The Marxist Betrayal

These are random thoughts of mine based on previous reading. I do not refer to any specific text per se.

The history of the Marxists in India has been one of repeated betrayal of the country. They have let India down time and again when it came to the clash of interests with the Soviet Union or China. Their political loyalties lay outside.

M.K. Gandhi broad-based the Indian National Congress to include the teeming masses belonging to all ethnic, caste and religious groups in the anti-colonial freedom struggle. To quote B.R. Nanda "From a three day Christmas week picnic of the upper-middle class in one of the principal cities of India, it became a mass organization with its roots in small towns and villages". The Indian Marxists never had this rural base. There's was an urbanized elite leadership.

Stalin entered into a pact with Hitler in 1939. The understanding reached between the two was for Germany to annex western Poland while the Soviets annex eastern Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and parts of Finland. It was a territorial demarcation of war spoils between Europe's two most expansionist and authoritarian regimes. The Community Party of India then supported the independence struggle with a series of blitzkrieg trade union action, shut downs, gheraos, strikes and sabotage which crippled industrial activity. The railway workers, the sailors, the dockers and the textile workers belonging to the Marxist trade unions led the strikes. The intent was to weaken the colonial hold on the Indian economy and open a third front against Britain given that Stalin and Hilter had joined on an anti-western platform.

However, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941. German troops had reached the outskirts of Moscow by December that year. The Soviet Union had suffered unparalleled destruction and did an immediate policy reversal to join the allied war effort. The Communist Party of India changed track in tandem. It decried the Indian freedom struggle as weakening the international struggle against fascism, a movement which the Marxists had initially allied with. The Communists pulled out of the freedom struggle. M.K. Gandhi had launched the Quit India Movement in the summer of 1942. The Communists turned informants and helped the colonial authorities to identify and imprison the entire leadership of the freedom struggle. The Indian Marxists supported the British in this crucial interlude given the new Soviet-British alliance against Hitler.

M.K. Gandhi and the Congress hierarchy were behind bars between 1942 and 1945. The Congress had convincingly won the 1937 elections while the Muslim League had suffered a devastating defeat at the hands of the Congress in all Muslim majority provinces of pre-partition India except East Bengal. While the Congress leadership had been imprisoned, Jinnah was free to organize the Muslim League and strengthen its holds over sections of the Muslim population of British India. The fortunes of the League rose between 1942 and 1945. The Marxists meanwhile supported the ideological case for partition arguing that the Muslim population was entitled to self-determination. This was interesting given the Soviet Union's own suppression of Muslims in the Caucasus and Central Asia. Stalin had deported the Chechens and Tartars to Siberia en-masse!

The British partitioned India in 1947. Pakistan immediately expelled its Marxists who fled to India!

Nehru, a self-proclaimed socialist, did not oppose Communist China's annexation of Tibet in 1950. Tibet had an area of 471,700 square miles. China was then fighting the United States in the Korean war and Nehru could have easily retained the colonial-era Indian military presence in Lhasa and consolidated it further in order to ensure Tibetan independence. Furthermore, Nehru supported Peking's cause in the United Nations. China responded by annexing the 15,000 square mile Aksai Chin in what remained of Indian-held Kashmir in 1957. Pakistan had earlier annexed Baltistan, Gilgit, Hunza and Muzafarabad that had an area of 32,000 square miles.

The Nehru administration was not even aware of that development in Aksai Chin while his Marxist Minister of Defence, Krishna Menon continued to support China in international fora such as the United Nations. Taiwan then occupied China's seat at the Security Council. The Indian Marxists later defended Chinese actions in Aksai Chin pointing out that enclave's historical links with Chinese-held East Turkestan, now called Xinjiang.

China invaded the North East Frontier Agency with an area of 32,000 square miles in 1962 and then quite as suddenly withdrew its troops. The road to Assam was open and Nehruvian India lay prostrate. The Indian Marxists defended Chinese actions on the alleged grounds that NEFA had historical links with Tibet. Not one of them questioned China's initial hold on East Turkestan and Tibet on historical grounds to begin with. China had no valid territorial claim on either under modern international law. China detonated the nuclear device in October, 1964. The Indian Marxists welcomed that step as part of the global war against international imperialism! Yet, when India exploded its second nuclear device in May, 1998, the Indian Marxists opposed that as an unnecessary belligerence.

The Indian Marxists have repeatedly let India down. They do not have Indian national interests at heart. They currently control the Departments of History in major Indian universities such as JNU. With that platform, they are able to twist the past to suit their nebulous aims in the present. I refer here to Habib Irfan, Harbans Mukhia, K.N. Panikkar, R.S. Sharma, Romila Thapar and Sarvapalli Gopal. Other individuals such as Arundhati Roy, Barkha Datta, Brinda Karat, Mani Shankhar Aiyer, N. Ram and Praful Bidwai in India, and Meera Nanda, Sarmila Bose, Sugato Bose and Sumantro Bose overseas continue to occupy the intellectual and media space in a disproportionate manner. They leverage this vantage point to weaken India!