INDIA TODAY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP83-00415R010200020024-9
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 60
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 11, 2001
• Sequence Number: 24
• Publication Date: November 1, 1951
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

V~L, 1 U 7+1 ;~E1~ B 195! L i ~ `O M`Y PC , JOSH
25X'1 A
Iector I Sits atiarf ire Est I en a E
Genesis a f I than b~ ur edrsie
When moth ers wise All revolt
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 To Soong Ching-ling*
This medal that Ehrenburg hangs on your coat
This golden ear of wheat, from the harvest of the
great land of peace, the Soviet Union,
Is well bestowed upon you, Soong Ching-ling.
I knew you from the day China awoke.
And also when China suffered, tortured and betray-
ed by her ancient enemies.
From the day of China's liberation, I saw you ...
Like your people, who suffered and fought so long
And are now victorious, smiling and greeting the
people all over the world.
We Latin Americans, we know your enemies.
Our land has wealth in plenty, copper and iron
and tin, sugar and nitrate
But it belongs all to our enemies, those same
enemies you have thrown out forever.
Our country folk have neither shoes nor culture
They plunder us to raise fifty storey skyscrapers
in New York.
By Pablo Neruda
And with our wealth forge weapons to enslave
other peoples
So -the victory of the Chinese people is ours too.
In San Francisco and Washington, a handful of
diplomats
Will not "recognise" the China of the people:
These gentlemen do not know she exists.
They could as well not "recognise" the earth, yet
this earth moves,
And moves forward not backward as
willed.
they have
Let these gentlemen of San Francisco who
not "recognise" New China
Let them ask of miners, of peasants by the thou-
sand, of professors and poets, of old and young,
From Alaska to the Antarctic and they will have
their answer:
"We recognise, we love Mao Tse-tung. To us
he is a brother,"
So it is, Soong Ching-ling, dear friend of peace,
This golden ear of wheat from Stalin's generous land
Comes to you, a great and simple woman,
Not by chance or whim, but by the love the people
Pablo Neruda at the Peking ceremony where Soong show you
Ching-ling (Madam Sun Yat-sen) was presnted with the By the love of peace which you are defending so
Stalin Peace Prize. The picture shows Kuo Mo-jo who that and all le
presided at the ceremony and Madam Sun receiving the your people people
precious gold medal from Ilya Ehrenburg. May recognise themselves and freely build their lives.
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DIA TODAY
Chief Editor: P. C. Joshi
Editor: O. P. Sangal
Contents
Special article :
The Glory of Tripura by P. C. joshi
Special Feature : Into the Elections
Electoral situation in the PEPSU by
Tara Chand Gupta
Electoral situation in the Uttar Pra-
desh by A Correspondent
Hindu Communalism : Parties of the
Extreme Right by 0. P. Sangal
Truman's
Sangal
Indian Agents by
Economic Section :
India and the World Economic
ference
Data on Wages and Strikes
I War India by Kalpana Dutt
Economic Notes by A. R.
Reports from Provinces
in Post-
Spotlight on Subramanayam Committee
Report on Agrarian Reforms by Asoka
Private Colleges in Bengal and the
Condition of teachers by S. N. Chakravarti
INDIA
FOREIGN
Single copy : Rupee one
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For an India-China-Soviet Alliance
by P. C. Joshi .. .. 1
Electoral Situation in Bengal by A
Correspondent .. 10
Economic Notes by A. R. .. 14
Real Face of Panchayat Raj in Uttar
Pradesh by Shanti Tyagi .. 17
Songs of the West Indians by Leon
Fung .. .. .. 22
Indian Revolt of 1857 and the Early,
British. Labour Movement by P. M.
Kemp-Ashraf 25
Genesis of Indian Bourgeoisie by Sunil K. Sen .. .. 31
When mothers rise in revolt by
Hajrah Begum .. .. 35
Krishan Chandar's Art by P.C. Gupta 37
Parties and Politics in PEPSU by. .
Tara Chand Gupta .. .. 40
34th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution:
Defender of Nations' Freedom .. 43
Soviet Tajikistan .. ... 46
Soviets remake Geography and
Climate by V. Kovda .. .. 48
Allies or Satellites ? by Andrew
Rothstein .. .. 53
Cover:
First page: Mao Tse-tung greets Pt. Sunder
Lal, leader of Indian Delegation to China
Second page:
Neruda
Fourth page:
To Soong Ching-ling by Pablo
Leaders of Peoples' China
Published and Edited by O. P. Sangal at 7 Albert Road, Allahabad. Printed
by Sadan Lal at the Technical Press, Allahabad.
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For an
I ndia-China-Soviet Alliance
P. C.
On the 7th of this month falls the most
significant date in world history when the
working people of Russia, headed by the
Communist Party and guided by their great
leaders, Lenin and Stalin, carried through the
victorious Socialist Revolution. For the first
time in the history of humanity the ideas of
genuine freedom triumphed and in a land
backward and oppressed under the barbarous
tyranny of Czardom power passed into the
hands of the people- the majority of the people,
those who work, the real people, i.e., into the
hands of the workers and peasants.
Thirty-four years are gone by and the
results of the People's Revolution in Russia
have surpassed the boldest dreams cherished
by the daring champions of progress of all ages
who ever protested against the social order
based on exploitation and oppression of man
by man.
The emergence of the Soviet Republic
split the world into two systems: thriving
Socialism and moribund Capitalism; and it has
been a factor of progressive debilitation and
disintegration of imperialism, and a powerful
inspiration for the peoples of the countries
oppressed by imperialism in their struggle for
independence.
"For a new factor has risen", said J. V.
Stalin, "such as the vast Soviet country, lying
between West and East, between the centre
of financial exploitation of the world and the
arena of colonial oppression, a country which by
its existence is revolutionising the whole world."
The struggle between these two systems
is the history of our day.
Beacon of peace
The imperialist rulers of the world have
never accepted the right to peaceful existence
of the first Socialist Republic of the world.
Just when it was born Churchill organised the
armed intervention of fourteen imperialist-
Josh i
capitalist nations, but the infant Red Army
successfully smashed it. Today, once again,
the same British Tory imperialist Churchill
is. the arch war-monger and chief advocate
of the "policy of strength" against the USSR,
under the leadership of the dominant imperia-
list power of the day, the USA.
On the other hand it, was no accident that
on the very morrow of the Revolution, after
proclaiming transfer of power to the working
people, the first job the newly established
Soviet Government did was to pass the historic
decree on peace and appeal to the govern-
ments and peoples of all the belligerent coun-
tries to start immediate negotiations for the
conclusion of a just and democratic peace.
The declaration of the Soviet Government
stated among other things: '
"The government considers it the greatest of
crimes against humanity to continue this war for the
purpose of dividing up among the strong and rich
nations the feeble nationalities they have conquered,
and solemnly announces its determination immediately
to sign terms of peace to stop this war on conditions
indicated, which are equally just for all nationalities
without exception."
Might is now on the side of Right
Strictly adhering to the principles proclaim-
ed in October, 1917, the Soviet State has
been consistently and energetically fighting
for peace among all nations, for the security
of the peoples against aggression on the part
of world imperialism.
During the inter-war years, while the
imperialist powers helped to build up Hitler
with a view to diverting Nazi armies to attack
the USSR, the Soviet statesmen consistently
fought to build up a system of collective security
through the League of Nations.
During the second world war, the peoples
of the USSR not only suffered and sacrificed
the most, but it was the valiant Red Armv
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which made the major contribution and dealt
those decisive blows which annihilated the
vaunted military strength of the German and
the Japanese armies. The outstanding role of
the USSR in World War II demonstrated even
to the politically backward that Soviet advocacy
of peace was not the result of Soviet weakness
as the imperialists had persistently preached,
but an outcome of its own internal strength,
its love for humanity and faith in its own destiny.
The experience of the last war has proved
beyond any doubt that the USSR possesses
the, military strength to defeat the aggressive
designs of imperialist powers.
1-?eace-loving peoples of the world can now feel
confident that not only right is on their side but also
the ne?ded might.
After World War II, while the imperialist
rulers of the USA have donned the Hitlerite
mantle and aided by the rulers of Britain as
junior partners are, once again busy plotting
and planning for another world war, an im-
perialist anti-Soviet war, the Soviet statesmen,
inside and outside the UNO, are repeatedly
making proposals for the conclusion of a pact
of Peace among the great Five Powers to guaran-
tee world peace, reduction in armaments, prohi-
bition of the atomic weapon and the estab-
lishment of international control over its imple
mentation, and have initiated the cease-fire
talks in Korea. In all this, in simple and
noble words they confidently express the
mighty will of the Soviet people and give
rallying slogans to the peace-loving peoples
of the world to defend the cause of world
peace, defeat the criminal designs of would-be
Hiders, and save humanity from an unprece-
dented, holocaust.
People's camp also possesses Atom
The latest blow for peace from the Soviet
Union is the timely statement of Stalin on
the atom-bomb which has successfully disrup-
ted the plan of the American imperialists
who had hoped to panic the rest of the capital-
ist world into submission by flaunting their
monopoly of the terrible weapon. Now there
is panic on the other side, in the camp of
the enemies of the people, reactionary rulers
of capitalist countries, allies of American
imperialism, who are faced with the grim
reality that their paymaster and leader
no more enjoys the monopoly of the war-
weapon which was supposed to be decisive
against any army, including the Red Army.
Now there is greater confidence in the multi-
millioned peace partisans all over the world,
NOVEMBER 1951
in their capacity to further isolate the im-
perialist war-mongers and win over to the
peace camp the hitherto vacillating and weak-
minded. Another immediate gain from
Stalin's intervention has been that Korea has
been saved a second time from becoming the
victim of atom-bomb, which the Pentagon
Chiefs were plotting as the only way out of the
indomitable resistance of the Korean People's
Army and the Chinese Volunteers.
Every time our philosopher-ambassador to
the USSR, Dr. Radhakrishuan, has come back
for discussions to New Delhi, he has reported
that the dominant passion of the Soviet Govern-
ment is to save world peace and has in sincere
words publicly stated that Stalin wants peace.
The Goodwill Mission of our writers and
cultural workers that has lately returned
from the USSR has come back overwhelmed
with the universal desire of our Soviet neigh-
bours for peace.
For peaceful co-existence
The guiding principle of the foreign policy
of the USSR is peaceful co-existence of the
two systems, Socialism and Capitalism. "The
idea of cooperation between the two systems
was first expressed by Lenin," said Stalin,
"Lenin is our teacher, and we Soviet people
are Lenin's pupils. We have never departed
and never shall depart from Lenin's tea-
chings."
At the fourteenth Congress of the Commu-
nist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU/Bl) in 1925
Stalin said:
"Underlying the policy of our Government, the
foreign policy, is the idea of peace. Struggle for
peace, struggle against new wars,-exposing the steps
that under the banner of pacifism screen actual pre-
paration for war, that is our task."
In 1939, on the eve of the second world
war, the following emphatic pronouncement
was made by Stalin from the platform of the
18th Congress of the CPSU(B) :
"We stand for peace and the strengthening of
business relations with all countries. That is our
position and we shall adhere to this position as long
as these countries maintain like relations with the
Soviet Union and as long as they make no attempt
to trespass on the interests of our county.
In 1946, answering a question put to him
by the Moscow Correspondent of the arch-
conservative Sunday Times whether in view of
the USSR's onward march to Communism, it
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was possible for the Soviet Union to cooperate
with the outside world, Stalin said:
"I do not doubt the possibilities of peaceful co-
operation; far from decreasing they may even grow."
In May, 1948, in answer to Henry Wallace's
open letter, Stalin wrote:
"....the Government of the USSR believes that
despite the differences in economic systems and ideolo-
gies the co-existence of these systems and the peaceful
settlement of differences between the USSR and the
USA are not only possible but absolutely necessary
in the interests of universal peace."
No interference in others' internal affairs
Marxism-Leninism teaches us that a
revolutionary upheaval and the victory of
Socialism in one or another country primarily
results from the development of internal forces
in that country. In 1936, in a conversation
with Roy Howard, a representative of the
American press, Stalin stated:
"We Marxists believe that a revolution will
also take place in other countries. But it will
take place only when the revolutionaries in these
countries think it possible or necessary. The ex-
port of revolution is nonsense. Every country will
make its own revolution if it wants to and if it does
not want to there will be no revolution.
"For example, our country wanted to make a
revolution and made it, and now we are building
classless society. But to assert that we want to
make a revolution in other countries, to interfere in
their lives, means saying what is untrue, and what
we have never advocated".
It is an essential postulate of Soviet policy
that the internal regime of each country is
primarily the concern of the people of that
country and as long as the two systems-
Socialism and Capitalism-co-exist, let them
peacefully cooperate and that system will
ultimately triumph which is sounder, stronger
and more acceptable to the people.
Ever since the birth of the USSR, the
Soviet leadership has consistently advocated
the policy of peaceful co-existence. This
fact demonstrates the boundless self-confidence
of the Soviet leaders. But ever since the
victory of the Russian Revolution, the central
guiding point of the foreign policy of imperial-
ist powers has been to hammer together mili-
tary and political alliances to isolate and en-
circle the USSR, paving the way for a war of
aggression against it, with the aim of liquida-
ting Socialism and restoring Capitalism in
Russia. This demonstrates the inherent weak-
ness and wickedness of imperialist rulers.
The crux of the world situation as it has
faced our generation is that the leaders of
world capitalism turn down Soviet challenge
for peaceful competition on the basis of out-
lawing war.
Imperialist camp Immensely weakened
It is primarily because of the existence
and achievements of the USSR that the camp
of World imperialism is immensely weaker
despite all the efforts of the imperialist rulers.
The valour and skill of the Red Army was the
decisive factor in World War II that le;d to
the annihilation of three imperialist pow4-rs-
Germany, Italy and Japan. In the posh-war
period, the very first major venture or the
imperialist camp, headed by the US, has turnec'1
into a military debacle and a diplomatic fiasco.
The imperialist armies have been fought to
a stand-still in Korea without the intervention
of the Red Army. Pressure of world opinion
has forced America's war-mad statesmen to
talk peace and enter into armistice negotiations.
The American pretenders to world domina-
tion are face to face with man-power crisis
even during their Korean dress-rehearsal. Du-
ring the year Chinese Volunteers have fought
in Korea, 3,87,000 imperialist troops have been
killed or wounded, including 1,76,000 Ameri-
cans. And during the second week of Octo-
ber, the rate of imperialist casualties has risen
to the unprecedented figure of 5,600 men per
day. America's puppets want all the dollars
they can get from their Washington masters
but they just cannot persuade their people to
become the American canon-fodder in far off
Korea. And more, American strategists are
even faced with an air-force crisis, because a
total of 2,310 planes have been shot down or
damagaed in Korea.
Soviet strength makes peace possible
On the other hand, the camp of peace,
democracy and Socialism is immensely stron-
ger? The victorious Russian Revolution
hoisted the Red flag over the Kremlin, thirty-
four years ago. It is primarily because of
what the Russian Revolution has meant to
the world we live in, that today the Red flag
flies over the vast region from Peking to Prague.
The frontiers of the Socialist world have ex-
panded and of the imperialist world have
correspondingly shrunk. Emphasising the
implication of this decisive shift in the balance
of world forces, Prime Minister of People's
China, Chou En-lai stated on November 2,
INDIA TO-DAY
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in his report to the National Committee of
People's Political Consultative Council, that
the Western imperialist powers will meet
with "total defeat," if they started World War
III. "The alliance between China and
Russia which embraces one-third of world's
population is an invincible force unprece-
dented in history. An utterly corrupt and
fundamentally shaky imperialism is struggling
for existence."
The international weight of the Soviet
Union makes it a mighty bastion of peace.
If the peace-loving peoples of the world link
their efforts with the peace policy of the So-
viet, the diabolical aggressive plans of Anglo-
US imperialism can be successfully disrupt-
ed and reduced into paper plans. The
experience of the two world wars in one
generation coupled with growing faith in the
strength, sincerity and peaceful policy of the
USSR, has already led to the birth of a unique,
world-wide, multi-millioned, organised Peace
Movement. In the first half of our century
the imperialist rulers could befool the people
and were in a position to start world wars.
In the second half of our century, however,
advanced elements in every country are out
to impose world peace on the rulers of all coun-
tries -and millions upon millions consider the
preservation of peace a practical and realisa-
ble aim and are seeking to achieve it.
Such is the historic turn in the situation
that has been made possible by the consistent
advocacy of world peace by the Soviet Union
for 34 long years.
An emancipatory force
The cause of peace against imperialist
aggressors has been immensely strengthened
by basing it upon support to the right of self-
determination for every nation, its right to
independent national existence. Stalin states:
"The October Revolution is the first revolution
in the world that has broken the sleep of centuries of
the toiling masses of the oppressed peoples of the East
and drawn them into the struggle against World
Imperialism."
Czarist Russia was a prison-house of peo-
ples. The October Revolution boldly con-
ceded and constitutionally guaranteed the
right of self-determination, including secession,
to every nationality and thus transformed the
old decrepit Russian Empire into the Union
of Socialist Soviet Republics. The rise of
the Soviet Republics in the East in place of
the puppet Khanates of the past became a
miracle for the rest of the colonial world. The
unity of the Soviet family of nations was tested
during World War II and it proved its worth
by demonstrating its stability in a manner
unknown to history so far. From the grand
post-war plans and projects of construction
of the Soviet Government it is the Soviet Re-
publics of the East which will gain the most.
Such is the fraternal aid, from the more ad-
vanced to the more backward, inside the
USSR, in striking contrast to the American
infliction of the Marshall Plan on its allies.
Simultaneously with declaring the right
of self-determination for all the nations living
inside the old Russian Empire, the newly
established Soviet Government renounced
all the concessions and privilleges Czarism had
extorted from the neighbouring countries, e.g.,
'Turkey, Persia and China, etc. Such unsel-
fishness was unknown in earlier history. It
was practised for the first time by the first So-
cialist Republic of the world and Marx's memo-
rable words that a nation that enslaves another
can never itself be free were implemented in
real life by the victorious Russian Bolsheviks.
The Soviet Government not only liberated
those whom the old ruling class had subjugated
but also went to the fraternal aid of those of
its struggling neighbours whom irnperialists
sought to keep enslaved.
To give only one example, emerging out
of the ashes of the old Ottoman Empire,
Kemalist Turkey would never have retained its
independence except for the recognition and
support given by the Soviet Government.
Without the fraternal aid of the Red Army
the nations of Eastern Europe were in no
position to emancipate themselves from
Hitler's clutches. It was Soviet neighbourhood
and prompt alliance with the USSR which
enabled the birth of People's Republics in
these countries and prevented the restoration
of old feudal-capitalist regimes as their own
puppets by the Anglo-American armies.
Similarly, the Mao leadership has repeated-
ly and gratefully admitted that were it not
for the new light and inspiration from the
Russian Revolution and concrete moral and
material aid from the Land of Soviets, the
Chinese Revolution would not have been
victorious so soon.
Influence on Indian national movement
The impact of the Russian Revolution
on the Indian national movement was no
less strong though not so decisive because the
Indian bourgeois leadership was too closely
linked with the British and its fear of a real
NOVEMBER 1951 5
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People's Revolution was greater than its hatred
of the British rule.
Lenin hailed the political initiative of the
Indian working class when in Bombay it struck
work, against the arrest of Lokmanya Tilak,
early in the century. The day the Indian
working class was born, the teacher and guide
of the revolutionary working class of the world
promptly noted its significance.
After World War I, as the Indian freedom
movement began acquiring a mass basis,
Lenin and Stalin looked towards it with great
hope and with prophetic vision pointed out
that the path of our advance to victory lay
along the lines of adopting an irreconcilable
revolutionary line against the imperialist rulers,
heightening the democratic content of our
movement by going all out to liquidate feudal-
ism in our land relations which grounded
down the vast majority of our people, the
peasantry, and served as the social base of
the alien rulers, and finally, step by step, in
dislodging the compromising bourgeois leader-
ship from the position. of leadership.
It is necessary to recall over and over
again these historic formulations for they alone
correctly and scientifically summate our na-
tional experience and help to explain the
ignominous debacle of August 15, 1947,
symbolised in the slogans: Pandit Mountbatfm
ki Jail Lord Nehru ki ,Jai!
We start learning from Russia
The failure of the first non-cooperation
movement under the Gandhian leadership
led to the birth of a Left Wing and all sections
of the movement began to think afresh. After
our own miserable failure, only the blind
would not have looked towards Russia., the
land of successful Revolution. Pandit Moti
Lal and Jawaharlal Nehru went to Moscow
to attend the tenth anniversary of the Novem-
ber Revolution. After this visit Pandit Jawa-
harlal Nehru widely popularised the ideas
that the Soviet Union from its very nature
had no aggressive designs against any other
nation and that Lenin's heirs had all their sym-
pathy for Indian national aims and that they
were busy building up their country on new
foundations. The interest in "the Russian
experiment" grew in our country. It was
carried a stage further when Tagore visited
the Soviet Union in early thirties and his
informative, human, and thrilling Letters from
Russia were published.
After the second major failure of the Gan.
dhian leadership, during the struggle of the
early thirties, the Indian Leftists' interest
in the teachings of communism grew rapidly.
The United Front line of the Seventh Cong-
ress of the Communist International, of build-
ing a world wide Peace Front against the
rising menace of fascism (after Hiler's rise
to power and Jap aggression in China) and a
United National Front in every colonial coun-
try for national liberation, received wide
response. The influence of this tactical policy
of international Communism on the Presiden-
tial address of Nehru at the Lucknow session
of the Congress and in the documents of the
Faizpur session was noted by reactionaries
and democrats alike. As a result our move-
ment revived and acquired a broad-sweep
and the interest in Socialism grew on a mass
scale.
The political deadlock during the war
years revealed that the Indian bourgeois
leadership had no real faith in the libera-
tionist role of the USSR, but thought it more
realistic to manouvre between the British
rulers and their Jap rivals and the net result
was that the cunning British imperialist crude-
ly provokde and cleverly out-manoeuvred
it and successfully imposed political deadlock
throughout the war years.
After the war, when the allied statesmen were
discussing the foundation of the UNO and the
British rulers had India represented by their
stooges while they had kept the Indian na-
tional leaders behind the bars, Molotov caused
a world-wide sensation and thrilled every
Indian patriot when he declared that the
Soviet Government expected that represen-
tatives of an independent India would soon
be representing India in the UNO.
After formation of Congress Government
After the formation of the Congress Govern-
ment, whenever Indian -representatives have
taken a stand in defence of the democra-
tic rights of our nationals abroad, or in the
interests of colonial peoples or of world peace,
Soviet representatives have heartily welcomed
and warmly supported us. Stalin's prompt
response to Nehru's peace initiative for ending
the Korean War, and the Chinese gratitude for
the Indian stand for China's rightful place in
the UNO exposed the aggressive and lurid
nature of the US aims and demonstrated to the
peace-loving and freedom-loving world how
fraternal cooperation between India, People's
China and the USSR could become a firm
guarantee of World Peace and Asian freedom.
This, however, is only one part of the picture.
INDIA TO-DAY
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sought to assuage American imperialist fears
by showing how Indian representatives had
only thrice voted with the USSR as against
so many more times with the USA and quite
often remained neutral. For opportunist rea-
sons the Nehru Government plays between
the two camps, the camp of war and imperia-
lism and that of peace and anti-imperialism.
The possibilities inherent in the present
situation because of the liberationist role played
by the USSR were vividly described by Mao
Tse-tung :
"Comrades, since the victory of the great October
Soviet Socialist Revolution, a victorious situation
has definitely been established for the people of the
world .... If any other imperialist country tries to
tread the old path taken by the three former aggre-
ssors-Germany, Italy and Japan-cart we not fully
predict the result ? In a word, the future world
:MUST be a people's world. The countries of the
world must be, governed by the people's of these
countries themselves. The world certainly cannot
any longer be tyrannised over by imperialism and
its lackeys."
Guarantee of prosperous and cultured life
The October Revolution "brought the
people not only freedom, but also material
benefits and the possibility of a prosperous
and cultured life." (Stalin)
The nationalisation of land, large-scale
industry, railways and banks and the institu-
tion of foreign trade monopoly-all of it
together laid the foundation for planned social-
ist economy. The working peasantry received
from the Soviet state gratis 150,000,000 hectares
of land which before had belonged to landlords,
bourgeoisie, the Czar's family and the Church.
The new Socialist economy which is develop-
ing according to plan, knows no crisis, unem-
ployment, starvation and ruin. It is growing
with a tempo unknown in any other country
before. A steady rise in the living standards
of the people has become a cardinal law of the
economic development of the Soviet society.
In the USSR, the entire national income is
fully at the disposal of the working masses them-
selves. The national income of the USSR in
1940 was six times above that of pre-revolutionary
times, in 1950 it was 64% above 1940 level.
The incomes of the working people are
systematically growing in the USSR; wages
of factory and office workers increased more
than five times over from 1929 to 1940. The
incomes of factory and office workers and
.
peasants in 1950 were 62% above 1940.
working day in Soviet factories and offices and
a seven to six hour day in a number of trades.
A working day of four hours has been fixed
for those engaged in injurious trades.
An advanced State Social Insurance
System prevails and in addition to money
wages, the people of the USSR receive
various benefits and privileges at the expense
of the state (free medical aid, free education,
free technical training, stipends to students,
allowances to mothers of large families, etc.)
The USSR has now become a country of
universal literacy; while on the eve of the
Revolution in Russia only 30% of the popu-
lation were 'able to read and write. The
number of pupils in general schools and special-
ised secondary schools amounts to 37 millions,
nearly five times as many as in Czarist Russia.
Projects of Communism
But all these grand achievements of Socialism
triumphant will pale into insignificance when
the new Stalin projects of building Communism
are completed, when the Soviet Union success-
fully makes the transition from the present
stage of Socialism ("from each according to his
capacity, to each according to his work") to
the stage of Communism "from each according
to his capacity to each according to his needs".
Socialism has released new, unprecedented,
creative energy of the million-fold masses,
energy capable of changing the course of rivers,
of bringing life to deserts, reviving land, and of
realising the most daring dreams of mankind.
The Soviet Union has begun work on the greatest
construction of modern times, creating a power-
ful production-technical base of Communism.
The huge power installations on the Volga,
Dneiper and Amu Darya will have a capa-
city that will exceed by far the over-all capacity
of 30 of the biggest power stations in the USA
which took decades to build. Their capacity
will be four times greater than that of all the
hydro-electric stations in South America.
The newly planned Turkmenian, South
Ukrainian, North Crimean and Volga-Don
canals will be the greatest in the world and
link up for navigation purposes all the oceans
and seas that girdle the USSR. In the next
5 to 7 years, over 28 million hectares of land in
the USSR will be brought under irrigation,
that is, an area seventeen times greater than
the entire crop area of Denmark, 30 times
that of the Netherlands, and 53 times that
of Belgium. This area could accommodate
five such countries as Great Britain, Belgium,
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Holland, enmark and Switzerland taken to-
gether. The new irrigated lands alone can pro-
vide everything needed to ensure a life of well-
being for a hundred million people. The
grandeur of these projects is seen from the fact
that the USA after hundreds of years' work has
but eight million hectares of irrigated land.
The words of the great Lenin that the
economic policy of Sovietland exerts a
powerful influence on the development of the,
struggle of the working people against imperial-
ist bondage sound with particular force today :
"All look to the Soviet Russian Republic, all
working people in all countries of the world, without
exception and without any exaggeration."
Economic co-operation as equals
Socialism has meant not only prosperity for
the people that achieved it, but also fraternal
economic aid to the nations that break away
from the imperialist orbit and seek its coopera-
tion for upbuilding their national economies.
Unlike the reactionary rulers of Western.
.Europe, the leaders of Eastern European
states refused to accept the enslaving terms of
the Marshall Plan and sought Soviet aid to
rehabilitate their economies devastated during
the war under Nazi occupation and it was
readily given. It is because of Soviet assistance
that in bare six years they have passed from the
stage of rehabilitation to that of building the
foundations of a socialist future for their peoples.
The leaders of New China gratefully admit
that without the selfless assistance given in
the form of technicians and machinary, the
marvel of Chinese National Construction
would not have been possible in that record
quick time when compared with 1949? increa-
sed 11.4 fold, steel 7.8 fold and output of diffe-
rent kinds of machinery has more than. trebled.
The Indian Government's efforts to seek
help for the industrialisation of India are
confined to knocking at the doors of White-
hall and White House or their satellites in
western Europe. The leading Indian industrial-
ists too cannot think of others besides British
and American monopolists for getting machine
tools and technical assistance and are being
called upon to agree to fantastic and ensla-
ving terms. Session after session of UNE-
CAFE has revealed that the aim of Anglo-
American rulers is not to aid but to hinder
the industrialisation of backward Asian nations
and intensify their colonial exploitation. The
Colombo Plan has put in black and white
the economic counter-part of the Mount-
batten Plan :
The concentrations on the "development
CIA-RDP83-00415R010200020024-9
of agriculture " without touching feudal
land relations and without giving land to the
tiller only means more intensive exploitation
of our peasantry and retention of India prima-
rily as the producer of raw materials and as an
agrarian hinterland of the doininent economy
of imperialist countries.
The development of Indian transport only
hnplies strengthening it for the strategic war
purposes of the imperialists.
Giving the last place and least attention to
industries implies perpetuating the existing
economic colonial backwardness of our economy.
Soviet offer of aid
In the latest session of the UNECAFE, at
Colombo on October 12, the Soviet represen-
tative not only exposed the imperialist policy
of perpetuating the dependent, backward and
colonial character of the economies of the
Asian countries but made the declaration that
the USSR was prepared to help the industria-
lisation of Asian countries and the independent
development of their national economies by
supplying machinery in exchange of their
raw material produce on mutually acceptable
purely business basis.
It is not only a general offer but is being
rapidly and concretely implemented and fortu-
nately the first country to which the Soviets
have paid attention is our own.
The press reports that a couple of
Soviet ships are bringing machinery of all
sorts as well as consumer goods to be publicly
demonstrated in a Soviet pavillion at the
International Industries Fair to be orga-
nised towards the end of the next month in
Bombay. Those of the national capitalists of
India, genuinely interested in industrialising
the country, who were so for being starved of
machinery, the know-how and the technical
personnel by the Anglo-American monopolists,
have now the chance of their lives opened
before them. The Indian people who were so far
being fed on the myth that the USSR was
either unwilling or in no position to help in
the industrialisation of India will be able to
see through the hoax with their own eyes
and will be encouraged to demand the necessary
changes in the Government policy.
Progressive Indian opinion has noted the
sharp difference in Soviet and American offers
of wheat. The Soviet Government began
dispatching ship-loads even before business
terms had been settled, on the mere word of
the Indian Ambassador that a great famine
threatened our country and every day counted.
American reactionary rulers sought to exploit
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our famine situation to blackmail us into
changing our foreign policy. The contrast
in their attitude towards aiding our industrial-
isation is still more glaring, it is the difference
between black and white.
It is in this backgriound that the World
Peace Council has convened a World Economic
Conference at Moscow on the basis that economic
co-operation between nations is one of the
surest guarantees of preserving world peace..
It is reported that a fairly influential dele-
gation of Indian industrialists and businessmen
is becoming interested and will respond to the
invitation. It is understood that the Soviet
attitude to trade with India is : Tell us what
you need and sell us in return what you don't need
for yoursef No nation can desire a better
offer.
Make the choice
Years back, in 1923, the prophetic vision
of the great Lenin had foreseen that "in the
last analysis the upshot of the struggle will be deter-
mined by the fact that Russia, India and China,
etc., account for the overwhelming majority of the
population of the globe."
By 1951 the imperialists have realised the
danger to themselves in the three of us getting
together much more clearly than the Indian
people yet understand the grand prospect
before them contained in the Leninist pers-
pective above. The central point in the
Anglo-American imperialist attitude towards
India is to prevent at all costs such a perspective
materialising. That is the condition on which
they "transferred power" on August -15, 1947,
and ensured India's remaining within the
British Empire. That is why they talk of
making Nehru their leader of Asia. That is
why they alternate blackmail with cajolery
and a tough Loy Hendereson is followed by a
liberal Bowles.
The coming general elections will be
the first nation-wide political action of the
Indian people. It will be the supreme task
of progressive Indian parties to ask the Congress
ruling class some leading questions and call
upon the Indian people to judge aright.
How is the foreign policy of the Indian
Government a genuine peace policy when
the Indian representatives at the UNO take
pains to demarcate themselves from the Soviet
peace policy and seek to water down or
radically amend the clear-cut peace proposals of
the USSR representatives. How is it not
flirting between the camps of peace and war "?
How is the Far Eastern and Middle Eastern
policy of the Indian Government worthy of
a freedom loving major Asian nation when
it sends an ambulance to serve the American
aggressors in Korea; when instead of recog-
nising the Ho Chi Minh Government it lets the
French imperialists use Indian air ports and
their bases at Pondicherry, etc., to carry on their
dirty war in Viet-Nam; when it permits Gurkhas
to go and fight for the British enslavers in
Malaya; when it supplies arms and ammuni-
tions to Thakin Nu to prosecute Civil War
in Burma; when it remains silent over the Anglo-
American intrigues to grab Iran's oil; when
the Egyptian leaders have to appeal for the
moral support of India before Nehru would
deign to express his sympathy with Egypt?
How is the Indian Government pursuing
an independent economic policy when it surren-
ders to the American ban against entering into
closer economic relations with the USSR and
the People's Democracies?
The only path before India
Our people spontaneously realise that their
destined place is with the USSR and China
and against the imperialist camp. The tradi-
tion of our national movement is also pro-
Soviet and pro-China and anti-imperialist.
Our people have to be roused against the
pro-imperialist opportunist foreign policy of
the Indian Government. Our people have to
be won for the policy of India-China-Soviet
friendship. Firm India-China-Soviet coope-
ration for world peace will successfully
disrupt the Anglo-American imperialist aim
of dragging the world into World War III and
every nation will get the best chance to earn
its future according to its own genius and
strength.
Fraternal India-China-Soviet cooperation,
when the whole of the colonial world from
Korea to Cairo is passing th rough an unprece-
dented popular upsurge, can compel the im-
perialists to quit Asia.
Mutually beneficial India-China-Soviet eco-
nomic cooperation can help us solve our food
crisis and get the means to industrialise our
country.
The path to Indian prosperity, Asian freedom
and world peace lies through India-China-Soviet
alliance. On this 34th anniversary of the Russian
Revolution, a month after the second anniversary of
Chinese liberation and after our own four year's
experience of the Mountbatten Plan, this path
stands out as the only alternative to acting the
miserable fly in the traditional imperialist spider's
web.
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Electoral Situation in Bengal
From Our Correspondent
The very mention of Bengal stirs senti-
ments. It has faced calamity after cala-
mity-famine, epidemics and then parti-
tion. It is scarred with suffering and yet
Bengal's is not a tale of tears. The Bengali
has always fought back and in a manner as to
command the respect of all. If the British
rulers inflicted the horrible famine in 1943,
the Bengali peasant had his revenge when 60
lakhs rose like an endless tide in the mighty
Tebhaga movement of 1946. If the then
Governor Casey through his long talks with
Mahatma Gandhi in Calcutta laid the basis
for Mountbatten-Nehru Settlement, the patriotic
people of Bengal unleashed the INA upsurge
which acclaimed as national heroes the very
persons the British wanted to shoot as traitors.
In vain endeavour to drown popular discontent,
the Congress Ministry could shoot helpless
Communist detenus inside the jails or inno-
cent, unarmed citizens on the streets of Cal-
cutta but the result has been that not one of
Bengal's Ministers dare face a public meeting
from 1949 upto date.
Bengal has always been more Left than the.
rest of India. Where does it exactly stand
today on the eve of elections ?
Calcutta and the industrial belt
Bengal and its immediate neighbourhood
is the most industrialised part of India but
British capital dominates the main industries,
e.g., jute, plantations, coal. The burra sahebs
of British Managing Agencies are carrying
on exactly as before, the only difference is
that on ceremonial occasions the Tricolour
flies in front of their offices instead of the Union
Jack. They "trust" B. C. Roy more than
they trust any other Bengali.
B. C. Roy Ministry is a one-man show,
other ministers are nowhere near being his
equals. And everyone in Calcutta calls B. C.
Roy Birla's man. The most popular description
of the Ministry is a gang of thieves. There is
a chronic food and cloth crisis and stories of
all-round corruption are household gossip.
Workers and employees have known no
wage-increase after what they won through
the first post-war strike-wave (1945-47) and
subsequent Tribunal-Awards. Even after the
steep rise in the cost of living after the Korean
War, they have not received any increased
dearness allowance.
Retrenchment and rationalisation is taking
place in every office and factory. Nobody
feels secure in his job. Younger men out of'
college are swelling the ranks of the unemplo-
yed.
Every housewife curses the Government
in juicy terms when the women start com-
paring notes on prices of daily necessities.
Whenever a Communist cadre meets an old
aunt or elderly friends of the family, the inevi-
table question asked is: When will it end, son
What are you doing about it ?
Every clerk's family is in debt by the last
week of the month.
Thus radicalisation has spread on a mass
scale among Calcutta's middle class. The
common talk in local trains, trams and buses
is that the Congress Ministry must go: The
weakness of the situation is that here the unani-
mity ends. Even the more enlightened city
folks are not clear about the alternative. Some-
times their attention gets diverted by what
reaction does in Pakistan. But life brings
them back face to face with real issues and their
discontent against the Congress Government
goes on mounting higher and higher.
In Calcutta and district towns Communist
Party and Left meetings are best attended.
People sit for hours listening. They seek an
alternative path and are trying to come to
their own conclusions.
In rural areas
The British rulers imposed on Bengal the
most reactionary feudal land tenure--the
permanent settlement. Congress Ministries in
other provinces have at least talked of agrarian
reforms but the Congress Ministry of Bengal
has just sat upon the agrarian problem.
Government procurement policy is such
that the peasant is denied a fair price and
literally fleeced. He is paid Rs. 7/ 8/ - per
maund for his paddy but the Government
sells it at Rs. 13/6/- to Rs. 16/- per maund.
And when the landless and poor peasants have
to buy rice they have to pay Rs. 25/- to 30/-
at least. In some areas the price goes up to
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Rs. 40 f., to Rs. 60/- per maund! The picture of The Communist Party, after correcting its
the prices of other necessities is as bad as in any Left mistakes, has * been actively rousing the
other province. unity sentiment and explaining how unity
The village folks easily concede that this of all democratic forces is the only way out
Government has failed. In their homes the of Congress misrule and prevalent corruption.
commonly heard phrase is: Swadhinata pelain The vast mass of people are going against
ki holo? (We got freedom but what is the the Congress Government and if neverthe-
result?) The more demoralised say that less the Congress wins, it will be solely due to
the British rulers were better because things division among the popular and Left forces.
have become worse tinder the Congress rule. All progressive elements clearly admit it and
Bitter experience is leading them to demoralised acclaim the unity efforts of the Communist Party.
apathy and not to a positive alternative. When But most of the mass organizations had been
coming elections are discussed they ask: vote split through Congress disruption and weaken-
diye ki hobe? (What is the use of voting). And ed through repression and instead of quick
then they start reminiscing and recall how after recovery a phase of stagnation intervened. The
getting elected all leaders look after their own Communist Party is not yet strong to be
interests and nobody bothers about the poor able to build a broad-based and solid United
villagers. Front of democratic forces. The corner has
This is, of course, not the picture in the been turned, some significant successes scored,
Red Flag areas who have known in the past but the anti-Congress popular unity movement
Kisan Sabha activities. There anti-Congress is yet weak
discontent is expressing itself in mass mobili- How does United Front stand ?
sation in election rallies and the talk is when An electoral alliance has been almost establi-
and how we shall succeed in achieving what shed between the Communist Party (CPI),
the Chinese kisan has won-land and people's the Praja Party (KMPP) and the United
rule. But these bases are like islands, both Socialist Organisation of India (USOI) started
large and small, in the vast sea of rural Bengal. by Syt. Sarat Bose, and consisting of Forward
Other Left parties are mostly urban. The Bloc (FB), Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP),
Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party (KMPP) has wider
links Republicans, Bolshevik Party, Socialist
ks but it is also confined to politically advan- Unity Centre, etc.
ced rural areas. In the vast majority of villages The story of building this United Front is
the peasants know of no alternative to the
give
Congress and so feel demoralised and political very interesting.
call for United Front for elections and
apathy prevails. The Ministry knows it and
its spokesmen say: "Calcutta is not Bengal." contacted the Left parties. Originally they
They hope to win the majority by winning tended to take a high and mighty attitude
the majotity of rural seats. The great danger and seriously believed that Government re-
lies in a situation that the majority of Bengal's pression had almost smashed the CPI and
peasants may not come to polls at all. A sought to strike the best electoral bargain by
minority of voters may be dragged to booths keeping their noses stuck up. But the need
by the hirelings of vested interests, through for Left Unity was keenly felt by the rank
caste and local appeals and with the aid of and file and more serious-minded among the
local official machinery, and thus lead to leaders of all Left Parties.
Congress victory. The democratic parties of However, unity did not come by merely
the opposition may not be able to branch out appealing for it. The practical experience
and stir Bengal's countryside and get the mass of the bye-elections drove home its necessity
of peasants actively express their discontent and possibilities. The first was Howrah muni-
against Congress rule by voting against it. cipal election where the United Left success-
It is noteworthy that even in the latest Cal- fully defeated the Congress and Socialist Party
cutta by-election, not more than 20% came disruptors. The second was the Chanderriagore
to vote. Assembly election where the broad-based unity
of all progressive and democratic elements
Unity sentiment popular led to a smashing defeat of the Congress candi-
dates in all the 25 seats. Here was positive
In Calcutta the Mara (Mohalla) youth inspiring experience. But there was also ne-
say: We will work for that organisation where gative experience. In Malda bye-election for
we see U ! (U for Unity or United Front). the Provincial Assembly seat, it was a trian-
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 Approved For Release 2001/09/10
gular conflict. The KMPP and CPI candidates
between themselves polled' a total of about
11 thousand (5 thousand and odd each). The
Congress candidate polled only 8 thousand
and odd but won because of the split in the
democratic opposition votes.
Malda experience swung the KP/IPP to-
wards unity with the Communists. The KMPP
leader Dr. P. C. Ghosh, as Chief Minister
had begun the Ordinance Raj and the lathi-
charging and shooting of demonstrators which
later Dr. B. C. Roy carried forward more
cynically and brutally. Other top leaders
of the KMPP like Dr. Suresh Bannerji, and
Syt. Deben Sen had, as the top leaders of the
INTUC, slandered Red Flag trade union
leaders, helped the Government to break
strikes, etc., etc. But as a realist bourgeois
leaderhip they easily saw from the victories
of Howrah and Chandernagore and the defeat
of Malda that without unity with the Commu-
nists, Congress could not be defeated, nor their
plans of forming an alternative Ministry be rea-
lised. After long and serious discussion among
themselves, the KMPP leadership approached
the Communists for electoral unity.
The Communist leadership reminded them
of their earlier policy statements where they
had declared that their aim was to fight the
Communists and Communalists alike. They
promised to change it and on the 1st of Sep-
tember they publicly rescinded their earlier
stand and began advocating the need for unity
with the Communists. Their argument is
simple: If we two unite we can defeat the Congress
in Bengal.
As united front relations between the
CPI and the KMPP developed, other Left
parties also swung decisively for unity. Some
of the RSP leaders had tried to forge an anti-
Congress and anti-Communist bloc through
the USOI but failed. The most eager for
unity was the Marxist Forward Bloc. The
USOI could not promptly and decisively
take definite positions because of the predomi-
nance of smaller parties within it. So there
was talk for a while whether electoral united
front should not be confined to KMPP, CPI,
FB and RSP as the four major parties who
really matter. This would have broken up the
USOI and upset the smaller groups within
it. The CPI leadership took the wise stand
that the four bigger parties could be the basis
of united front but smaller parties should be
included in it. Discussions were compli-
cated but they did lead in early October to a
formal electoral alliance between the KMPP,
CIA-RDP83-00415R010200020024-9
the CPI and the USOI.
Anti-Communist front
It is not that there are no "Left" disruptors
in Bengal. The Socialist Party has linked up
with the splinter Leela Roy Forward Biockists,
the so-called Revolutionary Communist Party
(RCPI-Tagore wing) and they call themselves
the "Socialist Front" ! Their main slogan is
"No truck with the Communists". The people
of Bengal don't think much of these Ameri-
can-brand anti-Communists for they know
that an electoral United Front which instead
of including the Communists is directed
.against them is dirty business. This unholy
'Combination has not much influence either.
Socialist Party leaders approached those
of the KNIPP and tried to blackmail them
with the threat: If you have united front with
the Communists, we will expose you. They
ere put in their place by the KMPP people.
Recently when Ashok Metha came to
Calcutta, he was upset by the sight of Marxist
classics being sold at every street-corner stall
in Calcutta. In his public speech he cursed
the intellectual decadence of present da)
Bengal and promised the Bengalis that his
Party will produce real educattional material
for them. One can imagine the devastating
elect of such a statement on the sensitive
Bengals intellegentia !
Later J. P. too came to Calcutta and held
a Press Conference and when he came io his
favourite theme of anti-Communism the press
correspondents put their pencils down and
looked either bored or amused. J. P. lost:
his temper and the story made the round of
Calcutta.
Socialist leaders are at their wits' end
discussing how to penetrate Bengali intelli-
gentsia "corrupted by Communism". Their
American literature is not proving very helpful
Discussion over minimum programme
The Communist leaders suggested to their
electoral allies that minimum electoral pro-
gramme be discussed.
In informal discussions with the KMPP
leaders following points emerged
Unite to defeat the Congress.
Tight corruption and black-marketeers.
Fight For Civil Liberties.
Repeal Public Security Act. Release all political
prisoners.
Abolition of landlordism with compensation.
(KMPP leaders argue that the Constitution
stands in. the way of confiscation and so a
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 small sum will have to be given as compensa-
tion but it can be given in 40 to 50 yearly
instalments.
Nationalisation of Jute industry, with guarantee
to Indian share-holders that they will get their
dividends as fixed by the State.
The KMPP leaders claim to have no love
for the British Commonwealth but hesitate
to agree in writing to the demand of leaving
the Commonwealth. They argue that it is
an All-India affair, and cannot be decided by
Bengal alone. They also ask whether it is not
more advisable to stay inside the Common-
wealth when we can pursue an independent
foreign policy. They agree that they would
not propagate for staying within the Common-
wealth.
'T'hey are not for confiscating but control-
ling British capital. They want to ensure
that no part of British capital is able to leave
India.
The Communist leaders took the stand
that there are several points of agreement to
form the basis of an agreed minimum pro-
gramme but more discussions would be needed.
The USOI parties were not keen at first
on any minimum programme but wanted
the electoral alliance to only arrange a division
of seats without any political commitments.
When the discussions began, they pressed for
"nationalisation of key and basic industries."
The CPI programme stands only for the
confiscation of British capital. In these dis-
cussions the CPI spokesmen stated that the
CPI also stood for this demand but not in the
last stage of the Revolution and that the
Party will be strictly guided by experience.
Let this standpoint of CPI be noted in the
document of the minimum programme. 'Thus
this hurdle could be overcome.
As regards foreign policy most of the Left
parties want to pledge friendly alliance with the
USSR and China, but the KMPP wants to
stick to neutrality. All except some KSP
leaders stand for strengthening the movement
for World Peace. Solidarity with China is
the most popular item.
Division of seats
There are 238 seats in all and all the demo-
cratic parties are concentrating on about 150
seats which are in politically more advanced
areas. The danger lies in the fact that in the
rest of the seats, in the darker rural regions,
Congress may have an easy walk over.
The one aim of the electoral united front
is to avoid triangular conflict and face the
Congress with a united democratic opposi-
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tion. This makes the division of seats
among the opposition parties a very tough
affair.
Division of seats in Calcutta is the hardest.
Leaders of all parties want safe seats in Cal-
cutta. There are 26 seats in all and the
Left influence dominates in 12-15 constituen-
cies.
In the countryside all the democratic
parties are concentrated in politically advanced
areas and do not want to go to open up new
areas during the elections and this brings
about conflict of interests.
The Communists are keenest on unity
and are acting as the bridge between the
KMPP and the USOI parties and their
leaders smilingly state: All we are getting
for our unity efforts for the time being, is
that the other parties want more seats at our
cost.
Narrow sectarianism is raising its head
in two different forms when cadres of Left
parties come face to face with the problem
of division of seats. Communist cadres ask
their leaders: Why should we give up our
safe seats and why to KMPP leaders who
did this and that to us in the past" Many
of the KMPP candidates are not very desirable
and Communist cadres ask: Is the united
front to push up fellows like these? Sectarian-
ism of other parties expresses itself in their
hesitation to sacrifice seats but claim more
than their real influence warrants.
The negotiations are reaching the final
stage and it is hoped that the KMPP and
the USOI parties will not break away over
differences over seats.
The role of the Communist Party
What is the attitude of the people and
the progressive Left parties towards the CPI
now? All those who are politically serious
and have been following events are convinced
that the CPI is making sincere efforts for
unity and is prepared to make the necessary
sacrifices.
Not even those who had systematically
propagandized for some time that the CP[
had been smashed up by repression or ren-
dered ineffective through internal dissensions,
now pretend to believe what they had prea-
ched. The CPI is generally accepted as the
Left Party. It is readily conceded that no
real democratic opposition to the Congress
regime can be organised by excluding the
CPI.
The mass of the common people respect
the CPI as a real fighting Party and thinking
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sections loo's up to the CPI as the coming
Party in opposition to the Congress, but it
is also their estimate that it is not yet strong
enough to deliver the goods.
The people are not yet . very clear about
Communist policy. The confusion caused by
sectarian mistakes of the recent past and
slanderous propaganda by reactionary forces
has not yet been totally removed.
The Party is strong among the Bengali
workers, but weaker among the Hindustani
workers. In the last elections. anti-Commu-
nist national demogogy by Nehru and others
had misled the majority of Hindustani workers
to voting for the Congress. The experience
of Congress Government has taught them a
lot. They attend Party rallies in growing
numbers and are at present in a vacillating
mood.
Middle-class youth is rapidly going pro-
Party or pro-Left. The impact of China
has been decisive.
There is a definite shift towards the CPI
in the towns.
In the countryside, wherever the Red
Flag has been active the peasantry has swung
against the Congress and accepts the Party
as its Party, but vast areas, the majority of
villages, yet remain untouched by the Red Flag.
Among the Muslims, the general senti-
ment is against the Congress and for the
Party. But the pressure of the Congress is
being intensified. Most of the ex-League
leaders have become Congress leaders today.
Their propaganda line is : Vote for the
Congress or you will have to go to Pakistan!
This is having some demoralising effect in
the villages though it is opening the eyes , of
the Muslims in the towns.
The Communist Party has been tradi-
tionally strong in Bengal. All experienced
and farsighted Bengalis wish it to rapidly
regain its old strength and go stronger and
stronger. It is not very difficult to see that
it is only a rejuvenated, strong and united
Communist Party that can aid and guide
Bengal to cope with the acute problems crea-
ted by partition, British domination of key
industries, Marwari speculation at the Stock
Exchange, blackmarket of all essential com-
modities, and chronic food deficit under a
Ministry which disdains even to talk of agra-
rian reforms.
The efforts of the Communist Party are
directed to forging such a united democratic
coalition of popular forces that the Congress
rulers are made to pay for their sins in the
coming election battle.
World Economic Conference at Moscow
Under the auspices of the World Peace
Council, an International Economic Conference is
going to be held in Moscow in December
next. The Conference will discuss (i) the
effects of the two World Wars on the
national economy of each country, and
(ii) the possible improvement in the standard
of living of the peoples of the world, if peace
is preserved and mutually benificient trade
relations are established on a non-discriminatory
basis.
The All India Preparatory Committee
formed by the Indian Peace Council is making
efforts to ensure adequate and effective parti-
cipation by the Indian people in the coming
International Conference.
It is learnt that the Indian Preparatory
Committee's work has roused a keen interest
among not only the Peace Partisans, but also
wide sections of businessmen and industrialists,
including some of the topmost rank. It
shows that the evil effect of the Anglo-Ameri-
can imperialist policy, further intensified by
the latest armament programme, i.e., the denial
of capital goods and essential raw materials
and export of inflation, is getting exposed to
wider sections of the Indian people. In
fact, a number of news-items of the last few
weeks have clearly underlined this fact.
Contrast between two policies
For example:
(i) "Mr. Mahtab (Indian Industry Minister)
who led the Indian delegation to the recent
Commonowealth Conference in London on
raw materials ..told Mr. Jnani Ram that
`It was made clear to the participating coun-
tries that raw materials, especially non- ferrous
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metals and certain chemicals, were in very
short supply because of Western rearmament pro-
gramme and that it would not be possible for
India or any other country to obtain these
goods in the same quantity to meet her restric-
ted requirements..." (Tine Statesman, October 7;
emphasis mine - A. R.)
Mr. Mahtab had flown to London with the
begging bowl, but had to return empty-handed.
(ii) "Effective from October 1, the National
Shipping Authority of the U. S. A. has announ-
ced an increase varying from $ 3.50 to $ 4.50
per ton in the rates for American Government.
owned vessels for the carriage of grain to India.
The new freight rates are 25 per ton from
U. S. Atlantic coast to the Indian West coast.
and $ 27.75 per ton to the Indian East coast.."
(Tfte Statesman, October 14)
The facade of Wall Street's sympathy for
the starving millions of India is crumbling
clown and the real face of the profiteers is
getting unmasked. The first instalment of
American wheat resulted in an increase of
Its. 2/- a maund in price; the latest increase
in freight is likely to further push it up by
Re. 1/- unless with an eye to the coming general
election, the Government of India pays it out
of the exchequer. That import of American
produce means import of inflation should be
clear from this.
(iii) The contrast between the selfish im-
perialist policies of the Anglo-American bloc
and the genuinely cooperative hand offered
by the Soviet Union is too glaring even for the
kept press of the imperialists to suppress.
"Both the British and American delega-
tions gave sober and rather depressing forecasts
of the amount of goods likely to be available
for export....
"The Russians, on the other hand, have
offered to barter capital goods and consu-
mer's articles in exchange for raw materials. . "
(Times' report of the recent UNECAFE
session, quoted by The Statesman, October 15).
The sharp contrast between the two poli-
cies-that of denial of essential supplies and
high profiteering by the Anglo-American War-
Bloc and the offer of capital and consumers'
goods on the basis of equality and with no
strings attached by the Soviet Union, which
stands at the of head the Democratic Peace
Camp, is opening the eyes of wider sections of
the Indian people. Let the work of the Indian
Preparatory Committee for the coming Inter-
national Economic conference reflect this de-
velopment.
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The American counter show
As a counter to the International Economic
Conference convened by the World Peace
Council, the National Association of Manu-
facturers (NAM), the organisation of the
topmost Wall Street monopolists, is making
hectic preparations for the "First Internation-
al Conference of Manufacturers" which will
meet in the United States at the same time
as the Moscow Conference.
The difference in the outlook and purpose
of the two conferences is obvious from their
respective agenda. The agenda of the NAM
Conference consists of:
"Discussion of ways to improve production
will centre around new or improved machines
and tools, new materials, new processes, im-
proved plant layout and design, better material-
handling methods, research and invention,
capital investment necessary for operating and
harmonious employer-employee relations."
(American Reporter, October 17)
While the Moscow Conference will study the
recent economic developments in advanced
Western countries as well as backward colonial
areas, the American Conference will confine
its studies only to the highly advanced industrial
countries. While the main purpose of the
Moscow conference is to study the standard
q f living of the world people, that of the NAM.
Conference is nationalisation; and finally, while
in the Moscow Conference will assemble the
representatives of not only the businessmen
and industrialists but of workers, peasants and
other toiling peoples too, the NAM conference
will gather the manufacturers only.
It is only natural that the peoples of the
world would look up to the Moscow Conference
with eager expectation and upon the NAM
Conference with deep distrust.
Significant figures
The recently published annual report on
Currency and Finance by the Reserve Bank
of India says :
Out of a total estimated expenditure of
Rs. 735 crores of the Central and State Govern-
ments (except Rajasthan) for the year 1951-52,
the share of Security including Defence Services
is Its. 310 crores while that of Social Services
is Its. 150 crores only.
The expenditure on civil administrati6on is
not given here. Even then, the amount spent
on Police and Military alone is more than
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twice that on education and health.
This is not only a continuation of the old
imperialist-bureaucratic policy in the sphere of
public finance but also conforms to the general
line of the Anglo-American War bloc. The
democratic and peace forces in India, if united
in a mighty upsurge, can change this pattern
of anti-social, anti-national waste and employ
this huge wealth for the betterment of the
people's conditions.
Misdeeds of Managing Agents
On the eve of the parliamentary debate on
the Company Law Amendments, we had
discussed the harmful role of the Managing
Agency System in our economy. In course
of the debate itself, more damning revelations
have been made by the official sources.
"Replying to the debate, Finance Minister
Sir C. D. Deshnuikh said," reported The Stalcs-
man, that "he had before him about 100 cases,
representative samples of various acts of
mismanagement by managing agents.
"Reading out certain cases, he said that
in one case, about Rs. 55 lakhs were lent to
private parties without security, for purposes
unconnected with the legitimate objects of the
Company, which was a mill. There were also
several cases of issue of debentures for inAvest-
ment in other concerns, grant of non-trading
advances to nominees of managing agents
or unknown parties, grants of loans and advances
to managing agents or directors of companies
on current account, interlocking of shares,
accumulation of unrealised book debts and the
like. The amount involved ran into c.rores
fo Rupees ......" (The Statesman, September. 8
It may sound strange, but it is nevertheless
a fact that even on the basis of the above evidence
collected by its own sources, the Government
of India did not think it necessary to issue an
ordinance to eliminate or control the malprac-
tices of the managing agents.` On the contrary,
all it did was to issue an ordinance, and later
rush through the Parliament a bill to prevent
the existing managing agents being dislodged
by other upstarts.
The thin end
Simultaneously with the signing ol.' the
`Peace' Treaty with America's Japanese pro-
tectmate, the Government of India has granted
it fishing concession to a Japaries firm, the
Taiyo Fishinti Go,, Ltd., to carry on fishing opera-
tions in Indian waters off the Bombay and
Saurashtra coasts.
Almost. at the same time American domina-
ted Japanese cartel, International Silk Association,
has initiated in India "a country-wide cam-
paign to step up the consumption" of Japanese
sill.. At the first instance they would spend
2,771 or Its. 13,500 in this campaign.
These are pointers over which Indian
industrialists would do well to ponder.
A Note on Indian Shipping
"Indian shipping", writes the editor of
the Investor's (India) Tear-Book-1951, the wcll-
known publication by the foremost brokers
in the Calcutta Stock-Exchange, "made slow
snit nevertheless steady progress ...... I'lie
Government of India decided to reserve the
coastal trade exclusively for Indian shipping
and notice was given to terminate the licences
of the British companies within twelve months
from August 15, 1950. When Indian owned and
chartered tonnage was found inadequate to deal
with the coastal cargo, foreign companies
were permitted to berth tonnage on the coast
under special licences granted for specific
periods. Analysis .... at the end of 1950
revealed that considerable headway had been
made since the coastal trade was reserved for
Indian shipping. The licenced tonnage of
foreign shipping had been reduced to 48,000 tons
compared to 1,78,000 tons two years ago.
Coastal cargo carried by Indian shipping,
which amounted to 53% of the total in 1948,
rose to 62% in 1949, and in 1950, was slightly
over 75%, against a pre-war figure of 33%,.
Indian tonnage on coast, or based on it,
owned or chartered, now stands at a little over
2,47,000 tons. There was a similar progres-
sive increase in Indian shipping in the overseas
trade. Xo Indian ships participated in this trade
in 1946-47, but by the end of 1950, their number
stood at 25..."
Though it is not known what part of the
fleet at the disposal of the Indian shipping
companies is really owned by them and what
part is chartered from foreign shipping mono-
polists at exorbitant rates, the advance re-
gistered by the Indian shipping is undeniable.
From 33% of the total in the pre-war days, the
share of the Indian companies in the coastal
shipping rose to over 75% at the end of 1950;
from nil in 1946-47, the number of Indian
ships in the deep-sea trade rose to 25 at the end
See on //age 21 ]
INDIA TO-DAY
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Shanti Tyagi
Real Lace of Panchayat
in Uttar Pradesh
Raj
Over two years ago the establishment of
Village Panchayats in the Uttar Pradesh was
announced with great fanfare. Congress
leaders and government ministers declared
the formation of Panchayats to be the dawn
of a new era for the tens of millions of pea-
sants in the state. 'their radio and the kept
press boasted that the setting up of Pancha-
yats was the biggest experiment in rural de-
mocracy ever witnessed in the world. What
is the reality behind these loud phrases?
Background to formation of Panchayats
The post-war period was a period of
great popular upsurge. In the wake of a
memorable anti-imperialist general awaken-
ing and alongside the mighty struggles of the
Indian workers and students, soldiers and
sailors and the state's peoples, the peasant
masses of India too rose in mighty movements
in several regions of the country. The peasant
of the U. P. was also on his feet in Basti, Rae-
barelli and other districts, militantly fighting
back the ejectment offensive of the zamindars
supported by police bayonets. And, though,
for some time, the frenzy of communal
blood-baths gave the Kisan movement here
a big setback, it never died down.
The economic crisis grew from bad to
worse causing appalling distress to the rural
population. Inflationary prices of industrial
goods, scarcity of fodder and fuel, prohibitive
prices of food and cloth, epidemics and floods,
new taxes and ejectments and low wages made
life impossible among the mass of peasantry.
Discontent, disillusionment and unrest grew
rapidly during the course of 1948. There
was a spate of spontaneous struggles of the
agricultural labourers and poor peasants.
The peasant masses were beginning to realise
the utter falsity of the promises and slogans
of the Congress rulers.
Real aims of the Panchayat scheme
Congress bosses quickly saw the writing
on the wall. They were fully aware of the
NOVEMBER 1951
democratic orientation of this peasant upsurge.
They were also aware of the deep-rooted tra-
ditions of some kind of Panchayati set-up in
the villages for hundreds of years and the
growing aspirations of the peasant for some
sort of direct and real participation in the
administration of the land.
The watchful rulers understood that guns
alone won't do. Something more was needed
to calm and cow down the agrarian unrest.
So while unleashing police and goonda terror
against the struggling peasantry, they simul-
taneously resorted to the deceitful propaganda
of the Zamindari abolition and the advent of
peasant self-rule. A whole barrage of propa-
ganda was let loose to strengthen existing
illusions and to create new ones among the
masses of peasants. They calculated that the
Panchayats combined with and supported
by Prantiya Rakshak Dal (the Government
sponsored, police-administered semi-voluntary
volunteer force) would act as brakes on the
popular movement and that they would help
in disrupting the fighting solidarity of the
peasant masses and help Congress to maintain
itself in power.
This was the Central objective of the
Panchayat scheme. The framers so designed
the Panchayat apparatus as to provide jobs
to a good number of dissatisfied Congress
workers. We will presently see how these
calculations were not wholly miscarried.
Class composition of Panchayats
Despite the provision of adult franchise,
the elections to the Gram Panchayats and
Panchayati Adalats were far from free and fair.
Although the Congress party did not officially
contest these elections, nevertheless, it used
coercion, threats, official pressure, money
and other unscruplous methods to back the
candidates of her choice to win. Further,
the candidates were required to deposit elec-
tion fees which the poor sections found di-
fficult to afford. Besides, in case of defeat,
security was forfeited without any regard of
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the number of votes polled. Thus the govern-
ment pocketed tens of thousands of rupees.
Moreover, educational qualifications were
imposed in respect of the office of Gram Sabha
Pradhan and the members of the Adalats which
barred the door against many uneducated but
honest and fighting elements.
On top of it, the Communist and several
other Left parties were not allowed to freely
participate in the elections. Restrictions
were imposed on their propaganda, meetings
and demonstrations and a large number of
Communist Party workers were either driven
underground or detained. Muslim voters under
fear voted for the Congress-favoured candidates.
Congressmen and zamindars also did their
worst to exploit the communal and caste
instincts of the electorate.
Thus were born the 35,000 Gram Pancha-
yats and 8,000 Panchayti Adalats.*
The government appointed 8 thousand
secretaries and about 500 inspectors to run
the whole machine.
These Panchayats and Adalats are either
landlord or landlord-cum-rich-peasant domi-
nated. There are also cases where they are
dominated by an alliance of rich and middle
peasants. In some places, they are under
the domination of rich peasants alone. Some
of the Panchayats or Panchayati Adalats are
also democratically led by the honest repre-
sentatives of the toiling masses themselves.
In majority of cases, however, we find the
above class combinations controlling and
directing the activities of the Panchayats. And
though representatives of the agricultural
labour, poor and small peasants and untouch-
*The main provisions of the Panchayat Raj Act can
be summarised as follows: I
The Gram Sabha is supposed to be the self-govern-
ing body of a village or a group of villages. Every
adult resident of the area concerned is a life member of
the Gram Sabha, except, of course those of unsound
mind or in Government service, etc.
The Gram Sabha is supposed to hold usually two
meetings In the year - one soon after harvesting of the
Kharif crop and the other after the Rabi. One-fifth
of the members can requisition a meeting.
Every Gram Sabha elects an Executive Committee
which is called Gram Panchayat. It consists of 30 to 51
members, and is elected for a period of 3 years. The
Gram Panchayat has been given wide powers. It can
make provisions for construction and maintenance, etc.,
of public streets, wells, tanks, ponds, medical relief,
sanitation; registering births, deaths and marriages; regula-
tions of burial ghats and cemetries; regulation of melas;
maintenance of primary schools, common grazing
grounds, public properties; regulation of construction of
new private buildings and alterations in the existing
ones; administration of Civil and Criminal justice and
able masses are also found on them, they
have no decisive voice.
In many instances even these representatives
serve as the agents of one or the other section
of the dominating classes, or play between
them, or in case of a more or less harmonious
combine ruling the Panchayats, play second
fiddle to the ruling group.
However, we should not forget one thing
that these Panchayats, with the exception of big
landlords, are manned by persons belonging
to classes which are essentially democratic, anti-
imperialist, and anti-feudal.
Another thing to be noted is that these
Panchayats, while co-operating with the Govern-
ment on many issues, also resist its reactionary
policies.
In fact, the present unpopular policies
followed by most of the Panchayati bodies,
the weak representation or voice of the toiling
peasantry in these bodies, and the opportunism
of the elected representatives of the toiling
stratas, is mainly due to a low stage of class
consciousness, very weak organisation, and
still weaker intervention of the down-trodden
masses.
Recently I made a study of the class
composition of the Panchayat of village Kaith-
wari in Meerut district and of the represen-
tatives of this village on the Panchayati Adalat
of that area. This examination revealed
that out of a total of 38 Panchayat members,
only 3 are rich peasants. The rest belong
to the middle peasantry, rural artisan and
agricultural labouring classes. There are 2
poor peasants. However, despite their very
small number the rich peasant members rule
the day in the Panchayat.
the election of Panches on. the panel of the Panchayati
Adalat, etc., etc.
In addition to the above, there are numerous dis-
cretionary functions of the Gram Panchayats, viz.,
planting and maintaining of trees; improved breeding
and medical care of the cattle; organizing a village
volunteer force for watch and ward development of
co-operation; managing of seed and implement stores,
taqavi loans, famine relief, libraries and akharas, etc.,
The Gram Panchayat can also enquire into the
misconduct of amin, process server, vaccinator, constable,
patwari, patrol, or peon of any government department.
Every Gram Sabha elects five adults as Panches of the
Panchayati Adalat. Panches from a group of villages
form the panel of Panchayati Adalat for that circle
of villages and they elect a Sarpanch.
Offences under certain sections of the Indian Penal
Code; the Cattle Trespass Act, the U. P. District Boards
Primary Education Act 1926; the Public Gambling Act,
etc. are cognizable by a Panchayati Adalat, which is
empowered to demand the execution of a bond for an
amount not exceeding Rs. 10J for keeping the peace for a
period not exceeding 15 days.
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And out of 5 representatives of this village
on the Adalat, 2 are small landlords (also
indulging in usury), 2 rich peasants (doing
petty usury and black-marketting also) and
one is a rural poor serving them. This
Adalat also is controlled by two rich peasants,
one of them being a Congressite.
Tax, tax and tax
You may go to any area in the Uttar
Pradesh and you will find peasants and rural
workers bitterly complaining against the
imposition of newer and fresher taxes by the
Panchayats. Where the Panchayats are either
reluctant or slow in taxing, the inspectors
pull them up and force them to do the un-
pleasant. In fact, the majority of Panchayats
have done nothing except inventing new
taxes. There is no economic activity of the
toiling population which goes untaxed. There
are unheard of taxes! Ridiculous taxes! Just
as in backward feudal states!!
The following table will give an idea of
the nature and extent of this taxation :
Shopkeeper attending
weekly village market
Vendors
Sale of cattle, etc.
Sale and identification
paper
Bullock-carts( for hire)
Petty wholesalers
Agriculturists
Village shopkeepers
Weavers
Weighman, etc.
Khandsari Producers
Summons of Pancha-
yati Adalats
Anna 1 to As. 2
per week
As. 4 per visit.
Anna 1 per rupee of
the sale amount
Re. I/-
Rs. 3/- as yearly
license fee
Rs. 5/- yearly
Anna 1 per rupee
the total rent.
Rs. 3/- yearly
Rs. 3/- per loom
Rs. 3/- yearly
Rs. 8/- yearly
As. 8 per summons.
This is how even the poorest in the village
are being burdened with taxes. Besides,
heavy fines and penalties are imposed by the
Panchayats and Panchayati Adalats in the cases
decided by them. In addition to these taxes
there are drives for "voluntary donations" launch-
ed from time to time for different purposes.
The heads and amount of taxes differs
from area to area. But one thing is common
to all villages. The panchayats fix them
without any reference to the Gram Sabhas,
(the general assembly of village population)
knowing as they do that unpopular taxation
would encounter fierce resistance of the pea-
sants. That is also why Gram Sabha sessions
are usually not held at all though consti-
tutionally it must meet twice a year.
The amount collected through such taxes
and fines is deposited with the treasury, while
village wells and school buildings lie in dila-
pidated condition, village lanes remain in
a most insanitary state, men and cattle die
for lack of medical aid, food and fodder,
but this money is not allowed to be touched
in most cases.
On. the other hand, the Panchayat Raj
Department of the Government makes it im-
perative for the Panchayats to subscribe for
official papers such as PANCHATATI RAJTA
and draws the money for the same from the
treasury. Some time back, the Panchayats
were compelled to "donate " for a newspaper
which never saw the light of day. !
One may see villages where some sort of
constructive work, which benefits the entire
village population or part of it, was done
under the old village or community panchayats
and also under the Rural Development Scheme
of the first Congress ministry in U. P. But
the constructive performance of the present
panchayats, with their increased resources, is
almost negligible.
In service of the police
In other spheres Panchayats have served
as the organs of the police. The Gram Sabha
Pradhan is used by the police and other authori-
ties to extort bribes in disputes and other
cases. He is made to supply information to
police officials regarding the work and acti-
vities of political parties and mass organi-
sations. Panchayats are also used by the
police and landlords to sabotage rallies, etc.,
organised by the Communist and other Left
parties by spreading slanders and panic in
the villages.
Pradhans often advise tax officers of the
District Boards to levy income tax on the
village poor and others on the basis of wrong
information about their incomes. They defend,
on the other hand, the black-marketeers and
bullies. On top of it, they themselves extort
illegal money and service for themselves in
various ways.
In most of the village disputes, which
come under the jurisdiction of Panchayats
and Adalats, justice is not done. Very recent-
ly Panchayats have been empowered to bound
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down persons in the name of peace and order
and in event of refusal to furnish bonds they
can be detained by the police. This is a
measure clearly aimed against the peasant
militants.
Thus the Gram Panchayats have functioned,
more often than not, as organs of intimida-
tion, corruption, disruption and discrimina-
tion.
Institutions based on adult suffrage and
directly associated with the masses and mostly
controlled by persons belonging to anti-impe-
rialist, anti-feudal class, thus pursuing generally
anti-popular policies ! How shall we explain
this phenomenon? This phenomenon is ex.
plained by the fact that the ideological,
organisational and united front level of the
peasant movement in our province is still
very low.
Whom do Panchyats help ?
The results of this so-called "colossal ex-
periment in rural democracy" are the common
talk of the villages today. Go to any village
and you will find peasants bitterly complain-
ing that since the inception of Panchayats
rivalries, feuds, factionalism and tension have
increased tenfold. In the absence of demo-
cratic intervention, Panchayats have become
liot-beds of faction-fights, thus considerably
disrupting the unity and solidarity of the
peasant masses.
And obviously, so far as the basic prob-
lems of the peasantry are concerned, the
existing Panchayats have not solved and cannot
solve a single one of them.
To Our Overseas Aegnts
We are glad to announce that from
November, 1951, we have revised our
terms for the supply of the journal INDIA
TO-DAY to our overseas agents as follows:
1. Price of Single Copy Re. 1 /- only;
2. 33 1/3 X,, trade discount on an order
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400;
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Half-yearly : Rs. 7/- ; Quarterly:
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7, Albert Road, Allahabad.
CIA-RDP83-00415R010200020024-9
The agricultural labourers and rural
artisans are wholly dissatisfied with them
because they cannot ensure them land, a
living wage, deliverance from indebtedness
and social oppression. Moreoever, they are
angry because they are being saddled with
taxes and fines which they are unable to pay.
The poor and small peasants know that
the Panchayats can give them neither land
and freedom from debts, nor seed, implements
and cheap and adequate water supply for
irrigation. They violently resent the Panchayat
taxation and the discrimination against them.
The middle peasantry is also conscious
of the fact that the Panchayats cannot and
will not save its collapsing economy from
further ruination that awaits it. They too
have gained nothing. They are vehemently
opposed to panchayat taxes.
The rich peasantry also finds the Pancha-
yats to be absolutely impotent in so far as
their demands against the big landowning
class and against the government for just
prices of industrial goods, etc., are concerned.
To the rich peasants, so far, the Panchayats
have given only the satisfaction of being
called the officers of a Government body,
however limited its powers, and of winning
some petty concessions from Government
officials by virtue of their new position.
To the untouchable and depressed sections
Panchayats gave a subjective self-satisfaction
of sitting round the same table as their tradi-
tional social superiors. That is all.
ONLY the big landlords are jubilant on
account of the domination they have been
able to exercise and the disunity and disrup-
tion which followed among the democratic
masses.
Weak popular resitance
The people resent the pressure of the
Government upon the Panchayats. The harm-
ful policies of the latter have led to people
losing interest in the Panchayats, not only
displaying spontaneous carelessness towards
their functioning and deliberations, but also
putting up resistance which, however, is still
very weak and disorganised.
This resistance expresses itself in many
forms, viz., non-payment of Panchayat taxes,
refusal to take any notice of the summons of
Panchayati Adalats; demand for the immediate
use of funds at the disposal of the Panchayats;
demand for the removal of corrupt Pradhans
and secretaries and inspectors. Moreover,
the Panchayats, themselves, are in some cases
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offering partial opposition to the Panchayat
Raj Act and the pressure of the Government
exercised through the inspectors, secretaries
and the district magistrates, is evidenced by
the fact of certain Panch Conferences demanding
the imposition of no taxes at all or only on the
rich, demanding the funds to be left at the
absolute disposal of the Panchayats themselves,
demanding the salaries of the secretaries to be
paid by the Government. These Conferences
have also raised the demand of the Government
to leave one-fourth of her total village revenue
for the development of the village and have
resented and opposed official interference in
their work. The Pradhans have demanded
freedom to join political parties and extention
of Panchayat rights.
As yet this resistance has been very mild
and weak and based only on few sections of
the entire Panchayat orgainsation; but once
the democratic and united peasant movement
takes up the issues in right earnest the scales
will be tipped in favour of the people.
Therefore, it will be a suicidal sectarian
-;stake for the peasant movement to boycott
,se Panchayats. We have to be in them and
ern to utilise them for people's interests.
We would be poor revolutionaries, indeed, if we
fail in this urgent task.
Utilise Panchayats for people's benefit
Obviously it will be a tough battle between
the peasant movement and the Government.
The ruling class will try more and more to
utilise the Panchayats as its helping hands
through village Congressmen, opportunist ele-
ments, landlords and also the rich peasants.
To counter this we must build up broadest
united front inside the Panchayats and isolate
the Governments, the big landlords and their
reactionary henchmen.
We should start on the basis of the follow-
ing tasks :
We must launch united front campaign from
inside and outside the Panchayats for an extension
of their democratic rights and powers.
We must expose continually the aim of the ruling
class behind the Panchayats and its reactionary efforts
in converting them into police organs.
We must work for the defeat of people's enemies
inside the Panchayats.
We must see that the panchayats pass resolutions
and send memorandums against police zoolum and
for common demands of their areas to begin with.
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We must expose the anti-democratic policies of
the Government from the Panchayat platform.
We must fight against taxation inside them.
We must draw them into the Peace movement.
We must insist and campaign to hold Grain
Sabha sessions regularly.
We must activize and democratise the Panchayats
led by us.
We must build up fraternal relations between.
the Panchayats and the Kisan Sabhas.
We must back up the Panchayats on all demo-
cratic issues by our independent actions.
The successful fulfilment of these tasks
depends, in the main, on two factors-firstly,
the independent and united organisation of
the peasantry, strong enough to intervene
decisively; and secondly, on patient and deter-
mined participation in the Panchayats, and
our competence to win all our allies and to
isolate the Government and the big landlords.
Economic Notes
From Page 16 ]
of 1950. But this advance is national in form
only, in content, it is Scindia's. This will be
clear if we have a look at Scindia's empire
today.
The Scindia Steam Navigation company
today maintains regular services between:
(i) India, Burma and Ceylon ports;
(ii) India, U. K., the Continent; and
(iii) India, and America,
(iv) Karachi and Calcutta
(v) Chittagong, and Rangoon.
Apart from its direct share, it has also a
number of associated and subsidiary companies,
such as:
(i) Narottam, Ltd., (ii) The Eastern
Bunkerers Ltd., (iii) Narottam and Pereira, (iv)
Scindia Steamship (London) Ltd., (v) Scindia
Steamship (Burma) Ltd., (vi) National Ship-
ping Agency Ltd., (vii) Ratnagar Steam
Navigation Ltd., (viii) Indian Co-operative
Navigation and Trading Co. Ltd., (ix) Bombay
Steam Navigation Co. Ltd., (x) Bengal-Burma
Steam Navigation Co. Ltd., etc.
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Leon Fung
Songs of the West Indians
We West Indians can
be proud of our peo-
ple and of our past.
I think of my country-
men as some of the
finest types, physically
and otherwise, that
can be found any-
where, and although
we are not taught
much about the history
of our own people in
the schools, stories
LEON FUNG is a, young singer and com-
poser from Jamaica whose Chinese surname may
remind us that the West Indies have old links
with Asia. The delegations of West Indians
and Africans to the Berlin Youth Festiaual made a
special contribution to the musical and cultural
side of this great demonstration of international
friendship. Here Fung explains the national
traditions of his art and shows the way in which
music can serve the peoples' cause.-Editor
and traditions get handed down from parents
and older people, making us conscious of the
sufferings of our people.
Among the enslaved Africans brought by
force from their native land to these Islands,
were many people of noble birth and many
others of high intellectual attainment. The
names of Toussaint L'Ouverture, Henri Chris-
tophe, Dessaline and many others will always
be remembered.
Music of victory and independence
Among the Maroons in the mountains of
Jamaica there was plenty of courage and intel-
lect. Dessaline and his comrades by sheer
brain power and organisational ability defeated
the once invincible fleet and army of Napoleon
in the West Indies and declared the indepen-
dence of Haiti in 1804. They ripped the white
stripe out of the French flag and joined the blue
and red to form the flag which still to-day
represents Haiti. After this extraordinary
achievement of inexperienced men against
well trained and organised troops, the new-
born citizens of Haiti on the 2nd of January,
1804, settled upon to celebrate their victory
and the newly won freedom with the music of
drums and dancing. And what extraordinary
rythm they can produce on their drums ! One
can imagine the incomparable rythxns and
ecstatic dancing inspired by victory, and. while
they beat out their measures on Haiti, the
slaves on the other islands were carrying out a
similar struggle.
Many of the slaves could not practice their
art as openly as the free people of Haiti. They
resorted to producing rythm by their voices.
Hundreds of varieties
of song sprung up and
died away, but many
survived and are well
known to-day-the
Buroo, the Mento, the
Meringue, the Son,
the Conga, the Rum-
bah, the Pickon, the
Calypso and many
others.
- _-------- The Calypso
It is in the last named form that I have
somewhat specialised myself. Calypsoes are
sung in most of the islands, but the inhabitants
of Trinidad have a special weakness for themx
The Calypso generally had an erotic charactc
but singers also use themes from individua
life, events in national history and above all
political subjects. Almost any incident can
go into a Calypso, and a number of highly
developed political Calypsoes have become
popular. Some have been published in Ameri-
can collections of songs.
Some Calypso singers think that the tradi-
tional four-verse form should not be altered,
"but for my part I think that" it would be
putting the Calypso in a strait jacket to
stick rigidly to such rules. It should be a
medium of free expression and I believe it is
capable of great development in the service
of the people. I want to use the Calypso
to stir my people out of their lethargy, to
inspire them and instil in them the revolu-
tionary idea, the desire for freedom and
independence.
We must defend our national art
It is my earnest desire to get as many people
as possible to sing Calypsoes reasonably well.
Everything else has been forcibly taken away
from us, the coloured people, by our "protec-
tors"-except our music. That has remained
and we should be glad that we still possess
something of which these gentlemen were
unable to relieve us. This bit of Negro cul-
ture, like the drumming in Haiti and Africa,
has remained faithful to us. We should want
to share it with our friends in all lands. In
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some of the islands of the West Indies to-day
there are snobs among us who go all out to
please the Yanks and to imbibe their empty
tin music. Such people decry true folk art,
the art of their forefathers. While I do not
believe that this decadent music can ever
kill the virile folk-song and Calypso, we have to
fight consciously for our national art and its
development, just as we have to fight for other
rights and needs.
It is much more difficult to explain the
musical character of the Calypso. Like the
Sambah the rhythm is negroid. The only
difference is that the Calypso rhythm cannot be
written, it must be felt. Try to write it, and
all you get is another stereotyped, lifeless corn-
mercial hash. I am not saying that an approxi-
mation of the notation could not or should not
be attempted, but in order to sing it, the rhythm
must first be felt. Perhaps this is the nature of
all true folk-song. While it is correct to say
for instance that the Sambah is on the beat,
it is also true to say that the Calypso is generally
off the beat, but I'm afraid that if I attempted
to describe its musical character more closely
in words, I should not be able to give my
readers any clearer impression. And yet,
although the Calypso is something so cha-
racteristic of my own country and so typically
part of our Negro culture, it seems to have an
almost universal appeal to people everywhere
once it can be heard, as my recent experiences
at the Berlin Youth Festival demonstrated.
Calypsoes at the Berlin Festival
I was singing not only with the West Indians
and West Africans who attended the Festival
but also with the English cultural group, and
I was kept busy from the time I arrived to the
time I left. Although I had been singing much
more than was good for my voice in France
before coming to Germany and my voice was
not in really good form, I was amazed to find
that I was in great demand to sing on every
occasion. My Calypso on Korea, which had
made something of a hit at London, seemed
to have an even greater effect in Berlin.
Every time I stopped in the street, a crowd
seemed to gather round to ask questions about
my country and to get autographs. When I got
through answering their questions and asking
my own questions, I would ask the people to sing
some of their German folk-songs. Then they
would ask me to sing the songs of my native
land. Sometimes I would start to show them
our folk-dances and then they would show
theirs,. And so it went on. Sometimes a loud-
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speaker van came along and provided music
for us to dance in the streets, and sometimes
after the dancing they would again ask me to
sing, and I would mount the top of the van and
sing from there as a platform.
There were always thousands of young
people who would collect and listen. One
evening it seemed to me that the crowd I had
collected was blocking up the highway to the
inconvenience of the traffic and I asked the
people to move into a side street where we
would cause less obstruction. This they accor-
dingly did very readily. And this is how I
come to have a very unusual souvenir from
Berlin, because the German police apparently
appreciated this consideration of their diffi-
culties and showed it by sending me a present-
a police badge attached to a handkerchief-
with their thanks and good wishes.
I was asked to sing in most of the big theatres
and every day and every night I sang to large
audiences either in some theatre, or in the
Treptower Park or in the streets. I and a
Trinidadian also taught some of the children
the ring dance in the Young Pioneer Central
House of Culture, near Stalin Alley, while the
children in their turn taught us some of their
folk dances.
Folk dance versus neurotic jitterbug
All this was a unique opportunity for ex-
change of ideas and learning something of
one another's art. I noticed for instance that
when in the streets some rather decadent
looking "spiv"-type youngsters started up
American dances like the "Jitterbug", the
majority of East Berliners did not regard this
at all favourably. These incidents only em-
phasised the contrast between the neurotic
American dances and the healthy folk-dance.
It is quite clear that even here all sorts of
attempts are made to foist this decadent and
spurious American "culture" onto the German
people but it was also quite clear that the
Germans' own folk-dances and art gave them far
more real pleasure and the "Jitterbuggers" just
seemed quite out of place in that atmosphere.
There seems to be a real renaissance of true
German culture with a new spirit. I came
away impressed by the healthy signs that
show that the German people have all the
talents needed to win again a leading position
in the world of true and progressive culture
and that they need certainly never succumb to
the cheap American variety of "civilisation".
One of the songs which I was asked to sing
again and again and which was always under-
stood and applauded explains why. Here it is:
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KOREA-A CALYPSO In these hilt t' h
orz
Trygve Lie was once considered a very good man
But like all other opportunists we've just got another
one.
United Nations is the United States
A factory where they engineer wars for their mates.
We'll bring them to book as we did Streicher
For their crimes in Korea.
(Chorus)
Women crying: "Murder, Murderl"
Children crying: " Help me, Mama !"
But there's no mother around
Theyankees butcher them on the ground.
Western "culture" travelled o'er six thousand miles
away
To bomb women and children in Korea every dey.
They glorify war and then
Their gangster films teach them how to murder, beat
women.
How they twist facts, now black is white.
Their culture's murder, rape - the plaguing parasites.
(Chorus)
6-6-0
1-8-()
Some books on China
Marx on China
Stalin on China
Mao Tse-tung:
Three Important Writings ...
Aspects of China's Anti Jap
struggle , , ,
Strategic Problems of China's
Revolutionary War
The problems of Art and Literature...
Lih Shao-Chi :
On the Party ...
Nationalism and International-
ism
Inner-Party struggle ...
0-8-0
1-0-0
... 0-8-0
Unfinished Revolution in China ... 6-8-0
Robert Payne:
Mao Tse-tung ... ... 13-8-0
,Jack Belden:
China Shakes the World ... 14-1-0
ADHUNIK PUSTAK BHANDAR, 7, Albert Road, Allahabad.
24
c ames we ave many things to do,
The Tankee vermin are crawling out far and wide,
its true.
They make Korea a desert wher'er they go,
They strike at children with the same old Tankee
blow.
The frozen bomb-twisted limbs of the young babies
Is just one of the testimonies.
(Chorus)
The Yankee upstarts think they can dictate to
New China
Any war they start in the East will be their own
cancer.
They think they're dealing with ",Jim Crow Problem"
When they're faced with a humanitarian system.
We'll have to teach them honesty and decency
That they might live with humani y.
(Chorus)
Wall Street will be crying "Murder" !
Eastern War is worse than Cancer.
"We'll have to face the music
The little Gooks have got us quite lick!"
speech at T. U. Con ference of
Asian and Australian coun-
tries at Peking ... 0-2-0
Li Li-san:
T. U. Movement in China
Astafyev:
0-2-0
1-8-0 China's Economic Problems
China from a Semi-Colony to
1-4-0 Peoples' Democracy
0-8-0 1. Epstein:
INDIA TO-DAY
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 Approved For Release 2001/09/10 CIA-RDP83-00415R010200020024-9
P. M. Kern p-Ashra f .
Indian Revolt of 1857 and
the Early British Labour Movement
"When first the West its warrior march began
The eyes of Earth were turned to Hindostan.
Long time the clouds stood gathering, tier on tier,
And thickening thunders muttering growled more near.
Through plain and valley pressed uneasy heat
That burnt volcanic under English feet.
Fierce and more fierce from Himmalaya's height
Fresh flash on flash keeps heralding the fight..... .
Victorious deluge ! From a thousand heights
Rolls the fierce torrent of a people's rights.
And Sepoy soldiers, wakening band by band
At last remember they've a fatherland !
Then flies the huxtering judge, the pandering peer,
*
In 1857 Ernest Jones could claim that his
Revolt of Hindustani, written in prison
between 1848 and 1850, had been prophetic.
Were he alive to-day he might claim even
greater insight for seeing where the betrayal
of democracy in "Man's sanctuary, America"
would lead. The introduction to the poem
on India explains why mankind had to look
elsewhere for the realisation of freedom as
the Chartists understood it, and here addres-
sing America he writes :
"But not the black alone the wrong shall feel,
The white man sinks the prey to blood and
steel; ii
For Victory carries Glory in her train
Which dark behinds her drags a lengthening
chain.
The horde's ambition taught afar to roam
Soon rivet links on misery's limbs at home;
The taste for conquest brings the taste for
more;
* The Presidency Towns,
t The complete text is reprinted for the first time
in Indian Studies, Vol. I to be shortey published by
Adhunik Prakashan, Allahabad.
tt The organized struggles of American labour in
the eighteen-forties had more sharply brought home
the class character of the bourgeois republic and were
associated in the Chartist press with the old "blot"
of negro slavery.
NOVEMBER 1951
The English pauper, grown a nabob here,
Counting House tyrany and pedlar pride..... .
Straight sink the three sea Sodoms in their pride;
Starts each imperial thief from counter side,
And leaves the untotalled ledger's long amount
For Hindu hands to close the dark account....
See where in turn accused the Judge appears,
While wrath from vengeance claims the dread arrears;
Law's lying, forms no more his sway secure;
No laws are valid that oppress the poor....
Now, treasure cumbered on his panting fight,
The Bishop kneels before his proselyte ...."
(Ernest Jones: Revolt of Hindostan, 1848-50)
And death fraught navies leave the saddened
shore....
But, when thy natural limits once possessed
Thou too shalt seek to colonize a west,
Round coral girt Japan thy ships shall fly
And China's Mains behold thine armies die."
And in those days, let it be remembered,
the United States represented the young
capitalists' ideal of peaceful enterprise, and
the middle class idea of free democracies.
First treatise on India
However, that is not the reason for quoting
the poem. It is in fact the first treatise on
India written from the point of view of work-
ing class revolutionary aims and giving a
call for armed revolt in the colonies as part
of the struggle for popular freedom. It is
therefore, in spite of the verse form, an im-
portant document for the history of the inter-
A keen student of languages, history and
anthropology, Mrs. P. M. KEMP-ASHRAF
is deeply interested in India. She has spent a
few years in India as a teacher and is at present
working in England on some studies on Indian
history which will soon be published.-Editor
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:national movement and indicates the position
of the English progressive movement at that
time already forced to consider its stand in
relation to wider issues, such as the practical
effects of colonisation on the conditions of
the masses, and what its vague and abstract
internationalism might really mean on a
world scale. Jones-and the Chartists in
general-represented a transition from Uto-
pianism to a more scientific approach. He
shows mystical trends, errors of judgement,
and idealism in the understanding of national
questions. But those Utopians who in time
and in direction were really forerunners of
scientific socialism, should never be belittled.
Jones' "prophesies" are striking because he
viewed the future of India from the perspective
of a distant future when a vast "federated
Republic" would use all the means discover-
able by science-including "the explosive
mineral's propelling force"-to benefit man-
kind, and then-
Those Halcyon days shall witness discord
cease
And one great family abide in peace....
.Nb parchment deed shall qualify the soil
God gave to man his title in his toil.
No vile distinctions mar his great design
And designate a theft as "mine and thine".
No perjured code shall make his bounty vain
And say: For thee the stubble-me the grain.
But 'twixt this dust and heavens o'er
arching span
Man own no nobler name than that of MA,N..
Jones' forecast of India's future
Nevertheless The Revolt of Hindostan belongs
to the period of the "pre-history" of Com-
munist theory. India's liberation from foreign
domination did not, according to this story,
result in a free republic, but produced a
strong, centralised semi-feudal national state,
introducing certain reforms that made it
possible to develop a capitalism similar to that
which already existed in Europe. In. this
part of his poem, Jones described at length
the stage of social development from feudalism
to bourgeois capitalism, the birth of the middle
and working classes, the ever increasing struggle
of the people against a series of oppressors,
very much as English history had been in-
terpreted. He presented the matter as though
each nation had to pass through almost an
identical process, until, at the critical point
when "monopoloy" became rotten ripe, some-
where the vast mass of people. would revolt
and break the vicious circle of the repeated
rise and fall of nations. Hindostan, therefore,
was fated to repeat the "mistakes" of Europe,
but-for reasons that are not at all clear in
the poem-she not only grew her own
"Chartist" movement, but achieved real
emancipation. Once that had happened in
one country, all the peoples of the world, the
most backward and the most highly civilised
alike, would rise one after another and throw
.ofl' their chains.
Abstract internationalism
Now in all this,-among other shortcomings
of political philosophy-the possibility of any
closer interaction of peoples, of any concretely
interrelated world history, is scarcely hinted.
Common cause against common oppressors
is the underlying moral of the whole poem,
of course, but there is no suggestion of any
effective international co-operation of the
oppressed before the world revolution of the
future. This ommission alone would show
us the difficulty of arriving at a world outlook
in the eighteen-forties. An ultimate unity
of aim; fellow-feeling for democratic move-
ments abroad; declarations of moral support
and fraternal greetings, were current among
the Chartists, even on the "right wing", but
this internationalism was generally somewhat
abstract.
By 1857 Jones' own ideas had broadened.
In the interval he had reviewed at length
the experience of the preceding period, seek-
ing for the causes of the decline in the popular
movement after 1848. He was largely res-
ponsible for drafting the Chartist program
of 1851, intended to turn the movement into
a broader, more organised type of political
party. One of his formulations precipitated
a somewhat controversial discussion of the
colonial issue as a whole, perhaps for the
first time in the history of Chartist conventions,
if we exclude the debates on Irish indepen-
dence. It may be gathered from some of
his writings that he saw colonial expansion
as a strenghtening of the position of the
bourgeoisie against the forces of progress and
as a danger of the "English system" engulfing
the whole world unless it were killed early
in its career. He began to write articles
in which he related the colonial question to
home affairs and working class interests, and
others in which he spread information as to
the conditions in the Col' nies themselves.
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Jones' articles on Indian Revolt of 1857
Most important of all, in these years he
had come into direct personal contact with
Karl Marx. We need not discuss the history
of this connection, which is well known, but
it seems likely that they must also have dis-
cussed Indian affairs and perhaps collabora-
ted. The articles written by Marx between
May and July 1853, published in the New
York Daily Tribune, cover much the same
ground and use much the same material
as a series of articles published by Jones,
partly about the same time and partly earlier.
The probable explanation is that Jones, who
had obviously read a good deal of Indian
history much earlier and had far better oppor-
tunities of following the affairs of the East
India Company, may have handed over
notes or suggested sources to Marx. In any
case it is extremely instructive to read the
two sets of articles side by side. The data
is all much the same; the presentation and
conclusions characteristic of the writers'
differences in theory, temperament and
approach.
In Jones' articles during the Indian war of
1857 and in some earlier ones, there is an
attempt to relate the fate of India to the
interests of the working class in Europe. Jones
greeted the outbreak of the revolt in 1857 as
a great event in international struggle against
oppression-no less significant than that of
the Polish people against Czarist reaction. He
took this stand before the only news reports
available spoke of anything more serious than
local mutinies in the army. All too readily,
perhaps, he read into Indian events the signs
of a revolutionary upsurge in the world at large
and he called on the English workers to seize
this opportunity for a renewed attack on the
privileges of their common enemy, the English
capitalist class.
New questions
Jones attempted to answer new questions
that now presented themselves. True, he
often put them in an ethical rather than a
political form and his answers were not always
very adequate, but on the whole they were
good questions. Some of them should still
be thought about seriously. What should be
the attitude of the British working class to the
war in India? How would an Indian victory
help the cause at home? Were the people
better off for colonial possessions or would they
benefit by their loss? Is not the Indian war
CIA-RDP83-00415R010200020024-9
as "holy" and just as the national cause of
the oppressed peoples of Europe? What
is the class structure in India itself, can a
peasant population achieve a democratic
order? What about the feudal princes who
in the main have betrayed their own people?
Are they the only leaders? How is effective
unity to be reached in India in order to
carry out a successful campaign against foreign
invaders? Was Hindu-Muslim unity rea-
lisable ? Are the people of any class better
off under British rule, as we have been told,
or are they suffering from the ever increasing
drive for profits ? What is the true position
of peasant expropriation, what really under-
lies the policy of government and traders?
What is the truth of the atrocity stories ?
Finally : how can the workers in England
make common cause with the people of
India and give aid ? It is noteworthy that
any English newspaper put such questions
at that date. It is not to be confused with
the liberal or labour "sympathy" for the
Indian nationalist movement in the Congress
phase, but this forgotten page of history does
reveal the historical reason that afterwards
obliged any party that made pretensions to
a progressive and popular platform to give
at least lip-service to the principle of colonial
independence.
Search for a popular basis
At the same time, Jones searched for
every scrap of news that might reveal a
popular basis of the movement in India, for
signs that something different from the old
order would have to emerge for the struggle
to succeed. He attempted to judge the
character of the rising and the chances of
success by the extent to which it roused po-
pular support and initiative and held pro-
mise of a more just and democratic social
order for the common man in the future.
He tried to understand the forms in which
this might be expressed in Indian conditions.
He also gathered all the news items that
illustrated international co-operation-indic-
ations of unrest among British troops,
individual cases of Englishmen going over
to the mutineers, Irish revolutionary propa-
ganda to stop recruitment, resolutions of
democrats abroad and in the USA--a piti-
fully small total in the end. He made a
great many wild statements and predictions.
In the last stages of the war he launched a
red herring petition for the restoration
of Oudh, around which he hoped to mobi-
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lse whatever middle class radioal opinion
could be moved to protest against the excess
of blood vengeance, which he soon realised
was a mistake. Week after week in his paper
and often at public mettings he had driven
home the main lessons, declaring that the
cause of freedom was indivisible, exposing
the policy of the government at home and
abroad and its responsibility for the fictitious
role of the East India Company and ended,
as he had begun, by laying the burden square-
ly on the shoulders of the capitalist class-free
traders, pacifists, radicals and mercy-mongers
included.
Decline of Chartism
Now in these years the organised Chartist
movement was in decline and disrupted from
within. Jones himself was in a state of anxiety
and confusion, committed mistake after mistake
and became temporarily involved with Bright
and the radicals in opportunist negotiations
for an alliance on the franchise question. At
that time Marx wondered whether Jones was
a renegade or only a big fool. Factions
within the remaining Chartist leadership
united to isolate him. There is no doubt
now that some of the individuals concerned
were encouraged from outside. It is possible
that anxiety as to the effect of Jones' propa-
ganda about India when the frenzy of chau-
vinism fostered by atrocity stories subsided,
may have hastened the final blow. Early
in 1858 Jones faced political bankruptcy and
financial ruin. When he was obliged to sell
his newspaper, he was tricked into an agree-
ment which he thought guaranteed him a
partial control of its policy. No sooner
was the contract signed than he discovered
his mistake. The paper which he had built
came out openly as his chief slanderer, and
then ceased publication. In the last issue
we may read, side by side Jone's exposure
of this dirty treachery, his last article on
India-a bitter exposure of the farce of the
"mercy" policy designed for the Queens' pro-
clamation. The Chartist party was formally
dissolved.
Beginning of "connivance" at colonial spoils
It was no accident that the first serious
colonial revolt went down to the swan-song
of Chartism. The consolidation of British
capitalism in its leading position in the world
had to be secured by the repression of the first
working class movement, which up to 1848 had
really menaced its stability, and of the colonial
revolt of 1851. During those ten years, on
the basis of an expanding market, liberal-
radical demagogy had also made some head-
way among the masses. Although it was
still possible to gather some very large meet-
ings and demonstrations, and on economic
issues there was some renewal of workers'
activity from time to time, there was nothing
of the nation-wide unrest and broad response
that had, in spite of all its limitations, made
Chartism a national movement. The atmos-
phere was quite unlike that of the thirties
and forties. There was no longer a coherent
body of opinion to respond to any appeal and
even the circulation of Jones' articles was
limited to a small minority. In October
1858 Marx wrote that Jones' mistakes and
failure were "bound up with the fact that the
English proletariat is becoming more and
more bourgeois, so that this most bour-
geois of all nations is apparently aiming in
the end at the possession of a bourgeois aris-
tocracy and a bourgeois proletariat as well
as a bourgeoisie." Up to that point Marx
himself seems to have had some faith that
the Chartist movement could rally, in spite
of the changed conditions.
In so far as Chartism, vague and fluid
as its theroies might be, did lead and colour
opinion in the working class and petit bour-
geois masses for two decades (and even those
historians who try most earnestly to ridicule
the Chartist "episode" admit that its influ-
ence penetrated deep into the remotest corners
of England, Wales and Scotland), and in so
far as it had, if not a precise program at any
rate a defined attitude towards colonial prob-
lems, whenever they came to the surface of
consciousness, the lack of protest against the
"reconquest of India" could almost date the
beginning of "connivance" at the colonial
spoils of the ruling class. Up to then there
had been vocal disaproval of actions which
the disenfranchised working class regarded
as solely in the interest of the wealthy, in-
cluding the Afghan and Sikh wars. Naturally,
it serves no purpose to exaggerate the extent
to which the views of advanced individuals
or even of the Chartist convention were
shared by the rank and file, nor may we
speak of "connivance" in any but an abs-
tract sense. India herself has borne part of
the historical inheritance, for no colonial
country perhaps gained less from the experience
of the European proletariat and inter-
national movement until comparatively recent
times.
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Colonial policy of labour movement
There is a long history behind the ideas
of the Revolt of Hindostan and the People's
Paper. I think that there is sufficient evidence
to show that the conception of colonial in-
dependence which the Chartists associated
with "social justice" and "democracy", with
the interests of "producers of wealth"
as opposed to the interests of the capitalists
and aristocracy, was not simply handed on
from the early middle class liberal reformers,
republicans or radicals, who at one time
condemned the "burden" of colonies or the
monopoly of the East India Company, when
a large section of them were cut oil' from the
benefits of colonial profits. On the contrary,
an internationalism and a colonial policy
of a different order developed with and within
the democratic and early working class move-
ment and its development was linked with
the sharpening of conf3cit between the class
forces in England. I suggest that distinct
phases of this development can be clearly
traced in the radical press between 1793 and
1848, and that the right of colonial peoples
to full self-determination became one of the
points commonly shared by Chartists or
"democrats", Owenites or "socialists", and
most of those peculiar small groupings of
semi-religious communists that sprang up
in the thrities and forties in England. All
these trends contributed to the ideas expressed
in The Revolt of Hindostan and it is noteworthy
that among the few supporters of Jones'
1858 Indian peitition are to be found the
names of many of the middle class one time
supporters of "moderate" Chartism and of
the veteran Owen himself, who were amongst
the greatest opponents of the Chartism of
,Jones' type.
Colonial conquest was a sufficiently
alive issue at the end of the eighteenth and
beginning of the nineteenth century. It
brought wars; it had its obvious effects on the
bread and butter problems of new industry;
it was reinforced by the interested propaganda
of the slave emancipationist and anti-mono-
poly doctrines of middle class parliamentary
reformers and then by the free traders and
Leaguers.
Even in the days of the London Correspon-
ding Society there is a difference of opinion
that corresponded not to the division of a Right
and Left wing attitude to parliamentary re-
form, but between the main body of leaders
and the handful of' democrats who wanted
more than parliamentary reform or who did
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not regard the corruption of the constitution
as the real cause of social grievance. Spence,
most gifted of all our Utopians, regarded
the monarchy or even the organization of
the State as secondary considerations. He
summed up the difference between his views
and those of the Painite republicans, by
remarking that the latter could afford to be
republicans because they did not hope ever
to be kings, but that they opposed the common
ownership of land rents and capital goods
because they could hope to become landlords.
Consequently his clearly put international-
colonial policy was also different. The equali-
ty of nations was a first principle. The
right of' self-determination for colonies
was based on the right of all to the fruits of
the land on which they live, but could
only be effective in those countries where
Spensonian society had been established.
Similarly William Thompson's important
contribution to the colonial problem grows
out of his analysis of the irreconcilable conflict
between private property and the right of the
producers. He takes India itself as the
illustration for a long analysis of' the typical
evils of "monopoly"-that is, the monopoly
of wealth and power, not Lite monopoly of
trade as opposed to free trade. The first
important grouping to announce its class
character and class aims as such, with the
remaining anti-Reform Bill Radicals, included
in their Manifesto a colonial clause based
on the literal interpretation of the old Rights
of Man, but in the context of a document
that has the seeds of a class movement. From
this followed. throughout the publication of'
the Poor Man's Guardian, a clarification of the
ideas of an international common cause of
the oppressed classes in all countries, a consis-
tent exposure of free trade doctrines and fairly
frequent references to events and conditions
in colonial countries by way of illustration and
protest. In 1831 also we meet the first pro-
gramatic demand for the right of self-deter-
mination, as distinct from rights of represen-
tation, self-government or participation in
reforms, for Ireland and all colonies. We
may also find that when these loose and vague
statements were interpreted to apply to the
protection of European colonists only, such
interpretations were challenged. Throughout
the Chartist conventions there were discus-
sions and resolutions intended to clarify that
particularly urgent problem of the relationship
of the English and Irish peoples, and in this
form some of the principles of colonial policy
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are first made more concrete. But whereas
the history of intermingling populations and
closer economic and cultural ties made the
discussion of some form of union more com-
plex, and the solution was sought in the founda-
tion of an independent Irish Chartist move-
ment to act in concert with the English move-
ment for mutual aid and emancipation, we
have to conclude from all the evidence available
that the main body of Chartists envisaged sim-
ply the evacuation of the more remote colonies
by British troops, leaving them to their own
devices, and a vague idea that somehow they
too would come "under the banner of
Chartism". The controversy with O'Conne-
lites is a most instructive source for differences
between Chartist views and bourgeois na-
tionalism. Hence in the forties, while we
usually associate the Fraternal Democrats
chiefly with the closer connections with conti-
nental revolutionaries; support of democratic
nationlist movements in Europe; new ideas
of possible organisational unity and the agree-
ment on common aims and principles, that body
wished to extend its programme to colonial
countries and made it clear that basic princi-
ples should be applied universally. At one of
the early meetings the discussion was devoted
to Indian problems in particular. The fact
that even the existence of any sort of Chartist
colonial policy has scarcely been recognized
by later historians, much less studied in greater
detail, illustrates how completely this tradition
was obliterated in the second half of the
nineteenth century.
Need to study works of British democrats
During the conquest of India and the
post-Reform period, a powerful democratic
opinion existed in England which included
a t,_rudimentary democratic colonial policy.
But although the history of modern India
came to be written so often as an appendage
to English interests and institutions, the works
of democrats were never consulted. Evidently
they do not seem to contain new "facts", like
the sacred scriptures of government records
and the memoirs of Governor-Generals. Yet
they do contain facts, of a different order,
essential for evaluating the results of conquest
for the peoples of both countries and for
understanding the process of international
developments. For the study of the back-
ground of the Indian nationalist movement,
too, they contain valuable background for
the European contacts and allies of that move-
ment and for evaluating the character of that
movement itself, its place and role in the whole
liberation struggle of colonial peoples, its
standards in relation to what is progressive at
a given period. The old recipe for concocting
modern Indian history was to concentrate
on the history of British policy and administra-
tion in India, and as though this were not
bad and narrow enough, British policy was
treated more or less as the personal records of
Vice-Roys and Generals (with clashes between
them and the authorities that had appointed
them, if you pleases). This is done without
any reference to the first great clashes of labour
and capital which shaped the course of Bri-
tish history as a whole, or to how this problem
was "solved" by the British bourgeoisie, which
in turn determined the methods of co-ordina-
ting colonial resources. If the British priod
as a whole cannot be seriously studied without
bearing in mind all the time that India was
then drawn into the world market and into
world politics, despite the artificial segre-
gation, it is also impossible to understand the
social internal changes that took place as a
result of that process.
I have felt for a long time that a better
co-ordination of the English and Indian as-
pects of the development towards imperialism
should be illuminating, disconnected as the
old writing of history has made them appear.
The more convinced one may be that India
has her own national history and destiny,
the more important it is to examine and
understand the facts of 200 years of foreign
domination. It is even more urgent to study
India from the standpoint not merely . of
British but of world history and external
relations, to know her international role, both
passive and active, and to include in that
world backgorund those progressive and de-
mocratic forces developing within it as a whole.
The differences in origin and course of
development of the modern working class in
Europe and Asia none the less left us with a
closely related destiny and eventually a
common struggle towards emanicpation, but
from the historian's point of view we have not
yet answered satisfactorily that question of
interrelation posed one hundred years ago.
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Some notes on the
Genesis of Indian bourgeoisie
Suni! K. Sen
The bourgeoisie has been inseparably linked
up with the national movement from the very
beginning. The democratic evolution of India
began under British rule when she attained a
measure of political unification which she never
did before. The origin of the Indian bourgeoi-
sie also starts from this period. The role of
the Indian bourgeoisie can only be understood
through a study of its economic development.
It arose from the specific social and economic
forces generated within Indian society under
conditions which are peculiarly Indian. The
evolution of this process of development should
be studied historically. I, therefore, begin
from the beginning.
Where did Indian Capitalist spring from?
When England was passing through the
Industrial Revolution a reverse process of'
"de-industrialisation " was going on in India.
After 1757, the East India Company embarked
upon a systematic policy of destroying India's
trade and manufacture. The process was
complete by 1800. India was transformed
into an agrarian appendage to Britain, a source
of raw materials and a market for her ma-
nufactured goods. The Indian traders and
manufacturers could not secure even the
middlemen's profits, because the export trade
was the monopoly of the East India Company
and conducted in English ships. The ruined
traders and manufacturers accepted the job
of Gomashtas and agents of the British factories
with which India was dotted. In 1874 we
read of a memorial being sent by the Man-
chestor Chamber of Commerce to the Secretary
of State pointing to the growth of the Indian
textile industry and pleading for the abolition
of the import duties. From the growth of the
textile industry dates the emergence of the
Indian bourgeoisie. Where did the Indian
bougeoisie spring from? In other words, what
is the genesis of the Indian bourgeoisie?
From the womb of merchant capital
The Indian bourgeoisie was born, as in
other countries, in the womb of merchant
capital. The Indian bourgeoisie made the
primary accumulation of capital through
commerce. The Tarsi sections invested this
capital in the building up of modern industry.
The Banias, who belonged to the Marwari
and Gujrati communities remained as mer-
chants and developed as the commercial bour-
geoisie.
Marxist terms are not empty words. Each
term bears a distinct historical connotation.
The term industrial bougeoisie refers to those
sections who are associated with modern factory
industry and should be distinguished from
the commercial bourgeoisie, whose operations
remain principally confined to trade, commerce
and money-lending. However, a section of
the Banias, the Gujrati merchants and bankers,
did invest money in the building up of cotton
mills in Ahmedabad while simultaneously carry-
ing on trade and banking operations.
The Parsi merchants
The Parsis migrated from Persia sometime
in the eighth century and settled on the west
coast of India above Bombay in Surat and
Broach. They began to settle in Bombay
when Surat and Broach decayed and Bombay
took their place as the' commercial centre
of western India. They did not come with
money and many of them had humble begin-
nings. We know of one Mr. Framjee Bottlewala
who was dealing in 1798 with empty bottles
which was " then a lucrative trade." Kamaji
Kuver jee, founder of the famous Cama family,
served as a clerk in the Government Treasury
in Bombay and rose to a well paid position.
Mr. Jamshedji Wadia was building in 1814?
first class frigates for the Indian Marine.
Mr. Nusserwanji Tata, father of Jamshedji
Tata, began his carrer as a clerk in a country
Before partition, SUNIL K. SBN was the
leader of the strong kisan and democratic
movement in Dinajpur district of Bengal. Now
he is a refugee in Calcutta and is devoting his
time to making a study o f the development of
Indian Capitalism. This article is an introduc-
tion to a bigger study on The Evolution of
the Indian Bourgeoisie.-Editor
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bank at Navsari.
It was, however, through commerce that
the Parsis accumulated the necessary capital
for the building up of modern industry. "The
East India Company's ships employed Parsi
dubashis or agents to manage their investments."
(Edwards: The Rise of Bombay). With the
growth of the cotton trade, the Parsis came
to act as brokers for the European importers.
In 1812, "many of them were very opulent,
and each of the European houses of agency
has one of the principal Parsee merchants con-
cerned with them in most of their foreign spe-
culations." (Milburn: Oriental Commerce).
Opium and cotton trade with China
The removal of the monopoly privileges
of the East India Company in 1813 gave a
great impetus to the export trade in raw cotton
which rose from 30 million lbs. in 1809 to 90
million lbs. in 1816. The Parsis began to
participate in this expanding export trade.
They built up a network of mercantile firms
in Bombay such as Messrs. Hormashji
Manchesji Cama's sons; Messrs. Dinshaw
Rustamji & Co.; Nusserwanji & Kaliandas (the
firm of J. N. Tata). 't'hey exported mainly
cotton and opium and the principal customer
was China. The importance of the China
trade is evident from the fact that the Parsis
had firms at Canton and Shanghai. Mr.
Rustamji worked as a partner in Messrs. Rat-
tanji Hormashji Cama & Co. at Canton. Mr.
Jamshedji Tata opened a firm in China in
1859 under the name of Jamshetji and Arde-
shir, and a branch office at Shanghai. They
dealt mainly in cotton and opium. In
return they sent to India consignments of tea,
silk-goods, camphor, cinnamon, copper, brass
and china-gold. (See Mr. Harris's Life of
,7..N. Tata)
In 1855 Mr. Rustamji Cama founded
the first Indian business house in London.
The Parsi firms were doing very good business
and competed with the principal Europeans
firms of Bombay like Forbes & Co.; John
Mitchel & Co. etc. In 1848, we read of a memo-
randum being sent to the Bombay Government
to inquire into the causes of the decline of the
cotton trade on behalf of Messrs. Remington &
Co F orbes & Co. and Jamshetji Jeejeebhoy,
Sons & Co.-a fact which conclusively proves the
great importance of the Parsi firm. By the
way, Jamshtji Jeejeebhoy was the first Indian
to be raised to Baronetcy in 1857.
The godsent opportunities
In the eighteenth century, the famous inven-
32
tions-Hargreave's spinning jenny, Crompton's
mule, Kay's flying shuttle, Watt's steam
engine came in a throng and effected a tech-
nical revolution in England's textile industry.
The mass production of goods began, and
Manchester began to consume an unprece-
dented quantity of raw cotton. The Napo-
leonic Wars came in 1805. This was a god-
sent opportunity for the Indian merchants
who took advantage of the dislocation of the
European supply and began to export cotton
in huge quantities. The biographer of Jamshet-
ji Jeejeebhoy, Mr. Kooverji Sorabjee, writes:
"During the Napoleonic Wars he shipped
thousands of bales of cotton. `Nothing venture,
nothing win, hazard all, and gain all' was
his watch-word." Between 1807 to 1822,
Jeejeebhoy amassed two crores of rupees. Then
came the American Civil War in 1861 which
shut off Lancashire's supply of raw cotton.
Prices of Indian cotton reached the skies. The
export of raw cotton from Bombay rose from
180 million lbs. in 1850-55 to 424 million lbs.
in 1863-68. The export brought in large
amounts of fluid capital. The total value of
export in one year, 1864-65 amounted to
x;30,370,482 sterling. (Imperial Gazetteer of
India, Vol. III).
The first cotton mills
The Napoleonic War and the American
Civil Wars were, therefore the periods of the
accumulation of capital by the Indian bour-
geoisie. The first cotton mill was started in Bom-
bay in 1854 by Cowasji Nanabhoy Davor. By
the end of 1861, there were nine mills in Bom-
bay and in 1865, 13 mills in the Bombay Presi-
dency. The boom ended in 1865 with the
termination of the Civil War. The nineteenth
century South Sea Buble burst and crash
followed. The "mushroom" companies col-
lapsed and then came a period of depression.
After 1875, there was again a veritable boom,
the number of mills increasing to 51 by 1877.
If any date is to be emphasized, the year 1877
marks the turning point in the rise of the
Indian bourgeoisie. Rapid construction of
mills began in Nagpur, Ahmedabad and
Sholapur. An array of factory chimneys sprang
up in Bombay: its population increased.
Bombay emerged as the capital of the Indian
bourgeoisie.
The history of the House of the Tatas whose
name is associated with the founding of heavy
industry in India tells the same tale. The
Tatas also started as merchants and made
money in the China trade. The Empress
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Mills, opened in 1877 and named after Queen
Victoria, who was formally proclaimed Empress
of India in the same year, and the Swadeshi
Mills of 1886-so called because of the Swadeshi
movement, "India for the Indians," which was
gaining ground since the foundation of the
Congress, made unprecedented profits. Money
came pouring in, and the Tatas accumulated
the necessary capital for the building up of
modern heavy industry like the Jamshedpur
Iron Works.
Banias started with hoarded wealth
The Marwari and Gujrati Banias did not
lag behind the Parsis in getting rich and accu-
mulating capital. But they did it in a different
way. While the Parsis became enterprising
merchants, the Banias flourished as bankers.
Unlike the Parsis the Banias started with hoard-
ed wealth. When the glory of Rajputana
vanished, the Rajputs migrated to western
India and brought with them lumps of gold.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
a large proportion of the payment for exports
was taken in gold and silver resulting in huge
accumulation of bullion. Gold and silver thus
accumulated went underground or were con-
verted into ornaments. (Leading authorities
are unanimous on this point. Even to-day
the practice of hoarding is inherent among
tribal races. There is an interesting chapter
on Hoarding in Capital, Vol. III, Section :
Money)
That there were very rich men among
Banias is evident from the Income-Tax returns
of Ahmedabad, Surat, Broach, etc., in the
period 1869-73 (and the Income-Tax returns
cannot be regarded as exact because the Banias
must have learnt to evade income-tax even in
those early days of the British rule) which
show that there were men even after the
depression of 1865 who possessed 0100,000
to #-120,000. (Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. 4).
The earliest indigenous bankers
The Banias are the earliest indigenous
bankers of India. During the reign of Aurang-
zeb we hear of Manek Chand Seth, the most
eminent banker of his time. Seth Manek Chanel
had no issue. He adopted his nephew Fateli
Chand, who was himself an influential banker
in Murshidabad, Bengal. This Fateh Chand is
no other than the famous (or notorious?) jagal
Seth-a title which means " world banker".
The Seths issued hundis or bills of exchange
which were honoured throughout India. The
Bania bankers built a network of banking
houses in such commercial .centres as Surat,
Cutch, Bombay, Calcutta, etc. The difference
between these bankers and the money-lenders
is too fine to recognise. The big shrofs lent
money to the second class bankers from whom
the village mahajan borrowed money and these
"cannibalistic" creatures simply ate up the peas-
ant once he was in their grip. The indigenous
bankers held their ground when the Europ-
ean banks were established. This was possible
because the European banks financed the
external trade while the indigenous bankers
employed their capital in loans to the peasants
and in financing the internal trade. (Jain:
Indigenous Banking in India).
Agents of the Bombay firms
Unlike the Parsis , the Banias did not go in
for commerce, but acted as agents in the pur-
chase of cotton for the Bombay firms. During
the cotton season they spread out in the cotton
growing districts and carried on a brisk trade.
In the early nineteenth century, they also ven-
tured into opium investments , which speedily
assumed huge dimensions because of the China
market. In 1819-20, they netted one crore of
rupees. In 1849, the trade employed fifty
lakhs of rupees. (Bombay Gazetteer, Vol. 4).
It is evident, therefore, that Bania capital was
derived from money-lending, usury, and middle-men's
profits in the cotton and opium trade and should be
distinguished from Parsi capital which was essen-
tially merchant capital. And it was with this
capital that the Ahmedabad Banias built the
four cotton mills during 1861 to 1878.
It is impossible to compute any figures on
the primitive accumulation of capital by the
Indian bourgeoisie. But the capital invested
in industry was ridiculously small. Probably
only a small quantity of the hoarded wealth
came in the market. The total capital of the three
Ahmedabad mills amounted to merely about
eighteen lakhs of rupees and the first class
Empress and Swadeshi mills of the Tatas started
with only 25 lakhs of rupees. Well, it is a drop
in the ocean compared to the colossal capital
accumulation in England derived from the
loot and plunder of India. No wonder that
England became "the workshop of the world"
in the nineteenth century and India remained
an agrarian appendage to that workshop.
Army of cheap labour
Capitalism invariably creates a home market
and an army of free labour. In India the job was
done by native capitalism. British manufactur-
ed goods flooded the Indian market and
destroyed the hand-loom industry which was a
national industry in India and employed thou-
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sands of men and women. The Bombay, Baroda
and Central Indian Railway with 421 miles
open and the G. I. P. Railways with 1,287
miles by 1880-81 not only dealt the final blow
to the native handicrafts, but also vastly ex-
panded the market. On the other hand, the
string of unsuccessful land-experiments and
land settlements resulted in the expropriation
of the Indian people from their land and the
creation of an army of landless labour. The
rate for agricultural day-labour as quoted in
the Magistrate's Returns in 1821 and again
in 1849 was 2 annas per day. Rice was cut at
Re 1-8 as. per acre. The monthly wages of
male adult operatives in the Ahmedabad mills
varied from Rs 6 to Rs 7. (Bomay Gazeteer,
Vol. 4). In the Bombay mills "the average
wages per month are for a girl 10 shillings;
a woman 16 shilling; a man # 1 12 sh." This
was in 1881. (Imperial Gazetteer of India, Vol..
III). Indian labour is not only cheap, it is
the source of "super-profits. In 1881, the
cotton mills were paying hundred per cent
dividends to their share-holders ! Factory laws
did not bother them and as yet there were no
trade unions.
Land relations remained feudal
Capitalism developed simultaneously in
agriculture and industry in England. In
India, however, the cotton mills developed
on capitalistic lines while feudal relations
remained in land. Cotton cultivation will
serve as an illustration. Cotton became a
commercial crop. The area of cotton culti-
vation extended from 59,487 acres to 78,079
acres in Surat and from 66,607 acres to
124,965 acres in Ahmedabad (Cassels : Cotton in
Bombay). But cotton was grown not in consolida-
ted farms, but in innumerable scattered small
peasant holdings.
There is an inherent tendency in capitalism
to expand. But how is it that Indian capi-
talism remained mostly confined in 'western
India till the close of the nineteenth century
and did not grow in Bengal? Why is it that
the Bengali traders and manufacturers, with
serveral centuries' experience of trade and
commerce, could not develop as an industrial
bourgeoisie like the Parsis or the Banias? Was
it a national vice ? No; the reason for it should
be sought in the imperialist stronghold in
Bengal where the British assumed Dewani as
early as 1765 and completed the land settle-
ment in 1713.
The peculiar development in Bengal
Between 1850 and 1860, foreign imperial-
ism had established its octopus-grip over coffee
and tea plantations, on coal mining and on
jute. And the ruined traders and manu-
facturers of Bengal acted as agents and gomashtas
in these foreign industrial undertakings. A good
many invested money in land and formed
the nucleus of the " class of gentlemen pro-
prietors", a new class of sharks and rapacious
businessmen who took over the estates of
the old benevolent Zemindars. The example
of Sir Dwarkanath Tagore, ancestor of
I' abindranath, serves as a pointer to this process.
Dwarkanath had a vision of industrial develop-
nnent of Bengal. He was the owner of a col-
liery and founder of many indigo-factories;
he introduced sugar cultivation and founded
a sugar mill; he promoted the cultivation of
flax. By 1834, all his industrial undertakings
had failed. With grim frustration he casti-
gxated the British "for having taken away all
that the natives possessed; their lives, liberty
and property; and all were held at the mercy
of the Government." Dwarkanath ended as
a. landlord. In Bengal there emerged not
a class of industrial bourgeoisie, but a class
of petty-bourgeoisie, the sons and grandsons
of Zemindars who acted as the representatives
of the educated middle-class. This was the
general pattern of Bengal's economic develop-
ment. Sir R. N. Mukherjee was only an
aberration.
The rise of the bourgeoisie in Europe was
a revolutionary process, the bourgeoisie rock-
ing the Ancient Regime, sweeping away feudal
relics and throwing "career open to talents."
Blood flowed; Kings and Queens and nobles
lost their heads. In India there was no such
development. The Indian bourgeoisie arose
not in opposition to feudalism. Men with
money themselves became transformed into the
new class of landlords (Dwarkanath Tagore,
the Rays of Bhagyakul; the Chettys; the
Sowcars, etc). Hence the unbroken fraternal
relations between the two classes.
First rumblings of discontent
In the beginning of'its career, the Indian
bourgeoisie presented a picture of entente cor-
diale with foreign imperialism. They traded
in British ships. Their mills were fitted with
British machinery and the mill-managers and
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When
mothers. rise in revolt
Hajrah Bedglum
The silent town
It was in Mau, Azamgarh District, that the
unnatural quiet of the streets, struck me.
A small town of some 30,000 inhabitants, mostly
weavers, living in congested mohallas, Mau
should have been ringing with the laughter
and shouts of children. I asked my companion
the reason for this hush over the city.
"During the last month or so, about 4,000
children and older persons have died of small
pox," was the reply, " `Hardly a house has
escaped."
Aghast I stared at him. More than a
tenth of the population wiped out in a month?
Could this not have been prevented?
"We have no hospital for women and
children." My companion quietly replied :
"Last year nearly Rs 80,000 were willingly
contributed by the weavers' families for a
women's hospital, but no one knows what be-
came of that money, we have not even seen
the blue-print of a hospital yet!"
12 thousand women belonging to the fami-
lies of the weavers work in Mau from morn to
night, 12 thousand pairs of hands send the
shuttle flying back and forth so that the
people of this country may be clothed. The
weavers are Muslims and the lives of the women
are confined to the mud enclosures round the
looms which are their homes. The houses
are damp and dark, there is no sanitation, no
drainage in the town. Can one then wonder
at the high incidence of disease?
Why is there no provision of a hospital,
a lady doctor, a midwife in this place? What
became of the 80,000 rupees collected? What
happened to the lakhs collected in the name
of Kasturba ? What became of the Congress
pledges for building a happy and prosperous
free India?
Shyamratti, the mother of heroes
In the gateway of the District Jail, Ballia,
a little boy of six was playing with pebbles.
"What is your name? "I asked him.
"Shyam Narain". His smile was shy yet it
had a gleam of impishness.
"Where do you live?"
"In the Jail"
NOVEMBER 1951
"What do you get to eat in the jail?
"Dal Bhat"
"Don't they give you gur?"
"Sometimes, when someone deposits it"
His eyes were wistful.
Later I met his mother, Shyamratti, who
along with her two sons Phool Badan and
Kapil Dev is amongst the accused in the Ballia
cases.
How did it come about that this elderly
woman, mother of three sons, with an intelli-
gence not above the average, with no educa-
tion, came to be involved in political cases
of this nature?
Kapil Dev was interested in the Kisan
Sabha. He had worked in Calcutta and came
in touch with the Red Flag. The blind Kisan
leader of Ballia, Baijnath Sharma used to visit
him often and the Zamindars' goondas knew
of this. One day they waylaid him and start-
ed beating Sharmaji. Kapildev when he
rushed to the rescue, was also subjected
to lathi blows. The youngest brother Shyam
Narain on hearing his brother's cries rushed
out and caught hold of the Zamindar's legs.
The Zamindar Saheb threw the boy on the
ground and put his foot on the little chest.
Shyamratti had seen all this. The iron
had entered her soul. Never more would
she submit to the tyranny of the Zemindars.
Next time when the Zemindar's men,
.thinking the property to be unprotected came
to plough up Kapil 1)ev's fields, it was Shyam-
ratti who rushed out at the Zemindar Saheb.
Only by smashing her skull and rendering
her unconscious could the zemindar's men get
rid of this fury of outraged motherhood.
A new faith springs up in women's hearts
Shyamratti, Singhasini, Sukhvansa, Kusmi
and several others, illiterate peasant women,
harijans and khet mazdoors, founded their Jan-
wadi Mahila Sangh and challenged the world.
Numerous are the stories of how the jathas
of women toured entire areas, rousing and
mobilising men and women for the defence
of the land, for a higher daily wage, for pro-
tecting the honour of women.
In Kasmabad, Ghazipur district, the peo-
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ple still recall with a smile how the village
women taught a lesson to the thanedar who
dared enter a house and lay hands on the
mother of the family. With their broom-
sticks and rolling pins, the women drove out
the thanedar while the children of the village
made free with his horse.
In Ballia it was the fisherwomen who had
refused to accept the imposition of a fresh tax
on the village pond by the zemindar. When
the police arrived in the village at the
urgent summons of the zemindar, they could
see no sign of the zemindar who was locked
up in his pukka house nor could they think
of some cogent reason for arresting the un-
armed women surrounding the house and
demanding the withdrawl of the taxes.
The militant participation of the women's
jathas in the strike of the khet-mazdoors for higher
wages, their rousing songs, their courage and
daring in the face of police provocation are
byewords in the Eastern Districts.
A new courage, a new faith was inspired in
the hearts of women.
Sukhva nsa-the symbol of courage
Swift was the action of the government.
In village after village the armed police force
swooped down. They rounded up, beat up,
and arrested as many militant kisan and Khet-
mazdoor workers as they could. They took as col-
lective fines and bribes as much money as could
be squeezed out of the impoverished villagers.
They took away all they could and what they
could not take away they wantonly destroyed.
Kerosene oil was poured onto bags of grain
and jars of ghee were smashed on the ground.
In Jaunpur, Sultanpur, Ghazipur, Ballia,
Azamgarh, Gorakhpur, and the rest of the
Eastern Districts in the first half of 1950, a reign
of terror prevailed. Hundereds were arrested,
hundreds hid from the terror. The biggest
manhunt in the history of the Eastern districts
was on.
Did a single woman betray ? Did any one
break down ?
Murli's mother nursed her son back to
consciousness. Once the sturdiest peasant in
the village, he was rendered a cripple now
because of the repeated blows on his instep.
"Where is Sarju Pandey ?" Was what the
police wanted to know. One word from
Murli's mother could have saved her son a
lifetime's torture but the word was not uttered.
From Pali's house they snatched up a three
days old baby and dashed the soft body on
the ground. The baby died within three days
but neither then nor later did Pali utter a word
of complaint or waver in her determination
to fight for a happier future for all kisan child-
ren.
Kusmi's children were just rescued from the
fire which razed her house to the ground.
Again and again the zemindar and the autho-
rities demanded :"Give up the fight for land and
bread, denounce your comrades and you shall
be rewarded." Kusmi withstood the beating
and torture, and with greater vigour joined in
the campaign against repression.
Sukhvansa's name was a symbol of daring
courage in Basti and the neighbouring areas.
No zemindar's goonda dared lay hands upon
her, no policeman relished facing this impetuous
young Harijan girl. Lithe as a finely tempered
steel blade Sukhvansa time and again faced
the police and the zemindars' lathials. Bare-
handed she would turn upon the armed men
and dare them to shoot a woman, would shame
them into lowering their loaded guns; would
rally the wavering crowd of men behind her.
Sukhvansa did not take into account the
bravery of Lal Bahadur Shastri, his daring
which could even sanction firing on unarmed
women. With a bullet in her leg Sukhvansa
was carried to the thana. For months she lay
in hospital, her life hanging in the balance.
Due to negligence gangerene had set in and
her leg was amputated. They maimed the
lioness but they could not break her spirit.
Even when she was dangerously ill the
rigorous restrictions placed on her were not
relaxed.
"Once a nurse whispered to me that a man
from my village had come to the hospital to see
me. She pointed to the window and I made an
effort and raised myself. A friend from my
village was truly outside, but the sentry saw my
movement and blocked the view."
Sukhvansa told me this when I met her in
the Ballia court-room.
"Sukhvansa," I said "Women from all over
the province greet you and are proud of you."
"Sukhvansa had tears in her eyes. "I did
nothing which I would not gladly do again."
She said, "But I have grown so weak. The
loss of blood .... " I saw that she was trem-
bling.
Can repression stop revolt of the hungry?
Four hundered men and women in Ballia,
two hundred and fifty in Ghazipur, and several
others in Sultanpur, Gorakhpur, Jaunpur,
Azamgarh, Basti, are facing trials arising from
36
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skirmishes between the kisans and zemindars.
Lal Bahadur Shastri and his minions had tried
to quell the movement of the kisarrs of the
Eastern Districts by posting armed police,
imposing collective fines, and putting an iron
curtain around the entire Eastern districts. But
even the Congress government cannot hide
facts.
The food minister is forced to declare that
the food situation in Eastern U. P. is critical,
The newspapers publish figures of the cloth
shortage which has made it impossible for
women to stir out of their houses. The wage
for a day's work is still two pice to three pice in
Ballia, Ghazipur and Sultanpur. Small-pox
together with the usual diseases-malaria, phila-
ria and berry-berry has played havoc with the
families of the kisans. No alternative occupa-
tion in the shape of industrial labour is avail-
able to the land hungry peasants.
Can repression stave off the revolt of the
hungry and the naked?
Already the signs of a new movement for
democratic liberties are visible. To demand
the release of their beloved leaders the peasants
of the Eastern Districts are collecting funds,
putting up posters, chalking up slogans and
holding conferences and rallies.
Undaunted the women are in the forefront
of this movement.
Book-Review
Krishan Chandar's Art
Flame and the Flower : A Collection of
Short Stories and Sketches by Krishan Chander.
Publisher: Current Book House, Bombay.
Pages 99 ; price Rs. 2/4
Krishan Chander today is one of the most
notable progressive writers in India, and a
translation of his representative work into
English and other foreign languages was long
overdue as a step towards his introduction to a
wider international audience. His Letter lo a
Dead Man coupled with his work for the Peace
Movement had aroused much curiosity about
his work among foreign democratic circles and
a publication like Flame and the Flower had be-
Manatora of Sultanpur
To me the future of this movement is symbo-
lised by Manatora of Sultanpur. This young
peasant girl, a picture of strength and vibrating
vitality had helped to organise a meeting of
three thousand kisan men and women in Kadi-
pur for demanding withdrawal of the Ballia
cases and had gone from door to door to collect
money for the Relief Fund. At night there
was the women's meeting which finished by
about midnight. Manatora's home was on
the other bank of the Gomti.
"How will you go back, Manatora ?" I
asked her, "Is there some one to take you home
at this time of the night ?"
Manatora's white teeth flashed in a brilliant
smile. "How will I go home ? I shall row
myself across. Many's the time when I rowed
across comrades from one bank of the river
to the other at dead of the night. What have
I to be afraid of ? Do I not know every twist
and turn of the river and the banks here?
Does not every man and woman know me?"
Indeed our workers are known and are dear
to the heart of every man and woman in their
villages. When Manatora's brother-in-law
protested at her activities saying that it was
shameful for Manatora to go from door to door
begging for funds, it was Manatora's mother
who rebuked him.
"It is not shame that Mantora brings to your
household;" she said, " It is honour, my son."
P. C. Gupta
come very necessary. We, therefore, welcome
this little book as the first of a series introdu-
cing India's younger generation of outstanding
writers to international circles.
Early writings
Krishan Chander has now been writing
for well over fifteen years. He first made his
mark as a writer of elegant, satirical sketches
notable for their feline grace and beauty.
There was in them an undertone of discontent
with the existing state of thing, but a certain
cynicism and ennui as well. There were in
them dreams of love and beauty, but it
appeared there was no hope of ever realising
them in life. When Krishan Chander was
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writing these early stories of his, he had already
been drawn into the drogressive Writers'
movement and was functioning as the Secre-,
tary of its Lahore unit. This was in the
Thirties, when the movement was still young.
Since then Krishan Chander's art has
moved forward with rapid strides towards
greater freedom and power. He plunged
himself increasingly into social and cultural
movements, and his art has gained thereby
immense range, variety and depth. Krishan
Chander was one of the chief organizers and
sponsors of the Indian Anti-Fascist Writers'
Conference held at Delhi in May 1943. He
was in that period showing some leaning to-
wards Royism, but fortunately soon recovered
himself. The example of Agyeya, the well-
known Hindi writer who organized the noto-
rious Freedom of Culture Conference recently
shows where this inclined plane of R'oyism
leads ultimately in art.as well as politics.
From victory to victory
Krishan's art after this phase moves for-
ward from victory to victory. He wrote his
long short-story Annadata during the days of
the Bengal Famine, later translated into Eng-
lish under the title I Cannot Die. During the
great Indian naval uprising he wrote Three
Goondas which movingly describes the stirring
scenes in Bombay during that event.
Peshawar Express included in this volume was
written during the communal holocaust which
followed the partition of India. He main-
tained this tempo in his writing, pouring
out one story after another as terror and
repression gripped the land. The Progres-
sive Writers' movement made serious mistakes
in this period, from which it has been making
earnest efforts to recover. Krishan Chander
helped to rehabilitate the Peace Movement
which had assumed a very narrow base in this
country. He became the Secretary of the All
India Preparatory Committee and has made
remarkable contribution in widening the
movement and giving to it a genuine national
character.
To this last phase of his work belong such
stories as Queen of Hearts and Letter to a Dead
Man. The other stories included in this
volume belong to the years just proceeding
the outbreak of war in Korea. This volume
Flame and the Flower gives one a very good. idea
of the kind of work Krishan Chandar is doing
to-day.
Included in this volume are stories on
foreign themes-the Korean war and the
Franco torror in Spain; sketches like The
Flowers are Red and The Bridge of Mahalaxmi
which are cross-sections from the life of the
working class in a big industrial city like Bom-
bay; there are wonderful pictures of the ro-
mance and beauty of this world, also its sorrows
and tears, such as The Night of the Full Moon
and the The Poet, the Philosopher and the Clerk.
Intense social awareness
There is in these stories much native strength
and power. They have in them an intense
social awareness and an earnest desire to use
the artist's gift for the service and betterment
of the people. Krishan Chander speaks out
boldly on behalf of oppressed humanity in this
land. Examples of such writing are The Flo-
wers are Red and The Bridge of Mahalaxmi. In
the latter story he speaks of six saries, symbolical
of the life of toil and drudgery of Indian wo-
manhood from the lowest social sub-stratum.
He speaks with similar passion about the suffer-
ing of people in other lands. His passion is a
blazing fire, a flaming sword, for his tears have
all dried up in his hatred for oppression and
cruelty. In his Letter to a Dead Man he says:
"Only now I have no tears for you, I have shed
my tears a long time ago, because I have seen
a great deal of misery and social injustice in my
own land. Let me assure you that I have
nothing but a flaming anger and a pure hatred
against the men who sent you to death in Korea.
The words in which Krishan Chander des-
cribes the song of the blind boy would also be
very telling description of the passionate human-
ism of his own work: "Then I took this thirsty
and starved and naked song to my blind
friend. And in this song of ours he put all the
insight of his blind being, all the anguish of
his suffering soul, all the light of his dark
work. And then the song became a sword.
And when he sang the song, it was like a thou-
sand naked swords dancing before the mill."
There is in the art of Krishan Chander
great and overflowing love of the land, its rich
brown and green earth, its golden corn, its
great rivers, its songs of the loves of Heer
Ranjha, Sohni and Mahinwal, its dark-eyed men
and women with their dreams and sorrows.
The course of his stories is like the course of
a song which conjures up ancient memories,
present woes and future hopes.
These future hopes are uttered in the fol-
lowing eloquent words: "This earth of ours,
though peace lies thinly and precariously over
it, is a vast big and a very beautiful place. We
can all live happily here. It has vast fertile
plains, rich in wheat, oats, maize and cotton,
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large undulating hills and mountainous regions
abounding in wild life, mineral ore and timber,
great rivers and lakes hiding hydroelectric
energy in their bosom. We could all live here
happily in evergrowing luxury and comfort."
(Letter to a Dead Man.)
Such art is a powerful weapon in the move-
ment for Peace extending in ever-widening
circles all over the world. Krishan Chander
tears off the mask from the cruel, mean faces
of the war-mongering Mac Arthrurs and creates
in the hearts and minds of the readers a healthy
contempt and hatred for them.
Vivid historical imagination
Among the most notable features of Krishan
Chander's art are his vivid historical imagina-
tion which enables him to recall without effort
the ancient past of makind with its memories
of struggle and victory, defeat and progress;
his mastery of the lively detail which creates
a picture with an utmost economy of strokes;
his overflowing love of nature which bursts
repeatedly through his narrative, painting
lively scenes of this land and others - America
with its "vast plains, and millions of clean
hands working to its mighty rhythm in
the great American hinterland". Africa
"of dark forests and green prrots, blue lakes
and colourful giraffes", and the beauty of
Kashmir and the Panjab painted through
many rich, memorable pasages. Above
all there is the gift of his imagination which
enables him to create vividly scenes and people
never seen, but made to live in an unforget-
table manner. This enables him to create
Korea more richly and vivdly than anything
done by people who have seen and experienced
the living horror in their own person. This
enables him to describe the barbaric descent
of Punjab to the lowest depths of degradation
and shame, and many other similar things
burnt into the Indian memory through
these last years. The secret of this success
lies in his extreme sensitiveness and quick
response to impressions.
Great command over language
Among the assets of Krishan Chander's
art, mention should be made of his great com-
mand over language. In the original Urdu
his prose has a rare, superb quality. His vo-
cabulary is rich in variety and range of in-
flexion. It has a tender, lyric tone on occasion,
as in his descriptions of love and the beauty
of nature. Such is the quality of his prose in
The Night of the Full Moon. It can be biting
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and satirical and achieves great denunciatory
power when occasion demands it. It is a most
supple and nervous prose, sensitive and strong,
and in his command over the magic of words,
their beauty, music and power lies one of the
main charms of Krishan Chander's writings.
In the English translation the innate quality
of his prose has been adequately preserved,
though the full flavour and beauty of the
original can never be completely realised.
Some have complained at times that
Krishan Chander builds too much on imagi-
nation. Krishan Chander has now been
writing for almost two decades. By all
standards he is a modern Indian Classic.
Through these years his art has continually
gained in stature, till it has become reprsen-
tative of all that is best and ablest in our coun-
try. But we would like him to move still
nearer to Mother Earth, so that we may have
from his pen more and more living portraits
of our peasant masses and proletarians as well
as those of the oppressed, spiritually hungry
intellgentsia. We also hope that he would
now begin to build on the grand scale instead
of working only in miniature. This we say
with a full appreciation of his manifold
achievements and with no small admiration for
his work done so far.
Genesis of Indian bourgeoisie
From page 34]
heads of departments were mostly British. The
mercantile restrictions no longer operated and
British free trade capitalism was in its heyday
of prosperity. Britain was the most dominat-
ing power in international trade, exporting
70 per cent of the cotton cloth entering the
world market. In the closing years of the
nineteenth century, the monopoly position
of Britain was being seriously threatened by
new rising nation-states like Germany and
Japan. Free-trade capitalism gave place to
finance-capitalism. In 1882, the import duties
on cotton were abolished. The first rumblings
of discontent of the Indian bourgeoisie begin
to be heard. They had already established
themselves in the Indian market and had at
their command huge capital resources. And the
number of cotton mills increased to 58 in 1880.
In. 1885, the Indian National Congress was
formed which was to be the platform of opposi-
tion of the rising bourgeoisie in the subsequent
period. In 1886, Tata christened his new co-
tton mills as Swadeshi Mills. The basic econo
mic conflict between imperialism and the colo-
nial bourgeoisie had begun to unfold itself. ,.
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Tara Chand Gupta
Parties and Politics
The Patiala and East Punjab States' Union
(PEPSU) comprises of. eight East Punjab
states--Patiala, Nabha, Jind, Kapurthala,
Faridkot, Malerkotla, Kalsia and Nalagarh.
It is spread over an area of 10,119 sq. miles.
The population, according to 1941 census,
was 34.24 lacs. With the migration of Mus-
lims to Pakistan, the population came; down
to 2511 lacs. The total number of refugees
settled in these states is in the neighbourhood
of 61 lacs. The up-to-date population of the
PEPSU, after exchange of refugees following
partition of India, is, according to census
figures of 1951, about 33 lacs.
Annual treasury receipts in the PEPSU
amount to about Rs. 5 crores. Nearly ten
per cent of the budget receipts, Rs. 50 lacs,
are paid in the form of pensions and privy
purses to sustain eight princely families. Two
major sources of state revenue in the PEPSU
are land revenue and excise tax. Rs. 1
crores are realised from Excise alone!
General Elections on basis of adult fran-
chise will be a novelty in this small border
union where democratic institutions are com-
pletely unknown so far. It would be the first
chance for the people here to go through the
experience of exercising the right to vote to
elect their representatives for running the
parliamentary institutions. About 18 lacs of
voters from 38 towns, big and small, and
6,166 villages would be electing 60 represent-
atives for the State Legislature and five for
the House of People. Out of sixty seats of
the PEPSU State Assembly, 10 have been
reserved for the scheduled castes.
Post-war upsurge
As elsewhere in princely India, mighty
people's movements swept over East Punjab
States in the post-war period. These :move-
ments suffered serious set-back when following
the partition, princes, jagirdars and their
imperialist masters fomented, organised and
conducted communal disturbances to divide,
uproot and destroy the people's unity in their
struggle for political and economic emanci-
Tara Chand Gupta is the Convener of the
People's Democratic Front of the PEPSU.-Editor
in PEPSU
Pation.
By the beginning of the year 1948,
the communal frenzy had died down and
people were again settling down to their
daily life of toil and labour. The snapp-
ed thread of struggles was taken up
and surprisingly enough even after the havoc
wrought by post-partition riot-wave, people's
movement again gathered momentum within
the brief' span of a few months. The peasants
marched on the capital -city of Faridkot and
captured the Secretariat. Thousands of
villagers surrounded the Dadri fort in Jind
state and forced the military unit to uncondi-
tionally surrender. Militant tenants of
Patiala state mustered in their thousands.
They held mass demonstrations in the streets
of Patiala demanding liquidation of Maharaja's
autocratic rule. Even the might of Patel
was proving ineffectual in shielding the princes
from the rising tide of mass anger of the states'
people. So the eight princely states of East
Punjab were lumped together and formed into
a union with Maharaja of Patiala crowned
as the Rajpramukh.
In the initial stages when the Punjab
Riyasati Prajamandal was christened into the
PEPSU Provincial Congress Committee, there
was an influential section of kisan workers in
the organisation. After the formation of the
PEPSU the right-wing Congress leaders tried
their best to strike bargain with the Maharaja
but the kisan leaders having links with peasant
masses stood in their way, so much so that
Patel set up a care-taker ministry with the
Maharaja's own uncle as the Chief Minister.
The Right-wing Congress leaders, however,
continued playing at their favourite game of
channelising the agrarian unrest and the
general feeling of frustration into the narrow
mould of constitutional agitation for their
ministry formation. The Maharaja bought
over a couple of extreme right-wing Congress
leaders and Patel set up a new hybrid ministry.
This ministry, with Maharaja's uncle still
as the Chief Minister, ushered in a reign of
terror. Half a dozen tenants were shot dead
at Kishengarli. But the kisans refused to be
terrorised. .They fought back.. Even the poor
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town-dwellers were roused to militant action,
so much so that a notorious Sub-Inspector
of Police at Malerkotla who had criminally
assaulted a minor virgin girl fell a victim to
an angry crowd of citizens. Warrants of arrest
were issued for left-wing Congress leaders.
They were forced to go underground. Many
were detained.
Such was the universal hatred against this
ministry that Patel had to wind up the show
ten months after, in November, 1949. Another
caretaker ministry on the basis of 50:50 re-
presentation between the Maharaja and the
States Ministry dragged on in isolated existence
for over 15 months till in May this year,
after the death of Sardar Patel, Nehru installed
the three-group Congress ministry in power
with the notorious imperialist agent Col.
Raghbir Singh as the Chief Minister. The
express purpose of this on-the-eve-of-elections
ministerial set-up is to manoeuvre the elections
for the Congress Party through the agency
of official heirarchy.
Misdeeds of Congress
Congress rulers, through their patronage
of Rajwara-shahi have helped in the conso-
lidation of the extreme Right-wing communal-
cum-fascist organisations. Akalis were the
first to go into action aganist the foisting of the
anti-people ministry of the PEPSU Congress
leaders. Their action, of course, was frothy
and their slogans hollow. But they took ad-
vantage of the situation and organised huge
anti-ministry demonstrations. Effigy of the
ministry was taken out in procession, beaten
with shoes and burnt at Patiala, Bhatinda and
Sangrur. Black flag demonstrations were held
against ministers wherever they went.
Hot-headed, arrogant, but essentially weak and
corrupt Brish Bhan, State Congress leader, fairly
popular among the city middle class before he became
the Deputy Chief to Col. Raghbir Singh, proved
to be a source of weakness rather than strength to
the new ministry. Tormented with internal con-
flict, bossed over by the ICS Regional Commissioner,
gripped by the mortal fear of dismissal at any moment
and lacking support of any section of the population,
the ministry lives on newsprint publicity in the
isolated `grandeur' of their bungalows in Baradari
gardens at Patiala.
No wonder then that the police baton has
been in frequent use to break up demonstrations.
Men and women have been thrashed, arrested
and locked up in prison. Civil liberties have
been blotted out.
In every part of the Union thousands of
tenant families are being ejected from fields,
they have been tilling fbr generations. Police
and the goonda squads of landlords go about
striking terror in the countryside. Three kisans
were shot dead recently at village Bishenpura,
allegedly by the Mukhtiar of Biswedar
Jaswant Singh Jeji. Tenant Jai Singh's minor
daughter Tej Kaur was reported to have been
criminally assaulted by a police constable at
village Narendrapura in Mansa Tahsil. 120
men, women and children were taken into
police custody at village Bakhora. Bare-
headed women with their hands tied behind
their backs were marched through village
streets. Eighteen-year-old Hamir Kaur was
removed to Sangrur and thrown by the road-
side to shift for herself along with her baby,
hardly three weeks old. Biswedar Teja Singh
was reported to have employed 40 goondas
armed with guns to drive off several tenant
families from village Chonegra in Patiala
district.
Labour in the factories at Hamira, Phag-
wara, Rajpura, Surajpur, Nabha, Dadri, Bha-
tinda, Malerkotla and Patiala is at the mercy
of monoply-capitalists Dalmia, Birla, Karam.
chand Thapar, Seth Gujarmal Modi of U. P.
and others like them. Trade Union legislation
remains only on paper. The proprietors are
minting millions, but the workers are forced
to work for long hours on starvation wages.
Education accounts for 15 per cent of the
budget, whereas the expenditure on police
exceeds 19 per cent. Fees are high but teaching
arrangements are altogether unsatisfactory.
Bhatinda Intermediate results this year were
9%!
Having lost face in municipal elections,
the Congress Ministry has decided to have no
more elections. It is busy smuggling undesir-
able persons in town and city municipalities
through nomination !
Alliance with feudal, communal forces
The Congress in the PEPSU, therefore, is
functioning through three different bodies to
`capture' power in the coming elections.
There is the official Congress, purged of all
progressive elements and with opportunists
in leadership, trying to establish perpetual
control over the P. C. C. machine. Then,
there are the landlords. Thirdly, the Akalis
will contest seats only to join the Congress
Assembly Party after elections are over. In
spite of wordy swordrattling against communal-
ism, Congress rulers are mighty glad that
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Akalis still have some sort of slippery hold on
the middle class Sikh youth and a substantial
section of rich peasants. Master Tara Singh
has established his headquarters at Patiala.
A few weeks back, he staged the big show of
Mahasamagam when some 75 thousand Sikhs
gathered at Patiala to revitalise `spiritualism'!
Landlords and the Princes are in this
way trying to impress upon the Congress
.rulers their influence with the Sikh masses
with a view to drive as hard a bargain with
their erstwhile patrons as possible.
Formation of People's Democratic Front
It is a pity that it took full three months
to work out the idea of People's Front into
concrete reality in the PEPSU. Had the
front been in existence at the time of the for-
mation of Congress Ministry in May last,
the Congress could have been smashed to
pieces. There was a stage when 80 Congress
leaders met in a convention at Patiala and
decried the formation of the ministry in al-
liance with Colonel Raghubir Singh. But
they had no place to go to. There was no
transitional organization which they could
join in order to fight against the reactionary,
corrupt Congress leaders.
But in spite of it all, it is nothing short
of a miracle that the People's Democratic
Front has been brought into existence in the
PEPSU. The two Communist Parties, Lal
and the official, had bitter memories offratricidal
quarrel. Such, however, is the demand of the
hour that every section of radicals mustered
promptly at the very first call of the Commu-
nist Party to unite popular forces against Cong-
ress misrule. On the 19th of August, about
150 prominent publicmen of the PEPSU came
together at Sangrur and decided to lay the
foundations of the People's Democratic Front.
The front is a coalition of the Communist
Party, Lal Communist Party, Forward Bloc,
former Congressmen who had recently left
Congress as a protest against the betrayal by
the PEPSU Congress leaders, independent
radicals and Left Socialists.
The Programme of the Front
It is an electoral coalition on the basis of
a concrete programme. The programme
includes:
(1) Abolition of Biswedari without com-
pensation.
(2) Distribution of lands belonging to
jagirdars and princes among poor peasants
and Khet Mazdoors on the principle of `Land
to the Tiller'.
(3) Higher wages for factory and office
workers and recognition of trade union rights.
(4) Repeal of Sales Tax Act.
(5) Free elementary education for all, reduc-
tion in education fees and provision of stipends
for needy students in institutions of higher
education.
(6) Ensuring supply of cheap raw mate-
rials and otherwise protecting small factory-
owners against the competition of monopoly
capitalists.
(7) Re-settlement of refugees on land,
in. business and starting of new industries to
absorb the unemployed.
(8) Ensuring price stabilization and en-
forcing price control and adoption of effective
measures against corruption.
(9) Abolition of Raja-shahi; pensions and
privy purses of princes and their relatives to
be stopped and their capital and lands to
be confiscated. '
(10) Creation of provinces on the language
principle.
(11) Repeal of Safety Acts, release of
political detenus and prisoners, and with-
drawal of punitive police posts from tenancy
villages.
(12) (a) Withdrawal of India From the
British Commonwealth of Nations and re-
moval of all Britishers from the armed forces.
(b) India to work for world peace in
alliance with the peace-loving Governments
and peoples of Russia, China and the coun-
tries of Eastern Europe.
Bringing together all the radical elements
on one common platform on the basis of a
concrete programme of action is a solid achieve-
rrient. The response has been tremendous.
It is for the first time that a planned campaign
of mass political education has been launched
in the PEPSU in a methodical way.
Bright future ahead
The task ahead, no doubt, is uphill. Big
chunks of city youth are still under the spell
of fascist ideologies of the R. S. S. and the
Akali Dal. Nearly 30% of the arable land
in the PEPSU belongs to a handful of jagirdars
and the seven princely families. Maharajas
of Patiala, Kapurthala and Faridkot, these
three alone, own capital of about two crores
in the form of extensive farms, tea and fruit
gardens, palaces, and shares in industrial con-
cerns and banks. Congress ministers are
openly corrupting the public life by utilising
the services of Government officials to collect
funds for the Congress Party.
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Thirty-fourth anniversary
of November Socialist Revolution
Smiling wheat bags from USSR-prompt and disinterested Soviet aid to India
Defender of Nations' Freedom
Acardinal principle of the Soviet Union's
foreign policy, a principle it has unalterably
followed since the first day of its exis-
tence, is to work for the independence and
sovereignty of peoples and states and for
non-interference in their internal affairs, to
work against national oppression and colonial
enthralment in any form.
This principle was proclaimed by the
Soviet Government on November 8, 1917,
in its Decree on Peace. And in V. I. Lenin's
and J. V. Stalin's Address of December 3,
1917, To All Toiling Moslems of Russia and the
East, it was stated that the Soviet Republic
was tearing up all unequal treaties concluded
between the Tsarist government and the coun-
tries of the East as well as the treaties with
the imperialist powers providing for the parti-
tioning of the countries of the Fast.
NOVEMBER 1951
The proclamation by the Soviet State of
the new principles for its relations with the
countries of the East, principles founded on the
recognition of their sovereignty and indepen-
dence, strengthened the struggle for national
liberation conducted by the peoples of China,
India, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan and other
countries in Asia and made it difficult for the
imperialist powers of the West to continue to
pursue their old policy in the East.
Protector of Afghanistan's independence
In 1919, when Amanullah Khan, the new
Emir of Afghanistan, proclaimed his country's
complete independence, the Soviet Govern-
ment unreservedly recognized the sovereign
rights of independent Afghanistan and agreed
at once to establish diplomatic relations with
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that country. And in connection with the
establishment of diplomatic relations between
the two countries, the Soviet Government
stated that
`from the first days it had taken the power
it had announced to the whole world its desire not
only to recognize the self-determination of all peo-
ples, great and small, but also to give its support
to all peoples fighting for their independence and
for the right to order their internal life as they deem
best without interference from the big and mighty
imperialist governments."
In 1921, the Treaty of Moscow was con-
cluded between Afghanistan and Soviet Russia
,,with the aim", as it was stated in the pream?-
ble, "of ' consolidating the friendly relations between
Russia and Afghanistan and protecting Afghanistan's
real independence." The Treaty of Moscow was
a. decisive factor in ensuring Afghanistan's
independence. The hostile actions of Britain
which stubbornly refused to reconcile itself
to the existence of an independent Afghan
State, were without avail.
Loyal friend of China and Mongolia
In the middle of 1919, the Soviet Govern-
ment took steps to establish friendly relations
between Soviet Russia and China. It add-
ressed a statement to the Chinese people
and the governments of North and South
China in which it reaffirmed its renunciation
of all conquests of the Tsarist government
in China and Russia's share of the indemnity
for the Boxer Rebellion of 1900. The Soviet
Government also announced the abolition of.
all special privileges enjoyed by Russian
citizens in China, underscoring that any
Russian subject meddling in China's internal
affairs or committing a crime should be justly
tried by a local court. "There should be no
other power or court in China," it was said in the
statement, " than the power and the court of the
Chinese people."
The Soviet Government informed the Chi-
nese Government that it was ready to establish
official relations between the two countries and
to nullify once and for all acts of violence and
injustice committed by the Tsarist government
against China.
At the very outset of their war of libe-
ration, the Mongolian people found in the
Soviet State a loyal and reliable friend. In
its declaration to the Mongolian people made
in 1919, the Soviet Government stated :
"Mongolia is a free country. All power in the
country should belong to the free people. No f oreigner
has the right to interfere in Mongolia's internal affairs."
Not only was the Soviet Land the first to
recognize the independence of the Mongolian
People's Republic, but it also helped the lat-
ter successfully defend its freedom from en-
croachment by the imperialists.
Helped in preserving Iran's freedom
The victory of the Great October Socialist
Revolution in Russia was of exceptionally
great importance for the destiny of the Iranian
people. As early as December 3, 1917, the
Soviet Government announced that it was
cancelling the treaty on the partition of Persia.
that had been concluded by the Tsarist govern-
ment with the imperialists of Britain and
France and that it recognized the right of the
Persians freely to determine their own fate.
When, following the withdrawal of Russian
troops from Iran, Britain occupied the country
(" swallowed all of Persia," to use Lenin's
expression) and forced on Iran the enthralling
treaty of 1919, the Soviet Government stated
in an announcement to the Iranian people
that it did not recognize the oppressive Anglo-
Iranian Treaty, considering it a scrap of paper
without legal force.
The declaration re-affirmed renunciation
of all unequal treaties with Iran or those
concerning Iran, of intervention in the internal
affairs of Iran and the title to Russian property
in that country.
On February 26, 1921, a Soviet-Iranian
Treaty was signed, in which the Soviet Govern-
ment solemnly announced its abandonment
of the policy that had been pursued in
Iran by the Tsarist and Provisional govern-
ments, and the treaty also annulled all agree-
ments and conventions infringing on the
interests of the Iranian people.
The Soviet-Iranian Treaty of 1921 played
an important part in preserving Iran's
independence. The British imperialists were
forced to withdraw their troops from Iran
in the spring of 1921.
Assisted Kemal Ataturk
Soviet Russia played a major role in
safeguarding Turkey's independence. The
Treaty of Sevres, signed by Turkey at the
dictation of the Entente imperialists, left the
Turks the Central and Northern parts of Asia
Minor only, which in fact, were turned into
a colonial region. The policy pursued in
Turkey by the imperialists of the United
States, Britain, France and Italy brought
about the growth of the Turkish peoples'
national liberation movement, which was
heartily supported by the Soviet people.
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Towards the end of April 1920, Kemal Selfless aid to People's Democracies
Ataturk appealed to the Soviet Government
for help to the Turkish national liberation
movement. The Soviet Government expressed
its readiness to establish normal diplomatic
relations with Turkey and displayed the
liveliest sympathy for the struggle waged by
the Turkish people.
On March 16, 1921, a Soviet-Turkish
Treaty of Friendship and Fraternity was signed.
The Soviet Government did not recognize the
capitulation regime and renounced all privi-
leges and all debts due from Turkey. The
treaty with Soviet Russia was a major factor in
Turkey's preserving her independence, in the
Turkish victory over the Anglo-Greek inter-
ventionists.
Soviet foreign policy has always firmly
opposed colonial regimes and upheld the
right of the peoples of colonies and dependent
countries to self-determination, and to inde-
pendent statehood. On entering the League
of Nations in 1934, the Soviet Government
made the reservation that it did not recognize
the so-called system of mandates, which was
a screen for a regime of colonial exploitation.
In the United Nations, the Soviet Govern-
ment has vigorously insisted that the inter-
national trusteeship system be so applied as
to help the peoples of dependent countries
gain self-government and independence.
Stalin's programme for post-war world
During the Great Patriotic War, J. V.
Stalin, speaking of a democratic programme
for the post-war organization of the world
stressed that there should be ensured
"abolition of racial exclusiveness; equality of
nations and inviolability of their territories; liberation
of the enslaved nations and the restoration of their
sovereign rights; the right of every nation to manage
its affairs in its own way; economic aid to nations
that have. suffered and assistance in establishing
their material welfare; restoration of democratic
liberties; destruction of the Hitler regime."
The world-historic victory of the Soviet
Union over Hitler Germany and imperialist
Japan was of decisive importance for the
preservation of the peoples' independence.
The defeat of Hitler Germany and the libera-
tion of a whole number of countries in Central
and South-Eastern Europe by Soviet troops has
permitted the peoples of Poland, Rumania, Bul-
garia, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Albania,
who previously had been under yoke of German
fascists to take power into their own hands and
for the first time in their history establish their
real national independence.
NOVEMBER 1951
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The Soviet Union has concluded with all
the Peoples's Democracies in Europe economic
and political treaties founded on the principle
of complete equality of both parties.
The Soviet Union was the first to recognise
the Chinese People's Republic and vigorously
to defend her sovereign rights. Article 5 of the
Soviet-Chinese Treaty of Friendship, Alliance
and Mutual Assistance, signed in Moscow on
February 14, 1950, reads as follows:
"The two Contracting Parties undertake in a
spirit of friendship and co-operation, and in accordance
with the principles of equality, mutual interest and
mutual integrity and respect for their state sovereignty
and territorial non-interference in the internal
affairs of the other Pary, to develop and strengthen
economic and cultural lies between the Soviet Union
and China, to render each other all possible economic
assistance and to carry out necessary economic coopera-
tion."
The imperialists of the United States, Britain
and other countries are trying by every means
to rob the People's Democracies of the freedom
and independence gained by them. To this end
they make use of the reactionary forces inside
those countries, to which they also send their
spies and saboteurs.
In contrast to the policy pursued by the
imperialists, Soviet foreign policy respects
national rights and the national aspirations
of the peoples. When entering into relations
with other countries and peoples the great
Soviet Union invariably treats them as equals.
Stalin on equality of nations
A profound scientific substantiation of
this principle adhered to by the Soviet Union
was given by J. V. Stalin at the reception
in honour of the Finnish Government dele-
gation on April 7, 1948. Stalin said:
".Many people do not believe that the relations
between a big and a small nation can be equal.
But we, Soviet people, hold that such relations can
and must exist. Soviet people hold that each nation
whether big or small has its own distinguishing
qualitative features, its own specific nature which
it alone possesses and other nations lack. These
distinguishing features constitute the contribution
that each nation makes to the common treasury of
world culture and that supplements and enriches
it. In this sense, all nations-big and small-are in
a similar position, and each nation is equivalent to
every other nation."
The Soviet Union came out against the
Marshall Plan for the reason that the American
imperialists have made its main objective
the destruction of the national sovereignty of
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the European peoples and their enslavement.
Against the Marshall Plan the Soviet
Union put forward a programme of economic
co-operation based on equality of rights and
respect for the national aspirations and in-
dependence of the peoples.
The whole world knows what a great fight
the Soviet Union has been conducting in the
United Nations in defence of the national rights
of the peoples of Iran, Greece, Indonesia,
Syria, Lebanon, China and Korea. The Soviet
Union's fight in defence of representation in
the United Nations of the China's People's
Government and the expulsion of the Kuomin-
India's Socialist neighbour
tang remains of American imperialism is a
fight in defence of the U.N. Charter, and in
defence of peace and the national interests of
the Chinese people.
The Soviet Union has established diploma-
tic relations with India, Pakistan, the People's
Republic of Viet-Nam, Burma, and the
Indonesian Republic, whose peoples for a
long time were under the heel of foreign
oppressors. The Soviet Union is developing
its relations with these states on the principle
of full equality, respect for their national
sovereignty and non-interference in their
internal affairs.
Soviet Tajikistan
(Progress in the
The Supreme Soviet of the Tajik Soviet
Socialist Republic in August 1946, dopted
the republic's post-war Five-Year Plan for
the rehabilitation and further development
of its national economy. Under this plan
Tajikistan was in the first five post-war years
(1946-1950) not only to attain its pre-war
economic level, but also to exceed it.
With the aid of the peoples of the fraternal
Republics of the Soviet Union, the working
people of Soviet Tajikistan have successfully
fulfilled their post-war Five-Year Plan.
Industries
Soviet Tajikistan has made great progress
in its further industrialization. It has rapidly
developed its numerous industries that came
into being under the Soviet system: coal
and ore-mining, cotton-ginning, the light
and food industries, production of building
materials. There have been erected and
put into operation a foundry and engineering
works, a fluorite mill, a number of ore mines
and concentrate factories, cotton ginning mills,
a silk weaving mill, a sewing and kni-
tted goods factories, a woodworking plant,
two oil mills, seven creameries and a number
of other establishments. Construction of en-
terprises has been launched to handle Tajik-
istan's own jute crops, the cultivation of which
began but recently.
A number of existing industrial establish-
ments have been reconstructed. The capacity
of textile, cotton ginning and silk mills has
five post-war years)
been considerably increased. For example,
at the Stalinabad Textile Mill 22,500 spindles
'were put into operation instead of the previous-
fly planned 18,500.
Coal output has more than doubled com-
pared with pre-war. The output of the non-
ferrous metals industry has gone up one and a
half times, and of electric power 27. times.
A considerable increase of output has been
registered in the major lines of the food and
the light industries. Compared with pre-war
1940, production of vegetable oil has increased
4 times; meat one and a half times; canned
foods more than double; and so on all along
the line; output of shoes nearly doubled, that
of silk fabrics increased 38. times. Production
of cotton textiles has increased five times during
this five-year period.
Mechanised, socialist agriculture
The past five post-war years have been
a period of new progress also for Tajikista.n's
Socialist agriculture whose technical facilities
have been growing year after year. The capa-
city of just the tractor fleet of the machine-
and-tractor stations which serve the republic's
farms has in the course of the Five-Year Plan
increased 38 per cent. Pre-sowing cultivation,
sowing and tending of the cotton plants is
almost fully mechanized. On the fields of
the state farms and collective farms, cotton is
harvested by machines.
Particularly great progress has been regis-
tered in the republics's major line of farming-
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cotton-growing. The area under cotton has
in the course of the post-war Five-Year Plan
increased here by 31 per cent and far exceeded
the pre-war figure. During this period, the
gross cotton harvest has increased 3.3 times,
including a fivefold increase in the production
of fine-staple varieties. Now, high-yielding
cotton varieties developed by Soviet breeders
are widely used on the plantations of the Tajik
collective farms and state farms.
The area under other industrial crops
(besides cotton) has increased by 46 per cent
and that under fodder crops by 43 per cent.
New fruit orchards and vine-yards have been
planted over large areas. New crops: jute,
citrus fruits, essential oil-bearing plants and
other formerly unknown cultures in Tajikistan
are now being successfully cultivated here.
Compared with pre-war 1940, per hectare
grain yields in 1950 went up 38 per cent and
the gross harvest, 34 per cent.
Thousands of hectares of formerly barren,
waterless land in the Vakhsh and Gissar
valleys and other districts of the Tajikistan
have been brought under cultivation. New
irrigation systems have been built and existing
ones reconstructed. Work is nearing comple-
tion on the construction of the Unjin pumping
station to mechanize irrigation; the Yangi-
Chairikaron Canal; the irrigation network
in the Verkhni Koktash lands, etc. Compared
with pre-war, the number of rural electric
stations has more than doubled and their
capacity increased more than threefold.
Tajikistan has made notable progress also
in animal husbandry. It has overfulfilled its
Five-Year Plan for increasing the head of com-
monly owned livestock. Compared with pre-war
its number of cattle increased 2.7 times, sheep
and goats 3.3 times, and poultry nearly 4 times.
Education; culture; health
Public education is successfully developing
in Tajikistan. In 1950, its elementary, junior-
secondary and complete secondary schools were
attended by 309,000 children, or 69, 000 more
than was envisaged by the post-war Five-Year
Plan. Instruction in the schools is given in
the native language of the population. Three
times as many lads and girls attended rural
evening schools as in 1945. 7,500 young peo-
ple (or three times as many as in 1940) attend-
ed colleges, and 10,800 attended secondary
specialized schools. The republic's higher
and secondary educational institutions gradua-
ted more than 10,000 specialists : teachers,
agronomists, doctors, etc. In the course of
the post-war Five-year Plan 548 schools
have been built and equipped here at state
expense; the republic opened its own Slate
University and eight new secondary specialized
schools. The number of scientific research insti-
tutions and their staffs of scientific workers has
increased.
Compared with pre-war, the number of
clubs in towns and rural communities increased
4.5 times, the number of motion picture pro-
jection installations 2.3 times, and the num-
ber of public libraries 2.4 times.
New medical service establishments have
been opened in the towns, industrial settlements
and rural communities. The republic now has
twice as many doctors as it had before the war.
Remarkable rise in living standards
The standard of living of the Tajik popula-
tion steadily advanced in the course of the
postwar Five-Year Plan, real wages of factory
and office workers continued to rise and so did
the incomes of the collective farmers.
In the course of 1947-1950, the Government
of the Soviet Union three times in succession
reduced prices of general consumer goods
and prepared the conditions for the fourth
price reduction effected on March 1, 1951.
The price reductions have sharply increased
real wages of workers, office employees and
the intelligentsia and yielded a great saving
to the peasants in purchasing cut-priced
manufactured goods.
The population of Tajikistan received at
the expense of the state allowances from
social insurance fund for factory and office
workers ; pensions from the Social Mainte-
nance Fund; accommodations in sanatoriums,
rest homes and child institutions free of charge
or at reduced rates; allowances and grants for
mothers of large families and lone mothers; free
medical aid; free education and professional
and vocational instruction; students' stipends
and a number of other payments and benefits.
Trade has expanded at a rapid pace. The
retail trade turnover in the state and co-opera-
tive network has considerably surpassed the
pre-war 1940 level. A considerable increase
has been registered in the sale of food and
manufactured consumer goods.
Local Soviets, state enterprises and ins-
titutions and also the population of towns
and industrial settlements assisted by govern-
ment loans on easy terms have built dwelling
houses with a total living floor space of 504,000
square metres. In the rural communities
41,000 houses have been built.
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Soviets remake Geography
and Climate
V. Kovda
In August last year the Soviet Government
passed a decision providing for the cons-
truction of gigantic hydro-technical works on
the Volga.
Russian science has always been distin-
guished by its progressive outlook and optimis-
tic faith in the ability of human reason, science
and technology to master the elemental forces
of nature. The discoveries and deductions
of Mendeleyev, Dokuchayev, Timiryazev, Mi-
churin and Voyeikov were a reply to those
scientists who asserted that in his struggle
against nature man is an impotent pigmy.
From its very inception, the Soviet State addres-
sed itself to the task of refashioning nature, of
removing the causes giving rise to drought and
crop failure, and thus making the earth yield
its bounties to the full.
Miracles of Socialist agriculture
That vast social reform effected in the
Soviet Union--the conversion of tens of
millions of small peasant husbandries into
large collective farms, amply supplied with
first-class machinery, fertilizers and scientific
guidance-has, coupled with a planned nation-
al economy, created huge potentialities for
increasing the productivity of labour in agri-
culture.
A constant and steady rise of fertility and
increasing output of food and raw materials
is an inherent feature of the Socialist agricul-
ture of the Soviet Union. Russia in the Tsarist
clays used to produce 64-80 million tons of
cereals annually; the figure today in the Soviet
Union is 112-128 million tons. In Soviet
times the area of irrigated crop-land has increased
by 50 per cent, the cotton crop five-fold, and the
crop of oil-bearing plants three-fold.
This unparalleled increase of soil fertility
and of agricultural output disposes of the
assertion of the neo-Malthusians that a process
of gradual and universal exhaustion of the
soil is inevitable, and that therefore measures
must be taken to restrict the growth of the
world's population. The trouble, quite obvious-
ly, is not a general decline in the fertility of the
soil, but the fact that it is being exploited waste-
fully and improvidently.
Contours of a great plan
The Soviet people are now engaged on a
grand programme of engineering measures,
designed completely to eliminate the causes of
the droughts that afflict the South-Eastern
areas of the European part of the USSR and to
irrigate vast expanses of desert and wasteland.
In 1948, the Soviet people began work on a
plan initiated by J. V. Stalin, providing for
the planting of trans-continental shelter belts
following the watersheds and the valleys of the
bigger rivers, and also for the afforestation of
the dunelands and black-earth steppelands in
the South-Eastern part of the country. These
forest belts will protect the fertile lands border-
ing the Volga against the dry, destructive winds
that blow from the deserts of Central Asia.
A good fifth of the 15-year programme for
the planting of forest belts has already been
completed.
In 1950, work was begun on the construction
of five gigantic hydropower stations and new
irrigation systems on the Volga, the Dnieper,
the Don and the Amu-Darya. From five to
seven years are planned for the completion of
these works, which will increase the annual
power output of the Soviet Union by approxi-
mately 23,000 million kilowatt-hours and the
area of irrigated arable land by 6,000,000
hectares.
Simultaneously, sand-fixing operations will
be carried out in the Kara Kum desert (Turk-
menistan) and over a vast area of the Caspian
lowland, and water will be brought to 22
This article is based on an article by Professor
V. Kovda. Professor Victor Kovda is the Vice-
Chairman of the Advisory Committee of
Hydropower, Canal and Irrigation Development
of the USSR Academy of Sciences. He is a
geologist and mineralogist and the author of
a number of works on soil science.-Editor
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million hectares of land in the cattle-breeding -
regions. The completion of this grand pro-
gramme will make it possible to increase the
output of cereals, cotton, vegetable oil and
animal products three or four times over.
This gigantic plan for the remaking of
geography and climate is called by the Soviet
people after its author and initiator J. V.
Stalin. The motive force of the Stalin Plan
is the desire to harness the forces of nature and
create an abundance of agricultural produce
for the promotion of man's welfare.
Scientists lend their aid
The Stalin Plan is an embodiment of the
finest progressive traditions of Soviet science.
It is based on the accumulated experience and
achievements of hydro-engineering in the
Socialist State.
A regular army of scientists, engineers,
agronomists and researchers in the most diverse
fields are co-operating with the Soviet people
in these grand construction projects of Com-
inunism. Hundreds of scientific expeditions
have launched an assault on the Kara Kum
and Caspian deserts and the barren steppe-
lands of the Volga and South Ukraine. Much
has already been accomplished. Charts of
natural conditions have been drawn up and
methods revised for bringing the land under
? cultivation. A pretty good idea has been
obtained of its chemical composition and
latent water resources, the behaviour of the
ground waters and the atmospheric dynamics
in the areas. New and powerful excavating
machines have been designed, and extra-tough
materials and new alloys invented for them.
Super-powerful turbines and the most delicate
automatic-control instruments are in the course
of construction or designing.
Soviet scientists consider it their prime
duty to contribute to the work of remaking
nature. Committees to advise and assist the
Stalin projects have been set up by the Academy
of Sciences, the Moscow University and other
scientific and academic bodies. Their pur-
pose is to make the latest discoveries and
inventions available to the builders with the
least possible delay.
World's longest canal
In June of last year I went to the Trans-
caucasus to supervise the research work in con-
nection with drainage and irrigation projects
in the lowland areas of the Kura and Araxes
rivers. On the Kura, near the village of
Mingechaur, Azerbaijan, a big hydro-electric
station is being built, which, with its dam,
will make it possible to irrigate some 500,000
hectares in the Kura-Araxes basins.
In August, after my return to Moscow,
I was informed by telephone that a scientific
committee had been set up to study projects
for irrigating new areas in Turkmenistan.
The committee included scientists and engi-
neers.
Two of my fellow-researchers in the Aca-
demy of Sciences and I were requested to
prepare data on natural conditions in the
Turkmen Republic and to suggest suitable
sites for the future irrigation systems.
The Main Turkmen Canal is to be comp-
leted by 1957. It will be the largest in the
world, 1,100 kilometres long, and will be able
to provide 600 cubic metres of water per second,
enough to irrigate 1,300,000 hectares and to
supply needed water for another 7,000,000
hectares.
I recently spent two months as scientific
chief of the Academy's big Aral-Caspian ex-
pedition which is plotting the route of the
Main Turkmen canal, and was able to observe
how swiftly the work is proceeding. Hundreds
of scientists, engineers and technicians atta-
ched to twenty expeditions appointed by
various ministries and scientific institutions
are busily at work along the route of the future
canal.
The first results of our investigations show
that, if necessary, the Main Turkmen Canal
will be able to irrigate an area twice as large
as was originally planned. At the village of
Takhia-Tash, where the dam on the Amu
Darya is to be built, housing settlements for
the workers, as well as a temporary wharf,
have already been built, the laying of the
approach roads and spur lines is nearing comp-
letion, and a wood-working and a concrete-
making plant will soon be ready for operation.
Work on the irrigation systems in the lower
reaches of the Amu Darya will be started in
1952.
World's biggest hydro-power project
Work was also begun this year on the
Volga hydro-technical projects, near the cities
of Kuibyshev and Stalingrad. For its scale,
excellence of engineering conception and rapid
pace of construction, the Kuibyshev Hydro-
Electric Station* will be the biggest hydro-
* The description of the Kuibyshev Hydro-Electric
Project is based on an article by Dr. G. Matveyev.
-Editor
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power plant.
This project will at once solve a whole
range of major national economic problems.
With a capacity of close to 2,000,000 kilowatts,
the hydro-electric station will have an annual
output of approximately 10,000 million kilo-
watt-hours in years of average waterflow.
It will transform industry and agriculture
over a vast area adjoining the Volga, and will
for ever rid the Trans-Volga collective farm
peasantry of the devastating droughts and
and winds.
The rise of the river's level due to the
Kuibyshev and Stalingrad dams and also
huge storage reservoirs and locks will radi-
cally change shipping conditions on the Volga.
Shallowing of the river will stop. The river
will become full-flowing and on it big passen-
ger boats and freighters will freely navigate with
out fear of shoals and banks. The Kuibyshev
Hydro-Electric Station will produce more than
5 times as much electricity as all the electric
stations of Russia before the Revolution or
half as much as is generated by all the electric
stations of Italy. Its capacity will exceed
several times that of Europe's hitherto biggest
Lenin Hydro-Electric Station on the Dnieper.
The Kuibyshev Hydro-Power Project in-
cludes: the hydro-electric station, a con-
crete overflow weir, an earth dam, and navi-
gation locks. Their construction requires the
removal and laying of 150,000,000 cubic
metres ' of earth, pouring of 6,000,000 cubic
metres of concrete, installation of 200,000
tons of metal structure, and a vast amount
of building work. Each hour, more than a
thousand cubic metres of reinforced concrete
has to be laid on this project.
Use of most modern technique
This scale of building work requires the
use of most modern technique. And Soviet
industry is supplying the builders of the
Kuibyshev project with the most varied and
efficient high-capacity machines. There are
at work here powerful suction dredges that
shift thousand of cubic metres of earth an
hour; powerful electric excavators with a cap-
acity of 200 to 300 cubic metres an hour,
and a vast array of other machines. The
construction works will have its own huge
concrete plants with a daily capacity of 4,000
cubic metres of concrete.
In designing this mammoth project the
engineers had to solve many difficult prob-
lems. For example, in selecting the building
site, our specialists succeeded in avoiding
the possible flooding of fertile land of some
districts. Notwithstanding established tradi-
tions, our Soviet engineers have decided
to reject rocky foundations. Relying on the
rich experience of Soviet hydro-engineering,
our specialists have found it possible to erect
the dam on a soft foundation. This will
save a lot of money and time.
Saving of 20 million tons of fuel annually
For fuel stations to produce the amount
of electric power that will be generated by
the Kuibyshev Hydro-Electric Station, it would
require the annual transportation and con-
sumption of no less than 10,000,000 tons of
fuel. By the use of the electricity that will
be generated by the Kuibyshev Hydro-Electric
Station, industry, the transport services and
agriculture will save approximately 10,000,000
tons of fuel. Thus, the total saving of fuel
accruing from the Kuibyshev Hydro-Electric
Station will run into a good 20,000, 000 tons
a year.
Of the 10,000 million kilowatt-hours
which the Kuibyshev Hydro-Electric Station
will generate, 1,500 million is intended f'or
the irrigation of the Trans-Volga steppes,
where an irrigation system is being built on
an area of 1,000,000 hectares.
Besides irrigation, it is planned extensively
to electrify farm work in the Trans-Volga
area. This will considerably increase pro-
ductivity of labour, reduce consumption of
liquid and solid fuel, and make easier the
work of the collective farmers.
Six thousand million kilowatt-hours annua-
lly will be transmitted to Moscow. To send such
huge quantities of electric power over a distance
of more than 800 kilometres, powerful high
voltage transmission lines will be erected
over which 400,000 volt electric current will
flow. The transmission of such high tension
current over such long distances is being
undertaken here for the first time in world
history.
The Moscow power system connected
with the Volga systems will become the big-
gest in the world.
I should observe that the problem of irriga-
ting the Volga region has interested many
Soviet scientists. In the thirties, Academi-
cians L. Prasolov, B. Polynov, B. Keller
and myself, all novices at that time, made
a study of the natural conditions in the mid-
dle and lower Volga areas from the point
of view of the possibility of large-scale irriga-
tion work. Following this, a number of irri-
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gation systems were built on the smaller rivers
in the region. The experience in irrigation
farming gained since has been put to use in
projecting much bigger irrigation develop-
ments on the Volga. I summed up the results
of these investigations in a recent book called
The Soil of the Caspian Lowland, where the
prospects of irrigating this area were dis-
cussed. We, scientists, believed that this
would be a matter of the distant future, but
the construction of the Kuibyshev and Sta-
lingrad power plants on the suggestion of
J. V. Stalin, has placed the irrigation of the
middle and lower Volga regions on the order
of the day. Some 14 million hectares of
arid land in this region will receive water
within the next few years.
Last year a group of engineers of the
USSR Ministry of Agriculture, headed by
hydro-technical engineer Lyuber, drew up
a project for the irrigation of the vast dep-
ression lying to the North of the Caspian
Sea. This gignatic drought-ridden area is
capable of producing enormous quantities
of grain, fruits and vegetables, all that it
needs being water. Now it will get the
{ water Sim It 1 h
u aneous y, t e details were
worked out of the Stalingrad hydro-power
plant and the Stalingrad canal, which will
cut through the Caspian lowlands from the
Volga to the Ural river.
Both projects were scrutinized very thoro-
ughly by an expert committee composed of
prominent scientists and engineers from the
Academy of Sciences, the Moscow University,
Higher Engineering School and Moscow
Power Institute. The experts made some
critcisms and suggestions, which were accepted
by the authors, but in general the committee
approved both projects, and the work will
start in the very near future. The excavation
of the cofferdam for foundations of the Stalin-
grad Hydro-Electric Station is being started
right away.
However, the problem of irrigating the
Caspian wastelands cannot be regarded as
solved. The Academy of Sciences has there-
fore appointed a large and all-round scientific
expedition, headed by the well-known
scientist Vladimir Sukachev, to render per-
manent assistance to the planners and buil-
ders. The detachments and provisional
stations of this expedition are investigating
the areas of the national shelter belts planted
in 1949 and 1950, as well as the sites of the
future irrigation systems in the Caspian area.
Volga-Don Canal
I write these lines with the impressions
still fresh in my memory of a visit I paid
to the site of another big construction pro-
ject-the Volga- Don Canal. The canal,
as well as the Tsimlyanskaya hydro-power
plant connected with it will be in the main
finished this year, and with.the disappearance
of the ice next spring it will be opened for
navigation. By next year, too, the first
100,000 hectares of desert land will be irrigat-
ed, and the figure will increase in the corning
four years to 750,000 hectares. When this
canal is opened for navigation, five seas-
the White, the Baltic, the Caspian, the Azov
and the Black-will be connected with navi-
gation water routes.
The construction of these new irrigation
systems in so short a period will naturally be
no easy matter. The irrigation canals in
the Don steppe are already in course of cons-
truction; but, for the water to be able to flow
to its destination, large areas will have
to be levelled, hundreds of smaller canals
and distributing installations built, and, in
addition, the collective farmers will have to be
taught the technique of irrigation. This
task has been entrusted to the scientists
of the Novocherkassk Land Reclamation
Institute, a famous Soviet higher educational
institution. They direct the agronomists and
engineers who are supervising the building
of the irrigation networks in the Don steppe,
and train collective farmers to be professional
irrigation supervisers.
Large-scale construction work is also in
progress in the South Ukraine and the Crimea.
Here, too, large prospecting and research ex-
peditions are at work, composed mainly of
scientists from the Ukrainian Academy of
Sciences and the Crimean branch of the USSR
Academy of Sciences.
Housing settlements are also
express speed at Kakhovka, on the
one of them is already completed
first workers have moved in.
built at
Dnieper;
and the
Detailed plans have been worked out for
the irrigation of the basin of the Verkhny
Inguletz, a Western tributary of the Dnieper.
The soil here is Ukrainian black earth and
remarkably fertile, but the grain and cotton
crops often suffer from the and climate. The
irrigation plan was drawn up under the
direction of Ukrainian hydro-technical engi-
neers. It provides for the irrigation of 100,000
hectares and is at present being examined
by a committee of experts.
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Dreams come true under Socialism
In 1920, a committee of scientists and
engineers working under the guidance of
Lenin and Stalin, drew up the first state
plan for the electrification of Russia. It
envisaged increasing the country's power
output from 2,000 million to 8,800 million
kilowatt-hours in the next 15 years. When
H. G. Wells was told of the project he referr-
ed to Lenin as the "dreamer in the Kremlin",
and predicted that nothing would come of
the plan. He was mistaken. By 1940 the
Soviet Union was producing at the rate
of 40,000 million kilowatt-hours of electricity
a year, more than any other European
country.. Today, after the first post-war Five-
Year Plan; the Soviet Union is generating at
the annual rate of more than 80,000 million
kilowatt-hours, and is the second largest power
producer in the world.
These figures should be sufficient answer to
those who doubt the feasibility of the new
plans, the plans for the remaking of geo-
graphy and climate. They rest upon a granite
foundation-Socialism.
These great hydro-engineering works are
being built by the free people of the Soviet Union, by
the whole Soviet State, backed by the might of its
heavy industry. The machine-building indus-
try of the Soviet Union is capable of producing
all the equipment necessary for the comp-
lete mechanization of the labourious processes
of excavation, concretelaying and construc-
tion. I have seen at the construction sites
powerful excavators, among them giants
with shovels of 14-cubic metre capacity,
25-ton tip-trucks, huge scrapers and bull-
dozers, first-class transporters and graders.
The plants of the Urals, the Donbas, Moscow
and Leningrad build-super powerful machi-
nes of the most diverse type, each of which
can do the work of thousands of labourers.
The demand for crude manual labour in these
great construction projects is relatively in-
significant.
If Goethe were alive to-day
As I write this I cannot help recalling
Goethe's wise old Faust, who, in his declin-
ing years, after he has lost his son Euphorion,
comes to the conviction that the human
intellegence can have no loftier aim than
to harness the forces of nature for the benefit
of man. He conceives a plan for reclaiming
the seashore and, already blind with age,
proceeds to carry it out. But Mephistopheles
-the symbol of stern reality-deceives him.
The Lemurs dig not a drainage canal, but a
grave for Faust, in which they bury his remains.
The great poets's moral is that the world
of his time was powerless to master the natural
elements.
I should have liked Goethe to have lived
to our day; he might then have written a
different Faust.
The great construction projects of Com-
munism will be completed by the Soviet State
in the amazingly short period of five to seven
years. They will work radical changes in the
physical and economic geography of the Soviet
Union. New " seas "and "rivers" and countless
ponds and reservoirs will appear, and the soil
will acquire a new vegetative surface. The
climate at ground level will change. New
cities, new railways and new ports will come
into being. Half the generated power will
be used for the broad electrification of agri-
culture and of river and road transport.
New and colossal wealth will be produced
by the peaceful constructive labour of the
Soviet people, enormous quantities of food-
stuffs and industrial raw materials, plants
and animals, will be made available for the
country's food industry and light industries.
Big new advances will be made in the gradual
transition of Soviet society from Socialism
to Communism. And all for the greater
welfare of man !
Parties and Politics in PEPSU
from page 42]
the services of Government officials to collect
funds for the Congress Party
The broad masses of PEPSU, led by the
militant Kisan movement, which in its turn
is guided by votaries of Marx, Lenin and
Stalin, are marching ahead with amazing self-
c:onfidenec. The united might of the people did
beat back the repression at Kishengarli and
Bakhora. The same thing can and should
happen in every corner of the PEPSU. We
are fortunate in one respect. The Right-wing
Socialist leaders count for next to nothing in
the socio-political life of the PEPSU. Only
a powerful democratic movement of all the
exploited sections of society can provide
sanctions for creating conditions in which
the people will be able to return their genuine
candidates in the coming elections.
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Andrew Rothstein
Allies or Satellites?
IN an editorial com-
bining the minimum
of logic with the maxi-
mum of insinuation, The
The distinguished authority on Soviet and
European affairs--author of the recent Pelican
"A History of the U. S. S. R."-analyses the
economic relations between the People's Demo-
Times wrote on June 13 cracies and the U. S. S. R.
_ - " - -
that the economic pro-
of Hungary is "geared to the demands
gramme
of the Soviet Union" and that "heavy industry
is being expanded with little regard to the
needs of the mass of consumers and at the
expense of labour standards."
You would have searched the editorial
columns of The Times in vain, before 1939,
when Hungary was ruled by the terrorist
dictatorship of the big landowners and finan-
ciers, for any similar worries about "the needs
of the mass of consumers"-the impoverished
illiterate majority of Hungary's peasants-or
about the "labour standards" (presumably
this means the working and living conditions)
of Hungary's factory workers. At that time
British big business-so eminently represented
on The Times' board of directors-was backing
the Horthy dictatorship for all it was worth.
The admitted past
Yet at that time Hungarian economy was
notoriously "geared to the demands"-of
Hitler. Already in 1938 an important League
of Nations Report on Exchange Control (C.232,
M.131) was contrasting the "impoverished"
agricultural countries of South-East and Eastern
Europe with the industrial countries, "with
their more varied economies and their more
substantial resources" (p. 6), and showing how
the first group inevitably fell into dependence
on the second, particularly on Germany (pp.
38-9,53)-which tended "in the long run to
obstruct their economic development" (p. 42).
This picture was drawn in still greater
detail in 1940, in the Royal Institute of Inter-
national Affairs book South-Eastern Europe. It
stated: "The cardinal facts about the countries
under survey are... that they are agricultural,
over-populated and poor" (p. 85), and that
their industrial development "cannot be said
to be great" (p. 100)-with the result that
they were economically dependent on Western
countries, particularly Germany (p. 103).
If they remained peasant countries after the
war, there would still be great "opportunities
for exploiting them-"
(p. 122): and indus-
I trialisation was their
"chief hope of better-
ment" (p. 135). To pre-
vent these "economical-
ly weaker States of Europe" falling once again
"into a state of economic servitude to Germany"
-said the Royal Institute's Problem of Germany,
in 1943--"their greater industrialisation " was
essential (pp. 44-5). And in Occupied Europe--
a study published in 1944-the Royal Institute
of International Affairs even suggested that
Germany ought to be "called upon to provide
at least some machinery," by way of repara-
tions, for this purpose-since "even before
the war it was generally recognised that in the
less industrialised countries of even Eastern and
South-Eastern Europe, owing to the excessive
density of' agricultural population, there was
an acute economic problem" (p. 70-1).
Only way out: industrialisation
If any lessons stand out from this testimony,
it is that
(i) "the needs of the mass of consumers"
in such countries depend for their satisfaction
in the long run upon industrialisation;
(ii) so does their prospect of economic
independence;
(iii) no known way of industrialisation
exists except through the expansion of heavy
industry-since no other way can provide a
country with the ability at any moment to manu-
facture the industrial equipment it requires,
without having to ask for help from outside,
on terms which can be dictated by the supplier.
The main question
Leaving aside the question of "labour
standards"-British trade unionists who have
been to the People's Democracies have every
opportunity of comparing those with what
existed in pre-war days-The Times in its edi-
torial therefore very skilfully evaded the main
question :
- Is the Soviet Union helping the People's Democra-
cies towards the economic development so long recog-
nised as desirable or is it obstructing them ?
Does The Times' ambiguous phrase "geared
to the demands of the Soviet Union" mean
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tied once more as Malaya and the Gold Coast
and Ireland are tied to industrial Britain--as
dependent suppliers of raw materials and
foodstuffs to a dominant industrial Power-or
"geared" as independent, industrially develop-
ed countries are linked with each other: for
mutual benefit ?
That is the issue-and that issue no propa-
gandist of hatred and war on the People's
Democracies has yet dared to face.
What are the facts?
For what are the facts ? So far as Hungary
is concerned, Matyas Rakosi, General Secre-
tary of the Working People's Party, gave them
in the report* to his Party Congress on Feb-
ruary 25, 1941:
"The Soviet Union helps us in the build-
ing of our most modern factories, gives us its
best machines, most up-to-date manufacturing
processes and, what is no less important, puts
its best scientists and ace workers at our disposal.
The best engineers and technicians of the
Soviet Union, led by Academician Bardin, the
world-famous foundry expert, have visited us,
people whose advice and guidance means a
service to us which cannot be over-estimated.
"Comrade Bikov was here and passed on
his experience in the field of fast cutting. Com-
radeZuravlyov taught our foundrymen the
method of quick smelting. Comrade Petrov,
the chief foundryman of the Stalin Automobile
Factory, passed on his experience in the fields
of casting and foundry work. Comrade
Dubyaga helped us to transfer to the multi-
machine system in the textile industry. Com-
rade Annanyeva taught our spinning workers
how to decrease scrap to the minimum in the
spinning mills. Comrade Shavlyugin taught
our bricklayers the fast bricklaying method.
Comrades Maximenko, Koba and Zuycv deve-
loped a whole team of Stakhanovites among
our building workers. Comrade Panin taught
the Hungarian engine drivers to increase the
average speed of our railways. Filirnonov,
Padgarov and Logvinyenko gave help to our
miners in acquiring methods of handling mining
machinery, and so on......
"The transplantation of the highly deve-
loped Soviet Socialist methods of production
to Hungary is being speeded by visits of our
engineers, workers and specialists to the Soviet
Union, and by students studying at the univer-
Published
tion Service, 33 Pe bridge Square, London, and W.f2 4d.
post free.
sities of that country, through whom the know-
ledge of the most recent achievements of socialist
construction is coming in a continuous stream
to our country.
"There is no field of our economy and,
I may add, of our entire socialist life, which
has not yet received, and which is not con-
tinually receiving, support from the Soviet
Union which cannot be over-estimated. We
are now gradually passing on to making that
immeasurable treasure house of experience
which is in Soviet technical literature, accessible
and applicable to our socialist construction.
During the last year, and especially in recent
months, a real siege of Soviet technical litera-
lture started.
"Our engineers and technicians are only
now beginning to realise those tremendous
advantages which the knowledge of Soviet
technical literature means to them, and an
indication of their thirst for knowledge can
be seen in the fact that there was a sudden
huge shortage of suitable technical translators.
It might be said that our technical intelli-
gentsia, and beyond them the entire Hunga-
rian intelligentsia, is only now beginning to
discover the Soviet Union in this respect.
They are only now beginning to grasp the
true importance of the limitless scientific and
experimental equipment of the Soviet Union,
its leading position and its fruitful effect"
This is what The Times editorial called.
"the subservience of the Hungarian economy
to the calls of the Soviet Union" ! Naturally,
its readers are not called upon to remember
the very, different language of days gone by,
when Hungary's agrarian and backward econo-
my was really subservient to a foreign Power-
and when The Times wrote complacently (after
Munich) of Germany's "peculiar interest as an
industrial power in the agricultural and other
markets of Central and Eastern Europe"
(October 17, 1938).
What Soviet aid means for Poland
Or take another example of "gearing"--
the Six-Year Trade Agreement between Poland
and the U.S.S.R., signed on June 29, 1950.
Of this arrangement Deputy Prime Minister
Mine said on July 2 the same year (Polish Facts
and Figures*, July 8, 1950) :
"What does it mean to Poland ? It is
common knowledge that, according to the
Six-Year Plan, the output of Polish industry
* Published by the Press Office of the Polish
Embassy in London.
54
INDIA TO-DAY
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should increase by over 150 per cent. The
increase in industrial output demands steadily
increasing supplies of raw materials and
industrial goods, which we lack in our country.
The new Agreement will ensure deliveries of
the raw materials and goods that we need in
quantities which will take into account the
great increase in output during the Six-Year
Plan. At the same time these agreements
regulate the export of our own goods to the
U. S. S. R. In this way, a strong and solid
basis is laid for our Six-Year Plan.
"The agreements will increase our inde-
pendence in relation to capitalist countries
and will render ineffectual their attempts to
discriminate against our foreign trade. They
mean that the implementation of our Six-
Year Plan will be based upon the granite-like
foundations of planned economic relations
between the Soviet Union and Poland.
Capital equipment from U.S.S.R.
"In addition to general trade agreements
an agreement has been signed on the delivery
of capital equipment from the U.S.S.R. to
Poland in the years 1951-58. This equipment
will be supplied to about thirty new and impor-
tant industrial establishments in Poland. As
is generally known, the Soviet Union is already
supplying capital equipment to Poland under
the 1948 agreement. Among other things, the
leading project of the Six-Year Plan, a new
big steel works near Cracow, is being built
with Soviet equipment, with Soviet blueprints
and with Soviet technical assistance. Now
capital goods deliveries will be greatly expanded, and
will constitute about 40 per cent. of all Soviet exports
to Poland.
"This means that, thanks to the brotherly
help of the U.S.S.R., the speedy indus-
trialisation of Poland is assured. It means
that the Soviet State has grown into a power
of such magnitude that it can put a most
modern and complex technique at the ser-
vice, not only of its own gigantic and steadily
growing economy, but also at the service of the
young, new and resilient countries of People's
Democracy. It means that we are building
our Six-Year Plan on unshakable foundations
of Soviet technical and economic assistance.
It means that the victory of socialist construc-
tion in Poland is certain..."
Why should The Times object to this mani-
fest fulfilment of what Chatham House* was
advising as recently as 1944 ? Can it be
* The Royal Institute of International Affairs
because, at that time, the hope was that "the
British Commonwealth and the United States
will probably have to play a major part by
providing capital goods on a basis of long-
term credits" (Occupied Europe, p 71) ? In
other words, having supported for six years the
vain efforts of the British and U.S. Govern-
ments to bully, blackmail and blockade the
People's Democracies into surrender to
capitalism, can The Times be possibly calling
"sour grapes"?
The new pattern of foreign trade
The new pattern of Czechoslovakia's foreign
trade, again, was analysed in revealing fashion
by Minister of Planning Dolansky at the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of Czecho-
slovakia on February 22, 1951 (Information
Bulletin, No. 6, March, 1951). Ile pointed
out that Czechoslovakian lorries and machine
tools were being exported to the Soviet Union,
while the latter was sending caterpillar tractors
and combine harvesters-the kind of relation-
ship that exists between expanding industrial
economies. And on the long-term trade and
economic agreements which Czechoslovakia
was concluding he had this to say (illustrating
with many details) :
"The significance of these agreements lies
in the fact that in this way the mutual exchange
of goods is increased and guarantees the growth
of national economy and the speeding up of
industrialisation; in that the socialist trans-
formation of industry and agriculture in the
People's Democracies is secure as well as the
raising of the technical level of the whole
economy; in that firm foundations for stable
economic relations between our countries are
thus created, protecting us from the effects of-
fluctuation developments on capitalist markets
and offsetting to a considerable degree the
effects of the discriminatory policy carried
on by the American imperialists and their
satellites; it lies in the fact that our countries'
economic independence of the capitalist states
is strengthened and thus the countries in the
camp of peace and socialism are better capable
of self-defence. Finally the significance of these
agreements lies in the fact that they represent
a form of planned dovetailing of the national
economies of the People's Democracies with
that of the U. S. S. R. and of each other, in that
they represent a form of co-ordination of long-
term plans for the development of our national
economy and thus strengthen the principle
of planned national economy in the People's
Democracies.
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Czech-Soviet trade agreement.
"A classical example of such an agree-
rnent is the long-term Soviet-Czechoslovak
trade agreement signed in November, 1950.
According to this agreement, the Soviet Union
will deliver such important raw materials for
our basic industries as iron ore and non-ferrous
ores, such textile raw materials as cotton, such
foodstuffs as grain, meat and fat, important
machinery such as mechanisation equipment
for the mines, for the expansion of our foundries,
and for heavy industry, and highly produc-
tive machinery for the mechanisation of
agriculture and the building industry.
In addition, under this agreement, the
Soviet Union will give us wide technical help in
building a number of important factories
which we could otherwise not build so rapidly,
and apart from this the Soviet Union will help
us to introduce the production of new goods
and to improve our existing production.
" According to this agreement, Czechoslo-
vakia will deliver to the Soviet Union mainly
machinery and equipment for the most part not
produced here before, and made according to the
most up-to-date Soviet designs. This means that
the Soviet orders will ensure a long-term pro-
duction programme for our heavy industry
and especially our engineering industry, and
will lead to the raising of the technical level
of our industry; we shall learn to produce
important new kinds of machinery and equip..
ment and in the case of certain products we
shall go over from individual to semi-serial or
serial production."
So it turns out that the Soviet Union
supplies raw materials and capital goods to
its alleged "satellites"-and they do the same
for their partner. Was there ever such
"subservience"
Testimony from Bulgaria
No less striking is the evidence from Bulgaria,
Rumania and Albania. Here is a Bulgarian
testimony :
"Were it not for the import of Soviet cotton,
Bulgaria would have failed to revive its major
industry-textiles-which was brought to a
standstill during the period of fascism.
"Without Soviet ferrous and non-ferrous
metals and the import of building materials,
machines and fittings, our country would have
failed to develop its heavy industry and begin
new construction.
"Without petroleum derivatives, lubricating
oils and transport facilities imported from
the Soviet Union, our auto transport and railway
traffic would have been impossible.
"Without Soviet tractors, spare parts and
other agricultural machines, tools and artificial
fertilisers, Bulgaria would never have pro-
ceeded to the establishment of co-operative
farms on a mass scale, to the mechanisation and
modernisation of our primitive agriculture.
"Without the import of medicines, instru-
ments and medical apparatus from the Soviet
Union, no broad and extensive health plan
for the people could have been adopted.
"The rubber, paper, cellulose and chemi-
cals which were imported from the Soviet
Union contributed to the further development of
printing and publication, to the revival of the
Bulgarian rubber industry.
"Without different kinds of iron, tin, non-
ferrous metals, machines, installations and fit-
tings sent from the U.S.S.R., the construction
of factories, dams, power projects and that of
municipal and other administrative buildings,
combines, baths, bakeries and laundries would
not have been possible.
"Without the electric building materials and
ready-made fittings imported from the Soviet
Union, without the assistance of Soviet
specialists in assembly and construction work,
T.E.T.S. (the State Power Project) would
not have been established, electrification and
the electrical industry in Bulgaria would have
been impossible."
Recognise the facts
These are new relationships in the world
of international politics-relationships in which
a Great Power and smaller countries stand
upon a footing of equality. They were never
intended to be exclusive : it was the sustained and
vindictive hostilitiy of the British and United
States Governments after the war that has
nearly killed all trades. Even today peaceable
relations could be established between East and
West in Europe which would be beneficial to
both sides. But they would have to accept as a
fundamental that the socialist system in the
People's Democracies has come to stay, and
that they will never go back to being "agricul-
tural, over-populated and poor."
(Reprinted from Central European Observer, Vol. IV
No. 13, June 23, 1951)
56 INDIA TO-DiAY
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 Regd. No. A 487
L EAPMReQF2001/09/10 : Cl
PEOPLE'S CHINA
Right :
Chairman MAO TSE-TUNG
Below: Left
Vice-Chairman and Commendar-in-chief
CHU TEH
Below : Right
Prime Minister and Foreign Minister
CHOU EN-LAI
India and China
"We have seen how great is the construc-
tive work of the great Chinese leader Chair-
man Mao Tse-tung and we have followed with
wonder and admiration the extraordinary
strides China has taken under his leadership."
(Pt. Sunder Lal: Article in "People's Daily",
October 7, 1951.)
"Both our peoples love peace and freedom."
Mankind can become brothers - only when
aggression is eliminated. The Chinese and the
Indian people want freedom. We wish pros-
perity not only for ourselves but for the whole
world." (Pt. Sunderlal speaking at the farewell
party in Peking)
CIA RDA ~ ~ .,.
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ADHUNIK PRAKASHAN
7, Albert Road, Allahabad, India.
INDIAN STUDIES
By M. Kemp (Mrs. P. M. Ashraf)
VOLUME 1. INDIA IN RUSSIAN LITERATURE
Present day Soviet interpretations of Indian social history challenge historians
to explore new sources and methods, Knowledge of India in Russia had an old
background of direct contacts and travel records from the early Middle Ages and
international politics in the modern period produced records and literature about
India little known abroad.
VOLUME 2. INDIA AND THE ENGLISH DEMOCRATS
A study of British policy and early labour problems in India from the point
of view of the democratic movement and struggles within England.
VOLUME 3. THE CHARTISTS AND INDIAN NATIONAL REVOLT
This volume contains sixty-two articles on India by the English Chartist leader,
Ernest Jones, written between 1852 and 1859, with an Introduction and notes.
The Publishers believe that these three volumes will from a distinguished
contribution, based on unknown on neglected sources, to the real history of India,
to an understanding of the close relationship between the European working-class
and the Indian liberation movement and to new perspectives on the role of India
in the international sphere.
Volumes 1 and 2 available shortly: Volume 3 in active preparation.
A NEW SERIES BEING PUBLISHED FOR
THE FIRST TIME IN ENGLISH
1. The Role and Significance of Stalin's
"Dialectical and Historial Materialism" in the
Development of Marxist-Leninist Philosophical
Thought : by Academician M. Mitin.
Price: Annas -/8/- only
2. Stalin on Dialectics as a Method of Revolu-
tionary Practice: by M. Leonov (In the Press)
3. The Development of Historical Materialism
by Lenin and Stalin: by F. V. Konstantinov
(In the Press)
MONOPOLY CAPITAL IN INDIA-
BRITISH AND INDIAN
A Study of
BY AJIT Roy
Concentration of labour and capital in
Indian Industry;
Concentration of Money-Capital in Indian
Banks;
Fusion of Industrial Monopolies with
Monopolies of Money-Capital (Big Banks);
Growth of Trusts, Cartels, and Syndicates;
Distribution of and inter-relation between
British and Indian Monopoly groups,
AND
A critique of Finance-Capital in India.
About 64 pages
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