BY K. B. KRISHNA, M.A., PH.D. (Harvard)

I

B. P. L. and Freda Bedi deserve congratulations for publishing the articles of Marx on India in book form.¹ It was indeed a ‘most taxing job’ they undertook. "It was hard," as the editors say, "to sit patiently, looking through column after column and issue after issue of the New York ‘Daily Tribune’ in the newspaper section of the British Museum in London." This book is ample reward for their labours.

These articles, or letters as Marx himself called them, were written by Marx as the London correspondent of the New York ‘Daily Tribune’ in 1853. These show the many-sided interests of Marx. He did not confine himself to European questions. He interested himself in China, India, and Ireland. How much Marx was interested in India can be seen in this book as well as in his references to India in ‘Capital’ arid in his correspondence with Engels. Ralph Fox’s booklet on ‘Marx and Engels on the Irish Revolution’ is further evidence of their encyclopredic knowledge, of and interest in, the colonial movements.

These articles were published some years ago by Swan Sonnenschein, and they are now out of print. Some of these articles up to now have been known only through a few sources. Some are to be found in the Labour Monthly of December, 1935. Some appear in the ‘Handbook of Marxism’ edited by Emile Burns. A few writers like Ralph Fox, Safarov, R. P. Dutt, Joan Beauchamp and L. Hutchinson made references in their works to some of these articles. These articles are now again available in book form.

In 1933, Mulk Raj Anand put together some of these articles as a book. Unfortunately the corrected galley-proof was mislaid. The type was dispersed by the printers. The original hand-written copy also was lost. With the subsequent discovery of the lost proof, the material is now published in India (1938) as "Marx and Engels on India." ²

Why they were not collected so far by scholars of Marx, the editors write, they do not know. We venture to give an answer. Marxist scholarship in India is an index to the growth of working-class consciousness and the need for such a theoretical weapon. Such a need arose only recently with the growth of the labour, communist and peasant movements in India. Marxism is the science of the emancipation of the proletariat (Engels). It is the generalised expression of the interests of the working-class (Stalin). The Indian working class, like its creator Indian capitalism, is a recent phenomenon. The need for a generalisation of their interests was felt only recently and not earlier. The growth of Marxist ‘study circles’ since 1924, the publication of a few Marxist texts in Indian languages, quite recently, under prohibiting conditions, all account for such a need. The fact that this book has already gone through three printings is a good index to the present-day need.

An editor has important and responsible tasks. A Marxist editor has added ones. What harm badly edited texts could do can be seen from Kerr’s editions of Marxist texts in America. The difference between Kerr’s edition of Feuerbach and that of the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute and the political implications can easily be seen. Rudas in his Preface to Engels’ Feuerbach (R. P. Dutt’s edition) writes: "This critical introduction…..by a certain Austin Lewis (in Kerr’s edition) is nothing short of a brazen adulteration of Engels’ views….. The translation is like-wise falsified in the strictest sense of the word (see p. 10, 11, 12).’ On the other hand the editions of Diderot’s writings and the ‘Critique of Gotha Programme’ published by Lawrence and Wishart are excellent examples of good editions.

The edition of this book has a few shortcomings. It is by no means complete as the editors claim. The significant articles of Marx on the Mutiny and the Land Revenue System are omitted. The historical background of the period of 1853, neccessary for the reader, is not discussed. The editors are aware of the historical significance of the articles but they do not discuss it. They leave it to be understood. They follow the general error of ascribing the authorship of ‘Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany’ to Marx, while it is now known to be the work of Engels. At the same time we must not ignore the political and other conditions in India which make it difficult for the exchange of latest Marxist scholarship.

II

These articles were written by Marx for the American readers in 1853, on the eve of the Sepoy Mutiny which broke out four years later. 1853 is a link in the chain of political and economic developments which led to the Mutiny of 1857. This was the period of the making of British India, a period of the consolidation of British rule within a century of Plassey. The British Dominion, ‘the most obstinately foreign ever set up in India,’ came to stay. India was undergoing a process of unification. In place of the disruption of the Moghul system, there came into being ‘a more efficient, more interfering and more systematic government than the country had ever known before.’ The work begun by ‘the great robber Clive’ ended in the establishment of the East India Company as the paramount power in India. This was the result of India passing into the sway of English industrial capitalism with its new colonial policy of so-called "development."

History-writing at this stage was still a monopoly of the British. Indian History was written and taught only by rhetoric, abuse and vilification. James Mill’s ‘History of India,’ prejudiced and chauvinist to the core, was still the Bible of the British Civil Servant. In 1853 Kaye in his ‘History of Indian Progress’ came to the comfortable conclusion that no other administrative body but the East India Company could have done more. The missionary historians added colour. They saw in India nothing but ‘Lingams’ and ‘Juggernaths.’ The Indian historical school was not yet in existence. Consequently, history-writing at this stage was done from the standpoint of the British ‘aristocracy,’ ‘moneyocracy’ and ‘millocracy.’

The articles of Marx on India constitute the best Marxist history-writing of the day on India. Sober analysis and critical realism characterised these articles, in contrast to the rhetoric and romanticism of the nationalist historians. These eight articles, though fragmentary, reveal Marx as the pioneer Marxist historian of India.

III

Marx wrote these articles on the Indian situation in 1853, long before the birth of the romantic, nationalist historical school in India. To free history-writing about India from imperialist and missionary vilifications on the one hand and on the other to free it from nationalist romanticism is the task of the present-day historian. These articles of Marx are still a guide in that direction. Herein lies their historical significance.

As early as 1926, R. Palme Dutt summarised the views of Marx on India in his ‘Modern India,’ Chapter II, Section 2, entitled ‘Karl Marx and the British Social Revolution in India.’ In 1933 Ralph Fox made use of these articles in his ‘Colonial Policy of British Imperialism.’ In the same year Joan Beauchamp also utilised these articles in her book ‘British Imperialism in India.’ A general complete summary of these articles is still an indispensable guide to the political study of India. It is especially so when British Imperialism in its hour of crisis is seeking new means of strengthening paramountcy by the present constitution in India.

Marx’s articles in this book can conveniently be divided into three types: (a) his observations on British rule in India, (b) his observations that reforms in India are due to class struggles at home, and (c) his observations on Indian States.

(a) BRITISH RULE IN INDIA.

British rule in India has always been described in lyrical notes. It was said by the Marquis of Zetland that India fell to British character. Sir John Seeley remarked that ‘our acquisition of India was made blindly. Nothing that had ever been done by Englishmen was done so unintentionally, so accidentally, as the conquest of India.’ Britain undertook the conquest of India at the behest of the land-owning, merchant, manufacturing mill-owning classes of the day. It was their interests and struggles among themselves that led to the conquest of India. Nor could it be said, as Seeley said, that the possession of India did not increase the power and security of Britain. Lord Curzon in his "Problems of the Far East" (pp. 8-9) wrote: "The Indian Empire is in the strategic centre of the third most important portion of the globe…..But her control and commanding position is nowhere better seen than in the political influence which she exercises over the destinies of her neighbours near and far, and the extent to which their fortunes revolve upon an Indian axis. The independence of Afghanistan, the continued national existence of Persia,…..are one and all dependent upon Calcutta……" In a speech delivered in the India Council on March 25, 1903, he made it clear that India is the centre of British world politics. He said, "In our dealings with them (the neighbours) the Foreign Department in India is becoming the Asiatic branch of the Foreign Office in England…..The geographical position of India will more and more push her into the forefront of international politics, she will more and more become the strategical frontier of the British Empire." The imperialists know better than Seeley how the possession of India increases the power and security of Britain!

Bryce and Marriott are equally lyrical and uncritical in their estimate of British rule in India. The first speaker to the first resolution of the first Indian National Congress session in 1885, Mr. Subramania Aiyar said: "By a merciful dispensation of Providence, India…..has been brought under the dominion of the great British power. I need not tell you…..how the inestimable good that has flowed from it has been appreciated by them. The rule of Great Britain has, on the whole, been better in its results and direction than any former rule……" Even the earliest Indian intelligentsia followed the same lyrical note.

Only in the hands of Marx did British rule in India receive a fair treatment. Marx did not share the opinion of those who believed in a golden age of Hindustan. The commencement of the Indian misery was traced to ‘an epoch even more remote than the Christian creation of the world.’ The misery inflicted by the British on Hindustan is of an essentially different and more intensive kind than all Hindustan had to suffer before.’ ‘British conquest of India is a form of social revolution. It is the only social revolution ever heard of in Asia.’ ‘Can mankind,’ wrote Marx, ‘fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England, she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution,’ In causing this social revolution, England ‘was actuated by the vilest of interests and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them.’

This social revolution consisted in the destruction of the old feudal order. ‘It swept away the Hindu spinner and weaver.’ This destruction was no doubt inevitable, Engels in the ‘Condition of the Working Class in England’ (p, 4) described the main features of just this process of driving the workers from hearth and home as it took place in the eighteenth century in England. He asserted again in the ‘Housing Question’ (p. 28) that it was an absolutely necessary historical process of development. Marx did not mourn this destruction nor shed Proudhonist tears as the nationalist historians did.

Marx was not so romantic with the village communities. According to him, the village communities had been ‘the solid foundation of Oriental despotism. They restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the un-resisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies,’ At the same time Marx did not deny the suffering caused by this social revolution in destroying’ the idyllic village communities.’

‘England fulfilled a double mission in India, one destructive, the other regenerating–the annihilation of the old Asiatic society and the laying of the material foundation of Western society in Asia. The destructive side of the social revolution was complete in so far as their interests demanded it. Village communities were destroyed, Village industry was uprooted, Village self-sufficient ‘inertia’ was broken up. The historic pages of their rule in India, wrote Marx, report hardly anything beyond that destruction. ‘The work of regeneration hardly transpires through a heap of ruins.’

Nevertheless, regeneration has begun. The political unity of India was the first fruit of its regeneration, strengthened by commerce and communications. The railways became the fore-runners of modern industry. ‘The millocracy has discovered that the transformation of India into a reproductive country has become of vital importance to them, and that, to that end it is necessary, above all, to gift her with means of irrigation and of internal communication. They therefore drew a net of railroads allover India.’ Indian industry of a simple nature began to develop. In 1853 Marx wrote to Engels that, excepting the revolutionary role played by the British in the earlier stages of her rule, "for the rest, the whole of British rule in India was swinish, and is to this day." (Marx-Engels correspondence, p. 70).

Simultaneously a new class was springing up, endowed with the requirements for Government and imbued with European sciences. But this development can only reach its full stature when England retires from India. In the words of Marx: "The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them by the British bourgeoisie, till in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindus themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether.’ This was written in 1853 when the Indian proletariat was not on the scene at all.

Here it would be interesting to recall how other foreign critics estimated British rule in India. In an essay on ‘The Colonies of the Ancients compared with those of the Moderns’, Sismondi wrote in 1837: "Wherever in this vast continent their dominion is direct, it is a real benefit. They have established security and justice; they have given the people a feeling of duration, and of something to look forward to,…..they have permitted Indian civilisation under them to resume its natural progress…..Agriculture is flourishing, the arts are cultivated with care; population and riches begin to increase; intelligence makes some progress; European opinions in-graft themselves naturally and gently on the old ideas of India; in short, the conquered people have learnt to defend the foreign rule." 1857 belies these words written in 1837.

In 1855 Montalembert wrote: "…..What a consoling and marvellous spectacle is that of the English dominion in India! Its history in those regions is certainly not without stain…. But everything considered and allowing a large amount of evil, we may boldly affirm that history gives no example of a conquest so completely turned to the good of the vanquished." These contemporary opinions show how different they were from those of Marx.

Paul Boell and Sir John Marriott think that England has no right to leave India. But the truth is, as Marx said, the full development of the new society in India could only take place when England is out of India.

(b) CLASS STRUGGLES IN ENGLAND AND REFORMS IN INDIA.

The Indian question has always been a party question. It comes into prominence only during periods of acute class struggle in Britain or what Marx called the periods of "the quarrelling of the aristocracy, the moneyocracy and the millocracy" ‘The aristocracy wanted to conquer it, the moneyocracy to plunder it and the millocracy to undersell it’ and later to develop it. The classic example is the trial of Warren Hastings. It was more of a struggle between the Whig and the Tory than a genuine interest in the affairs of India. No doubt the Indian received certain benefits from it. The present constitution of India is itself a product of class struggles in England. The struggles within the Conservative party–the struggles between

the Churchill-Lloyd Group and the Baldwin Group on the Indian question–are too well-known.

Why the Indian question did not become a great political question since and before 1784, was answered by Marx briefly. These were his reasons. Before that time the East India Company had first to conquer existence and importance. At this stage the landed and the moneyed classes went hand in hand. After that time the oligarchy absorbed all of its power which it could assume without incurring responsibility. Afterwards, the English people in general were, at the very epochs of the renewal of the charter in 1813 and 1833, absorbed by other questions of overbearing interest.

But the years 1783 and 1784 were the years for the Indian question to become a ministerial one. ‘The Company’s affairs failing to improve, notwithstanding their new condition, and the English nation having simultaneously lost their colonies in North America, the necessity of elsewhere regaining some great colonial empire became more and more universally felt.’ When the Company’s affairs failed to improve, the millocracy began to get alarmed. This new merchant class always desired India to be well governed, as well as their interests demanded. They naturally looked primarily to their own trade and manufacturing interests. They believed that, if the East India Company were abolished, and India were placed directly under a Crown Minister, it would be possible to secure further facilities for British trade with India, by means of pressure brought on the Crown Minister. As Romesh Chandra Dutt observed, the administrative policy of the British Empire was determined not by philosophers and statesmen but by the merchants and manufacturers. Thus every change in the Government of India was the result of a change in the alignment of class forces in England and acute struggles among themselves. This change was further accelerated by the growth of the Indian professional and merchant classes and their demand for a share in the Government. In 1853 as the merchants and the manufacturers demanded the abolition of the East India Company, the demand for representation from the people of India could faintly be heard from the Madras Native Association, the Bombay Association and the British Indian Association.

Today reforms in India are concessions wrung by the Indian political classes from the ruling classes in England. While previously reforms were measures to strengthen their rule, today they are measures conceded to the Indians to preserve their rule.

(c) THE INDIAN STATES.

The observations made by Marx on the Indian States as early as 1853 are interesting. They still stand true today. A great majority of the Indian States do not possess the prestige of antiquity. They are generally usurpers of recent date set up and legalised by British intrigue. When they were fast disappearing, the British Government had observed the policy of allowing the Princes to make heirs of adoption, or of filling up their vacant seats with puppets of English creation. Marx stated the reasons why the British desired the Indian States. ‘The native troops under English rule want employment in the petty warfares with their own countrymen in order to prevent them from turning their strength against their own European masters. The existence of independent States gives occasional employment to the English troops.’ There are also other reasons which show why the Indian States are desired. Lord Canning on 30th April, 1860. said: "It was long ago said by Sir John Malcolm that, if we made all India into ‘Zillahs’ (or British Districts), it was not in the nature of things that our Empire should last fifty years; but that, if we could keep up a number of native States, without political power, but as royal instruments, we should exist in India as long as our naval superiority in Europe was maintained. Of the substantial truth of this opinion, I have no doubt; and the recent events have made it more deserving of our attention than ever." This was said in 1860. It is equally true today. Today the Indian States are used as territorial counterpoises against the rest of political India. The Federation is an example of it. Above all Marx characterised the Princes thus: "The hereditary Princes are the most servile tools of English despotism. They are the strongholds of the present abominable English system and the greatest obstacles to Indian progress."

It is hoped that these letters will receive wide publicity in India and England. In the next printing the Editors would do well to improve the edition and include therein the rest of the letters.