India: The End of Congress
In a previous article PRede a 3, July, 1975, written immediately after the declaration of the state of emergency, we pointed out: "In this situation the medium-term political trend is toward the erosion of an already fragile bourgeois democracy and the institutionalization of a right-wing dictatorship. It is useless to speculate about the form such a dictatorship would take. In one sense the present 'state of emergency' is part of this trend, but it is also separate from it in that it is a part of the immediate tactical aims of the Congress party rather than of the Indian bourgeoisie as a whole. A stable right-wing dictatorship would have to have the support of all the bourgeois parties and formations as well as the backing of the army (even if the generals were not openly associated with the government). The present state of emergency does not have that support. Furthermore, its continued imposition is related to the personal fortunes of Indira Gandhi. A Supreme Court verdict against her could open up divisions within the Congress, where Jagjivan Ram,
Party Hegemony
by S. Bhagat and Javad Hussein Gandhi's senior minister, is waiting patiently in the wings. " (p. 13, emphasis added.) Subsequent events have tended to vindicate this analysis. Both the Maoist currents who maintained that India was a "fascist dictatorship" and others who thought that the emergency was virtually permanent have been proven wrong. The political structures of the Indian federation, which have their origins in the 1935 Act of India, drafted by British imperialism, have triumphed once again. Deliberately modelled so as to preserve a delicate balance between coercion and consent, India's political structures are unique in the "Third World. " We have consistently argued that a serious threat to the existing order from the left would be required before the Indian ruling class would unite in backing a military dictatorship or a regime politically sustained by the army. This threat does not exist at present, and its absence was an important factor in inducing Gandhi to go to the polls when she did. In previous articles we have dealt with the reasons for the emergency and the economic crisis which continued during it; here we will concentrate on analyzing the election results.
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SOUTH ASIA The end of Congress rule for the first time since independence in 1947 marks a watershed in the politics of the subcontinent. The defeat was of historic proportions. The Congress, the traditional ruling party which had generally garnered about two-thirds of the seats in parliament during previous elections, lost the bulk of these seats to the Janata party (the People's party). While the Congress retained only 153 seats out of a total of 542, the Janata bloc won 270 and Jagivan Ram's Congress for Democracy (CFD), a split from the Congress, won 28. The left parties declined. The Communist party of India (CPI) paid the price for its support of the emergency and lost 20 seats, retaining only 7. The Communist party-Marxist (CPM) lost two seats, reducing its total to 23. The CPM supported the Janata party on the issue of the state of emergency (presenting the struggle against it as an alternative between dictatorship and democracy) and thus outstripped the CPI. The CPM did not point out the class nature of Indian democracy, nor its class limitations. It could not and did not analyze the emergency in terms of the class needs of the bourgeoisie. It could not present a higher model of democracy - socialist democracy. Like the CPI, it was heavily encumbered by its Stalinist heritage of the theory of two-stage revolution, collaboration with "progressive, non-monopoly bourgeoisies, " subordination of workers struggles to the needs of the Stalinist bureaucracies, etc. As a result, the CM's approach to the general elections was hardly distinguishable from that of the Janata party. In an unprecedented personal humiliation, Gandhi lost her own seat by 50,000 votes and her son Sanjay was also soundly defeated in a neighboring district. Gandhi's defeat was historic in the strict sense. This is the first time in the annals of bourgeois representative democracy that an incumbent prime minister has been defeated. While the the Congress suffered defeat in its traditional strongholds in the North, it did surprisingly well in the South, a rather Pyrrhic victory since its allies are already beginning to defect to the victors. It is not difficu It to discover the reasons for this dramatic change in Indian politics. It reflects mass revulsion to the policies initiated under the emergency. The attempt to lend emergency rule a Bonpartist flavor rapidly collapsed, giving way to open repression. The working class, stunned by the initial impact of the emergency, began to recover. During the first year after the imposition of new laws prohibiting strikes, there were nonetheless 625 strikes involving nearly half a million workers and costing 1,702, 161 working days. This trend, while partial and uneven, was nevertheless becoming more generalized as the masses experienced a real decline in their living standards. The reforms in the countryside never amounted to much because of the stranglehold of the rural elites. The last straw was Sanjay Gandhi's drive to "clean up the cities" through "slum clearance" programs implemented with wanton brutality. These, coupled with the compulsory sterilization program initiated and supervised by Sanjay and Bansi Lall, a cabinet member, delivered the final blow to the prestige of the Congress party. (In the North the most popular rhyth12 mic chant during the election campaign was "Nasabansi ke teen dalal/ Sanjay, Indira, Bansi Lall" - The three pimps of sterilization/Sanjay, Indira, Bansi Lall.) No amount of public apologies from Lall could soften the impact of the blow. In other words, it was clear that the situation for the Congress was going to get worse and not better and that elections to legitimize Gandhi's position were thus vital. The only other option would have been resort to the army, which was a move that would not have commanded universal rulingclass support under the circumstances. Soon after the elections were called, the patient arch-maneuverist Jagjivan Ram delivered the coup de grâce, resigning from the Congress party with the support of leading provincial Congress politicians and denouncing the emergency and its perpetrators. When a journalist asked him why it had taken him so long to make this decision, he smilingly replied, "The essence of politics is choosing the right time." But it must be stressed that the overthrow of the Congress party cannot and should not be taken to represent political support among the masses for the Janata party. For the masses, the only way of getting rid of the Congress was to vote Janata. The left parties were either hopelessly compromised (as was the case with the PCI) or unable to provide a national focus for opposition (as was the case with the CPM). Under these circumstances, the masses chose what they saw as the most effective way of getting rid of Indira and the emergency. The position of revolutionaires in these elections should not have been to abstain, as the majority of Maoist currents did, but to have combined an independent campaign against the emergency with the presentation of revolutionary candidates and to have called for a vote to any working-class organization opposing the emergency and standing outside the alliance of the Janata party. The new government The Janata party itself is essentially a coalition of the most rightist forces of Indian society. It should be recalled that the new prime minister, Morarji Desai, split from the Congress because he regarded it as "too leftwing. " He and his Congress (Official) party regard the large-scale state capitalist sector as an indulgence and favor dismantling it and returning to total free enterprise. He may calm down somewhat after taking office, but such would be his tendency. But the most dangerous element is the communalist Jan Sangh party, whose central leader now holds a post in the new cabinet, a remarkable leap forward for a semifascist organization. The Jan Sangh's hostility to the large Muslim community is well known. It is equally rabid on the question of "fighting communism" and will undoubtedly favor repression of the struggles of the workers and poor peasants. The Socialist party may have George Fernandes as minister of communications, but this party is sandwiched between powerful rightist forces, which can only lead to its political emasculation. Thus, the left should have no illusions what-
ever in the new government. In any event, it is unlikely that this government will become a stable bourgeois alternative to the Congress. The next six months may see new re-alignments in Indian politics (not excluding a revitalization of the Congress itself. What is inevitable is a period of growing political instability, which will impede any process of democratization from the top. The central focus of all immediate agitation by revolutionary Marxists should be to demand the release of political prisoners. The Jan Sangh will certainly look after its own, but none of the components of the government will be interested in releasing all the Naxalites whose imprisonment predates the emergency. A united campaign by all the working-class organizations to demand the release of the 50,000 Naxalites is absolutely vital. This campaign should be taken directly to the streets. Let the so-called defenders of democracy against dictatorship release the prisoners. This campaign is vital not only because it is in the interests of the oppressed masses as a whole but also because it would receive mass support in the present period. This, coupled with a vigorous fight to win repeal of the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA) and the Defense of India Regulations (DIR), as well as repeal of the infamous fortysecond amendment to the constitution, should form the broad panoply of democratic demands which should be stressed in the current period. This campaign for the release of political prisoners must obviously be combined with systematic defense of the immediate interests of the workers, poor and landless peasants, and the inferior castes, the most oppressed and exploited layers of Indian society. More particularly, for the poor and landless peasants and the agricultural workers, the emphasis must be placed on demands like: complete and definitive cancelation of all the debts of poor villagers; freedom of organization for the agricultural workers and self-defense against the systematic violence of the rich peasants who employ them; a living minimum wage for the agricultural workers which enables them to subsist all year round; extension of the agrarian reform laws to eliminate all large-scale private property and give land to the landless peasants; communalization (or nationalization) of all water reserves, irrigation canals, and irrigation installations, managed by freely elected village councils, and the free opening of these facilities to all farmers; radical reorganization of the rural cooperatives and rural credit to allow genuine access of poor and landless peasants to these institutions and to break the control the rich peasants and rural bourgeoisie now exercise over them. The prospects When the emergency was declared we stressed the need to understand it within the framework of the specific structures and conditions of the Indian federation. Today, with the overthrow of the emergency, albeit electorally, and the defeat of the Congress, we should stress another fact. The process of erosion of democratic rights cannot be halted for any length of time; there should be no illusions on this score. During a period in which many bourgeois-democratic governments are restricting liberties in the advanced capitaled his support for the emergency this way: "Things had gone too far. You can't imagine what we have been through here - strikes, boycotts, demonstrations. Why, there were days I couldn't walk out of my office onto the street. The parliamentary system is not suited to our needs. " There can be little doubt that the parliamentary system in India does not suit the economic needs of big capital. But as we know, there is not a one-to-one relationship between economics and politics, although there is a very definite interdependence. Will the Indian ruling class allow untramelled political freedom indefinitely? When do such freedoms cease to be productive in an overall sense and become a definite liability? These are some of the questions that are undoubtedly being discussed in the boardrooms and clubs of Delhi, Bombay, and Calcutta. The mood in the boardrooms will be one of hostility to dismantling all the repressive legislation. In the clubs (where the politicians, senior civil servants, and businessmen come together) the discussion will probably be more restrained. But all the talk and exchanges will reflect the grim reality of India: 72% of its population in the countryside; a growing and powerful working class in the cities; the misery and deprivation of the workers and peasants and the squalor of the urban slum dwellers; the so-called marginal populations, which are extremely large. Trouble definitely lies ahead. Foreign policy The defeat of the Congress may also open a different orientation in foreign policy. The Soviet bureaucracy has been very directly linked to the emergency and the Gandhi regime. Brezhnev's 1973 visit saw him publicly commending Gandhi to the masses and upbraiding the opposition parties. His comment that he did not "think an opposition was necessary in India" was loyally implemented by the CPI. A shift away from a pro-Soviet orientation may be slow in coming, but it will take place. Furthermore, in this case it will have been brought about not by imperialist-manipulated palace revolutions (such as the overthrow of Nkrumah in Ghana), but by a massive electoral defeat at the polls. This will have implications for many forces. It will show the Maoists and others with similar views that there are no organic links between the USSR and India, despite all the economic aid, that the relationship between the USSR and India (as with the USSR and Egypt or Ghana in the past) is essentially political and not economic, and that all theories of alleged Soviet social imperialism are therefore completely unscientific. Moreover, a move toward a serious rapprochement between Peking and New Delhi, initiated several months ago, will now undoubtedly be accelerated, thus posing more problems for those Maoists who continue to regard India as a "fascist state. " Finally, the orientation of the new regime itself
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SOUTH ASIA will be one of cautious economic liberalization and a shift toward American imperialism. The next six months will provide a clearer picture of the direction in which