KERALA UNDER A "COMMUNIST" GOVERNMENT
68 India
Eleven years ago the British imperialists turned over the power in India to the Indian National Congress, which had von a majority in the previous year's elections. Ministries vere formed in the various "states" composing India. But the Congress, representing the weak native bourgeoisie of a backward country, lost ground in the 1952 and 1957
This defeat was most severe in Kerala. In 1949 the Congress had won the majority in Travancore-Cochin State. In 1952, however, having lost the majority, it had to form a coalition government there with rightist groups. State of Kerala was formed from this Travancore-Cochin State and the region of Malabar, where the Congress was
The Communist Party of Kerala, next strongest to the Congress in this state, had hundreds of paid full-timers, three laily newspapers ( other, bourgeois, papers also supported t), a certain number of weeklies, and considerable funds. In its election manifesto it promised wage increases of 25%, bonuses of 12.5 %, job security, the elimination of unemployment and poverty, the land to those who tilled it, and a reduction in rents. It added also the nationalization of forests and foreign-owned estates.
In the 1957 elections 162 seats were at stake. Of the 100 that it contested, the C.P won 60, with 2,059,548 votes (about 34 % of the votal). The Congress, which ran 124 candidates, elected only 43. The Praja Socialist Party and the Moslem League each won nine. The Revolutionary Socialist Party, which had had nine seats in the previous Assembly and which put forward a more revolutionary programme than the C P's, lost all its seats in the CP sweep.
With the aid of five of the six independents elected, the C P formed a government on April 5th 1957.
To understand its subsequent behavor, it is perhaps useful to point out the social composition of the Indian GP, as reflected by the announcement of the Mandates Commission of its Amritsar Conference in April 1958, which indicated that of the 474 delegates, 58 only were industrial or agricultural workers, the remainder being small peasant proprietors or small businessmen.
The new Kerala government carried on in a completely bourgeois fashion. The budgets it presented resembled of the other Indian states. The laws it introduced were timid and not seriously fought for. A draft law education, for example, was mildly progressive ( job-security for teachers, payment of their salaries directly to them, a lessening of the powers of the directors of educational inthe possibility for the government to take over private schools, and to improve the level of teaching ). But the Catholic reaction, which possessed about one-third of the educational institutions in Kerala, carried out a furious campaign against the draft law, and the "Communist"'
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL government agreed to amend it in accordance with the Catholics' objections. Still not satisfied, the reaction attacked rejected it ase unconstitutional. once voted, in the Indian Supreme Court, which
In agriculture, which accounts for the livelihood of about 80% of Malayalees, the Kerala "Communist" government has an equally poor record. It put through an Anti-Eviction Ordinance of a somewhat more progressive nature than those of previous governments. But the application has been disgraceful. Communist landlords have been able to evict tenants with impunity. Communist and fellow-traveler landowners sell their lands to the government at inflated prices. The government settled the important province-wide Kuttanad dipute between rural labor and the landlords so scandalously in favor of the latter that even Stalinist trade-unionist leaders protested, while the reactionary Catholic and Hindu press congratulated the government.
Concerning the nationalization of the forests, for which The idea of nationalizing foreign-owned estates has simply been abandoned.
In industry, the government's desire to industries to Kerala caused it to make a deal with the giant Birlas interests for setting up a rayon pulp factory at Nilambur the terms of which are a terrible blow to the Kerala trade unions. The officers of those Communist-led unions have already been putting the strongest pressure on the rank and file not to strike under any circumstances ; and in many union struggles the Communist-led unions have acted as strikebreakers.
Even worse is the behavior of the government itself in strike situations. There have been 27 cases of the notorious police "lathi-charges," and many cases of the use of tear-gas. But the peak was reached on July 26th at a locked-out cashew-processing factory near Quillon, when pickets trying to prevent trucks from carrying away finished products were fired on by the "Communist" government's police, killing several workers and wounding many.
So reactionary has the policy of the Kerala "Communist" government workers become that even S A the Indian Stalinist national trade-union top, and ' some other national Stalinist leaders, raised protests against it. But they treat the situation as exceptional, and fail to draw the conclusion that the actions of the Kerala "Communist" government flow with inevitability from the Indian Communist Party's overall policy of class collaboration. Nevertheless, what these leaders carefully refrain from admitting is being learned, the hard and bitter way, rank and file of the Kerala workers in their own flesh-andblood experience. That lesson will not easily be forgotten.
Indonesia