brought about
without drastic structural change to India's essentially demo
cratic system.
Now if JP's thought and action was in fact reducible to this
vacuous proposition-and he is sometimes gUilty of the reduc
tion himself-then there would be little more to be said about it.
Indeed there are other powerful deterrents to going further, as,
for example, ip this bland and utopian assertion that "true
democracy demands that existing division, inequalities and
conflicts in society are not accentuated by its processes, but
smoothed out and ultimately eliminated by the promotion of
community spirit and common endeavour towards the common
good. "22 And yet, a glib rejection of JP' s democratic theory on
the grounds that it is untenable unless there has been a prior
revolution is also impossible. It is checked not merely by the
historical record of JP's leadership of the massive popular
challenge to India's power structure in the mid-1970s, but also
by a deeper understanding of his explosive conception of "peo
pie's power. "
In practice JP provided the impulse for the biggest chal
lenge, after Telengana, * to Congress hegemony and misrule in
the history of independent India. It even came close to giving JP
a role in the turmoil of 1975 which the philosophes ofthe French
Revolution, Rousseau included, would have recognized and
saluted.
"Building Democracy From Below"
Indeed since Jayaprakash Narayan remained a revolution
ary activist to the end of his days, he was well aware of the
correctness of citing the example of the French Revolution in
weighing India's future prospects. In Three Basic Problems of
Free India. for instance, which was published ten years and
more after his supposed break with a revolutionary political
perspective, he wrote approvingly of the fact that the French
Revolution "demonstrated that the people could assert their
sovereignty, overthrow the powers of kings and establish their
own. "23 Likewise, and an illustration of the lifelong continuity
of his thought, he asserted that' 'the Indian freedom movement
was a people's movement par excellence. It was not rajniti
[politics of the state], but lokniti [politics of the people]. "24
Telengana refers to the site of a peasant rebellion in Andra Pradesh from
1946-1950. eventually crushed by the Anny.
21. Ibid . p. 22 (my emphasis).
22. Ibid., p. 32.
23. J. P. Narayan, Three Basic Problems ofFree India. p. 8.
jp in 1952 (photographer unknown)
His language, in fact, is one of constant reiteration of the
theme of "the people," too often abstractly perceived as undif
ferentiated by class or caste, but nevertheless more than a
populist slogan. Indeed his particular insistence upon "people's
power" as a sine qua non for any morally valid political system.
whatever such a system be called, is one of the essential features
of his thought. At different times in a long life, consistently
punctuating his political discourse, come references to "pe0
pie's struggle," "people's self government," "the people's
will," "people's awakening," "people's upsurge," "a real
people's democracy," "people's administration" (Janata
Sarkar) and, of course, a "people's party": hopefully-his
hopes were belied-a party of and for the people which would
transcend person and faction, and escape the boundaries of
24. J. P. Narayan, quo Nargolkar, op. cit., p. 63. 41 traditional political practice.
This continuous emphasis indicates an organic element in
his political thinking which, on the one hand, goes beyond a
shallow populism, and on the other cannot be reduced to metro
politan conceptions of "devolution" of political authority, even
though he sometimes used the word himself.2s Furthermore the
issue is not merely "the people." It is the question of power
which engaged him: the abuse and manipulation of power by
those unworthy to hold it-as in the notorious case of Sanjay
Gandhi-and its restoration to the sovereign people, whose
present lot is "to be moved about as pawns by political parties
and ambitious politicians. "26
. Thus, in pursuit of what he called "the taming and control
hng of power. . . concentrated in a caucus of leaders "27 as it
now is and always has been concentrated in free india, he
wanted not merely to devolve such power, but to "build democ
racy from below, "28 a somewhat different and more subversive
ambition, which momentarily gave a fierce impulse to
the Blhar movement. In the "inorganic system of democracy
based on individual voters," however-which he contrasted
with an "organic and participatory" democracy-there was
"hardly any force that tends to pull power down towards the
people. "29 Instead he argued, as cogently as any utopian philos
opher ever has, not just for a stereotyped model of political and
economic decentralization with an accompanying apparatus of
local self-government, but for a decisive restriction of power at
the Center. The Center must have "only as much of it as is
required to discharge its central functions"; "all the rest" must
be exercised at lower, sub-central, levels. And however sim
plistic his pyramidal structure may appear, with his recommen
dation that "as you proceed from the bottom levels of govern
ment to the top, each higher level should have less and less
functions and powers, "30 such a program seems to threaten the
very dissolution of state power.
His argument was also that a "strong centre" irresistibly
becomes more and more totalitarian, as it has tended to do in
India since Independence, while also being the Ions et origo of
corruption and subversion of the rights of the individual. More
it was on the basis of this political understanding, however
hmlted and schematic it may have appeared to its critics, that JP
his huge challenge to political authority through the
Blhar movement. "What can people do," he asked in May
1974, "when constitutional methods and established demo
cratic institutions fail to respond to their will, or to solve their
burning problems? ... Therefore, it is a healthy and welcome
symptom of our democracy that the people, the real masters,
should rise and take recourse to unconstitutional but powerful
means to assert themselves, and bend the powers that be to their
will ... There is no greater power," he added, "than the power
of the people. It is our duty to arouse that dormant power. Our
hope lies in it. "31
* Krishnamurti: mystic (b. 1897) who believed himself to be a new Messiah.
Aurobindo started a school of Hind'iism based on the teachings of the Yoga.
25. E.g. in Swaraj/or the People. p. 5.
26. Ibid., p. 8.
27. J. P. Narayan, Three Basic Problems o/Free India. p. 24.
28. Ibid.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., p. 5.
3!. J. P. Narayan, quo Mainstream. 13.10.79.
32. David Selbourne, "State and Ideology in India," Monthly Review.
These are not the accents of "a petit-bourgeois liberal," or
a "fascist" or a man given over to "zig-zag cerebration."
However complex and ambivalent, this is the voice of a social
ist, a democrat and even a revolutionary (if not a "total revo
lutionary") who had evidently forgotten neither his Gandhian
nor his Marxist antecedents.
Legality and Morality
I notice that some Indian commentators on JP's thought
have accused him of articulating his ideas in a "sophisticated"
or "Westernized" idiom, though the fact that the two terms
should be regarded as synonyms has its own disturbing reso
nance. I think the judgment of him which is implied by these
adjectives to be shallow and wrong, if put in such a one
dimensional perspective. Indeed much of JP's theory and prac
tice is not decipherable, except at a superficial level, unless
placed in relation to a quite specifically Indian moral, philo
and historical context and outlook. Though I have
pomted .out elsewhere that "the moralities of a Tolstoy or
Kropotkm clearly reveal that the leading features of the Gan
dhian ethic have been by no means confined to India, "32 there
were frequent occasions when what JP did and said stood
outside any recognizable boundaries of the "Westernized
idiom." It is therefore necessary for Indians and non-Indians
alike not to be misled into a narrow Eurocentric categorization
of his ideas, merely because their vocabulary and their accent
often resemble the familiar terms of "Western" discourse.
To begin with, the truth of the matter here as elsewhere is
that JP's political and moral philosophy is many-levelled. At
one level, his conception of "rights" and "freedoms" does not
differ from the "classical" (imperial British) "authorities"
sacred texts have always included the Magna Carta,
Dlcey and the largely-mystical British Constitution. Thus, if JP
had been alive today, he would justly have been as gratified by
the 1980 Indian Supreme Court decision protecting the funda
mental rights of the Indian citizen from usurpation by a par
liamentary dictatorship, as any Indian constitutionalist in the
days of the Raj. One could even go further and say that the
particular form of the "democratic spirit" which he embodied
lives on in this court judgment.
But at another level, JP's idea of rights and freedoms owes
nothing to the formal provisions of inherited law and constitu
tion. Emancipation, for such thinkers as he, is necessarily
invested with a moral dimension which transcends the defini
tions contained in legal prescription and legal sanction, and
becomes, as he put it in From Socialism to Saryodaya, a "pas
sion for life." It takes on, in some of his writings and speeches,
an aura which is deeply moral in the best sense. At times, of
it brings his political philosophy up to (but never, I
thlnk, beyond) that threshold of mystification which Krishna
murti and Aurobindo* crossed, and where the secularist rightly
fears to tread. Indeed, it is a measure of both the subtlety and
balance of his thought that he does not very often overstate
despite the temptations in India-the more elusive virtues of a
"spiritual" freedom, which in extremis passes all rational
understanding.
Instead, a modest and temperate notion of "self
realization" takes its place in his thought, alongside "ortho
dox" conceptions of the practical Rights of Man, in a way
owes nothing to "bourgeois individualism" and every
thmg to a sense of human dignity which is indivisible and
Dec. 1979, p. 35. 42
universal.
33
"Materialists" can no longer afford to insist upon
dogmatic scruples which object to such tenns on the grounds
that they are "idealist," even if, in fact, they are. Rather, I
think that we are bound now to agree that' 'no matter what kind
of social organization we build up, " as JP put it, "that organiza
tion should make it possible for the individual to pursue this
spiritual search for self-realization. "34 There is nothing inher
ent in this proposition, or even in the similar assertion that' 'man
must go beyond the material to find the incentives to good
ness, "3S which could or should be held to threaten the welfare
of the people. Indeed, JP and thinkers like him would claim the
opposite, and they must be left to think it, since they are more
right than wrong.
Furthennore, the fact that in 1952 he was very much more
wrong than right in asserting that' 'the task of social reconstruc
tion cannot succeed under the inspiration of a materialist philos
ophy, ' '36 should not be allowed to discredit judgment of the
tendency of his thought. It is similarly irrelevant that, like
Mahatma Gandhi before him, he often appears to adopt the
western Orientalist's ideological vision of India, transmitted to
India in the nineteenth century and solemnly digested as a
governing truth by many Indians themselves. It proclaims the
uniquely "spiritual" essence of Indian life; but the real and
fictitious "spirituality" of India-when "Hinduism" is in
practice the most this-worldly of all the great religions-was
never more praised by the British than when they were most
assiduously looting the material wealth of the Indian people.
Though a rationalist, JP showed himself both unable and un
willing to move away for long from this structure of perception,
and self-perception. Hence, "the most characteristic and most
important value that Indian society has developed," he wrote,
"is the value ofspirituality. "37 But it is not, and never has been;
instead, it is the immense moral and physical fortitude of its
toiling millions in withstanding, with dignity, the assault on
their well-being which is remorselessly meted out to them by
India's economic system. It is this "value' which a moralist, a
democrat, a humanist must salute. Far from it being' 'the value
of spirituality" which "has to be placed in the position of
control," as he put it, 38 he himself knew , especially in 1974 and
1975, that there were other and more pressing tasks on India's
political agenda.
And yet at a deeper level still, there is consistency, political
logic and persuasiveness in his position. The demand for a
"spiritual" life is not a program for inertia and injustice but a
means, once more, ofprotest. It is statism, corruption, privilege
and exploitation which, in his philosophical scheme of things,
stand to lose most from the active recovery of certain values.
And, however utopian such a perspective seems to be, the
politics-very profoundly Indian-of mass moral protest lies
dangerously close below this apparently bland surface.
The Bihar Movement
JP, as I see it more clearly now than J did before,39
provoked Mrs. Gandhi to revenge and reprisal in June 1975, not
because his leadership of the Gujarat and Bihar movements
threatened India with "right-reaction" -and even less with
"fascism"-but because from March 1974 he found himself at
the head of an unarmed popular moral force which had begun to
call armed established power, particularly the corrupt power of
Congress, into question.
Though the language of the Bihar movement might have
been more Messianic than Marxist, and the hopes utopian not
scientific, the power unleashed was real, and the threat of
militant direct action against institutions and structures of au
thority potent. "Our immediate task," JP said on October 14,
1974, "is to demontrate the people's will and the people's
power. " There were millions ranged behind him, and as the
mass protests against scarcity of food and rising prices, the
black market and the rigging of ballots, corruption and un
employment, mounted to a deafening crescendo, power visibly
trembled, fingering its lathi (bludgeon).
These were the fleeting moments of the moral rearmament
(in both its good and bad senses) of a people's India; "I have
come out openly," JP declared to crowds of hundreds of thou
sands, "to wage a fight against corruption." A non-violent
"moral regeneration" of the whole social order seemed, for a
while, to beckon beyond the horizon. At long last, this gigantic
dharna (civil disobedience), finnly wedded to Indian tradition,
seemed to promise the vindication of a politics of means and
ends which refused to go beyond satyagraha (non-violent resis
tance) in order to overturn the social structure.
JP's constituency was a wide one, crossing all class and
caste boundaries, and though self-serving critics have subse
quently tried to square its composition with their own categories
of analysis, the Bihar movement was too extensive and too
varied to fit them. As armed and unarmed force clashed in the
streets of Patna, the blood of the poor and downtrodden began to
flow, as it always has in India. Driven to fury by the scale of the
challenge, and the growing paralysis of administration, corrupt
power denounced its opponents for corruption, while the unfit
official custodians of Indian "democracy" such as Abdul
Ghafoor, the Chief Minister of Bihar, condemned JP as "a
lawless rebel out to destroy India's democratic institutions. "40
In more respects than one, this was a prelude to the Emer
gency, which the Bihar movement was instrumental-with
other factors-in provoking. And as the situation in the country
became "explosive," in JP's words, the prison-house door
began to open wider. "Friends," JP had said on June 5, 1974,
"this is a revolution, a total revolution," Sampurna Kranti. But
it was a revolt, not a revolution. We will return to it in a
moment.
JP's Moral Realpolitik
It is necessary now to ask and answer, in more detail, this
question: What was the moral basis of JP's leadership of the
Bihar movement? To begin with, it is very quickly possible to
find something more than innocent credulity in his moral posi
tions. At the same time as it was honest, his morality had always
been based on very practical calculation. Thus, as early as the
Sixth Conference of the Socialist Party in 1948, he had argued
33. E.g. see Three Basic Problems of Free India. pp. 19-25; From
Socialism to Sarvodaya. passim.
34. Ibid., p. 22.
35. J. P. Narayan, quo Masani, op. cit., p. 19.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., p. 24.
39. E.g. see An Eye to India. pp. 24-30, pp. 333-34.
40. The Statesman. 3.11.74. .
43
IP addressing a public meeting in Delhi. 1952
that "there are people in our society who accept moral values.
We must have a correct psychological approach towards these
people, as they are not influenced by our phraseology of class
struggle." This is, in a sense, a moral realpolitik. But it is also
the language ofa man aware of the profound ideological barriers
which exist in India (and not only in India) to the easy mobiliza
tion of the people around causes and slogans which correspond
neither to their perception of their own condition nor to the
means to overcome them.41
While JP's theme was the removal of all those obstacles
which "prevent man becoming truly human" -a this-worldly
aim, if ever there was one-it was neither vacuous nor naive. I
do not want to say that his moral campaigns were merely
instrumental, but they were plainly guided by a greater sense of
realism than some of his critics would allow. In addition, the
structure of his moral argument does not stand in a complete
socio-economic vacuum. Instead, for him, moral turpitude and
"indiscipline"-a dangerous word in Indian politics-lead
directly to economic ruin and political chaos. Moreover, IP's
residual materialism, however much he might have denied it,
prevents him from then falling into the extremer follies of an
abstract theory of' 'human nature, " as most other idealist think
ers quickly do. He is, in any case, far too intelligent a rationalist
to allow himself the ignorant lUXUry of attributing poverty to the
44
innate qualities of the poor, and wealth to the virtues of the rich.
Indeed, he castigated those who used the term "backward" of
the "rural masses" (another unpleasant term which, ideolog
ically, dissolves individuals into the anonymity of a political
slogan). "They are no more backward morally," he wrote, "or
deficient mentally than the urban elite. "42
Nevertheless, there is also in his thought a crippling moral
platitude. It may disarm the wicked and the ruthless on paper,
but in practice, as Mrs. Gandhi and Sanjay Gandhi showed, it
provides a feeble defense against those who are hell-bent on
maintaining power. The "fair and pure" means which JP
recommended to his followers, as did Christ, Tolstoy and
Gandhi before him, have unfortunately been able to withstand
the onslaught of the real world only on fairy-tales and moral
fables.
It is simply not true that the "stronger sections" in a social
order structured by privilege and exploitation can be "per
41. Cf.: "It is certainly difficultto link in a purposeful way the Moral Man
and the Common Man," C. N. Chitta Ranjan, op. cit., p. 8. This seems tome to
reveal a disabling lack of understanding of the so-called "Common Man's"
aspirations, in what was intended as an obituary judgment ofIP's life-work.
42. Swarajfor the People, p. 61.
suaded to share voluntarily a part of their wealth. . . with their
less fortunate neighbours. "43 It is simply not possible that the
"leaders of the political parties" in India could "place them
selves under a self-denying ordinance and refrain from setting
up party candidates in elections. "44 And it is wishful thinking to
expect the crooks who dominate much of India's political sys
tem to devote themselves to "the politics of service, not the
politics of power. "45
Yet much of JP's own life, in particular the climax of it,
dislodges the mocking critic from his pedestal. "Violence," he
once said, is "undemocratic," and in the sense in which he
meant it, it is, particularly in a country like India where an
overwhelming capacity and readiness to use violence against the
most defenseless is one of the main features of the political and
social system. When he wrote in his Prison Diary. on August
23, 1975, that "those wanting a change must also change
themselves before launching any kind of action," only the most
benighted detenninist, stuck with his dogmas, could dissent
from it.
But his truest vindication, together with the greatest chal
lenge he could issue to established authority, came in his appeal
to the police to disobey the orders of their superiors, if their
consciences told them they were improper. That a single indi
vidual could, like Joshua at Jericho, appear to an embattled
ruling class to be threatening the very stability of the state by
moral force alone, was the greatest tribute they could pay him.
Utilitarianism
All political philosophies, however high-flown, contain a
utilitarian element; indeed the more high-flown, often the more
covertly utilitarian. I have already indicated that JP's thought,
like Gandhi's, is a good deal less unworldly and closer to the
terrain of real practice than its idealist vocabulary might some
times indicate. Moreover, no one whose head is in the clouds
can take command of a popular revolt, as both Gandhi and JP
did, unless his feet are also planted finnly in the ground of real
struggle, against a real adversary.
JP's intennittent utilitarianism should, however, strike a
chill warning-note in those whose enthusiasm for his crusading
political morality blinds them to his statements of an ulterior
purpose which has precious little to do with Marx, Owen or
Rousseau. Behind the moral categories and the nobilities of
non-violence, it is possible to hear from time to time not so
much the call to battle of a tribune of the people, as the paternal
ist voice of a progressive utilitarian anxious-like John Stuart
Mill and Mahatma Gandhi were-to advance both the well
being and the' 'responsible" behavior of the lower orders.
43. Ibid., p. 14.
44. Ibid., p. 9.
45. J. P. Narayan, quo Nargolkar, op. cit., p. 196.
46. Swarajfor the People, p. B.
47. Ibid., p. 9.
4B. Ibid., p. 17.
49. See "On the Probable Futurity of the Labouring Classes" in J. S.
Mill, Principles ofPolitical Economy. London, IB4B.
50. SwarajforthePeople. pp. 17-IB.
51. Cf. JP's views on education, ibid., p. 22.
52. J. P. Narayan, letter of resignation from Praja Socialist Party, Dec.
21, 1957,qu. Nargolkar,op.cit.,p.61 (my emphasis).
53. Swarajfor the People, p. lB.
54. Ibid., p. 9.
Perhaps the most revealing indication of this occurs in
Swarajfor the People, where it is often much less the unleashing
of the immense power of the downtrodden of India which is at
issue, then the "strengthening" of their "consciousness"46 and
"responsibility" 47 -a hybrid combination of the strategic
thinking of Marx and Mill, dominated by the latter. There is also
no doubt at all that Mill would have assented to JP's assertion
that "good government can never be a substitute for self
government, "48 but for Mill "self-government" was an anti
dote to revolution, not a synonym for it. Indeed Mill's politics,
however radical-seeming, in fact constituted a modest program
for power-sharing with an internally colonized proletariat,
rather than for its political emancipation through the growing
scope of its self-organization.
Moreover, precisely as Mill had himself argued in his
Principles ofPolitical Economy, 49 so JP argued more than one
hundred years later: that "the remedy for backwardness [a term
he elsewhere rejected] is not to deny the people their sovereign
rigills, but to enlighten, educate and train them with as much
expedition as possible. "50 Indeed Mill feared the dangers to
established order in mid-Victorian England if the unruly ad
vance of "the masses" failed to be constructively channelled by
means of practical refonns, social progress and enlishtened
education. 51 The end in view for the subordinate classes was
nothing less than infonned and orderly political conduct, under
the democratizing patronage of their benevolent elders and
betters.
Some of the features of this utilitarian strategy can be found
scattered across the pages of JP' s writings-nowhere closely or
systematically reasoned, and by no means predominant, but
nevertheless appearing and reappearing as one of the themes of
his thought. Thus, like Jeremy Bentham, JP was capable of
thinking in terms not merely of "fashioning alternative forms of
collective behaviour," but also of "alternative forms ofsocial
control, "52 a perspective which, on the face of it, belies his
commitment to the truly democratic possibilities of "people's
power."
But there is one crucial distinction to be made between a
manipulative utilitarianism, which perceives the "lower clas
ses" to be in need of gratification and pacification, and JP's
demand that greater "responsibility" be given to the Indian
people. JP believed that the price of' 'refusal to hand over power
and opportunity to the people for self-government" was not the
overthrow of the ruling class, as Mill plainly feared, but "the
complete corrosion ofdemocracy in this country, and some kind
of dictatorship. "53 JP is counterposing "democracy" and "dic
tatorship," and arguing in a way that Bentham and Mill never
argued that' 'the withholding of responsibility. , , would lead
naturally . . . to an attitude of irresponsibility in the people, "
who would, he said, "ever be on the lookout for heroes and
miracle-makers to solve their problems. It is out of such a
psychological situation that dictators are born. "54
The Cart Before the Horse
Utilitarianism, the inevitable concomitant of all political
thought and all political practice-even the most moral of moral
philosophers is not exempted from its persuasions-is the cru
cial element in JP' s perspective. It can hardly be said to discredit
him, since it is as much part of a necessary realpolitik in a
country fronting the socio-economic problems which India
faces, as it is a characteristic symptom of the philosophy of a
leader, rather than the philosoph)' of the led.
45
The really serious difficulties and tensions within JP's
political thought are to be found elsewhere. I have already
argued that, despite certain contradictions, he had a consistent
and coherent theory of democracy, which was both potentially
progressive and deeply threatening to established power. The
same cannot be said, however, of the politico-economic theory
which is interwoven with it. Though the subject is too big to
raise more than briefly here, since it contains a major and
persisting theme of contemporary Indian politics, one thing at
least is certain: that JP's dalliance with the Spencean and Gan
dhian dream of an arcadian village economy, frozen in time, and
his belief that "a new socio-economic technology"55 could be
found for India, were founded upon hallucination.
Of course, JP himself knew that "mere harping on khadi*
and village industries will not take us far, "56 a statement which
in itself reveals his capacity for boldness in face of the Gandhian
tradition. It is also the case that he knew that the Bhoodan
movement had failed. Indeed, this knowledge provided a pow
erful impulse for his search for an alternative path, and brought
him ultimately to the leadership of the Bihar revolt. The volun
tary vesting of all village lands in the gram sabha (village
assembly), so that each person in the community might become
an equal shareholder in the landed wealth of the village, had
foundered-and always will founder until the land is expropri
ated-upon the incorrigible realities of the rural power struc
ture. JP, whatever he might hope or say, knew this as ~ e l l as
any.
Nevertheless, great and damaging havoc was wrought to
the viability of his socio-economic ideas by the variety of
incoherent influences which played upon them. It is in JP's
Prison Diary entry for September 9, 1975, for instance, that the
baleful impact on his thinking of eclectic and mutually irrecon
cilable positions is perhaps most apparent. By then, his "new
socio-economic technology" had degenerated into a random
seeming espousal of the removal of' 'unnecessary restraints" on
the private sector, the "social ownership" -not workers'
ownership-of "large establishments," the encouragement of
the self-employed producer, and community ownership organ
ized around the gram sabha. But there is no social order under
the sun in which such diverse economic structures could co
exist. Certainly "the Yugoslav pattern minus dictatorship,"
which he described (from detention) as "quite an agreeable
feature," bears no resemblance to it.
Yet there was nothing much wrong, prima facie and in
theory, with JP's earlier advocacy of economic decentraliza
tion, the development of labor-intensive technologies in in
dustry and agriculture, and the full utilization of local resources
to meet local needs, such as occurs in his November 1974
program. The trouble is not simply that India's industrial and
socio-economic development has proceeded too far for such a
reversal of time and' 'progress," but that the necessary condi
tion for the implementation of such policies in India is itself a
preceding revolutionary transformation of the structures of
land tenure, ownership and vested interest. It is to put the rural
cart before the horse. And since a bitter inter-class and inter
caste civil war over rights to land in India has been fought
unremittingly since Independence-and never more bitterly
than in the present period-such notions, pure and seductive on
paper, Cannot stand in practice, merely because they are com
manded to do so by the morally well-intentioned.
This is not to say that a pleasing symmetry of ideas is
absent from his thought at this point. JP himself sought to draw
their strands together by arguing that "a decentralized economy
would be more democratic. "
S7
1t could also, by the same token,
be a good deal less democratic. Indeed, deeper levels of rural
oppression and exploitation immediately suggest themselves in
the arguments which JP himself advances in favor of such
"decentralization"; among them, that "the element of volun
tary labour would be greater," and that "other social costs
would be much lower. "58 In fact, it is precisely for such reasons
as these that a "decentralized" rural economy is so attractive to
the more far-seeing defenders of the industrial capitalist system
in urban India.
Beyond these criticisms, ofcourse, lies another much more
sweeping diagnosis-which I do not share-of the nature of
this and all such utopian "ruralism" in Indian thought. Palme
Outt put it at its fiercest when he described "Gandhi and his
spinningwheel" as "the true prototype of a bourgeoisie born old
without ever having known youth," and as "the consistent
expression of one aspect of capitalism in decay. "59 Further
more for Outt, writing in the early 1930s, "a descent towards a
lower technical and economic level," together with' 'the urge to
break up large-scale organization and to revert to more localized
and more primitive self-sufficient economic units," was a char
acteristic of fascism's "tendency to petrifaction. "60
Though this proposition deserves to be taken seriously
even if it is untrue, JP was neither the "passive reactionary" of
Outt's description of Gandhi, nor the crypto-fascist agent of the
CIA whom Mrs. Gandhi's Emergency needed as a political
scapegoat. Nevertheless, the allegations that JP's political
theory and practice in fact represented a radicalism not of the left
but of the right must now be examined in closer detail.
"Fascism"
The argument that JP was becoming an active agent for a
fascist takeover in India," as Rajni Patel put it on July 13, 1975,
after JP had been arrested, was a commonplace in Indian politi
cal debate from late 1974 onwards. Moreover, pointing to the
unemployed students, the "lumpen elements" and especially
the marginalized lower-middle class among his constituents
(while ignoring the hundreds of thousands of poor peasants and
workers who supported the revolt in Bihar) it was, and is,
possible to argue that Marx's brutal description of "the inde
terminate fragmented mass . . . the refuse of all classes" in the
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon
61
fitted many of the
supporters of the Bihar movement. And much of JP's thought
indicates an organicist view of the social order,. at first sight not
far removed from the corporatist ideal. Concepts of "national
consciousness" and of "national integration," coupled with an
urge to dissolve structural social differences and divisive class
conflicts into a mass movement, seem to point in all-too
familiar directions.
* Khadi: homespun cloth, symbolizing an artisan or rural economy.
55. Ibid., p. 21.
56. Ibid., p. 19.
57. Ibid., p. 22.
58. Ibid.
59. Palme Dutt, Fascism and Social Revolution. Chicago (reprint), 1974,
p.69.
60. Ibid . p. 247.
61. Karl Marx, "Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon" in Surveys
from Exile. (Fembach, D., editor), London, 1973, p. 197.
46
It is also feasible to go back to JP's foundation of the
Congress Socialist Party in 1934 and there find, in what has
been called "the urge for socialism and the restlessness of
militant nationalism that soon made the Congress Socialist Party
a force to reckon with, "62 the roots of a nearly universal
"national socialism" which accompanied the international eco
nomic crisis. Threading together these and other similarly slen
der political clues, it might then be possible to reveal the JP of
the Bihar movement as the crypto-fascist of Emergency
propaganda.
Similarly, if fascism is essentially a theory-less politics of
"action," such as Sanjay Gandhi epitomized, then judicious
selection from JP's speeches will produce many examples of the
urgency of his political protests and demands which can readily
be fitted into such a schema. Communists, it might be argued,
wait for the maturation of class forces and the class struggle,
liberal democrats permit the long and slow unfolding of elec
toral procedures to deliver their objective verdicts, but the
politician suffering from "fascistic tendencies" cannot wait.
Instead he proclaims from the roof-tops, as JP did with increas
ing frequency from 1973 to 1975, that "the Time for Action is
Here and Now," and mobilizes his inchoate mass forces for a
pre-emptive coup d'etat, in order to outwit the democratic
process.
Furthermore, if you look, you can find that JP - not unlike
Sanjay Gandhi, a much more fitting claimant to the post
humous title of "fascist"-frequently called upon "Youth"
and "Yuva Shakti," Youth Power, to be "prepared for the
sacrifices necessary for playing its historic role of spearheading
the revolution. "63 Just as Mrs. Gandhi's Twenty Point program
incorporated some of the leading demands made by the Bihar
movement,64 so some of the "youth" constituency won over to
JP's banner was later to be found among the strongly "lumpen"
elements in the Youth Congress. In fact, it is arguable that the
Congress Party boosted its youth movement from 1975 onwards
precisely in order to harness for the Congress the energies which
JP had successfully unleashed against it.
Therefore, there undoubtedly is evidence, if one wishes to
assemble it selectively, for the proposition that JP's leadership
of the Bihar movement merely represented a rival populism,
with similarly "fascistic" characteristics, to that of the dynastic
rump of the Congress Party in the Emergency and post-Janata
periods.
65
And if one adds to this analysis the fact that the lana
Sangh (Hindu National Party) was always prominent in JP's
movement (and hence, thereafter, in the Janata Party), the term
"reactionary," or "right-reactionary" can be made to seem a
just and sufficient epithet to attach to Jayaprakash Narayan. At
any rate, there can be no dispute at all with the judgment that at
least some of those who "flocked to this banner ... were
believers neither in Gandhism, nor in socialism, nor in revolu
tion, total or partial. "66
The simple trouble with all the foregoing arguments,
which I have paraphrased, is that persuasive though they are
because they contain an element of truth amid falsehood, they
do not contain sufficient truth to stand up to closer examination.
The constant leitmotiv of IP's declared positions and actions, as
I have already indicated, was the defense of' 'democracy" as he
understood it, an understanding notably distinct from the views,
expressed at the time of the Bihar movement, of Atal Behari
Va jpayee that parliamentary democracy was "unseemly," and
"no longer effective. "67 Of course, Mrs. Gandhi, too, claimed
during the Emergency to be acting in defense of democracy.
IP in 1972 (photographer unknown)
But JP, unlike Mrs. Gandhi, believed that he was defending
Indian democracy against the risk of dictatorship; and not any
kind of dictatorship, but against the specific possibility of a
fascist dictatorship in India.
Yet it has to be conceded that the truth in this matter of the
"reactionary" nature of JP's politics remains a complex one.
And if it is certainly untrue that the notion of "partyless"
democracy was "anti-democratic," and itself would lead to
dictatorship in India,68 it is equally true that IP's leadership of
the Bihar movement was based on too many unquestioned
assumptions about the moral superiority of his personal princi
ples. JP's crusade against corruption, his re-emphasis of certain
traditional Indian values, his desire to see develop an indigenous
idea of democracy, and his advocacy of simplified socio
economic structures are all anticipations of some of the themes
of revolt and revival- not all of them progressive-which have
convulsed other countries in the region since the later 1970s.
62, "Analyst," Mainstream. 13.10.79, p. 3.
63. J. p, Narayan, June 23. 1974, quo Nargolkar, op. cit., p. 116.
64. Such as the demands for land reform, and for attacks to be made on
"smuggling," blackmarketeering, and hoarding.
65. E.g. inAn Eye to India, p. 90.
66, C. N. Chitta Ranjan, op. cit., pp. 8-9,
67, Atal Behari Vajpayee, qu, Nargolkar, op. cit., p. 175,
68. Ibid., p. 130.
47
There is one further level of understanding which cannot be
excluded from the discussion: namely, that IP was at heart a
permanent "outsider" in relation to the small political estab
lishment which had ruled, and has continued to rule, India since
Independence. In consequence his politics, from his earliest
career until its conclusion, was likewise a continuous reaction to
Congress hegemony and the deepening misgovernment of
India, which was to continue unchecked throughout the lanata
period. We do not, therefore, have far to look for an explanation
of a rhetorical style which, as S. K. Ghose has put it, was often
"agitational and apocalyptic. "69 The apocalyptic tone of his
discourse cannot, of itself, establish a commonality of intention
with the obscurantists who joined him. It is also defamatory to
suggest that he had anything of substance in common with those
who, having imprisoned him, went on to demolish, in the name
of democracy, much of the apparatus of the rule of law, the
prerogatives of Parliament and the rights of the individual.
Instead, JP's deepest belief-despite his forays into utili
tarianism-seems always to have been that "the only remedy"
for India was "for the people to take their fate into their own
hands, and shape it according to their will. "70 It represented a
profoundly democratic commitment. Moreover, from at least as
early as 1961, and perhaps earlier, he had warned with repeti
tious consistency, and in increasingly Cassandra-like terms,
that for the "fate of the country" to be "in the hands of a few
great leaders" was "a very unstable state of affairs" and
"likely to lead to national paralysis. "71 "The democratic proc
ess" was being "strangulated,"72 and "the whole edifice of
democracy" was liable to "topple at the adventurer's touch. "73
"Unless steps were taken to preserve democracy, sporadic
violence followed by dictatorship" would be "inevitable"; 74
and "a 'strong' centre would gradually move away from
democracy, and become more and more totalitarian. " "It is not
without reason, " he added, "that those in India who advocate a
unitary form of government have marked fascistic tenden
cies. "75 Such views were not those of someone who was him
self an "active agent for a fascist takeover in India."
Apogee aDd Imprisonment
As early as May 22, 1974, at Vellore, IP-subsequentlyto
be accused on the left of "not being an organizer," and of not
being "an integral part of the nationwide upsurge of the
masses' '76-had declared that "the future of Bihar, nay that of
India, lies in the consolidation of the organized power of the
masses. "77
As the Bihar movement rose through late 1974 and early
1975 to its massive climax, these and other arguments about
JP's politics and purpose were briefly lost in the roars of an
aroused people. The mass strike of October 3, 1974, the huge
march on Patna on November 4, the plans to set up a parallel
"people's government" (or system of dual power) in Bihar for
"the reconstruction of society on the basis of equality and the
elimination of poverty, oppression and exploitation," the de
veloping signs of the movement's spread to other states ofIndia,
and the threat to gherao (picket/surround) the Delhi parliament
early in March 1975 seemed for a moment to be bringing the
Bihar movement to the gates of national power.
"I want you to see it," IP had told a vast crowd at
Kurukshetra on November 27, 1974, "that the regime at the
centre headed by Shrimati Indira Gandhi is . . . dislodged. She
has assumed the role of a solitary leader like a dictator, and has
ignored the people." In conclave at Narora during the same
month, the Congress leaders had begun to plan a political
counterattack which would ultimately take thousands, including
IP, to jail and attempt to overthrow the Constitution. An extra
parliamentary mass movement for the redress of popular griev
ances, cutting across party boundaries, caste loyalties and class
organizations, had brought a man allegedly without ambition,
and "unable to forge the instruments of change," face to face
with the whole apparatus of corrupt Congress power.
And what was subsequently alleged on the left to have been
no more than "an outburst of anger at inequity and injustice" 78
was met by a huge show of armed force in Patna and assailed on
all sides as India moved towards precisely the form of dictatorial
rule which JP had feared and provoked into being. Thus H. N.
Bahuguna, one of the foremost and least scrupulous of JP's
assailants, denounced him in Lucknow on March 10, 1975 (in a
rhetoric close to that of Mrs. Gandhi herself) for "shattering the
people's confidence in their fight against poverty ... at a time
when India is facing external dangers," for "demoralizing the
people. "79
Worse, and' 'unnerved by the spontaneity and massiveness
of the popular demonstration," as Nargolkar has correctly put
it,80 as well as by the moral challenge of non-violence to a
Congress regime brutalized by unchallenged years of power,
Mrs. Gandhi lashed IP for "fomenting anarchy, violence and
terror." Transferring to him responsibility for the murder of
L. N. Mishra, * she accused him of "undermining the roots of
democracy while simultaneously masquerading as its
saviour. "81 The climax of this confrontation was to be a crush
ing one for Jayaprakash Narayan, but in these moments of its
apogee, Gandhi's political and moral successor was the focus of
widespread hopes in India and beyond.
But JP was playing with fire. His movement was not only
"threatening to engulf the whole country," as he himself de
scribed it, but calling Congress' bluff over its claims to be a
party committed to socialism, democracy and the people's wel
fare. In his advocacy of basic electoral reforms, in his struggle
against corrupt forms of patronage, ballot -rigging and the use of
black money in elections, he was also threatening to strike
directly at the very roots of Congress authority in the country.
"Nepotism, fraud and lying," and "the manipulation of the
masses" were JP's targets
82
No wonder that the "entire demo
... L. N. Mishra: Minister for Transport in Mrs. Gandhi's cabinet and a leading
fundraiser or her party, he was murdered in a bomb-attack on 21anuary 1975. It
was alleged that he had been silenced in order to prevent disclosures of corrup
tion. The Government refused to hold a parliamentary inquiry into the circum
stances of his death, or to publish the findings of the Central Bureau of
Investigation.
69. Mainstream, 20.10.79, p. II.
71. Ibid., p. 32.
72. 1. P. Narayan, Dec. 9, 1973.
73. SwarajforthePeople, p. 2.
74. J. P. Narayan at Begusarai, July 1974,qu. Nargolkar, op. cit., p. 129.
76. C. N. Chitta Ranjan, op. cit., 20.10.79, p. 7.
77. 1. P. Narayan, Vellore, May 22, 1974.
78. E.g. "Analyst," Mainstream. 13.10.79, p. 4.
79. H. N. Bahuguna, Bombay, March 9, 1975, quo Times of India,
10.3.75.
80. Nargolkar, op. cit., pp. 138-39.
81. Indira Gandhi, quo ArunShourie, Mainstream, 20.10.79, p. 13.
82. 1. P. Narayan. Everyman's, 28.7.73
48
cratic system" -that is, rule by the Nehru family and its im
mediate entourage-should have been said to be "hanging in
the' balance" 83 as Mrs. Gandhi's enemies, JP chief among
them, were rounded up and placed in detention.
JP as Avatar*
India is always in search of political as well as spiritual
avatars to follow. If not Mahatma Gandhi, then Jawaharlal
Nehru; if not Nehru, then Indira Gandhi; if not Indira Gandhi,
then Jayaprakash Narayan; most recently (and most absurdly),
Sanjay Gandhi. And after Sanjay Gandhi, who? The guru
figure and the chamcha (follower, retainer, hireling) define one
crucial aspect both of political structure and political behavior in
India.
But it was a deep irony, in JP's case, that he should have
been chosen by millions to be such an avatar for them, when he
himself genuinely wished the Indian people to be politically
mature enough not to need it. Indeed, his hope for a' 'renewal of
democracy" was linked very closely to his hope for such a
"maturation" which would make "the people" "worthy" of
asserting their power over the polity. In fact he mistook the
reasons for this supposed "immaturity," seeing it as a symp
tom, once again, of an "inorganic" system of democracy.
Moreover, he made the same mistake in his diagnosis of the
reasons for the concentration of power in the hands of a caucus.
Both are the products of feudalized social and economic rela
tions, with which his version of "democracy" cannot in any
case coexist. It is a matter of historical record, and of political
logic, that both these phenomena-the political credulity of the
electorate and the concentration of caucus power-were to
manifest themselves even more disastrously for India after his
death and the collapse of the Janata Party.
An even greater irony, also with its own logic, was that
independent India's first experiment with dictatorship, whose
rise he had always feared if his pleas went unheeded and
"democracy" failed, should have claimed him in 1975 as one of
its first victims. And it was equally logical that he and others
should then have been tarred with the brush of "extra
constitutionality" and "right reaction," accused by Mrs.
Gandhi of receiving funds from the CIA and capitalist interests
and of being a fascist.
But beyond irony, and beneath contempt, were the tributes
paid to JP's corpse on its cremation-ground. To Mrs. Gandhi,
"all his activities were imbued with patriotic fervour" and "his
life," which she had helped to end, was "a source of in
spiration. "84 To H. N. Bahuguna, "the light which time and
again showed the path to the nation is out"; his death, he added,
was "too deep for tears. "85 And so on.
It was to the accompaniment of such funeral eulogies that
"the individualist without an eye for details"86 and the man
who had "not made an original contribution to political
thought" (his own judgement
87
) joined the pantheon of the
other lost hopes of India. He left behind him an unabated and
unresolved dispute about the characterization of his politics and
morality, as well as what was well described as "the noise of
hypocritical homage. "88 Facile interpretations of his life-work
denoted it as the "politics of populist illusion," 89 the product of
"a vague concern for humanity at large, "90 as a deceptive and
unoriginal remaking of "classical anarchism, "91 as "a career
bereft of consummation, "92 and so forth.
The truth, as I have tried to show, is different and a good
deal more complex. But what is entirely clear, as far as the
realpolitik of the left is concerned, is that JP's utopian struggle
for a "partyless democracy," had it gained further ground,
would have begun seriously to undercut and disrupt the Indian
socialist, communist and trade union movements. Progressive
forces, already insufficiently strong and disablingly divided,
could not have afforded the attempt to build permanent and
alternative mass organizations. Moreover, JP notwithstanding,
the necessity for a'party-led, not partyless, democracy, from
Delhi to the panchayat level, has never been clearer.
Nevertheless, JP's legacy to India is a profound one. In
order to get to the' heart of it at a time of deepening political
regression, we can afford to brush aside his view that "the class
conflict approach at the village level is likely to help least those
very sections of the community that stand most in need of it. "93
The inter-class and inter-caste struggle over land-rights in India
is not a matter of recommendation or disapproval-both of
them equally utopian-but of the ineradicably opposed inter
ests of the landed and landless.
Instead, as India (especially from 1975 onwards) has step
by-step moved further and faster than ever away from the
decentralization of power, and away from the struggle against
corruption which JP sought to wage for the "people's welfare,"
it is salutary to be reminded of perhaps the finest of all JP's
moral-political declarations: that "if there is corruption, man
ipulation of the masses, naked struggle for personal power and
personal gain, there can be no socialism, no welfarism, no
democracy, no justice and no freedom. "94 And we might add,
no communism either. Moreover, such an assertion, not easily
arrived at by any other political-ideological route than the one he
travelled, serves as a fitting memorial to Jayaprakash Narayan's
life and thought, and an equally fitting rebuke to his critics. '*
* Avatar: Incarnation of a deity.
83. K. D. Malaviya at Narora, Nov. 1974.
84. Indira Gandhi, quo Hindu (International Edition), 2.2.80.
85. Qu. Arun Shourie, op. cit., p. 13.
86. "Analyst," ibid., p. 3.
87. Swarajforthe People, intro. [po 21.
88. C. N. China Ranjan, op. cit., p. 7.
89. David Selboume, Monthly Review, Dec. 1979, p. 31.
90. M. Masani, op. cit., p. 17.
91. Ibid.
92. "Analyst," op. cit., p. 5.
94. J. P. Narayan, quo Nargolkar, p. 187.
49
India's Rural Development
by T.G. Cannon
Marcus Franda views his book as:
a modest attempt by an American deeply concerned with
India to understand the broad contours of Indian rural de
velopment and to assess the myriad options open to Indian
leadership. (p. ix)
But it is a book which fails to live up to its title in two ways. The
range of rural development alternatives is unbalanced, and it is
not really an assessment. He provides only a vague indication of
the criteria for such an assessment, and in any case he never
actually states which of the alternatives (if any). are in view
necessary and possible. But perhaps he has a dIfferent VIew of
what it means to assess something. If we redefine it as an
exploration (description?) of "the record of Indian politicians
during the past 30 years in promoting rural development pro
grams" and "the new initiatives of the Janata government and
their likely outcome," (p. x) we might still have a useful book.
And it is true that because of the study's emphasis on the Janata
Government (1977-\980) Franda has provided a survey of
some value in understanding that sorry party's rise.
However, even this does not absolve him, for an examina
tion of the past record or new initiatives cannot be done without
a clear thesis and basic criteria by which to judge them. Such a
framework is lacking, and instead we have the author's eclectic
approach and ill-defined analysis of the classes in Indian society
and their relationship to the State. The nearest he appears to get
to some sort of thesis is in the penultimate chapter, which
begins:
the Indian poor tend to secure fewer benefits from develop
ment programs than do the better-off segments ofthe popula
tion because the poor are relatively unorganized and una
ware of their potential for national political influence. (p.
227)
It would appear, then, that the criteria to be used in judging
development is whether or not a program benefits more than Just
those people already better-off. There is no questioning of the
nature of the State which is attempting to implement such
strategies nor of the programs themselves, nor whether they are
at all intended for the poor. For Franda, development should be
for all, and is something made available by a benevolent State,
whose intention would be fulfilled if the poor were better or
ganized. Thus in his conclusion, he says:
There has been a determined governmental effort since the
mid-I960s to stimulate production. particularly in food-
Review
INDIA'S RURAL DEVELOPMENT: AN ASSESS
MENT OF AL TERNA TIVES by Marcus Franda.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979. 306.pp.
grains, but success has only spotlighted the vast inequalities
and intense degrees ofhuman degradation still present in the
Indian countryside. (p. 258)
It is as if he believes this effort could have benefitted all,
that there is no relation between the so-called success in grain,
the inequalities, and the Green Revolution strategy which is
used. This centralist view of rural development as a process
initiated from above by a benevolent State apparatus is a crucial
failing. The role of government and the State is seen as some
thing above classes and exploitation, and Franda's ability to
make an assessment (even on his own terms) is constrained.
To understand the nature oflndia's problems, it is neces
sary for Franda to use categories which contain the notion of
exploitation and oppression. For example, he speaks of "rich"
or "elite" groups, and sometimes "classes," along with
"poor," "backward," "exploited" and "outcast." The lack
of precision is excusable, since there is not even any clear
Marxist analysis of social classes in India, let alone a well
worked out position on the diversity of relations of production,
the modes of production themselves or their relations to the
caste system. What is inexcusable is Franda's. fai!ure to
stand the relationship between the State, explOItatIOn, the rulIng
classes (or elites if he wills) and the nature of the development
strategies he describes. This shows up not just in the treatment
of Congress and Janata initiatives as possible strategies, but also
in the way the current Left Front Government in West Bengal is
seen as another alternative to be pulled out of the bag. Thus the
"assessment of alternatives" for rural development is reduced
to a pragmatic and empiricist look at a few projects, at the
Congress and Janata record, with a quick survey of Bihar and
West Bengal thrown in.
Coupled with the way in which State and strategy are
separated from class and exploitation is Franda's vie,:" of the
relationship between the masses and government. Smce the
State is above class, it is the State's job to initiate and encourage
rural development on behalf of the masses. For Franda, the
exploited groups, the poor peasants, landless, outcasts, are
always having things done for them. He sees no role .the
masses except as passive receivers of such proposals. ThIS VIew
of the poor comes through repeatedly:
The rural poor are still too unorganised to affect elite domi
nance appreciably. (p. 72)
50
The absence offull and rewarding employment opportunities
forces villagers either to search for local patrons-which
usually leads to exploitative relationships-or, increas
ingly, to move into the cities. Widespread acceptance of a
third alternative-to remain under patronized, unemployed,
and undernourished in the countryside-has resulted in
extensive degradation in Indian rural life. (p.77)
This view embodies two of the traditional Western and
Indian ruling class attitudes-that Indian people are passive and
the revolution in India is impossible (and ofcourse undesirable).
Such attitudes are but little removed from the myth of the lazy
native, and do not begin to explain the causes of such disunity
and apparent inaction. As a result the masses are always pre
sented in a very negative light, and their own struggles and
initiatives to overcome their exploitation and oppression are
disregarded as impractical.or misguided.
Conversely, Franda tends to see the only chance for activ
ity by the masses in terms of government initiatives. Certainly,
any initiatives by the exploited classes on their own account
have been deemed dangerous because the "result was consider
able violence which ultimately worked to the detriment of the
poor." (p. 137)
What has been said so far constitutes a criticism of Fran
da's basic approach to rural development, the problems of the
thesis he has used, and his eclecticism in his treatment of the
"myriad options" supposedly open to the government. The
bulk of the book is made up of an "assessment" of these
choices. The result is a journalistic journey through the jumble
of options which is at once useful and limited by the very
pragmatism of the choices. For those who want an overview of
Indian Government policies in rural development, here you
have a reasonably useful book, particularly for the treatment of
the Janata government period, and its supposed greater orienta
tion towards rural India. There is an attempt to identify specific
Janata policies, and to contrast these with the Congress rule up
to 1977. One whole chapter is devoted to a discussion of the
Janata phase, and other references are useful, given the general
lack of material on this period.
Other chapters are devoted to the functioning of rural credit
and co-operatives, rural industrialization, the role of voluntary
agencies and Panchayati Raj (supposed village self-govern
ment). These suffer from being treated as pragmatic options and
strategies. It is as if the right combination of policies will
transfonn rural India. There is no recognition of the link between
such policies and the class nature of the governments engaged in
their implementation,the relation of the State and the masses, or
the potential for "non-pragmatic" options which involve a
revolutionary change in social relations and land tenure.
It is also interesting that the book lacks any detailed consid
eration of land tenure, and its fundamental importance to any
understanding of rural development. Land reform and land
problems are mentioned in passing, and in two short sections on
recent events in Bihar and West Bengal. These occur in a
chapter on "StlUctural Change: caste and agrarian reform,"
wherein Bihari struggles are described but no position taken up
on which strategy is most appropriate. By contrast, the discus
sion on West Bengal concentrates on the events since the new
Left Front government took power (1977) and the impact of the
dominant Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) policies.
Franda views the CPM attempts as "an alternative strategy,"
as if a policy which seeks to change land tenure and social
relations in a fundamental way can be treated as one of the
myriad choices available to whoever is in power. The fact that
this is a popular, elected left government has seemingly per
suaded him Qf the need to grant their policies "strategy" status.
Even allowing for the reformist nature of the policies, Franda
cannot really see that there is a distinct qualitative difference
between the West Bengal "experiment" and any other policy in
the rag-bag. The difference is that at least the Left Front recog
nizes that land tenure and social relations have to be altered
before rural development can take place. This marks it out as
something very different, and marks Franda out as someone
who is incapable of providing any real assessment of alternative
strategies-existing, potential, reformist or revolutionary.
The earlier chapters are marred too in another way, be
cause oftheirlack of balance . For instance, the chapter on Rural
Credit and Co-operatives begins with a brief history of money
lending, but does not relate moneylending and its modem al
ternatives to land tenure or class relations at all. Government
attempts to encourage nationalized banks to spread throughout
lUral India-arguably one of the most significant moves in the
1970s - is treated in a mere six pages. More space is devoted to
51
producer co-operatives than to credit co-operatives, and special
attention is paid to the Anand Milk Producers' Union Limited
(AMUL) in Gujarat. This is supposedly the "model" for "Op
eration Flood," a "profit-making venture that seeks to create a
nationwide grid of milk co-operatives for more than 10 million
farmers by the mid-1980's ... " (p. 58). Franta then quotes
approvingly from Malkin (Time magazine), who said that, "It is
not exaggeration to view the movement as a democratic alterna
tive to China's authoritarian rural communes." (Franda, p. 58).
Franda's disdain for China and other socialist countries also
shows in his remark in the preface that:
Indian leadership probably has more experience with the
vast array of experiments in rural development that have
been undertaken in this century than any national leadership
anywhere in the world. (p. ix)
Apart from this subjective and eclectic treatment, the chapter is
also marred by the lack of discussion of the "Agricultural
Refinance Corporation" (ARC). This body (which in any case
was revamped as the Agricultural Refinance and Development
Corporation in 1975) gets a mere three-line mention (p. 47) even
though earlier Franda had described the "ARC" as "the most
impressive credit agency in India" (p. 27). He also fails com
pletely to mention another significant para-governmental body,
the Agricultural Finance Corporation.
The chapter on "Voluntary Action" fails to mention any of
the widespread attempts by peasants, outcastes, plantation
workers and other exploited classes to form unions or other
organizations to fight for basic (often already legislated) rights.
The role of left and communist groups and parties is ignored.
Instead, he briefly mentions the experience of some of the
Janata constituents (J. P. Narayan, the right-wing Jana Sangh),
and some of the charitable, voluntary and social work bodies
active in a few scattered projects. It is here that Franda's
reformism is clearly illustrated, together with his naivete and
occasional banality. For instance, in showing how Janata's
government recognizes the value of voluntary action to rural
development he describes how:
Soldiers in the Indian army are being asked to engage in
rural development activities in the northeast territories of
Nagaland and Mizoram . .. (p. /8/).
To fail to penetrate any deeper than this in explaining the army's
presence in the northeast is to mislead the reader. Again, he
describes how:
another Janata initiative receiving considerable attention is
Antyodaya, whose goal is to provide economic sustenance
for the five poorest families in the village, with the state
paying the program's cost and villagers themselves deciding
whichfivefamilies are to benefit . .. (p. /83).
I can only describe this scheme as an insult, for apart from being
less than a drop in the ocean, he fails to even appreciate the
conflicts which would be created amongst villagers, let alone
the questions of who chooses the five families or how the social
relations are going to be changed.
In all, this is a book which is of some limited use to initiates
who wish to fill out their know ledge ofthe J anata period. But for
those who want a basic introduction to India's rural develop
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52
I
I
Indian Defense Forces and Arms Production
by Anonymous
Introduction
The role of defense industries in capitalist development has
not received the attention the subject deserves.
1
Recently a
number of writers
2
have begun to express a renewed interest in
the subject. These studies have occurred, however, without
focusing much on the role which defense industries play in the
industrial development of several contemporary Third World
states. A particularly important state in this regard is India.
A methodological problem which arises in any examina
tion ofthe role which defense industries play in a state's indus
trial development is the degree to which almost all industry can
be linked to defense. Here a definition that is adhered to is one
which recognizes the importance which a defense sector plays in
the health and growth of many industrial economies. This view
then sees defense industry as an integral part of a whole and of
all successful industrial development. In a case like India, as its
industrial development has progressed, its economy has become
increasingly tied to the growth of its defense industries. This has
manifested itself in a rising level of domestic aramaments pro
duction and the quantity oflndian arms exports.
The theory that defense industry may lie at the heart of
capitalist development can first be found in the work of Rosa
Luxemburg
3
in which she saw problems of capital realization
being alleviated by expenditure on arms. The importance of
defense industries, while neglected, has nevertheless a long
pedigree among some economists. 4 Benoit
S
has shown that
contemporary defense expenditure in developing countries,
rather than being wasteful, actually stimulates economic
growth.
Defense Industries and Industrialization in Japan
Before examining the Indian case, a word should be said
concerning the Japanese experience of development which
holds some important lessons for India, particularly in the field
of defense industry. 6 From the early Meiji period there was an
awareness in Japan of the dangers of relying too much on
foreign capital for industrial development and the threat which
the imperialist powers posed to Japan's independence. To safe
guard this independence, Japan's leaders sought to build a
modem industrial state by the quickest means available. This
led to what has been characterized as the "unique features of
Japanese industrialization."7 This was because ofan overriding
sense of vulnerability and concurrent need for a strong defense
base. The aim was to establish industry not for its own sake but
53
for strategic reasons, laying the basis of a modem Army and
Navy. This led to the creation of heavy industries, and the
necessity of the state to undertake the development of arma
ments as well as other industries. The private sector, which
remained pre-capitalist in methods and outlook at the time, was
too small and incapable of developing these by itself. In this
sense industrialization in Meiji'Japan can be equated with mili
tarization, as special attention was paid by the Japanese imperial
state to industrial development that was of strategic importance.
This included such features as shipbuilding, mines, steel and
communications.
8
The normal classical European order for capitalist develop
ment was reversed. Instead oflight industries first springing-up,
and gradually permitting a transition to heavy industry, in Japan
heavy was built first for strategic reasons, and in a short
space of time equalled Western technology in the field of arma
ments. This stress on heavy industry first, however, led to the
continued existence of a traditional small trader and handicrafts
sector co-existing with the most modem of heavy industry, a
pattern which has been repeated in India.
As Meiji Japan's industrial development progressed, the
early stress that this put on military industries had a stimulating
effect on all industrial sectors, boosting self-sufficiency. In
I. The only study in recent years is that by Emile Benoit, Defense and
Economic Growth in Developing Countries (Lexington, 1973). A more substan
tive discussion of the role of defense in economic growth can be found in a
forthcoming thesis (1981) of Gautam Sen, Department of International Rela
tions, London School of Economics.
2. Gavin Kennedy, The Economics ofDefence (Totowa, 1975). Asbjom
Eide and Marek Thee, Editors. Problems ofContemporary Militarism (London.
1980). Andre Gunder Frank, "Anns Economy and Warfare in the Third
World," Third World Quarterly Vol. 2 No.2, April 1980.
3. Rosa Luxemburg, Accumulation ofCapital-An Anti-Critique (New
York, 1972).
4. Kennedy, Gavin, op. cit.
5. Benoit, op. cit.
6. E. H.Norman, Origins of the Modern Japanese State (New York:
Pantheon, 1975). lon Halliday, The Political History ofJapanese Capitalism
(New York: Pantheon, 1977).
7. Norman, ibid., p. 224.
8. Ibid. This strategic motive was evident in the building of railroads, just
as occurred in colonial India. More recently in India the massive roadbuilding
activities of the Border Roads Organization has had far-reaching effects on the
economic, political and social spheres of the border areas.
some areas of the economy, as enterprises became fully de
veloped they were divested of by the state, and transferred into
private hands. This early stress on strategic industries built by
the state as an engine of industrial development gave strength to
Japanese bureaucrats who thereby came to exercise a large
degree of control over both public as well as the private sectors
of the economy. Even after some industries in Japan were
placed in private hands, the defense bias of Japan's industry
continued to playa central role in the economy right up to 1945.
One fourth of annual public expenditure was spent on defense
industries and numerous loans were floated to underwrite their
cost. Familiar effects of this were the rising rates of domestic
inflation and the increasing rates of taxation imposed to finance
defense development. 9
There was another, more disturbing feature of Japanese
industrial development-tied as it was to defense production.
This was the crisis such development engendered, inherent to
the expansion of defense production, which is necessary in all
modern arms industries. In order to absorb the tremendous
output of arms, the Japanese imperial state may have been
prompted to engage in imperialistic wars in an almost classic
example of the Luxemburg thesis. 10 That is, arms production
had its own imperatives.
Implications
These features of Japanese development have implications
for analyses of the arms production sectors of all developed and
developing industrial economies. These analyses can be applied
to those states who have developed not just defense industries
but who have created a fairly wide industrial base, the two being
interrelated. The most important analyst and proponent of the
view that arms production was one of the keys to understanding
advanced capitalist economies was Michael Kalecki.
11
In 1957
he wrote that the U.S. in the post-war period had become
dependent on the continuous production of armaments-a
structure that Dwight Eisenhower characterized as the "mili
tary-industrial complex. " Kalecki's analysis was based on Rosa
Luxemburg's contention that capitalist development was depen
dent on constant expansion into "third markets," i.e. petty
commodity or feudal production which were many times found
abroad. To reach these external markets, constant military ex
pansion was necessary. Furthermore Luxemburg felt that one
way to solve the problem of surplus value in capitalism was
through armaments production. While this may have been an
extreme conclusion and one which Bukharin disagreed with, 12
it is important to recognize that arms industries are important to
the "health" of all industrialized countries. Defense develop
ment and arms expenditure are important to most if not all
national economies in maintaining profitability, a healthy rate
of reinvestment and of generating exports, not just of arms
alone. In fact arguments about the "wasteful" aspect of arms
industry are misguided 13 as defense industries generate long
term gains in technological knowledge through their huge re
search and development programs. These eventually boost the
overall level of production.
Today arms industries and exports which they generate are
an important part of the economic health of the USA, USSR,
France, U.K., Israel, W. Germany and in future will increas
ingly playa similar role for Japan, India, Brazil and perhaps
China. 14 While the superpowers participate in the world arms
trade partly for strategic political reasons and not just the eco
nomic alone, economic determinants do playa role. The U. S. is
the largest supplier of arms in the world and while the arms
component of its total exports is small, defense industries are an
important part of its domestic economy. This has become partic
ularly striking in the post-1979 period as what is characterized
as a "new cold war economy" emerges, which may lead to a
new boom period in the U. S. economy accompanied by rampant
inflation. ISIt will also have important political implications.
While some analysts have argued over the actual size of the
Soviet defense sector few argue over its relative importance to
the Soviet economy. 16 In this sense then the Soviet Union is no
different from states characterized as "developed capitalist."
The USSR is the second largest supplier of arms in the world
market and am1S constitute more than 10 percent of total Soviet
exports.
In France also defense industries are important and it is the
third largest supplier followed by Britain and then W. Germany.
In all these three, commercial motives are more explicitly evi
dent. In order to survive, modern defense industries must op
erate economies of scale and this generates massive excess
capacity. Only through exports can such industries hope to
survive. The economic compUlsions of defense industry mani
fest themselves in two ways:
1) Their importance to the overall economic health of a
country's economy by the generation ofjobs and its creation
ofa demand on other sectors ofan economy.
2) The need of defense industries to maintain large scale
production results in a needfor large guaranteed markets.
Even in states like contemporary Japan which seemed after 1945
an exception, immune to pressures for expanding its defense
industries, economic compulsions are leading to a return to a
reliance on a defense industry. In October 1979 under the
auspices of Keidanren a conference was held in Tokyo with
representatives of Japan's defense industry and from govern
ment. 17 Their conclusion was that as Japan faces narrowing
markets for its industrial goods, Japan should start expanding
and exporting its arms production in a big way.
9. Ushisaburo Kobayashi, War and Armament Taxes of Japan (New
York, 1922) and War and Armament Loans ofJapan (New York, 1922). Ono
Giichi, War and Armament Expenditure ofJapan (New York, 1922).
10. Luxemburg, op. cit.
II. Michael Kalecki, The Last Phase in the Transformation ofCapitalism
(London, 1972). It is a contentious point whether defense industries are im
portant to the growth of just capitalist economies alone or to all industrial
economies. Further whether those states characterized as being non-capitalist
are actually so. This in cases where defense industries clearly play an important
role to their economic growth as in the Soviet Union.
12. Nikolai Bukharin, Imperialism and the Accumulation ofCapital (New
York, 1972); and Luxemburg op. cit. Appendix. Fritz Sternberg, The Coming
Crisis-Is a crash far worse than that of 1929 inevitable? (London, 1947)
posited that in the post-war period a 'war preparation economy' would be the
predominant pattern in capitalism.
13. The 'wasteful' expenditure of the U.S. space program tied as it was to
defense industries generated tremendous technological advances. These gains
have gradually translated themselves into wider fields ofcommercial production
benefitting all U.S. industry by raising their technological level.
14. China's arms industries, while having a very large scale, have not thus
far exhibited as blatantly the commercial aspects of some other states' defense
industries. Its arms transfers have been mostly on a grant basis rather than
through sales. Whether this remains the case in the future will have to be seen.
Bernard Grossman, "The PLA-economic aspects," Revue du Sud-est Asia
tique et de l' extreme Orient No.2, 1969.
54
India: Defense Industries and Industrialization
Since 1947 India has embarked on a path which seeks to
develop its productive forces and through this process ulti
mately strengthen the state as well as those controlling it.
Thought and planning at the State level has gone into this
process. Beginning with the Bombay Plan of 1944,18 followed
by the 1948 Industrial Policy Resolution and, in 1956 a second
Industrial Policy Resolution, the government has taken upon
itself the role of builder of India's heavy industries and high
technology skills. This has created a so-called "mixed econ
omy" which in reality consists of an important state sector
which is augmenting, assisting and complementing the private
sector of the Indian economy. 19
India is then a state capitalist system, a form of state
capitalism which is specific to several post-colonial societies
(post-1945). 20 At the head ofthis political-economic system are
bureaucratic captains, the bureaucratic component of the ruling
class. It is they who guide and plan the direction of the Indian
state's development. They are not owners but controllers of a
portion ofthe productive forces contained in the state. They play
a role of mediation between contending capital formations with
in India, such as a rural landed class and big urban bourgeoisie.
The Indian state capitalist system is therefore composed of an
alliance of forces found in several post-colonial states. These
are:
1) Native big business;
2) Small urban traders, professionals, Army, academics,
and bureaucrats;
3) Landlords, moneylenders, and rich peasants.
Without analyzing each group and the complementing role each
plays in the structure of the Indian state, suffice it to say that in
the absence of anyone of these groups achieving a hegemonic
position, it is the bureaucrats who mediate in such a way as to
direct the Indian state to the benefit of all of them. One of the
manifestations oflndia' s state capitalism is the growing defense
15. Business Week. 21 Jan. 1980.
16. John Markoff, "Strategic Failure: The Economic War Against the
Soviet Union," Pacific Research Vol. X No.3, 1979.
17. Connected to this was the earlier setting-up in Tokyo of an Institute of
Peace and Security modeled on the !ISS in London. In January 1980 a
'non-profit' think tank for Japanese defense technology was formed. Composed
of representatives of Keidanren, Japan Ordinance Association, Society of
Japanese Aerospace Companies, Japan Shipbuilders Association, Honda and
four defense-related organizations. TranslationsjromJapan No. 93, 1980.
18. S. C. Jha, Studies in the Development of Capitalism in India (Cal
cutta, 1963).
19. Sumitra Chishti, "India's Foreign Economic Policy, " Indian Foreign
Poliev. Bimal Prasad (ed.), (New Delhi, 1979).
20. V. I. Pavlov ,India: Economic Freedom Vs.lmperialism (New Delhi,
1963). Issa Shiv ji, "Tanzania: The Silent Class Struggle" and Thomas Szentes,
"Status-Quo and Socialism," Socialism in Tanzania, Saul and Cliffe (eds.),
(Dares Salaam, 1973). Charles Bettleheim,lndia Independent (London, 1968).
Paresh Chattopadhyay. "State Capitalism in India," Monthly Review, March
1970. Prabhat Patnaik, "Imperialism and the Growth of Indian Capitalism,"
Studies in the Theory of Imperialism, Owen and Sutcliffe (eds.), (London,
1972).
21. OnkarMarwah and J. D. Pollack, Military Power and Policy in Asian
States: China, India, Japan (Boulder, 1980).
22. Economic and Commercial News, 20 May 1972.
23. K. Subramanyam, "Planning Defence Production," Times of India,
24 Jan. 1980.
24. Marwah, op. cit.
25. Economic and Commercial News. 22 Jan. 1972.
sector which gives a further indication of the nature of this
system.
Whatever the exact definition of state capitalism one uses
to describe India, its development has resulted in certain eco
nomic determinants inherent to the process itself. These are that
all capitalist development, as it unleashes productive forces,
always occurs at the expense of some other sector of an econ
omy or society, i. e. it must find sources for its capital accumula
tion and later ground for reproduction of that capital. In this
sense it becomes a rule of capitalist development that, to mobil
ize productive forces, sources of sustenance must be found.
Therefore as industrial development progresses, it must con
stantly seek to expand its base, in order to maintain its health
(i.e. growth) and the economies of scale it needs to survive. If it
is to continue to take place, this capitalist industrial expansion
must go further and further afield as more areas of a domestic
economy become saturated by the scale of industrial develop
ment. When this domestic sector has become exhausted, either
temporarily or permanently, this capitalist expansion continues
by going abroad particularly in a search of markets and invest
ment opportunities.
The Arms and Defense industries of India occur in a
particular context bearing some resemblance to features found
in the defense industries ofother states as well as having features
unique to itself. The foundations of India's defense industries
were laid during the colonial period for servicing the British
imperial armies. The first colonial ordinance factory was built in
1793. When Britain became involved in the 20th century in two
world wars it became acutely necessary to equip the British
Indian army in India. This was remedied by the building-up of
defense industries in India-mostly ordinance factories. These
p!a.yed an important role in India's early industrial development
and, along with railways, formed in a nascent fashion the heavy
industrial base for the public sector in post-1947 India.
All of India's defense industry is currently in the public
sector. In 1973 there were 30 ordinance factories, plus 8 public
sector defense factories for a total of 38 which employed
219,000 workers. In 1979 this had grown to over 50 defense
units employing 280,000 with a turnover of 1.33 billion dollars
and generating 1.5 million other jobs.
21
Ordinance factories
were under a Minister of State for Defence Production (See
Tables 1 & 2). The capacity of India's defense industry was
illustrated in 1971-1972 by the 400% rise in production during
the Indo-Pakistan war. 22 As can be seen in Table 2, the level and
value of India's defense production has been rising steadily with
only marginal falls in the period 1968-1978. It is gradually
becoming known that India since 1947 has become self-suffi
cient in many areas of defense (See Table 1). The defense
industries produce a full range of hardware and software, from
sophisticated electronics and aircraft to a full range of military
ancillaries. Despite many efforts to develop indigenous models
of heavy weaponry, India's defense industry in this field re
mains in part in production under license as can be seen in Table
1. 23 While India's annual announced defense expenditure only
accounts for 3.5 percent of its GOP in 1977, this figure cannot
gi ve an indication of the importance of defense industries to the
economy by the unseen activity it generates. Marwah declares
the defense sector to be the second largest industrial sector in
India.
24
In 1971-72
25
private sector sub-contracts for items
such as bomb bodies, tail units, fuses, electronics, electricals
i
I
t
I
i
t
55
Table I
InCiian Defense Forces and Arms Production: 1978-79
Total Armed Forces Total Military Budget
1977 ........ 1,055.500 1978-79 ... Rs.29,450million
Army ......... 913,000
Navy .......... 42,500
Air Force ...... 100,000
Weapons Manufactured Under Licease in India:
Soviet:
MIG-21M aircraft
Missiles
Tanks (T-72?)
MIG-23 aircraft?
French:
Alouette-3 Helicopters
Cheetah Helicopters
Naval frigate?
Mirage-5 aircraft?
xBritish:
ASW frigates
Tank (Vijayanta)
HS-748 Avro aircraft
Jaguar aircraft (cancelled 1980)
Swiss: Avionics
Indigenous Arms production:
Small arms:
Pistols. rifles, machine guns. mortars, grenades,
anti-tank. anti-aircraft guns. most artillery.
Aircraft:
HAL HIT 16 MKI & MK2 Kiran fighter/trainer
HF-24 MK 1, MKT & MK3 Marut fighter
HAC-33 Stol
HPT-32 Trainer
Target Drone
Aerojet engines-various
Naval:
Landing craft
Ship to Ship missiles
Patrol boats
Frigates
Submarine (under development. possibly under
license)
Infantry:
Main battle tank (under development)
APC, Anti-tank missiles
Ground to air missiles
Electronics
& Missiles:
Avionics. defense electronics, radars
SLY -3 IRBN (launched July 1980) SLY -5 MRBM
planned
Satellites
Source: SIPRI Yearbooks, IISS Strategic Surveys.
Table 2
Indian Arms Exports and Anns Production
Year Value of Exports Value of Total Production
1967 Rs.25.5 million Rs.450 million (1968-69)
1971-72 Rs.22.70million Rs.3, 140 million
(Rs.70.5 million)
* 1st half.
(Rs.lOO million)
1972-73 Rs.35 million
1973-74 Rs.44 million Rs.4, 174 million
(Rs.54 million)
1974-75 Rs. 196.40 million Rs.3,OOO million
1975-76 Rs.93.80 million Rs.3,620 million
(Rs.I46.50 million)
1976-77* Rs.125.80 million Rs.6,OOO million (full year)
1977-78 Rs.4.250 million
Table 3
Selected Defense Production Units' Exports
Figures in parentheses are variants.
Hindustan
Aeronautics Ltd.: Year Value
1973-74 Rs.3.2 million
(Rs.6 million)
1975 Rs.5.45 million
(Rs.4.33 million)
(Rs.5.5 million)
1976 Rs. 14 million
Bharat Elec
tronics Ltd.: Year Value
1972-73 Rs. 11 million
1975 Rs. 170 million
contracts
1976 Rs.250 million
secured
1977 Rs.340 million
(1976-77) Rs.7.5 million
(target Rs.82 million)
Mazagaon Docks: Year Value
1976-77 Rs. 104.4 million
1977-78 RS.191.2 million
26. Benoit, op. cit., predicted that the spin-off effects would become
apparent in India after 1971.
27. Subramanyam, op. cit.
28. Economic and Commercial News, 20 Jan. 1979.
29. A National Defence Council was set up in November 1962 to coordi
nate civilian and military development planning.
30. Raju Thomas, The Defence ofIndia (Delhi, 1978).
31. Subramanyam, op. cit.
32. BBC Summary ofWorld Broadcasts FE/W447/A/19 8/12/1967.
33. Indian Economic Diary, Nov. 11-17, 1972.
34. Indian Economic Diary, Jan. 29-Feb. 4, 1970.
35. Indian Economic Diary, May 6-12 and Nov. 11-17,1972.
36. Commerce, 6 May 1972. It is not known if such an organization was
set up. However a special cell exists in the Defence Ministry to coordiate
exports.
37. BBC Summary ofWorld Broadcasts, FE/W843/A/18 10 Sept. 1975.
38. Eastern Economist, 14 July 1978.
39. Swadesh Rana, "Brazil's Armament Industry," Strategic Analysis
Vol. 3 No.8, Nov. 1979.
56
and other ancillaries were worth RS.279 million. Consciousness
of the desirability of integrating the rest of the Indian economy
more fully with the defense sector has grown in India in the
1970s.
26
This to foster all-around industrial growth. 27 In 1979
ancillary defense production by the private sector was encour
aged by the signing of 28 defense project contracts worth
Rs.3,200 million.
28
The private sector is also aware of the
importance of defense to their growth and health. Their
favorite ploy in the past was 'to gain industrial licenses for items
which had a defense application in times of national "crisis."
This is what occurred in the post-1962 period following war
with China,29 when the Indian private sector reaped a windfall
in industrial licenses. In subsequent years such production
which had been licensed for defense was not utilized.
As in the case of Japan, India's defense industries and
indeed all its modem industry co-exists with small industry and
a traditional handicrafts sector. Vast areas of the domestic
economy remain outside the modem industrial sector in the
sense of having no purchasing power, a feature of subsistence
agriculture and mass poverty. Because of its small market and
despite the size of its Armed Forces (Table l) India's defense
industry shares many of the problems of all its industries,
namely chronic under-utilization of capacity. This problem
became particularly acute in the period when arms
projects initiated earlier began to come on stream.
30
In fact as
lead times for bringing projects into production have dimin
ished, and with a concurrent need to build up massive stockpiles
to fight short wars, no industrial country can afford by itself a
completely self-contained defense production base.
31
This is
because of the massive market which is needed to absorb de
fense production. Indian arms industries face therefore a classic
dilemma in order to maintain their standards and participate in
modem economies of scale. They must maintain production at a
high optimum level or they stagnate. They must expand or they
will perish.
What have other medium-sized industrial economies with
arms production done to maintain themselves? The answer has
been simply to export their arms production, selling to the
highest bidder irrespective of long term political implications.
In the absence of overall equitable development within India,
this is now occurring in India's own defense industries. In 1967
the government first hinted that excess production could be
exported to other developing countries
32
and in the same year
automatic weapons worth Rs.25.5 million were exported to Sri
Lanka. 33 In January 1970 the government confirmed that India
was exporting arms, then involving five defense factories. 34 In
1972 India was said to have exported between Rs.70.5 million
and Rs.100 million worth of arms.
35
In the same year an
additional Rs.4O million in software was sold to Nigeria, Leba
non, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. That year Indian arms sales
were becoming so big that the government was considering
setting-up a public sector organization to promote them.
36
By
1975 the Indian defense industry's export quota was set at 20
percent ofall production to be sold on a profit basis. 37 By 1978
India's exports of arms and other defense items had grown
tremendously as selective contracts show (See Table 3). One
electronics defense fIrm was exporting to over 40 countries
items worth Rs.150.9l million. One overseas contract of
Hindustan Aeronautics in 1977 was worth Rs.4O million. 38
Exports of Indian defense industries have fallen into two
categories, straight sales which are in the majority, and transfers
by the Indian government based on aid agreements. In the latter
category a number of countries have received both light as well
as heavy arms. In the former category there have been two types
of Indian arms sales:
l) Government to government sales without recourse to
agents or commissions.
2) Sales by private agents licensed by the Defense Ministry.
This last category of arms sales has led to an increasing number
of complications and embarrassments for the Indian govern
ment. Agents are said to have generated sales, later denied, of
Hunter aircraft to Pinochet's Chile and the sales of refurbished
Centurion tanks for riot duty in South Africa and tank spares to
Israel. The 7 private entrepreneurs licensed in 1979 to sell
Indian arms generated a large volume of exports to: Nigeria,
Uganda, Iraq, Singapore, Bangladesh, Kuwait, U.A.E.,
Somalia, Hong Kong, Ghana, Togo, Tanzania, Ethiopia, In
donesia, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Italy and Yugoslavia. On their
lists were over 450 exportable items, which included ammuni
tion, field guns, small arms, tanks, aircraft, radar, armored
vehicles and electronics.
That India and its arms industry is in the export business is
not surprising, occurring as it does against a background of
economic imperatives already outlined. India's position as a
Third World arms supplier is shared by another state, Brazil,
that is comparable in some ways. Brazil has a defense industry
which in 1979 exported 500 million dollars worth of arms to 33
countries in Latin America, West Asia and Africa. 39
Brazilian defense items for export include missiles, tanks,
aircraft and frigates and by volume are much bigger than India's
arms exports thus far. Like India, Brazil's huge arms segment is
integrated into the entire economy with almost 500 different
companies participating in the arms trade. A difference from
India is that much of the Brazilian defense industry is under
licensed production to W. Germany. This has not, however,
acted as a constraint on Brazilian arms exports, unlike license
agreements between India and the Soviet Union which have
inhibited the export of MIG spares from India to Egypt.
Despite efforts at concealment, India is involved today in
arms transfers. These, a natural outcome of its aim to establish
an independent arms industry, have implications for all of
India's foreign relations with other states, particularly in the
developing world. The introduction of Indian-made arms into
situations which may not be conducive to overall Indian state
aims is increasingly becoming possible. Despite declarations
that Indian arms are directed only to "friendly countries and
those who would not misuse them," commercial causes can
often outweigh political consequences. Particularly interesting
in this regard are the activities of private traders who, despite
screening, sell arms via Switzerland and Spain to countries such
as South Africa which is considered a pariah to most of the
world, including India. On the other hand India, like other
powers, is in a position to give at the government level more
than moral support to countries and liberation struggles it sup
ports such as the PLO and SWAPO.
India today joins South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, China,
Brazil and Israel as a newcomer to the international arms mar
ket. This is the result of an indigenous arms industry in India, an
integral part of its state capitalist system. These developments
are increasingly bringing India some of the features of the
developed capitalist economies despite the continuing low per
* capita income of India's population.
57
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Letters to the Editors, continued from inside front cover.
As a federal agency charged with the responsibility to
ensure the safety of nuclear power, such statements not only
erode the trust given to your Commission, but also shake the
foundation for nuclear development in the future everywhere in
the world.
As a citizen of the Republic of China where two reactors
are in operation, four are under construction and another two are
on the drawing board, I would like to register a strong protest
over the statements. I consider that the cause of potential acci
dent in any country does count. I consider that while a worst
case accident may not have a significant impact on the "global
commons," it would have a significant impact on my own
native land and people. I consider the "global commons" as the
space-ship earth in which you and I live. I also consider the lives
of my own people as precious as the Americans'. Therefore, my
government and people demand safety measures for nuclear
power plants in Taiwan as stringent as your Commission would
impose on those in the V. S.
As you are well aware, nuclear technology is a highly
sophisticated technology that is beyond the complete manage
ment of my government at this time; and as you are also well
aware, nuclear power has its potential risks that are beyond the
current means of assessment.! 2 With such understandings,
your Commission has every moral, legal and technical responsi
bility to ensure that every nuclear power plant is constructed and
operated, especially in the third world, in the safest way pos
sible. I assume that a 1979 Executive Order from President
Carter to direct federal agencies to assess the environmental
impact of V.S. activities overseas is meant precisely for that
purpose.
My government is extremely concerned with the safety and
risks of nuclear power plants because of the large number
constructed and proximity to densely populated metropolitan
areas. However, due to its deficiency of technological capabil
ity and legal binding, it has to rely largely on your Commission
and the vendors to conscientiously carry out safety require
ments. From the statements allegedly made by your Commis
sion, I am afraid that your Commission is taking advantage of
my government's trust and innocence, and is wilfully evading
the responsibility that your government has entrusted you to
take.
On behalf of the 17 million residents in Taiwan whose lives
and health have been and will be affected by your decision on
licensing, I would like to request that your deliberation be made
upon the following issues:
1) The nature and magnitude of the seismic risks and
dangers posed by (a) Chinshan Reactor's site, (b) Kuosheng
Reactor's site and (c) Yen Liao Reactor's site, and the effects on
. .
TaIwan's reSIdents and the global commons.
2) The nature and magnitude of the volcanic risks and
dangers posed by (a) Chinshan Reactor's site, (b) Kuosheng
Reactor's site and (c ) Yen Liao Reactor's site, and the effects on
Taiwan's residents and the global commons.
3) The nature and magnitude of the risks and dangers
posed by the extremely high population density around the
Reactors' sites.
4) The nature and magnitude of the risks and dangers of
typhoons
3
posed by (a) Chinshan Reactor's site, (b) Kuosheng
Reactor's site, (c) Maanshan Reactor's site and (d) Yen Liao
Reactor's site, and the effects on Taiwan's residents and the
global commons.
5) The nature and magnitude of the risks and dangers of
massive garbage from the sea
4
posed by (a) Chinshan Reactor's
site, (b) Kuosheng Reactor's site, (c) Maanshan Reactor's site
and (d) Yen Liao Reactor's site, and the effects on Taiwan's
residents and the global commons.
6) The likely environmental impact on Orchard Island and
Taiwan of the waste disposal plans.
7) The likely environmental impact derived from the dis
crepancies of criteria in procedural requirements for licensing
between the V.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the
Atomic Energy Commission of the Republic of China.
8) The likely environmental impact on fishery and mari
culture posed by (a) Maanshan Reactor's site and (b) Yen Liao
Reactor's site.
9) Generic safety questions posed by all nuclear power
plants and by Westinghouse in particular.
Until these issues mentioned above are given satisfactory
attention and research, I wish to beg for your delay in your
recommendation for reactor export to Taiwan.
President Carter directed on April 22, 1977 that in his
words "reactor safety and standards should be strengthened and
enforced." I strongly urge upon you to strengthen and enforce
reactor safety and standards also for those exported to Taiwan
and elsewhere.
Dr. Aheame, we are all in the global commons. Let us
work together to end forever' 'the tragedy of the commons" S by
having a global concern at least for safety issues of nuclear
power.
Sincerely yours,
Lin Jun-yi, Ph.D.
Chairman, Biology Department,
Tunghai Vniv.
Taichung, Taiwan
President, The Asian Ecological Society,
Taichung
October 31, 1980
Notes
I. Sorensen B. 1979. Nuclear power: the answer became a question. An
assessment of accident risks. Ambio 8(1): 10-17.
2. Union of Concerned Scientists. 1977. The risks of nuclear power
reactors. A review ofthe NRC Reactor Safety StudyWASH-I400(NUREG-75/
014).
3. An unexpected accident of serious proportion (interrupted supply of
cooling water) took place on the night of August 27, 1980 as a result of typhoon
Norris sweeping seaweeds and an untold quantity of garbage from the sea into
the cooling waste intake pipes for Chinshan Reactors.
4. An unexpected accident took place on the night of August 19, 1980 as a
result of an untold quantity of floating plants and garbage from the sea blocking
the cooling water intake pipes for Chinshan Reactors.
5. Hardin, G. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science 162:1243
1248.
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58
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Letters, continued.
To the Editors:
As a member of the Editorial Board of the Bulletin of
Concerned Asian Scholars since its inception, I want to write
that I do not agree with the "Statement on Vietnam and Kam
puchea" by Torben RetbOll (BCAS Vol. 12, No: 4, 1980, pp.
66-69). I think BCAS had every right to publish this statement
(although I did not know that it was to be published), and I do
not question the author's good faith or his good intentions. I
think, however, that he is mistaken in his assessment.
As far as I know and understand the evidence, I approve of
the entry of Vietnamese troops into Kampuchea in support ofthe
Heng Samrin forces, and I approve of their remaining there at
the present time. In general, I agree with Torben Retboll that
under most circumstances, it is a bad thing for one country to
invade another. I am, however, one of those who believes that it
is justified if it serves the welfare of the people and if it advances
revolution in the direction of socialism. By "in the direction of
socialism" I mean in a direction that enhances or promises to
enhance the common people's collective mastery over their
lives, their work and their products.
I believe that the Vietnamese invasion and the establish
ment of the Heng Samrin government broadly served this cause,
although there may have been some instances of plundering or
other misbehaviour by individual Vietnamese. (Most accounts I
have seen stress, in fact, that these were very few and that
offenders were immediately transferred back to Vietnam. Cer
tainly, the overall capital flow has undoubtedly been from
Vietnam to Kampuchea since the Heng Samrin government
came to power, and very great aid has been given by Vietnam to
Kampuchea in spite of Vietnam's own dire poverty, its invasion
by China, and its succession ofdisastrous floods.) Balancing all
the evidence available to me, I have to conclude that the lot of
the Kampuchean people is infinitely better now than it was when
the Vietnamese entered the country, and that Vietnam, together
with the Heng Samrin forces, has indeed saved Kampuchea
from genocide.
This conclusion is based substantially on the evidence
presented by more than 50 Kampuchean witnesses in the trial for
genocide of Pol Pot and leng Sary by the People's Revolution
ary Tribunal in Phnom Penh on August 15, 1979.
1
The trial was
attended by more than 600 representatives from all strata of the
Kampuchean people, by 70 representatives of international or
ganizations, and by lawyers, media workers and social activists
from at least 15 countries. The tribunal found the Pol Pot
government guilty of:
I. The planned massacre of large categories of Kampucheans
including almost all of the officers, soldiers and civil servants of
the previous regime.
2. Systematically exterminating Buddhist priests, religious be
lievers and the intelligentsia. Thus, for example, some 62% of
the country's 81,000 bonzes are believed to have been slaugh
tered, and 574 out of 643 doctors, chemists, surgeons and
dentists who returned to Kampuchea from abroad at the behest
of the Pol Pot government in its early days.
3. The massacre of vast numbers of other people of all walks of
life who opposed or were thought likely to oppose the regime,
and the extreme ill treatment or starvation of many others, so
that about three million out of some seven to eight million
Kampucheans are thought to have been killed, harried to death,
or to have died of disease between 1975 and 1979.
4. Forcibly driving the urban population from the cities, and
systematically moving and mixing up the rural people of dif
ferent regions so as to uproot people from their relatives, neigh
bours and homes, causing many deaths in the process.
5. Imposing extremely hard labour on workers in communes,
including children, so that many women became sterile and
many old people and children died of exhaustion or disease.
Punishments for infringements of the rules of work were re
ported to have been withdrawal of food, or death.
6. Destroying normal social relations between parents and
children, married couples, neighbours and friends, so that indi
viduals were atomized and subjected to a form of state slavery,
under constant surveillance and fear of death.
7. Particular forms of atrocities, such as using hoes or other
implements for murder, disembowelling, burying or burning
victims alive, bulldozing large numbers to death, tearing off
limbs, throwing children in the air and catching them on bayo
nets, throwing people to crocodiles, or swinging them to death
by their limbs. Other atrocities included the torture before
execution of large numbers of cadres and party members who
opposed the regime. In some cases victims who survived re
ported being forced to scrape decaying flesh from murdered
people to provide fertilizer.
8. The wholesale destruction of schools, temples, libraries,
hospitals, and other institutions of culture or welfare.
In order to convict the Pol Pot regime, it is not necessary to
show that all of these things happened in all parts of the country .
If, however, all or most of them happened in some places, the
Pol Pot government was surely gUilty of more extreme forms of
genocide towards its own people than any other regime in living
memory, or perhaps in all known history. If they did not hap
pen, the present government of Kampuchea, and that of Viet
nam, as well as many hundreds of individual Kampucheans, are
guilty of monstrous, systematic fabrications of a kind that is not
consonant with the past history of the Communist Party of
Vietnam, and is hard to credit on the part of such large numbers
of witnesses in any country .
I believe that these atrocities did happen, although perhaps
not in every single instance precisely as they have been re
ported.
2
For this reason I think that the Vietnamese invasion of
Kampuchea is not to be compared to the German invasion of
Denmark, as Torben Retboll would have it, but perhaps more
nearly to the Allied invasion of Germany at the end of World
War II and the rescue of surviving Jews from the concentration
camps. But even this comparison is not very apt, for the Pol Pot
genocide was evidently wreaked on a far larger proportion of the
Kampuchean population than the German, and the Vietnamese
had apparently not inflicted prior large scale atrocities on Kam
puchea comparable to the Allied bombing of German cities.
It is true that it might have been better if a neutral, interna
tional force appointed by the United Nations had entered Kam
puchea, put a stop to Pol Pot's atrocities, and organized free
elections among the Kampucheans. But this did not happen and
life is in general not like that. Although there had been at least
************************************l
59
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Letters, continued.
one major uprising in Kampuchea in 1978, although tens of
thousands had fled into Vietnam, and althbugh Vietnam itself
was being invaded and shelled along a 1,000 kIm. border,J no
deus ex mach ina was there to put things right. I think the
Vietnamese, together with the Kampuchean revolutionaries
(who are not by any means negligible) had to do it. Overthrow
ing Pol Pot was seen by them-and I believe was-both self
defence and proletarian internationalism. It also seems to me
that the Vietnamese are justified in staying in Kampuchea at
present, given the serious shortage of adult men and of in
tellectuals remaining in Kampuchea, and given the continuing
attacks by border forces recruited or forcibly conscripted by Pol
Pot, with the backing of China and of the CIA.4 leng Sary's
suggestion (reported by Torben Retboll) of Vietnamese with
drawal followed by UN sponsored elections sounds reasonable,
but I have no faith whatever in any suggestion from leng Sary,
and no belief that the United Nations would be strong enough, or
China and the USA complaisant enough, to allow of such a
process.
Mao Ze Dong has often been quoted as saying that revolu
tion is not a tea-party. This adage has come to have' grim
connotations because of the atrocities carried out in Kampuchea
in the name of "Maoism." At all events I would say that
revolution is not a cricket match. The counter-revolution almost
never plays by the rules, and so the revolutionaries cannot
always do so either. They have to fight as best they can, the goal
being the people's welfare and ultimate self-mastery. In 1976 a
Communist woman leader in Thai Binh, North Vietnam, told
me, "Remember that revolutions are fought to rescue people
from misery. You must first see where the misery is, and then
who is causing it." I believe that so far, and on the whole, the
Vietnamese Communists have rescued their own people, and
have helped to rescue the Kampuchean people, from misery.
Future events or revelations may prove me wrong, but that is
how I read the present record.
Kathleen Gough
Vancouver, B.C.
Notes
1. See, e.g., Trial of Pol Pot-leng Sary Genocide. published by the
Vietnam Wornen's Union, 39, Hang Chuoi Street, Hanoi.
2. For further evidence see, e.g., "Bureaucracy of Death," New States
man, May 2, 1980; Pol Pot's Legacies. Foreign Languages Publishing House,
Hanoi, 1980; Kampuchea Dossiers I, II and III, Vietnam Courier, Hanoi, 1979;
War Crimes of the Pol Pot and Chinese Troops in Vietnam, Hanoi, 1979; Ben
Kiernan, "Contlict in the Kampuchean Communist Movernent," fournal of
Contemporary Asia, Vol. 10, No. 1/2, 1980; Gavan McCormack, "The Kam
puchean Revolution 1975-78: the Problern of Knowing the Truth," fournal of
Contemporary Asia, Vol. 10, Nos. 1/2, 1980; Milton Osborne, "Pol Pot's
Terrifying Legacy," Far Eastern Economic Review, June 6, 1980.
3. The Truth About Vietnam-China Relations Over the Past Thirty Years,
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, S.R. Vietnam, 1979, p, 56.
4. John Pilger, "Arnerica's Second War in Indochina," New Statesman,
August I, 1980.
Attention
For more than two years we have entertained a
dialogue on the difficult issues that grew out ofthe
inter-communist conflicts ofsoutheast Asia in the
late-l97Os. That dialogue continues here with an
essay on Laos and with a letter to the Editors. We
invite other readers to participate with essays
which present new evidence and documentation,
approach the questions from a fresh perspective,
and proceed in a comradely fashion.
The Editors
The Bulletin Dialogue on
Southeast Asia
Tenth Anniversary Special on Vietnam with essays by Earl
Martin, Ngo Vinh Long, Christine White, Jayne Werner, Serge
Thion, David Marr and Marilyn Young, plus translations. Vol.
10 #4, 1978: $2.50.
"Kampuchea's Armed Struggle; The Origins of an Indepen
dent Revolution" by Stephen Heder. VoL 11 # 1, 1979: $3.25.
"Kampuchea and the Reader's Digest" by Torben Retboll.
Vol. 11 #3, 1979: $3.25
"Intercommunist Conflicts and Vietnam" by Anthony Bar
nett; "In Matters of War and Socialism, Anthony Barnett
Would Shame and Honor Kampuchea Too Much" by Laura
Summers; and "Vietnam and the Governments and People of
Kampuchea" by Ben Kiernan. Vol. 11 #4, 1979: $3.25.
"The Ingratitude of the Crocodiles; The 1978 Cambodian
Black Paper" by Serge Thiop; 'Vietnam's Ethnic Chinese and
the Sino-Vietnamese Conflict" by Gareth Porter; "New Light
on the Origins of the Vietnam-Kampuchea Conflict" by Ben
Kiernan; and "Statement to the Conference on Vietnam and
Kampuchea;; by Torben Retbo11. Vol. 12 #4, 1980: $4.00.
All five issues plus the current number for only $15.50; or
$ 12 .25 for the five issues.
B.C.A.S., BOXW, CHARLEMONT, MA 01339 USA
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60
Socialist Construction and
National Security in Laos
by Martin Stuart-Fox
As the poorest country in Asia (with the current exception
of Kampuchea), Laos faces peculiar problems associated both
with promoting economic development and with maintaining
national security. Not only is Laos far less powerful by any
criterion than any of its neighbors (again excluding at present
Kampuchea), with a weak economic infrastructure and minimal
industrial capacity, but its small population is deeply divided,
both ethnically and culturally. Since the 1975 socialist revolu
tion, opposition has continued among different social groups to
the politics of the new regime. This has resulted in a massive
outflow of refugees to Thailand and beyond, incidentally pro
viding a ready source of recruits for clandestine attempts to
undermine the present Lao government. Opposition has tended
to focus upon either ethnic dissatisfaction, or popular suspi
cion of government attempts to alter the socio-economic struc
tures of Lao society through nationalization of the means of
production and distribution.
The principal attempt to date by the Lao government to
promote socialist economic development took the form of a
three-year plan to run from 1978 to the end of 1980. An essential
aspect of this plan was the rapid collectivization of agricul
ture-a move expected to have a three-fold result: to socialize
the basic relations of production of Lao society, to promote
productivity, and to improve internal security and thus
strengthen national defense. The combination is significant. It is
an expression of the close relationship which perforce exists in
Laos between the construction of a socialist economy and the
maintenance of the security of the state.
The clearest statement of this connection is contained in the
report by Lao Prime Minister and Secretary-General of the Lao
People's Revolutionary Party (LPRP), Kaysone Phomvihan, to
the annual joint session of the Supreme People's Assembly and
Council of Ministers in February 1977.
Because our country is a socialist outpost, and because ofthe
thoroughness of our country's revolution, we must always
closely link the duties ofnational defense. . . with the duties
of economic construction . . . both in the intermediate and
long-range future. We must regard the duty offostering and
consolidating security and national defense as an integral
and interrelated pan of the entire socialist revolutionary
struggle.
For Laos the problem of economic development cannot be
divorced from the requirements of national defense.
The outskirts 9fVientiane. 1980 (fohn Spragens)
This paper* sets out to assess the effectiveness of the Lao
strategy of linking economic development and internal security
through the collectivization of agriculture by examining the
cooperativization program in the light of its stated goals. The
reasons why the strategy failed have to do with peculiarly Lao
conditions which were overlooked by party ideologues and their
mainly Vietnamese advisors. In particular these included the
country's ethnic and cultural patterns and its geo-political posi
tion. In addition a changing international situation had the effect
of further undermining Lao security by drawing the country into
an unnecessary and unwanted confrontation with the People's
Republic of China (PRC).
In discussing what went wrong with the cooperativization
program and where new policies may be leading, I conclude that
a major problem concerns the country's close and continuing
dependency upon the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV)-a
relationship which in some respects has exacerbated rather than
overcome Laos' traditional problems of economic underdevel
opment, social division and internal insecurity. Finally in in
stituting a new economic policy based upon what is clearly a
Soviet model, Laos may be attempting to distance itself from
what for the Lao threatens to become the suffocating embrace of
Hanoi.
* This paper was presented at the Third National Conference of the Asian
Studies Association of Austraha, Brisbane, August 1980.
61
The Three Year Plan
In March 1978, Kaysone, in a key speech to a joint sitting
of the Supreme Peoples Assembly (SPA) and the Council of
Ministers, launched Laos upon its first three-year economic
development plan. Three months later the Politbureau of the
Party announced the beginning of a concerted drive towards the
cooperativization of agriculture. Two things are worth noting
about these decisions. The first is that both actions were taken
not simply in accordance with Vietnamese advice proffered
after consideration of Lao conditions, but in order to mesh with
decisions pertaining to the SRV. The Lao plan will be follo,:"ed
by a five-year plan to coincide with the next Vietnamese five
year plan (1981-85), itself co-ordinated with the development
plans of Comecon nations. The cooperative program in Laos
was launched two months after the decision was taken to col
lectivize agricultural production in the southern part of
Vietnam.!
The second point is that in both decisions improvement of
security was a primary consideration. It was hoped that the
three-year plan, with its emphasis upon agricultural production,
would strengthen security by raising living standards, thus
generating a commitment to the new regime. Cooperativization
would have a similar effect, both by proving the superiority of
socialist over individualist/capitalist modes of production, and
by implanting new popular administrative structures by which
to promote party control.
In his March 1978 speech, Kaysone outlined the three broad
political objectives he hoped would be furthered by the three
year plan. These were:
1. To strengthen solidarity among the people of all na
tionalities at home; strengthen international relationships,
solidarity and cooperation, such as with the fraternal social
ist countries, build and strengthen in all respects the ad
ministration, popular organizations and the ranks ofcadres;
pay special attention to building the revolutionary forces at
the grass-roots level; andformulate regulations for state and
economic management from the central down to the local
levels.
2. To strengthen national defense and popular peace
keeping activities; maintain political stability and public
order; and firmly defend the country and the people's social
ist construction cause.
3. To promote and coordinate socialist transformation
with socialist construction; gradually advance socialist pro
duction relations in the national economy; incessantly de
velop and increase production forces; build new technical
and material bases; resume production, restore and develop
the economy and culture; insure the normalcy of the eco
nomic and financial situation, as well as of the people's
living conditions; and create conditions for vigorously de
veloping the national economy from the year 1981 onwards. 2
Not only did these objectives express the priorities of
national planning policy as the government saw them, they also
reveal the major problem areas that the regime had already
encountered. Opposition had continued among certain tribal
minorities, most notably the Hmong and Yao. At the same time
social dissatisfaction over radical change was widespread. As
Kaysone told delegates to the 1978 joint SPA-Council of Min
isters meeting, "the vestiges of colonialism and feudalism con
stantly caused confusion in our country." What was worse,
opposition was being encouraged by U.S. imperialism, and by
the Thai government whom Kaysone accused ofcontinuing' 'to
foster, support and assist the exiled Lao reactionaries in their
fight against our Lao revolution. "3 This had led to a serious
security problem. National solidarity and defense had to pro
ceed hand in hand. So long as ethnic and social divisions
remained, these could be exploited by the "enemies" of the
new regime.
On the economic front the Lao government had been faced
with many problems similar to those of its predecessor. The
country lacked a basic economic infrastructure. The few roads
in Laos were still in a poor state of repair, with many bridges
down. The existing transport network was quite inappropriate
for the organization of a centralized economy, and communica
tions in general were inadequate. This made it difficult for the
Party to exert control over outlying areas at the village level, a
situation exacerbated by an appalling lack of trained cadres,
both in the central administration, and at the grassroots.
4
With
out adequate numbers of trained personnel it was proving ex-
I. As Kaysone stated: "The development of our revolution is closely
linked with the development of the revolutions of the two fraternal countries
Vietnam and Kampuchea .... " Report to joint session of the Supreme Peo
ple's Assembly and Council of Ministers I Feb. 1979. loint Publications
Research Service (JPRS), Translations on South and East Asia (TSEA) 808, 19
March 1979, p. 10.
2. Kaysone Phomvihan, Report to joint session of the Supreme People's
Assembly and Council of Ministers. 2 March 1978, as read over Vientiane
Domestic Radio 6 March 1978. (Foreign Broadcasts Infonnation Service
(FBIS), Supplement no. I, Asia and Pacific, 17 March 1978, p. 22).
3. On the world situation in ibid., pp. 1-5.
4. Laos had only 113 doctors for a population ofover three million-and
these presumably included foreign medical practitioners, ibid., p. 13.
62
tremely difficult either to translate government directives into
concrete administrative and political changes, or to provide the
technical and economic services to improve living conditions.
As Kaysone admitted, a number of difficulties had dogged
attempts to implement party policies. Many cadres had "not yet
profoundly understood the line, plans and policies of our party
and state." Cadres were still influenced by "narrow nation
alism," a term applied to anti-Vietnamese sentiments, and still
failed "to fully rely on the socialist countries." Others were
said to "impinge on the people's right to mastership at home,"
or exhibited a "dependence mentality" instead of demonstrat
ing self-reliance and developing self-sufficiency. Worse still,
"some service branches at some levels had no actual plans to
implement the lines and policies [of the party]." Failings were
due to two principal causes-' 'a low level of understanding and
an inappropriate working system" -poorly trained cadres and
poor administrative structures. 5
Within the context of the "three fundamental political
objectives," Kaysone specified ten main tasks to be accomp
lished. Where these were not expressed in general terms which
referred to ongoing commitments, they tended to be over
optimistic. Broadly these tasks had to do with:
(I) national defense and security;
(2) socialization of the economy;
(3) agricultural and industrial production;
(4) communications and transport;
(5) trade and the distribution of goods;
(6) culture and education;
(7) consolidation of the state apparatus in the fields of
management and administration;
(8) building of mass organizations;
(9) promotion of foreign policy objectives;
(10) improvement of cadres.
The order in which these were presented revealed the
urgency the Lao regime attached to security in the light of the
rapidly evolving polarization of socialist forces in the region
into pro-Chinese and pro-Soviet camps. The inability of Laos
either to influence this development (through the government's
initiative in sending President S04phanouvong to Phnom Penh
in December 1977 in a last ditch attempt to convince Pol Pot to
negotiate with the Vietnamese), or to remain neutral was al
ready clear to the Lao leaders.
National defense was therefore of major concern. As Kay
sone told the assembled delegates: "the building and strength
ening of national defense and the people's peacekeeping forces
constitute fundamental themes of the socialist revolutionary
struggle in our country. " And he characterized these aims as
"the most important political duties of all our people and sol
diers. "6 An allied theme stressed was national solidarity, and
5. Ibid., pp. 20-21
6. Ibid., p. 24.
7. Ibid., p. 26.
8. Cf Kaysone's directive on agricultural production in 1978 as carried
special emphasis was placed upon improving conditions for the
tribal minorities. Kaysone called for special attention to be
given to training ethnic minority cadres, increasing production
in minority areas, and improving education. The aim would be
to set up "an economic and cultural center in each area to
provide ethnic minorities with a base for developing their own
economy and culture and conducting economic and cultural
exchanges with other nationalities," The security aspect was
specifically stated. Party members would have to "pay attention
to consolidating the political foundation in ethnic minority areas
infiltrated by the reactionaries."
In this stage of socialist revolution, the solidarity of all the
people and among various nationalities [is] ofgreat signifi
cance for promoting and expanding the overall strength of
the entire nation in order to thwart various sabotage schemes
of the enemy and the reactionaries and to defend and build
the country. 7
Of the purely economic objectives of the plan, the most
important had to do with agricultural production. The goal was
for Laos to become self-sufficient in food over the three-year
period. In addition production of industrial crops was to be
increased, and agricultural and forestry exports were to be
stepped up. 8 For a country with a small population (something
over three million) utilizing only around 8 percent of land area
for agriculture and blessed with ample natural resources, the
objective of self-sufficiency in food crops would not seem to be
over-ambitious. Due to a severe drought in 1977, however,
grain shortfall had amounted to some 113,000 tons, or more
than 10 percent of requirements; hence it would require a steady
production increase to meet the set target. Other economic goals
included increased production of electricity, tin, farm tools,
construction materials, textiles, salt and simple consumer
goods; the upgrading of postal services, communications and
transportation; and increased internal and external trade.
Perhaps the most radical of the decisions taken at this time
was to build each province into a "strategic economic unit,"
agriculturally self-sufficient and responsible for the develop
ment of its own economic infrastructure. Such a move may have
taken account of the country's poor communications and under
development, but the decentralization of administrative and
political power that would presumably result could only pose a
threat to the central authority in a country where regionalism is
rife, especially in view of the fact that each province was
encouraged to enter into economic arrangements with neighbor
ing provinces in neighboring countries, a move which ties Laos
even more closely to Vietnam. Yet the same goal was reiterated
a year later, with the defense aspect also included:
Each province in our country, with a population ofbetween
200,000 and 300,000 and labor forces of between 100,000
and 150,000 is capable of exploiting our rich natural re
sources, developing its own strength to advance forward to
gain adequate capabilities in resolving production and con
struction requirements and the people's living conditions in
the province; and is capable ofbuilding locallogisticsfound
ations by coordinating economic construction with national
defense. to
on Vientiane Domestic Radio 1 April 1978. (FBIS, April 1978). See also the
The overall structure of the Lao plan reflects the dominant
editorial in Sieng Pasasonh 21 March 1978. (FBIS 21 March 1978).
Vietnamese rather than Soviet or East European influence.
9. See Nayan Chanda, "Laos: Back tOlhe Drawing Board," Far Eastern
Economic Review (FEER), 8 September 1978.
Ideologically the plan was based upon the Vietnamese strategy
10. JPRS, TSEA 808, 19 March 1979, p. 28. of simultaneous promotion of the "three revolutions. " The first
63
Roadside shop near Vientiane (Spragens. 1980)
of these, the' 'revolution of relations of production," was not
emphasized in Kaysone's speech, but was of primary concern
when the cooperativization program was launched. Economic
provisions of the plan aimed at establishing the basis in ag
ricultural self-sufficiency and general infrastructure for the sec
ond "technical and scientific revolution," especially during the
following five-year plan. This would be based upon progressive
mechanization and the use of technically trained personnel. The
third "ideological and cultural revolution" would be pursued
through mass organization, education, propaganda, and the
ideological training of cadres. In Laos, however, there has been
notably less emphasis upon exclusively national culture in the
promotion of "socialist patriotism" than has been the case in
Vietnam. Lao values have not been stressed over and above
Indochinese solidarity and proletarian internationalism. Nor has
there been the same degree of almost paranoic and xenophobic
chauvinism that has recently been evident in Vietnam. The
reasons for this are obvious: whereas the Vietnamese are en
couraging an ardent nationalism as part of their anti-Chinese
campaign, the last thing they want in Laos is a parallel emphasis
upon Lao nationalism whose target in the circumstances could
only be the ubiquitous Vietnamese presence.
It is perhaps not surprising, given the limited resources
available to the government, that the Lao three-year plan
amounted to little more than a rationalization of existing goals
and programs. But if the document was neither inspired nor
64
inspmng, nor was it overly ambitious. It stayed within the
bounds of possibility in concentrating upon agricultural pro
ductivity and the gradual development of an economic infra
structure. It was the subsequent decision to press ahead more
rapidly with the collectivization of Lao agriculture which rep
resented a decisive new stage in the socialist construction of the
country-a development whose implications lay not simply in
the field of economics, but which also affected the nation's
security.
Cooperativization and National Security
The first, and most basic. of the "three revolutions" the
Lao government is intent on pursuing-the "revolution of
relations of production" which would bring about the socialist
transformation of society and the economy-was the one least
evident in the three-year plan. This "oversight" was corrected,
however, with the announcement in June 1978 that Laos would
undertake a nationwide program to set up cooperatives. II Not
only would this transform the relations of production in the
countryside to the "socialist pattern," it would encourage ag
ricultural production, and contribute to the internal security of
the state by preventing counterrevolution. As Kaysone told a
gathering in southern Laos
The efficient organization of an agricultural cooperative
constitutes an effective basis for promoting the collective
mastership ofall farmers, consolidating the proletarian dic
tatorship, strengthening the unity of the people of all
nationalities, and building a new, prosperous man and
countryside. 12
At the same time it was recognized that internal security could
suffer. The army would have to increase its "revolutionary
vigilance" for
the period of socialist transformation and construction for
turning the private and individualistic production method
into a new socialist production method and guiding peasants
into the socialist collective ways of life is, in particular, the
most complicated, confusing and arduous development. The
enemies always take advantage of such a development to
carry out their counter revolutionary activities to the fullest
extent. \3
Clearly both socio-economic change and internal security de
pended upon the success of the program. High hopes were held
in particular in the areas of productivity and national solidarity,
both of which would incidentally provide the government with
criteria by which to judge the effectiveness of the overall
program.
The cooperativization of Lao agriculture was not decided
upon without some preliminary investiglttion and experience.
Collective methods of agricultural production had been in use in
the pre-1975 liberated areas. By early 1978, according to Kay
sone, the first steps had been taken towards setting up "a
collective agricultural system" throughout the country by form
ing "solidarity units to promote production and using labor
exchange units to conduct experiments in building agricultural
cooperatives. "14 The former consisted of communal labor
teams organized to perform tasks of mutual benefit to all, such
as the construction of an access road, irrigation canal or local
school house. The latter was "a form of collective labor" in
which time worked was computed and repaid by those for whom
it was performed.
Already in Laos some larger collective units had been
formed, either as state farms or as resettlement projects for
refugees where the means of production were supplied by the
state. The new cooperatives were to be based upon the village,
though larger villages might be divided into two or even three
cooperatives or smaller villages combined to form a single
cooperative. Cooperatives thus represented not only the logical
next stage in the collectivization of Lao agriculture, but also the
most appropriate form for Lao conditions.
The success of early moves to collectivize agricultural
production, both in cooperative ventures in the pre-1975 liber
ated areas, and in the labor exchange teams and state farms in
those areas taken over since 1975, may have helped convince
the Lao authorities to press ahead with full-scale cooperati
vization.
Another reason may have been the Vietnamese example in
southern Vietnam. It seems clear, however, that ideological
considerations were a decisi ve factor, for the social and material
conditions necessary for the successful implementation of such
a program simply did not exist. Most peasants owned their own
land, and many were suspicious of government motives follow
ing the introduction of unpopular agriCUltural taxes in October
1976. Careful preparation would have been necessary to conv
ince farmers ofthe reasons for and benefits ofcooperativization,
including the promise of effective state support, training of
administrators, and provision for state purchase of crops at
realistic prices as a production incentive. The time allowed for
such preparations was totally inadequate. Members of the LPRP
at the grassroots level must have been aware that far more
required to be done to raise the political consciousness of the
highly individualistic Lao peasant farmers before the success of
agricultural collectivization could be assured.
In the event, the pace at which cooperativization was put
into effect was quite unrealistic, and adverse reaction on the part
of the peasantry was badly underestimated. Within less than a
month of the decision to form cooperatives, more than three
hundred were said to be in existence, 15 a figure which increased
to sixteen hundred by the end of the year. 16 Even though this
may have included production brigades and state farms run by
the Ministry of Agriculture, or the Army, and recently upgraded
experimental collective production units, it still reflects an ex
traordinarily rapid execution of instructions by some cadres.
This was taken as proof that conditions in the countryside had
been ripe for the formation of cooperatives. More likely it
reflected an extraordinarily rapid execution of instructions by
some over-zealous cadres of the LPRP who hoped to impress
their superiors. In some cases nominal cooperatives may have
existed only on paper.
Some suggestions that things were not progressing as
smoothly as had been hoped may be deduced from the decision
in November 1978 to set up a Central Committee for the Guid
ance of Agricultural Cooperatives under the chairmanship of
Saly Vongkhamsao, Secretary of the LPRPCentral Committee,
Minister in charge of the Prime Minister's Office, and later
Acting Minister of Agriculture. Working directly under the
Central Committee Secretariat and the Standing Committee of
the Council of Ministers, the new committee was responsible
for determining cooperatives policy and supervising and co
ordinating its implementation.
17
The enormous disparity in
numbers of cooperatives in different provinces was clear evi
dence that implementation of policy was uneven. Of the 1600
cooperati ves in existence by the end of December, no fewer than
304 were in the southern province of Champassak (up from 180
in July) while Khammonane saw an increase in five months
from a handful to 305. Savannakhet and Xieng Khouang also
boasted substantial numbers. Other provinces had far fewer and
better bore out Information Minister Sisana Sisane's claim that
.. we have been careful not to go too fast. "18
II. For the relationship between the "revolution of relations of produc
tion" and cooperativization, see ibid., p. 29; and for the effect the formation of
cooperatives was expected to have on the other two revolutions, ibid., p. 30.
12. Vientiane Domestic Radio, 13 June 1978 (FBIS 13 June 1978).
13. Station editorial, Vientiane Domestic Radio, 29 June 1978 (FBIS 30
June 1978).
14. Kaysone to joint session of Supreme People's Assembly and Council
of Ministers, 2 March 1978. (FBIS Supplement No. I, 17 March 1978, p. 9).
15. Khaosan Pathet Lao (KPL) in English to July 1978 (FBIS to July
1978).
16. Kaysone to joint session I February 1979, JPRS TSEA 808, p. 15. A
month earlier Radio Hanoi had put the total at 800, quoting KPL in English 20
November 1978 (FBIS 21 November 1978).
17. Vientiane Domestic Radio 19 November 1978 (FBIS 21 November
1978).
18. Interview with Lao Information Minister Sisana Sisane carried by
Agence France Presse, 17 November 1978. (FBIS 17 November 1978).
65
The bald statistics on the number of cooperatives in dif
ferent provinces camouflaged a variety of different collective
enterprises. These included not only recently upgraded experi
mental production units, refugee resettlement projects and state
farms run by the Ministry of Agriculture or the Army, but also
cooperatives formed among tribal groups in upland areas. The
large number of cooperatives in Xieng Khouang probably in
cluded not only reconstructed bombed out villages for Lao
farmers on the Plain of Jars, but also tribal cooperatives and
government sponsored lowland resettlements for Hmong sol
diers who previously fought for General Vang Pao and the CIA.
It is impossible, however, to obtain any breakdown of figures 'of
the formation of cooperatives, or to assess the relative effective
ness of the program in different regions. That opposition was
widespread is obvious, however, since the program was eventu
ally halted a little over a year after it got underway.
By the end of the first year of the three-year plan it was
clear that production targets for 1978 could not be met. A series
of disastrous floods kept agricultural production low and rice
imports almost as high as the previous year. Socialist bloc aid,
while substantial, failed to meet the need for major infra
structure development. But the principle problems besetting the
government had to do with the level of training, zealousness and
inflexibility of cadres on the one hand, and rising international
tensions leading to increased insecurity on the other. Both of
these factors affected implementation of the cooperativization
program.
The decision to encourage the formation of agricultural
cooperatives practically coincided with the decision openly to
back Vietnam in its growing dispute with Kampuchea and
China. Kaysone chose the first anniversary of the Lao-Viet
namese Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in July 1978 to
denounce the actions of "international reactionaries," Viet
nam's term of abuse for the government of the PRC. Over the
next six months the Lao became increasingly nervous over
alleged Chinese support for dissident tribal minorities in north
ern Laos, and relations with Beijing further deteriorated, despite
apparent attempts by some senior party officials to steer a more
neutral course.
l9
Ever more urgent calls were made to improve
internal security and national defense, two terms which in the
Lao context had become virtually synonymous. Conscription of
young men into the regional and local militia forces was stepped
up in August, despite the fact that "peacekeeping forces" had
reportedly been doubled since 1976. Sieng Pasasonh urged that
The various localities must carry out the task of mobilizing
the youths to serve as soldiers to insure that we have suffi
cient manpower to build various divisions, companies and
military corps. 20
19. For an account of Lao-Chinese/Lao-Vietnamese relations during this
period see Martin Stuart-Fox. "Laos: The Vietnamese Connection" in L.
Suryadinata (ed.) Southeast Asian Affairs 1980 (Singapore: Heinemann, 1980),
pp. 191-209.
20. Sieng Pasasonh editorial, 19 August 1978, read over Vientiane Do
mestic Radio 19 August 1978 (FBIS 21 August (978).
21. Vientiane Domestic Radio, 28 September 1978 (FBIS 6 October
1978).
22. Ibid.
23. Cf Nayan Chanda, "A New Threat from the Mountain Tribes,"
FEER, I September 1978. .
24. NayanChanda, "The Sound of Distant Gunfire," FEER, 8 December
1978.
However, a poor level of response and poor motivation
marked the program. Too often training was desultory and
ineffective. Calling for improved tactical training for regional
and local forces, Radio Vientiane stated bluntly' 'when they are
called to launch an attack they must win,"2' suggesting at least
that this had not always occurred. Regular "in-service" tactical
training was necessary for all cadres in order to defeat the
schemes of the enemy:
Efforts must be made to avoid certain loopholes; for exam
ple, the training programs may be too brief or incomplete;
the fundamental objectives of the training are not fulfilled;
documents other than those prepared for the training pro
grams are utilized; the training period is arbitrarily cut shot;
and so forth. 22
Calls for stepped up conscription and improved training of
cadres appear to have been in response to increased guerrilla
activity in southern Laos and growing concern over Chinese
support for rebellious minorities in the north.
23
Both were
related to government attempts to alter traditional lifestyles
through the introduction of socialist planning: of the lowland
peasantry through cooperativization; and of the mountain tribes
by curtailing use of slash and bum methods of agriculture and
urging permanent resettlement at lower altitudes where wet rice
production was possible. Opposition to both provided anti
government propagandists, "elements of the old ruling class,"
with new opportunities to sow dissension, though the extent of
anti-government feeling was difficult to determine.
By November the authorities were becoming concerned
over the effect opposition to the cooperativization program was
having upon internal security. In Pakse, capital ofChampassak
province, security extended no further than the city limits after
dusk, and gunfire could be heard at night. Ambushes were
frequent, and "reactionaries" were holding regular anti
government propaganda meetings in many villages, where
peasants were warned that they would lose all their personal
belongings if they entered- a cooperative.
24
Sieng Pasasonh
called upon the entire populace to
work closely with the army and the peace-keeping forces to
smash all schemes aimed at sabotaging our new regime so
that tranquility can prevail in our country and our people can
freely earn their living and build the country in peace. In
maintaining peace and public security, we must keep an eye
on the enemy, who is likely to carry out deceitful propaganda
among the people to create unrest . ...25
Another editorial urged that
We must inculcate in the people patriotism and the spirit of
loving the new socialist system so they will volunteer to take
part in national defense and public security work in their
localities. 26
The role of the army was also stressed in the implementa
tion of minorities policy. Tribes recently liberated were still
"influenced by an old way of thinking, " so "our various armed
forces must play an important role in aiding and motivating
them to earn their living in a new, better way," Radio Vientiane
admonished its listeners. 27 Local customs were to be respected,
and nothing done to disturb "the peace and happiness of the
people." But security was to be maintained through active
patrolling, and the pursuit and punishment of "reactionary chief
tains" causing unrest and disunity. The contradictions implicit
in such a policy were left to local cadres to resolve.
66
The Problems of Early 1979
By early 1979 two things were evident: Laos would not be
able to avoid being drawn even further into the Sino-Vietnamese
conflict, and the cooperatives program was running into serious
difficulties. The Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea was
strongly supported by the Lao, and Laos was the second country
to recognize the new Vietnamese-backed Heng Samrin regime.
With the Chinese border incursion against Vietnam, and the
supposed Chinese threat to Laos, the Lao, under strong Soviet
and Vietnamese pressure, began openly to condemn the Chinese
by name. A war of words followed between Vientiane and
Beijing, in which the Chinese accused the Lao goverment of
being dominated by Hanoi, and the Lao accused the Chinese of
forcibly occupying a portion of Lao territory and of being about
to invade the country-a charge for which there was never any
real evidence. However, in May Lao fears were further excited
when it was revealed that a new revolutionary party, the Lao
Socialist Party, had been established, with Chinese blessing,
dedicated to liberating Laos from the Vietnamese yoke
2S
-this
at a time when the government found itself facing increasing
dissatisfaction over cooperativization and growing anti
Vietnamese feeling. National sentiment and consciousness of
the new threat were aroused by two nationwide congresses: the
first to form a new mass front, the Lao Front for National
Construction, to replace the Lao Patriotic Front of the war years;
the second to bring together the nation's military heroes so that
"the entire party, army and people [could] clearly understand
their consolidated strength, the strength of unity of our people of
all nationalities. "29
Already in February 1979 Kaysone had placed primary
emphasis upon' 'the maintenance of public security and national
defense' , in his address to the annual joint meeting of the
Supreme People's Assembly and Council of Ministers. What
was essential, Kaysone said, was to
make the whole army and people clearly understand the
situation and [their] duties. know how to distinguish friend
from foe. and clearly understand the objectives as well as
new schemes and tricks of the enemy. On this basis there
must be a determination to rally our forces and make use of
all means associated with the collectivization ofagriculture
to further mobilize the people. . . .30
In the immediate future, Kaysone urged, "we must continue to
develop the movement to set up agricultural cooperatives by
aiming at consolidating the economic and national defense
fields in certain important areas ...."31 The close link be
tween security and the cooperative movement in the minds of
the leaders was striking -alink implicit in the call for coopera
tives to be established first in strategic regions.
32
Active co
operati ves with their own militia would reinforce national secur
ity, Kaysone told the first All-Lao Congress on Agricultural
Cooperativization in April:
True activities in different places. notably in the newly lib
erated zones where agricultural cooperativization and the
improvement of agricultural and forestry production have
been well accomplished. have shown clearly that administra
tion was consolidated. and the maintenance ofsecurity and
national defense were also ensured. 33
In turning to the cooperativization program Kaysone ad
mitted that difficulties had arisen when he told delegates that "a
conflict appears to have developed between the emerging prog
67
In Laos (photo by Bengt Albons. 1977)
25. Sieng Pasasonh. editorial. 3 November 1978, read over Vientiane
Domestic Radio 3 November 1978 (FBIS, 3 November 1978).
26. Sieng Pasasonh. editorial 9 October 1978, read over Vientiane Do
mestic Radio 9 October 1978 (FBIS, 17 October 1978).
27. Vientiane Domestic Radio, 21 December 1978 (FBIS, 22 December
1978).
28. Voice of Democratic Kampuchea, 17 May 1979 (FBIS, 18 May
1979).
29. Kaysone to annual plenary session of the Supreme People's Assem
bly, 26 December 1979 (FBIS, 18 January 1980. p. I 17).
30. JPRS, TSEA 808, 19 March 1979, p. 26.
31. Ibid., p. 30.
32. Sieng Pasasonh. editorial 24 February 1979, KPL Bulletin Quotidien
24 February 1979.
33. Kaysone, speech to the First All-Lao Congress on Agricultural Co
operativization, 24 April 1979 (KPL Bulletin Quotidien, 3 May 1979, p. 12).
34. JPRS, TSEA 808, 19 March 1979, p. 30.
35. KPL Bulletin Quotidien, 27 April 1979.
36. Kaysone to Cooperativization Congress, 24 Aprilf 1979 (KPL Bulle
tin Quotidien, 12 May 1979, p. 7). This target was not met. By the end of 1979
after the program was curtailed, the number of cooperatives stood at 2,800
incorporating 25 percent offamilies. Kaysone to Supreme People's Assembly,
26 December 1979. (FBIS, 18 January 1980, p. I 14).
37. Kaysone to Cooperativization Congress, 24 April I 979/KPL Bulletin
Quotidien 12 May 1979, p. 6).
ressive production relations and the backward production rela
tions"34-clear reference to increasing 'peasant resistance.
Nevertheless by the end of April during the Congress on Ag
ricultural Cooperativization it was proudly announced that the
number of cooperatives had increased to 1,732, and the goal for
1979 was set at around double that number, comprising between
30 and 35 percent of all peasant families. 36 In his speech to the
Congress, however, Kaysone was critical of cadres who had
"abused their power by giving orders obliging the masses to
join cooperatives [thereby] making them discontented, " and he
warned of the serious consequences of such actions. "37
In June 1979 Khaosan Pathet Lao, the Lao News Agency,
carried more items on cooperatives than it had in the previous
six months combined. Villages such as Thaliang in Champassak
province were taken as examples of model cooperatives and
extolled as part of an emulation campaign. But it was clear that
serious problems had arisen. Sieng Pasasonh stated bluntly that
cooperativization and the push for agricultural and forestry
production has for the most part been carried out superfi
cially under the form of propaganda and exhortation only,
instead ofbeing closeLy tied to particular concrete instances
in such a way as to transmit in detaiL the line ofthe Party and
government, aiming to establish proper methods and politi
cal programs so that they will be applied by the masses. If
this situation is not resolved, it will not be possible to trans
form the policies oftheParty and government into concrete
acts by the masses, despite the correctness of the policies
whose application remains ineffective. The political prog
ram of the Party and government has stipuLated that coop
erativization has to be achieved voLuntarily, and in accord
ance with common interests and democratic management.
But in reality certain regions have not yet properly carried
out propaganda on the continuing objectives ofagricuLturaL
cooperativization. The masses have not yet determined to
mobilize, nor acquired adequate political consciousness to
volunteer to join cooperatives. In certain [other] regions the
masses have been mobilized andforced to join otherwise they
will not benefit from any favors. This was an error. Because
of this a certain number of cuLtivators decided to join co
operatives through fear, thus engendering dissatisfaction
among the masses and considerably prejudicing the political
line ofthe Party and government. 38
The situation could not have been stated more clearly. Above all
coercion was counter-productive. Pressure to join a cooperative
would lead to dissatisfaction, difficulties in supervision, and
loss of production, Sieng Pasasonh warned. "We must refrain
from suppression, intimidation, and creating a poor relationship
with those who are going to quit, or those who have not yet
joined the coop. "39
Yet despite increasing evidence of dissatisfaction, the au
thorities continued to call for the setting up of still more co
operatives, especially in deprived areas. Emphasis was to be
placed, however, not simply upon starting new cooperatives,
but upon the improvement of production by means of proper
organization, planning, labor, accounting and enterprise. 40 To
accomplish this, state aid was necessary but seldom forthcom
ing. Also it was considered essential to strengthen Party direc
tion of the "basic units" or cells. Yet where cadres were
ineffective it was claimed that they would be "formed" through
the experience oforganizing and directing the very cooperatives
which they were expected to know how to organize.
41
It was little wonder, given this kind of reasoning, that
mistakes were being made. But whereas some nations might be
in a position to accept a degree of social unrest as an inevitable
concomitant to any social revolution, Laos, because of its justi
fiable concern for national security, could not afford to do so.
As unrest grew, fanning anti-government sentiments, a decision
was finally made to halt the program.
Reversal and Reassessment
At the end of June 1979 a high-powered delegation of the
Agricultural Committee of the Vietnamese Communist Party
led by Central Committee member Vo Thuc Dong visited Laos
to investigate the cooperatives program. Vo met separately with
LPRP Central Committee member Sisavath Keobounphanh and
with Saly Vongkhamsao, a meeting at which Vietnam's ambas
sador to Laos, Nguyen Xuan was also present. The official
account of the talks said only that the two sides had' 'exchanged
views on the experiences acquired by each particularly in the
domain of agricultural cooperativization.' '42 The real impor
tance of the visit was not evident until two weeks later when the
Central Committee of the LPRP announced the "immediate
and absolute suspension of the mobilization of peasants through
collectivization or the creation of agricultural cooperatives in
the middle of the productive season. "43
By then cooperativization was seriously interfering with
production of the summer rice crop. Evidence of this came with
the call for army units to assist in production in agricultural
cooperatives. But if declining productivity, and the prospect of
the third massive annual rice deficit in a row, were decisive
factors in convincing the government to suspend cooperativiza
tion, a further consideration of major importance was the effect
the program was having on internal security. The government
warned that the cooperatives had become
an urgent problem which will create an immediate and long
term danger if it is not quickly, effectively and skillfully
resolved. It will become not only an economic danger affect
ing production and the people's living conditions, but also a
political danger. The enemy will take advantage of this to
create confusion, win the support of the people and create
difficulties for us. 44
The security aspect seems certain also to have counted
strongly with the Vietnamese. At a time when Chinese inten
tions were unclear and rightist guerrillas were active and effec
tive iri spreading anti-government propaganda critical of co
operativization, it seems unlikely that the Vietnamese were
prepared to risk the kind of popular uprising in Laos that greeted
their own overly rapid cooperativization program in the north
38. Sieng Pasasonh, editorial 5 June 1979 (KPL Bulletin Quotidien, 5
June 1979, p. 4).
39. Sieng Pasasonh. editoria126 May 1979 (JPRS TSEA 838, 23 August
1979).
40. Sieng Pasasonh. editorials 19 and 26 June 1979 (KPL Bulletin Quo
tidien. 19 and 26 June 1979).
41. Sieng Pasasonh. editorial 28 June 1979 (KPL Bulletin Quotidien, 28
June 1979).
42. KPL Bulletin Quotidien, 30 June 1979.
43. Order dated 14 July 1979. but not carried in KPL Bulletin Quotidien
until 2 August 1979.
44. Quoted in Asia Yearbook 1980 (Hong Kong: FEER. 1980) p. 222.
68
ern provinces in 1956. By either criteria, productivity or secur
ity, the cooperatives program was becoming a liability. Suspen
sion of new initiatives, consolidation of existing cooperatives,
and even the dismantling of ineffective ventures was considered
imperative.
[Ilf members have not joined voluntarily, they must abso
lutely not be forced; ifthey show any desire to withdraw, they
must be given allfacilities [to do sol, and over and above the
facilities, the Party and goverment must mobilize them to
fully pursue production and with a better return. 4S
It is easy to see where the cooperativization program had
gone wrong. Peasants were forced to join cooperatives against
their will by cadres seeking the plaudits oftheir superiors. Often
neither the poorly trained and ill equipped cadres nor the peas
ants understood what they were being asked to do, nor why.
Despite instructions that coop members should be allowed to
keep their fruit trees and a private plot for personal production,
that they should be offered 10-15 percent of the value of the
harvest from land contributed to the cooperative as rent, and be
given a payment in rice for use by the cooperative of draught
animals, in fact all private property, and even cash in some
cases, seems to have been seized without compensation. 46
Other difficulties included too complex a system of computing
work points based upon that used in Vietnam, poor administra
tion, planning and management, and inadequate incentives to
support the call for more work and greater production. The
easy-going Lao peasant proved unwilling to embark upon the
building of irrigation canals, dykes and feeder roads using only
primitive instruments unless he could see likely returns. The
peasantry rightly feared that any excess production would go to
the state. The agricultural tax introduced in 1976 was thor
oughly unpopular and widely resisted by most peasants, and the
official government procurement price for rice of kips 25 a
kilogram (later raised to kips 45 a kilogram) made it hardly
worth selling. The shortage of consumer goods on which to
spend any additional income was a further disincentive. The
result was passive resistance to the exhortations of cadres,
suspicion and distrust of government motives and instructions.
Cadres became isolated and security suffered. In some places
peasants deliberately destroyed property about to fall into com
munal hands, chopping down fruit trees and slaughtering ani
mals. Thousands simply walked off their land and made for the
45. Order on the cessation of cooperativization, KPL Bulletin Quotidien,
2 August 1979.
46. Cf Nayan Chanda, "The Uncooperative Farmers," FEER. 8 De
cember 1978.
47. Quanerly Economic Reyiew: Indochina, Supplement 1980, p. 20.
Production appears to be up in 1980, but the Economist has pessimistically
concluded that: "At the very best, 1980 is forecast to produce a reduced import
requirement," ibid., Second Quarter 1980, p. 12. The objective that every
province should be self-sufficient in food will not be easily achieved even during
the first five-year plan.
48. Kaysone to Supreme People's Assembly, 26 December 1979 (FBIS,
18January 1980-parts I and ll-andSupplement, 8 February 1980-partsIII
and IV).
49. FBIS, 18 March 1980. In August 1979, Phoumi was said to rank sixth
and Souphanouvong seventh in terms ofpower and influence. FEER. 24 August
1979.
50. Kaysone to Supreme People's Assembly, 26 December 1979 (FBIS,
18 January 1980, pp. 123 and I 30).
51. Ibid., p. 122.
towns, or crossed the Mekong to Thailand. Laos, already under
populated, could not afford to lose more primary producers. Not
surprisingly, rice production failed to meet targets, and the
shortfall in rice remained around 75,000 tons for 1979, despite
(or thanks to) improved weather conditions. 47
Mid-1979 was thus something of a turning point in recent
Lao history. The nation found itself in confrontation with
China, and more totally dependent upon Vietnam than ever
before. Half way through the three-year plan the economy was
in a shambles; collectivization of agriculture had been sus
pended until further notice; disaffection with the government
and popular unrest were widespread in the rural areas; China
was encouraging dissident minorities in the north; and hatred of
the Vietnamese had sent new waves of refugees into Thailand.
The only bright spot was improved relations with Thailand,
notably on the trade front and through a mutual commitment to
reduce insurgency. But while the Lao expelled a number of
pro-Chinese Thai communists, Lao rightist guerrillas found it
possible to continue to operate with the support of regional Thai
commanders .
Three factors therefore forced a rethinking of Lao eco
nomic development strategy during the second half of 1979:
deteriorating security, increased ethnic unrest, and poor pro
ducti vity. What was required was a new approach which would
enable "the multinational Lao people" to counter propaganda
undermining social cohesion (by the Chinese to provoke ethnic
divisions; by the Lao resistance to promote opposition to ag
ricultural cooperativization), improve internal security (by
building motivation and commitment to the new regime), and
promote economic development (by increasing production
through provision of new incentives). The new policy was
announced by Kaysone to the annual meeting of the Supreme
People's Assembly at the end of December 1979. This lengthy
document stands in striking contrast to the one which marked
the launching of the Lao three-year plan two years earlier, and
repays careful study. 48
Since it is too soon at this point to assess the success or
failure of this new Lao initiative, examination of Kaysone's
speech will be limited to a few salient points. To begin with, the
tone of the document is moderate, pragmatic, and flexible. It
therefore represents a victory for those who have repeatedly
argued for such an approach in Laos, most hotably Education
Minister Phoumi Vongvichit and President Souphanouvong.
This seemed confirmed by the promotion of Souphanouvong
from number seven in the Politbureau listing early in 1979 to
number three position a year later.
49
Kaysone and Finance
Minister Nouhak Phoumsavan still retain their rank as numbers
one and two, though it is possible that both have, as a result of
their experience, been partially converted to a more moderate
line. Even more interesting, however, is the evidence of Soviet
as opposed to Vietnamese influence. Frequent reference is made
to Lenin in a context which makes it clear that the Lao are taking
Lenin's "New Economic Policy" as the model and "authoriza
tion" for their own economic about-face. so This suggests some
interesting possibilities-that the Soviet Union is working to
increase its influence in Laos as distinct from that of Vietnam;
that the Lao are trying to distance themselves from Vietnam and
using the Soviets to do so; or, as seems most likely, that both are
occurring simultaneously in a new marriage of convenience.
In detail too Kaysone's speech makes interesting reading.
Defense and internal security are stressed as the primary tasks
69 for 1980,SI with China clearly thought of as the main threat.
Kaysone warned that "the international reactionaries have vol
unteered to become the vanguard counterrevolutioary forces in
opposing the socialist countries. "52 More specifically,
the international reactionary forces have colluded with the
imperialists and hurled armed threats from outside into Laos
in coordination with those carrying out acts ofsabotage and
disturbances in the country. 53
Relations with China were of "great concern." "The acts of the
Chinese side threaten the independence, sovereignty, territorial
integrity and political security of our country, " Kaysone said in
calling for negotiations between the two nations to settle their
differences. 54
Thailand also continued to give concern through its con
tinued support for Lao reactionaries. While Kaysone admitted
that "the situation along the border" had been more peaceful in
1979 than in previous years, he called upon the Thai to over
come the "remaining problems and difficulties caused by the
enemies who seek to sabotage the friendship between the two
peoples of Laos and Thailand. " 55 Just how serious the situation
was became evident when Kaysone announced that Laos was
engaged in a new war, "a war of national defense" against
those who sought to overthrow the regime.
We are facing dangerous enemies who maintain a close
alliance with various imperialist forces and other reaction
aries as well as with the exiled reactionaries and reactionary
remnants in the country. The enemies have colluded in imple
menting many subtle, brutal schemes and tricks in the eco
nomic, political, military, cultural, ideological and other
fields. They have combined schemes of spying . .. and
psychological warfare with schemes aimed at disrupting the
unity in the country and at sowing division between l:aos,
Vietnam and Kampuchea. They have misled and bought off
Lao cadres into serving them while infiltrating ... our
offices, organizations, enterprises and mass organizations
with a view to sabotaging, destroying and controlling the
economy, creating disturbances, inciting uprisings, carry
ing out assassinations, and subversive activities in the coun
try, putting pressure on and weakening our country in order
to proceed to swallowing up our country in the end. 56
Though Kaysone did not mention it, an essential ingredient used
by the enemy in convincing even party cadres to resist the Lao
government was the continuing dependency of Laos upon Viet
nam, and the continued presence in the country of numerous
Vietnamese civilian advisors along with some 50,000 troops
more than the total Lao regular armed forces (not including local
self-defense forces). These were considered necessary, how
ever, to protect Laos as an outpost of socialism in the region. As
Kaysone put it: "our economic task and the national defense
tasks are linked with ... our people's international task-that
is to join Vietnam and Kampuchea in standing at the forefront of
the safeguarding of socialist revolution in Southeast Asia. "57
Many who have criticized the Vietnamese presence have been
sent for political re-education, or been forced to flee the
country.
It was in the economic area, however, where most mis
takes were admitted (if only by implication), and where the most
radical changes were foreshadowed. Laos, Kaysone pointed
out, was only negotiating "the first minor transitional step"
towards socialism-that of "building various basic state eco
nomic foundations." It would be a mistake to move too fast.
70
During this period there remained a role both for private citizens
working within an "individual economy" and for capitalism
working in joint enterprises with the state. Both were to be
encouraged as contributing to the national economy.
In three areas in particular, agricultural production, local
industries, and internal trade, the new policy of relaxation of
government controls is likely to have important effects. As far
as cooperativization was concerned, Kaysone gave no indica
tion when the program might be resumed. After candidly enum
erating past errors he called only for the consolidation (in terms
of productivity and management) of existing cooperatives.
Greater stress than previously, however, was placed upon the
establishment of state farms, where advanced technology could
be applied to agriculture. Small scale local industries were to be
encouraged and left in private hands, while internal trade,
markets, and the distribution of goods were also to rely largely
upon private enterprise. Prices were to be allowed to find their
own levels, salaries greatly increased, the currency devalued,
and credit extended. 58
Whether such a wholesale reversal of earlier policies will
prove effective, or merely confuse and demoralize party
cadres-thus further weakening goverment control-remains
to be seen. One thing is certain, however: Laos has embarked
upon a new direction in its internal policies which undoubtedly
will have important and as yet unforeseen implications. One of
these may be to modify the nation's external relations. Within
closely confined limits, Laos may also be in the process of
rethinking its position vis-a.-vis Vietnam, and within the social
ist bloc as a whole.
52. Ibid., p. 13.
53. Ibid., p. 18.
54. Ibid., p. 19.
55. Ibid., p. I 12.
56. Ibid., FBIS Supplement 8 February 1980, p. I.
57. Ibid., FBIS 18 January 1980, p. 123.
58. For these economic provisions see ibid., FBIS Supplement 8 February
1978, pp. 12-35.
59. Since the cessation of cooperativization one high level Lao coopera
tives delegation has visited Vietnam (in October 1979), but two more recent
visits have both been to the Soviet Union (in November 1979 and June 1980).
Conclusion
Over the past two and a half years Laos has attempted to
meet its problems of chronic internal insecurity and under
development by mounting a three-year plan whose aims were:
the attainment of agricultural self-sufficiency and construction
of the economic foundations for a more ambitious five-year plan
to follow; the socialization of production relations at the basic
economic level; and the strengthening of national solidarity and
defense. A key part of the overall Lao strategy was to push the
rapid formation of agricultural cooperatives. Opposition to co
operativization, however, resulted not only in declining produc
tion, but also in deteriorating internal security. Under the joint
impact of Chinese propaganda and Lao opposition to the new
regime, both internal and mounted from Thailand, social dis
satisfaction and unrest increased to unacceptable levels. Thou
sands of farmers and hundreds of trained personnel and even
party cadres crossed the Mekong, further weakening the regime
both politically and economically.
In retrospect, the cooperativization program had to be
curtailed because too much was asked of it, because it was
implemented too hastily, and because its potential benefits were
never apparent to those it affected most closely. Not only was it
designed to transmute Laos into a socialist society, it was also to
lead to increased productivity and to promote the kind of na
tional solidarity which would stand. firm against all divisive
propaganda and acts of aggression. The program failed to live
up to these expectations because too much was staked on a
single panacea introduced without adequate preparation. In
stead of reinforcing each other, the socialist construction and
national security aspects of the cooperatives program each ex
acerbated the weaknesses of the other. As a result none of the
goals and targets of the three-year plan are likely to be met, and
the country hardly seems equipped to embark upon an ambitious
five-year development plan in 1981.
But perhaps Laos has taken the first faltering steps towards
a new set of not only economic but also foreign policies. With
the help of the Soviet Union the Lao may be trying to distance
themselves ever so slightly from Hanoi, though whether they
have much room for maneuver in this regard, or how far the
Soviet Union is prepared to go to assist them, are moot points.
Despite their frequently voiced solidarity with Vietnam, the Lao
leaders may be having second thoughts about the wisdom of
identifying too closely with policies which have been responsi
ble for dragging Laos into a confrontation with Beijing. Viet
namese advice led to the cooperatives fiasco. 59 And the Viet
namese, by their very presence in Laos, generate suspicion and
dislike which only too easily rubs off onto the Lao People's
Revolutionary Party and government. This is a situation ready
made for Chinese propaganda to exploit.
Clearly the security of the Lao state will be of continuing
concern to the government in the future, along with ethnic
solidarity and economic development. The ruling Lao Polit
bureau is too closely identified with Vietnamese interests not to
share Vietnam's suspicion of the PRe. The importance attached
to the "Chinese threat" in particular was a key consideration in
persuading the Lao authorities to adopt new social and eco
nomic policies. In doing so they appear to have taken Soviet
advice and, by going further than the Vietnamese have done in
the direction of economic liberalization, to have lessened ever
so slightly their dependency upon Hanoi. Whether or not these
moves will have the desired effect of stimulating socialist con
struction while maintaining internal security, however, remains
to be seen. *
-T."
, .
--.
71 BCAS. All rights reserved. For non-commercial use only. www.bcasnet.org
Books to Review
The following review copies have arrived at the office of the
Bulletin. If you are interested in reading and reviewing one or
more of them, write to Bryant Avery, BeAS, p.o. Box W,
Charlemont, MA 0/339. This is not, of course, an exhaustive
list ofthe available books in print-onlya list ofbooks received.
We welcome reviews ofother worthy volumes not listed here.
Archimedes L.A. Patti: Why Vietnam: (California, 1981).
Robert Cole: Work, Mobility, & Participation (California, 1980).
Makoto Itoh: Value and Crisis; Essays on Marxian Economics in Japan
(Monthly Review, 1980).
Franco Gatti: La Ricostruzione in Giappone. 1945-1955 (Stampatori. 1980).
Chr. L.M. Penders (ed.): Indonesia: Selected Documents on Colonialism and
Nationalism, 1830-1942 (Univ. of Queensland. 1977).
Michel Bruneau: Recherches sur l' Organisation de' Espace dans Ie Nord de la
Thai/ande, volume I and 2 (Paris. 1980).
K. Ballhatchet &J. Harrison (eds.): The City in South Asia (Humanities. 1980).
R.R. Sharma: A Marxist Model of Social Change (on Soviet Central Asian
Republics) (Humanities. 1981).
UN Asian and Pacific Development Institute: Local Level Planning and Rural
Development (Concept. 1980).
Archie Crouch (ed.): Mid-Atlantic Directory to Resources for Asian Studies
(AAS.1980).
Gerald O. Barney. et a!.: The Global 2000 Report to the President ofthe U.s..
VoL I (Pergamon. 1980).
Frank H. Tucker: The Frontier Spirit & Progress (on U.S .. Gennany. Japan.
USSR) (Nelson-Hall. 1980).
Naranarayan Das: China's Hundred Weeds: A Study ofthe Anti-Rightist Cam
paign in China ( 1957-1958) (Bagchi, 1979).
Elisabeth Croll: Feminism and Socialism in China (Schocken Books, 1980).
James Seymour: The Fifth Modernization; China's Human Rights Movement,
1978-79 (Coleman, 1980).
Elizabeth Perry: Rebels and Revolutionaries in North China, 1845-1945 (Stan
ford, 1980).
J.D. Annstrong: Revolutionary Diplomacy; Chinese Foreign Policy and the
United Front Doctrine (California, 1981).
Leo A. Orleans (ed.): Science in Contemporary China (Stanford, 1980).
I. Gasparini et al.: Cambiamento e Continuita' in Ona (Milano, 1980).
Stephen Endicott: James G. Endicott: Rebel Out ofChina (Toronto: 1980).
Richard Wich: Sino-Soviet Crisis Politics (Harvard, 1980).
Ivan Kovalenko: Soviet Policy for Asian Peace and Security (Moscow: Progress
Publishers. 1976. 1980).
Eugene Cooper: The Wood-Carvers ofHong Kong (Cambridge Univ., 1980).
Kenneth Liberthal: Revolution & Tradition in Tientsin. 1949-52 (Stanford,
1980).
Hok-Iam Chan: Li Chih (1527-1602) in Contemporary Chinese Historiography
(M.E. Sharpe. 1980).
Marc Blecher and G. White: Micropolitics in Contemporary China: A Technical
Unit during and after the Cultural Revolution (ME Sharpe. 1980).
George Kao (ed.): Two Writers and the Cultural Revolution: Lao She and Chen
Jo-hsi (Univ. of Washington Press. 1980).
Bernier. Chang. Ricketts: Le Japon: Problemes economiques et sociaux de
f' apres-guerre (Montreal: Centre d'etudes de I' Asie de l'Est, 1980).
Nakano Shigeharu (trans. by Brett deBary): Three Works (Cornell, 1979).
Roger W. Bowen: Rebellion and Democracy in Meiji Japan (California. 1980).
Kazuo Sato (ed.): Industry and Business in Japan (M.E. Sharpe. 1980).
Diane Tasca (ed.): U.S.-Japanese Economic Relations (Pergamon. 1980).
Kim Chi Ha: The Middle Hour: Selected Poems (Coleman Enterprises. 1980).
Laos: Photo by Albons. 1977
72 BCAS. All rights reserved. For non-commercial use only. www.bcasnet.org

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