India and the Raj 1919-1947
Glory, Shame and Bondage
Volume Two
Which classes did the Congress leadership represent before 1947? What were their goals and methods of struggle? What were the objects of the seemingly anti-imperialist movements they occasionally initiated? And where did they lead India to -- freedom or more sophisticated bondage than direct colonial relationship? Relying mainly on primary sources, this book seeks to find out answers to these and related questions. The answers are wholly contrary to the basic assumptions with which conventional historiography starts.
While exposing what was India's shame, India and the Raj 1919-1947 also deals briefly with the glorious aspects of India's anti-colonial struggles -- the struggles waged by the peasantry, the working class and the urban petty bourgeoisie. These struggles and the movements launched by the Congress leadership were not complementary, as is generally assumed, but essentially of an antagonistic character. In the absence of a mature revolutionary party these struggles failed to merge in a broad stream powerful enough to sweep away imperialist rule and its domestic props.
Suniti Kumar Ghosh has been associated with the communist movement since the Tebhaga days of 1946-7 and was externed from East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1949. He joined the All-India Co-ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries after the Naxalbari upsurge in 1967, and became a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) when it was formed in April 1969. He is the author of The Indian Big Bourgeoisie: Its Genesis, Growth and Character.
Earlier versions of sections of this book appeared in Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, Colorado (July-September 1985), Economic and Political Weekly (November 988 Special Number) and some issues of Frontier.