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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2013
Within a year of Indian independence, the Communist Party of India declared independence to be a false dawn and the whole Socialist bloc within the ruling Indian National Congress cut its ties with the national government. The speed with which the left disengaged from what had been a patriotic alliance under colonialism surprised many at the time and has perplexed historians ever since. Some have looked to the wider context of the Cold War to explain the onset of dissent within the Indian left. This paper points instead to the neglected domestic context, examining the lines of inclusion and exclusion that were drawn up in the process of the making of the new Indian constitution. Once in power, Congress leaders recalibrated their relationship with their former friends at the radical end of the political spectrum. Despite some of the well-known differences among leading Congress personalities, they spoke as one on industrial labour and the illegitimacy of strikes as a political weapon in the first year of national rule and declared advocates of class politics to be enemies of the Indian state. Congress thus attempted to sideline the Socialists and Communists and brand them as unacceptable in the new regime. This paper focuses on this first year of independence, emphasizing how rapidly the limits of Indian democracy were set in place.
I gave a version of this paper at the Annual Conference on South Asia in Madison in 2009. Thanks to Samira Sheikh, Miles Taylor, and the anonymous readers for their constructive advice.
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41 In the main, they all echoed Jayaprakash Narayan's words: ‘The Communists were only Russian patriots who were unreliable, undependable and who betrayed and stabbed the country in the back in her hour of need. The Communists do not work in the interests of the country but according to the dictates and commands of the Russian government. As a nationalist I believe it will be in the best interest of India to maintain friendly relations with Russia but you should not permit agents of a foreign power to work, grow and prosper in our country.’ Speech made at Bangalore, 9 March 1947, Communist Survey, 15 December–15 May 1947, Communist Activity in India, 1946–48, L/PJ/12/432, OIOC.
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