From the Writings of Raya Dunayevskaya: Marxist-Humanist Archives
July 1999
Historic roots of conflict in South Asia
by Raya Dunayevskaya, founder of Marxist-Humanism in the U.S.
Editor's Note: The heating up of tensions between nuclearly armed India and Pakistan,
which has led to renewed fighting between them in Kashmir, makes this a
timely moment to revisit the historic roots of today's conflicts in South
Asia. This piece, entitled "The China-India War in a Nuclear
State-Capitalist Age: Relationship of Imperialism to the Ideological
Struggles," was written by Raya Dunayevskaya in December 1962 after the
outbreak of war between China and India. It represents one of many writings
on South Asia in the Marxist-Humanist Archives. We publish here excerpts
from the piece, which was originally written as a Political Letter to News
and Letters Committees. The original can be found in THE RAYA DUNAYEVSKAYA
COLLECTION, 3088.
India was the first country to gain its independence from British
imperialism and thus, in 1947, open a new third world that was to stretch
from Asia to the Middle East, and from Africa to Latin America. Since all
newly independent countries born in the next decade, or 13 years, had all
emerged out of national movements striving to free themselves from Western
imperialism, the unifying link predominated over the divisions WITHIN this
post-war world and seemed indeed capable of forging a new path for all
mankind.
Both because it was one of the richest in culture and past traditions, and
the first to gain its independence, India seemed destined to play a central
role on the Asian continent. As the African continent also sought to use
Gandhism(1), or the non-violent mass resistance method to gain freedom,
India's world role shone so brightly that it dimmed the OTHER TRUTH, THAT
NO FUNDAMENTAL CHANGE IN HUMAN RELATIONS FOLLOWED INDEPEDENCE. The dominant
Congress Party, which had succeeded in uniting all classes in the struggle
against foreign domination, first began showing its true class nature by
leaving production relations, in the city or the country, basically
unchanged.
INDIA CONTINUED TO BE THE LAND OF VILLAGES, WITH AN OUTMODED AGRICULTURE,
OVERLADEN WITH AN ENTRENCHED LANDLORD CLASS, AND A HALTING, PARTIAL
INDUSTRIALIZATION THAT WAS GRAFTED ON TOP OF THE SEMI-FEUDAL RELATIONS. IT
WAS FURTHER BOTH OVERBURDENED AND UNDERMINED BY THE HINDU CASTE SYSTEM THAT
HAS REMAINED CHANGELESS THROUGH THE MILLENNIA. BACK IN THE 19TH CENTURY,
HEGEL DESIGNATED IT AS "THE PHILOSOPHY OF UNFREEDOM."
It is true that, politically, there was both independence from Britain, and
a parliamentary democracy established so that, in law, caste is not
"recognized." In life, unfortunately, it remains dominant.
Every leader in the new third world seems to consider himself a
"socialist"-from Krishna Menon [defense minister under Nehru] to Nasser,
from Mao to Nkrumah, not to mention the
"Marxist-Leninist-till-the-day-I-die" Castro. But, obviously it is not the
HUMAN difference these leaders are concerned with, but the State Plan and
some statistics about the "rate of economic growth"....
It is here that the entry of China, two years after India's independence,
quickly took away from India its status as a "beacon for the underdeveloped
lands." It is true that in Mao's China, the state, and not the people,
rules over production, in agriculture as in industry. But, once it drove
out Chiang Kai-shek, China did experience an agricultural revolution, and
did not have to compete with private vested interests when it established
its Five Year Plans. Above all, it had what the Indian rulers did not and
could not have-an usurped banner of Marxist liberation.
INDIA'S CONFLICT WITH CHINA
Up to the Great Leap Forward, which turned out to be state regimentation in
forced barrack-like "communes"-or, more precisely put, up to the FAILURE of
the Great Leap Forward in 1959-there was no doubt that on every front, from
agricultural reform to rapid industrialization, from the prestige of its
own hard-won victory through guerrilla war to encouragement of national
liberation movements, stretching from Algeria to Cuba, armed with the
banner of Marxist liberation, China was winning as against India, both the
struggle for the minds of men and actual adherents in this new third
world.(2)
We need not stop here to demonstrate how false is the claim of Mao to any
"Marxism"...All I want to say here is that, despite China's setback, she
does not fear, at this moment, economic competition from India. Those who
think that, if it were not for the defeat of the fantastic attempt to leap
to 20th century industrialism in a single year, Mao would not have embarked
on his present imperialist adventure, will once again be caught blindfolded
both as to the expected fair harvest this year AND, ABOVE ALL, THE POSSIBLE
BREAKTHROUGH IN THE NUCLEAR FIELD IN 1963...
TWO OPPOSING IDEOLOGIES?
Strangest of all blindfolds is the one that covers Nehru's vision. Now that
his "neutrality" principle lies as shattered as Bandung's "Five Principles
of Co-Existence," co-authored by himself and Chou En-lai, he has suddenly
discovered that Mao wishes "to destroy the Indian way of life." He rolls
that phrase off his moral lips as if it were some classless phenomenon
instead of so class-ridden and contradictory a chain over so unfinished a
revolution that the strains and stresses in the Indian body politic gave
Mao the illusion he could have as easy a victory within India an the
military victory on its borders. THE FACT THAT THE [CHINESE] INVASION [OF
INDIA IN 1962], INSTEAD, UNITED INDIA AS A NATION SHOULD GIVE NO ILLUSIONS
TO NEHRU THAT THE MASSES WILL FOREVER BE SATISFIED WITH A SHAM FREEDOM AND
NO BREAD.
The truth is that it was not the classlessness but the SAMENESS OF THE
CLASS-that of State Planners-which united Mao and Nehru at Bandung. The
respect for "sovereignty of nations" and "non-interference in internal
affairs" meant no FOREIGN interference in class relations within each
country SO LONG AS the third world could be a single unit against "the
West." Mao still thinks that, on that basis, he can get acquiescence to his
grab of Indian territory by many of "the uncommitted nations," as indeed he
seems to be doing at the Colombo conference meeting presently in Ceylon.
But if his imperialist ambitions are all too clear, do Nehru's lesser
ambitions constitute a different CLASS phenomenon? The moment of
independence was the moment also of the fratricidal war with Pakistan.
(That unresolved conflict was another element in the temptation of Mao to
attack.)
There is no doubt that British imperialistic maneuvers and their eternal
attempt to break up a country at the moment of independence so as to
continue its rule over it helped set up the division between India and
Pakistan. It is as true, however, that once the countries did separate each
had a right to its own existence. Gandhi became a martyr when he fought to
end the "holy war" and build up fraternal relations.(3) Nehru chose Menon
as his "holy man" to proclaim Pakistan "Enemy No. 1" for all these 14 years
[and] kept two-thirds of the Army at the Kashmir site while leaving the
borders to China unprotected from that "ally."
Despite its "period of glory"-the 1947-48 Kashmir war-Nehru had not allowed
the Army any decisive role in the Indian pattern of life. Despite the fact
that he allowed the ultra-conservative Sandhurst-educated officer class to
have the Army under its command and play some old imperialist roles in
Korea and in Congo, Nehru's concept of the role of the army made it
subordinate to the civil authorities. In this he fundamentally differs from
Mao, who, even in the Communist (read: state-capitalist) orbit holds to a
special militaristic position. The Chinese Constitution is the only one
where not only the "Party" but the Army is made synonymous with the state
authority.
This one element that would have created at least the semblance of an
ideology in opposition to that expounded in China is now itself in question
since the Anglo-American aid will not only come with political strings
attached but inevitably create its own image internally by raising the
Indian Army to a new status. Since Nehru's good anti-military instincts
were not backed up by a proletarian class position he will inevitably give
way both to the Anglo-American advice and Indian Army ambitions.
It is true that he is still holding out one hope of not completely falling
into the orbit of Western imperialism by counting on Russian aid, but
insofar as the Indian masses are concerned, DOES IT REALLY MATTER WHETHER
IT IS THE RUSSIAN OR THE AMERICAN NUCLEAR ORBIT? Even as a foreign policy,
a military line is derivative, rather than a determinant, of the class
relations within the country. In this lies the danger that India may still
capitulate either to Communist totalitarianism or to a military clique.
Nehru's unique authority in India does not stem from his creation of new
relations with the great mass of the Indian people who must bend both to
his State Plans and to the private capitalist and entrenched landlord
interests. He has been a leader of the struggle for independence from
Britain, and he has now been attacked by his Communist ally, and the Indian
people have saved him from downfall. His desperate attempt first now to
search for a new ideological banner and come up with "the Indian way of
life" will create no new world apart from both poles of world capital-the
Russo-Soviet or Anglo-American orbits-fighting for world domination. To
cling to the class-ridden "Indian way of life" is only one more way of
saying "the old cannot be changed"-and, by losing the struggle for the
minds of men, losing both India and the new third world.
It was no accident that in the 15 years since independence, in the 13-year
alliance with Mao's China, in the seven years of "Afro-Asian Solidarity
Conference," plus the innumerable "neutralist" conferences since, Nehru
failed to condemn Russia either for its counter-revolutionary role in
putting down the Hungarian Revolt in 1956 or for its unilateral breaking of
the nuclear moratorium; [he] acquiesced in China's conquest of Tibet and
bowed sufficiently to [Egypt's] stand on Israel not to open an embassy
there although he had been among the first to hail its independence. The
opportunist, the short-sighted, the self-righteous, the ambivalent in
foreign and military policies, was the counterpoint to the so-called
socialist, but actually capitalist, exploitative relations internally.
The Indian people who have pushed him off his "neutrality" for the
Sino-Soviet orbit, must now see that he doesn't merely shift over to the
Anglo-American orbit, leaving production relations and ideological banner
as unchanged as the changeless caste system of "unfreedom."
NOTES
1. Gandhism means both much more, and much less, than passive non-violent
mass resistance. From Gandhi's first introduction of satyagraha and the
resulting British massacre at Amritsar in 1919, which coincided in world
affairs with the Russian Revolution and the attempts in India to start a
Marxist movement which he fought, to Gandhi's role in the post-World War II
movement he finally led to victory and thus became the prototype of the new
nationalist revolutionary in Africa-there lies a quarter of a century in
need of analysis. This is not the place to attempt it.[BACK]
2. NATIONALISM, COMMUNISM, MARXIST-HUMANISM AND THE AFRO-ASIAN REVOLUTIONS,
by Raya Dunayevskaya (Chicago: News and Letters, 1959 [new edition, 1984]).[BACK]
3. One other role for which Gandhi will go into history is hardly ever
mentioned, and yet it will endear him more to future generations than the
role he is famous for. This "hidden" role in his recognition that "The
Party" in power is corruptible. Though be passed on his mantle of
leadership to Nehru, he himself refused to take a position in power, and
urged that others too must stay out of power and look at the ruling
Congress Party, their own, with "outside" eyes.[BACK]
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