The toiling peasantry came under increasing pressure to cultivate inedible cash crops like cotton and indigo which were shipped back to the booming textile mills of Manchester during the early stages of the Industrial revolution at a very substandard price. This resulted into an acute shortage of edible crops, disruption of the crop cycle and loss of valuable commodity for exchange resulting into large-scale famines leading to genocidal deaths. Farmers lost their land and means of subsistence. This created a large section of native landed gentry comprising of upper-caste landlord and High-ranking Company's officers who were able to solidify their grip on the landless peasant mostly comprising of the lower caste. Caste-system is a topic of another article, it is a form of oppressive ancient system, which segregates individual by birth in to 4 main castes, the majority to the population either lie in the last 2 castes which have been historically oppressed by the upper ones.It is widely followed within the Hindu-society, but a common social practice among all religious and ethnic groups on the sub-continent. This fermented an ideal opportunity for the Company to harness and further the divisions which made it possible to rule such a huge and diverse land-mass. This key historical condition sheds light on the foundation of the sub-continent's current social and economical hardships.The anti-imperial sentiment was establish right after the company's consolidation of the power through a series of wars with local kings and indigenous tribes.The famous rebellion of the 1857 can be considered as one of the 1st attempt to a unified fight back against imperial oppression. The immediate reaction was the direct intervention of the British empire, by which the British state took direct responsibility of governing the Indian colony. This exposes the class nature of British imperialism, where the state and private enterprise served as revolving doors harmonious within the interest of the ruling class.
With the advent of 20th Cen. Introduction of Western-education and isolated industrialization in selected Urban spots made the emerging ideas of Nation-state a desirable and popular demand. But, by then the carnage of two world wars had put a heavy toll on the British administration. Therefore, the empire unrelentingly concede to a demand of'complete independence' prior to the initial push for a dominion status.Imperialist stooges like Winston Churchill had famously declared that India was ungovernable without the might of the British empire and he was under no desire to "liquidate her majesty's empire which, was fought by the British blood. Following the war, a new government of the labour party came to power which no longer had the appetite for imperial quests since, the war had changed the political aspirations of the British masses. As talks for transfer of power solidified, the effects of years of coercive policies of'divide and rule' perpetuated by the empire raised its ugly head which eventually led to a bloody partition of the subcontinent. Could the partition have been avoided, which led towards one of the biggest forced migration followed by brutal killings on both sides?
The contemporary narrative for the cause of partition is usually rested on the inability of the independence leadership to reach on an agreement of a untied India since, India was never a unified country and within it existed nationalities with antagonistic hegemonic base and super-structures.It is true, that the India of the nation-states did flare the historic communal tensions between the majority Hindu population and the prominent minority of the Muslim religion, yet there is conclusive evidence that the culture of the subcontinent has a rich past derived from shared traditions, customs, languages, food,etc. There is no doubt that caste based oppression never actualized the bonds of traditional sense of nationhood, because it restricted common socializing practices like dinning or working side by side with a fellow country-men outside of the caste. There are certain "jatis within the lower caste who were even forbidden to touch or drink water from a public reservoir. This probably also answers the antithesis between class and caste. However, some of these practices began to frail in and around urban areas where one had to work together regardless of caste or religion, in mostly, British owned factories. Since, it worked in the interest of the domestic bourgeoisie, reformist movement within the Hindu upper-caste began to marginally support the abolition of such draconian practices.If the struggle for Indian independence is considered a fight against imperialism then one of the salient event highlighting the most spectacular episodes of this struggle was the Royal mutiny of the Indian navy on February 18th 1946. It had the potential to alter the trajectory of history on the entire sub-continent towards a greater achievement of people's liberation. It all started when a few sailors and ship-men on board HMS "Talwaar" went on strike protesting against bad or unsanitary food and adverse conditions. The protest took place on the industrial port city of Bombay. This followed after a mass uprising which had a series of occurrences the entire preceding decade. The message of the sailor strike soon spread like a wild fire in an already growing anti-imperial sentiment among the masses. On the next day February 19th wider sections of the navy joined the revolt. A total of 74 ships, 20 fleets and 22 units of navy along the coast including major industrial ports like Bombay, Calcutta, Karachi, Madras, Cochin, and Vishakapatnam got involved. There were reports of the Union Jack being torn and replaced by red flags and the earlier version of the popular tri-colour which later became the official flag of modern India. Radio stations were soon taken over which transmitted updates on the revolt and also broadcast-ed revolutionary songs and poems.
Initial confusion might have made this rebellion appear as a spontaneous event, however, the revolting sailors were quick to organize a strike committee. The leadership elected by the committee comprised of two sailors one being a Muslim and the second a Sikh, this was a conscious effort to undermine the divisive propaganda of the domestic bourgeoisie and their British masters who were busy with negotiating the rummage of power among themselves in a prospective post-colonial India . The immediate objective of the strike committee was to link up the sailors revolt to the already striking textile mill workers and railway workmen in Bombay, who were participating in a general strike. This was a theoretically accurate attempt to get a political party involved which could accelerate the momentum. Tragically the Communist Party of India(CPI) under the whips of the degenerated 3rd Communist International failed to act as the vanguard of this particular revolutionary upsurge. The disastrous Kremlin-led policy of a 'popular front' against the fascist aligned the CPI with the imperial masters while the national bourgeois leadership overtly and covertly co opted to crush the revolt. The domestic bourgeoisie were fearful of these young radicalized sailors, since they threaten to evoke revolutionary politics on mainstream of the Independence movement
The Indian National Congress (INC) was the most prominent party of the Indian bourgeoisie. At its inception it was a secular party which claimed to represent all of India's people, this changed when the emergence of M.K. Gandhi, who willingly introduced religious chauvinism within the party line.Fundamentalist religious organizations were seldom before Gandhi introduced his reactionary idealism and spiritual "mumbo jumbo" into mainstream freedom fight.Gandhi was from a petty-bourgeois upper-class family, He was a lawyer, by trade, but had supposedly renounced his western etiquette after, turning his life for the independence struggle. He claimed to champion the rights of the lower-caste, one cannot deny his populist role in bringing the Indian masses together, but, his ideological leanings were anything but, counter-revolutionary. His attempts for opportunist demagogy was exposed by a Dalit leader(lower caste) Dr, Babasaheb Ambedkar who shed lights on contradictory view-points published by Gandhi in two different newsletters where he's caught appeasing the working-class and the lower caste community in his liberal English daily, where as spewing hatred towards the same demographic in a vernacular magazine by claiming his support to the restoration of the abusive caste-system and calling on workers subservient to the capitalist-class because according to him the capitalist out-flanks the working-class due to it's supremacy is intellect and tact. Following this revelation, Dr. Ambedkar defined Gandhi as a manufactured leader who came into prominence with the help of the British, the upper caste and the funds of the domestic bourgeoisie. With Gandhi's encouragement religious sentiments were inspired, often under the guise of "inter-faith harmony". This became one of the fundamental feuds between Gandhi and M.A Jinnah, the leader of newly established Muslim League (Political party) and then, later the founder of modern day Pakistan, who finally split away from the INC in 1920 . Organizations like the Hindu Maha sabha and the Rastriya Swayam Sevaks (RSS) quickly sprung like mushrooms on a rainy day. The rise of the Muslim League's demand for a separate Muslim homeland, fuled organizations like the RSS to stage demands for a Hindutva nationalism. RSS, to this day plays a pivotal role in modern India's politics, often fanning the flames of communal disharmony. The organization at once had pictures of Mussolini and Adolf Hitler decorated in their pantheons, calling on the Hindus to draw inspiration from the German nationalist by spilling venom against the Muslim community by calling them " The Jews of India." Their popular support is still reflected by their grip on the nation's largest trade union named Bhartiya Mazdoor Sang. Muslim political elites were no better than Gandhi's clique, while their concerns for Muslim safety in a majoritarian Hindu nation was legitimate, They never seeked to voice the grievances of the Muslim workers or tried to align with the nation's other minorities.They too were fearful of emerging class consciousness of the Indian proletariat. The emergence of the Muslim League had its origin in London by a group of wealthy Muslim lawyers who romanticized themselves as heirs of the Mughal rule during the medieval period .
On February 21, 1946, British shock troops opened fire on the rebel held fleet in Bombay thus, the peaceful strike became an armed uprising. Around the next day, 14 sailors were killed at the port city of Karachi. The British Labour prime minister, Clement Atlee in sheer desperation ordered the uprising to be crushed by means of violent force. An ultimatum was given to the rebel sailors which ordered them to, "surrender or perish." The INC and the Muslim League set aside their differences for a very brief period of time to form a unified support to this imperialist ultimatum.Gandhi opposed the revolt right from the first day. Another INC leader, named Sardar V. B. Patel openly denounced and discredited the sailors. while, Leaders like S.C. Bose was occupied in adventurist program of the free Indian National army (INA) to the point where he co-opted with the reactionary forces of Nazi Third Reich and Japanese imperialism. This exposed the real class character of the native bourgeoisie. M.N Roy, the founder of the Communist Party of India and Mexico had expressed the possibility of a similar situation at the Second Congress of the Communist International on the colonial question.The strike committee met twice before surrendering themselves at 6 A.M. on February 26, 1946. Most of the leaders of the revolt, even after surrender, were either prosecuted, incarcerated, or executed.
The rebellion was crushed, but it certainly shook the British morale in India. Following this incident, Prime Minister Atlee immediately announced the deadline of the British departure which was set to June 1948. They left a year earlier on Aug 14-15th 1947. The strike committee before surrendering, gave an official statement "Our uprising was an important historical event in the lives of our people. For the first time the blood of uniformed and non-uniformed workers flowed in one current for the same collective cause. We the workers in uniform shall never forget this. We also know that you, our proletarian brothers and sisters shall also never forget this. The coming generations, learning its lessons shall accomplish what we have not been able to achieve. Long live the working masses. Long live the Revolution".
There is no doubt that this uprising under a vanguard revolutionary party had the potential for a successful insurrection which would have had a different conclusion.The peculiarity of this rebellion had a resounding similarity to certain aspects of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917 in Russia which has always served as a source of inspiration to the workers around the world.The revolutionary role played by this mutiny should become a beacon of hope while organizing in the nightmarish hell the sub-continent has attained.The independence which we sought was illusive, A rotten compromise. Years after, the cold-war has a lasting impression on both the countries. While, India maintained a Keynesian style social democracy, Pakistan under the tent of the west became a military style puppet state. Both the countries have fought numerous wars, especially on the issue of the province of Kashmir, which is still a contemporary issue. Both have now reached nuclear capacity. After, the fall of the Berlin wall, India gave up on it's venture of planned economy and opened up the markets for Intentional capital. It is yet to see the cyclical cycle of capitalist depression.But, newly adopted neo-liberal polices have already started to take its effect.Especially, now, since the government in power is a coalition with the political wing of the RSS. Nationalistic chauvinism has also gone up.Attacks on civil-rights and minorities have escalated.Caste and gender based violence has risen. Although, the caste-system and untouchability was constitutionally banned after Independence, It has become institutionalized which still has a hegemonic dominance. Attempts are in progress to de-fund higher education public schools and universities. The war on the indigenous people living in mineral rich central India has seen a new revival.The people in Kashim literally live under an occupy war-zone.The only silver-lining out of these looming clouds has been the emerging students movement which has been waging a strong resistance.
Critics of communism would often cite the failures of the Russian and/or the Chinese revolutions. Yet, they fail to acknowledge the vast leaps which these nations could accomplish. Or the reforms won by the working-class in the west under the shadow of a similar uprising. The founders of the Russian revolution understood the importance of an International revolution. Especially, among the most advanced capitalist countries. The post 2008 financial crisis has seen a rise in the consciousness among the working-class in the west. It can be inferred as evidence with the rise of social-democratic leaders, like Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in Britain. The most vital task for today's revolutionist is with to learn the lessons from all prior attempts towards liberation while never failing to undermine the ability of the capitalist-class to re-spawn. remember, in words of one of the great Marxist, "It is either socialism, or barbarism".- Rosa Luxembourg
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