FORTY years ago, official history books tell us, India won independence. And, we are told, at the helm of the struggle for independence was the Indian National Congress. With the institution of universal adult franchise under the Indian Constitution in 1950, this same party has predominantly been in power in the country.
Yet, despite the Congress's nationalist democratic pretensions, why could the regime not make a material difference to the lives of most Indians to date? Why have most Indians in the countryside sunk deeper into indebtedness to local moneylenders and landlords? And why has `industrial development' led us hopelessly into the international debt trap? Why are the rates of unemployment and underemployment so abominably high, want and destitution so widespread and terrible? And why is development in this country being measured by the import of high technology and machinery (euphemistically called `modernisation') and by the consumerism of the country's tiny `middle' class? Moreover, why has the `Indian' Government of India found it necessary to use repressive laws against people's movements which even outdo those employed by the British rulers? Why, for example, has our `own' Government enacted the National Security Act (matching the Public Safety Act under the British), the Essential Services Maintenance Act (matching the Trades Disputes Act), and the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (matching the Rowlatt Act), as well as retained intact Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code? Did the Congress change character after the transfer of power to it in 1947, or are we misinformed about its earlier character?
A search for answers to such economic and political questions requires an investigation of the nature of the transfer of power that took place, then, in the earlier history of the struggle for independence since 1857. Since the Congress looms so large in official history-telling and in current times, an enquiry into its history and its character becomes necessary. Besides, even the present-day opposition parties as well as the Congress(I) are all in one way or another descendants of the same "Indian National Congress".
Hence this study.
It was completed two years ago. Its publication, intended to be timed with the release of the Congress's own centenary volume, 100 Glorious Years, could not be undertaken for various reasons. We are undertaking it now and are grateful to all those who helped its publication materially and financially.
The sources used for this study were largely the very routine and establishment ones. In the general outline of the Congress history Sumit Sarkar's Modern India: 1885 to 1947 was useful, though the conclusions of our study are greatly at variance with his. The secondary and primary sources quoted at the end of this book(*) provided us the hard facts though the reasoning and national democratic premises for assessment are ours. Very little of what we have said is material uncovered for the first time; however, our contribution has been to link all the available material and draw the obvious conclusions. We feel that if these linkages have generally been avoided by several scholars it is because the implications of drawing the necessary conclusions are inconvenient. We are putting this book out in the hope that it will help people to understand the character of the State power that emerged in 1947 so that they can decide what democratic course must be taken in future to build a free and independent India.
| January 26, 1988 |
Rajani X. Desai, |
IT IS now the fiftieth anniversary of the transfer of power from the British, and an appropriate occasion to reprint this book.
In the interim, we continued to receive requests for copies, but the book had gone out of print. A Telugu translation has been published by Tirugubatu publications, and a Kannada translation is being published by Belli Chukki Book Trust, Bangalore; translations of excerpts have appeared over the years in several other Indian languages. Given the apparent continuing demand for the book, we have decided to reprint it.
In the interim, a much more detailed and thoroughly researched study, sharing broadly the same viewpoint, has been published: namely, Suniti Kumar Ghosh's India and the Raj, 1919-47: Glory, Shame and Bondage, (two volumes, 1989 and 1996). Indeed, R.U.P.E. has published the second volume of that landmark work. Nevertheless, the present publication continues to serve a purpose, in that it is shorter and written for a broader audience.
In the period since the first edition, the decline of the Congress party has accelerated, and now appears irreversible. Yet this does not reduce the topicality of this book. First, the book not only deals with the Indian National Congress but also sketches briefly the freedom struggle as a whole. Secondly, the decline of the Congress party is merely an instance of the overall decline and degeneration of ruling class politics today. Indeed all the major opposition parties are descendants of the Indian National Congress in one way or another, and lay claim to its `heritage'. The roots of the current ruling class politics can be found in the history of the freedom struggle.
Re-reading the book, we found a few typographical errors, errors of fact, over-statements and accidental omissions. We have tried to correct these, though some may remain. In a couple of places additional quotations have been inserted. However, by and large the text has been left as it was. In this edition, we have dropped the Bibliography, which is more appropriate to a scholarly work [1]. Instead we have mentioned at certain points in the text the book or article that we have particularly relied upon. In doing so, we have not attempted to provide references for each fact, but merely to suggest some titles for further reading. Given our target readership, we have also endeavoured to keep the price as low as possible - indeed, in inflation-adjusted terms the price is much lower than for the first edition.
| August 1997 |
Rajani X. Desai, |
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