Marx has been alwayz a favourite of UPSC..so i felt to hv an
Insight on it !!
- Marx
was of the view that 'British rule in
India was fulfilling a double mission–a mission destructive as well as
regenerating '.
- Marx believed that the ruin and
devastation caused by British colonial rule was a terrible but necessary
price for “the only social revolution ever heard of in Asia.
Marx noted in 1853 that the chief
features of precolonial Indian society were the following:
(1) “the absence of private property in
land,” an idea which he and Engels owed to Bernier;
(2) dependence on artificial irrigation
which was in the East, as Engels said, “the first condition of agriculture” and
which was “a matter either for the communes, the provinces, or the central
government”;
(3) a society consisting of “stereotype
and disconnected atoms”–self-perpetuating village communities which
"existed with a given scale of low conveniences, almost without
intercourse with other villages, without the desires and efforts indispensable
to social advance”;
(4) “the domestic union of agricultural
and manufacturing pursuits,” the primeval marriage between the plow and the
handloom and other tools of crafts workers and “an unalterable division of
labor” (besides “possession in common of the land”) as the basis of these
self-sufficient and isolated village communities;
(5) the customary obligations through
which exchange of goods and services between the agricultural and industrial
producers and the servants of the community took place, and the virtual absence
of production for the market;
(6) the existence of towns and cities
that were no more than military camps “superimposed on the real economic
structure”; and
(7) its resistance to change: the village
communities “transformed a self-developing social state into never changing
natural destiny....”
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- Marx designated Indian society as the
“Asiatic society” or the “Asiatic system” in articles written on Indian in
1853.
- According to Marx, Asiatic society, which
provided the surest basis of Oriental despotism, was a preclass society or
a class society of the most primitive form.
- Referring to India, he wrote as early as 1853: “As to the question of property, this is a very controversial one among the English writers on India. In the broken hill-country south of Krishna, property in land does seem to have existed.” And, even in 1853, he noted “an internal dualism” in the village communities in India.
- He
wrote that though the land belonged to the entire village community, and
though in some of these communities “the lands of the village are
cultivated in common, in most cases each occupant tills his own field.”
Besides, there was slavery and the caste system within them. Much later,
contradicting partly his earlier view about the “possession in common of
the land,” he said, “no private property in land exists, although there is
both private and common possession and use of land.”
- What the English take from them [the
Indians] annually in the form of rent, dividends for railways useless to
the Hindus, pensions for military and civil servicemen, for Afghanistan
and other wars, etc., etc.–what they take from them without any equivalent
and quite apart from what they appropriate to themselves annually within
India–speaking only of the value of the commodities the Indians have
gratuitously and annually to send over to England–it amounts to more than
the total sum of income of the 60 millions of agricultural and industrial
laborers of India! This is a bleeding process with a vengeance!
Marx on Ryotwari and Zamindari System ?
Marx had welcomed the zamindari and
ryotwari systems of land settlement for introducing private property in land,
as early as 1858 he described the “exclusive proprietary rights claimed by the
talukdars and zamindars” as “an incubus on the real cultivators of the soil and
the general improvement of the country.” In 1881 he said: “To take the case of
East India, for instance, no one with the exception of Sir H. Maine and others
of the same stock, can be ignorant that there the extinction of the communal ownership
of land was only an act of English vandalism which pushed the indigenous people
not forward but backward.”
Marx on Scindhia and Raja of Patiala ?
Marx poured all his scorn on the native
allies of the British. In the closing years of his life, he wrote: “Scindhia
[the ruler of Gwalior] loyal to the ‘English dogs,’ not so his ‘troopers’; Raja
of Patiala–for shame!–sent large body of soldiers in aid of the English!”
Again, he lashed out at those two supported the British: “Young Scindhia
(English dog-man) driven out of Gwalior by his troops after hard fighting, fled
for his life to Agra.” He also used the choice epithet “English dog-man” for
the king of Nepal, who was loyal to the British.
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Marx wrote that “the fruits of the new elements of society” would not be reaped by the Indians till the ruling classes in Great Britain were supplanted by the industrial proletariat or till the Indians themselves were “strong enough to throw off the English yoke altogether.”
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Marx and Gandhi
Gandhi and Marx were both highly
influential leaders who felt very strongly about the way that society is run.
They both think that the rich are inferior to the poor and that change within
society and the social classes are needed in order to create a successful and
well balanced society. In order to achieve this ideal society, they both take
action to convey their ideals: Gandhi through peace, and Marx through violence
and action. Even though they both have completely different approaches, they
both make clear the fact that the economy and social class are main issues in
society.
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Bhagat Singh and Marxism
- Bhagat Singh was a fervent torchbearer of the
proletarian struggle. He rejected the prejudices of caste, creed,
nationality, race, gender, and, of course, religion.
- Bhagat Singh once at HSRA said “We don’t want independence! We don’t want
independence where the English rulers are replaced by the local elites. We
don’t want freedom where this wretched system of exploitation and slavery
continues. We are striving for an independence that would transform the
whole system thorough revolutionary socialism.”
- Bhagat Singh, who was initially a diehard follower of
Mohandas Gandhi, had revolted against him when the latter had called off
agitation against the British after Chauri Chaura incident.
- Bhagat was deeply influenced by the Bolshevik revolution
of 1917 in the Soviet Union and he diligently studied the works of Marxism
and contemporary revolutionaries.
- Through his experience, he came to the conclusion that
Gandhi’s politics was to preserve the system imposed by the British
colonialists rather than its overthrow.
- Historian K.N. Panikkar said that Bhagat Singh was one
of the early Marxists of India who tried to chart out a revolutionary path
for the country and that his contributions to nurture a democratic,
socialist and secular tradition has considerable contemporary relevance.
- Bhagat Singh was opposed to communal politics from which
he tried to distance the organisations he was associated with. The
Naujawan Bharat Sabha, for instance, did not entertain those belonging to
religious-communal organisations as its members. The rules of the sabha
drafted by Bhagat Singh emphasised its opposition to communalism as well
as its resolve to create the spirit of general tolerance among the
public.
- In other words, Bhagat Singh was a champion of
secularism which he appears to have held as central to his political
practice, as any nexus between religion and politics was likely to
endanger the pluralistic ethos of Indian society. Emancipation from the
bondage of religion and superstition was, in his reckoning, crucial for
revolutionary practice and therefore he tried to instil rational thinking
in the minds of all his comrades.
- In his prison notebooks, he quoted Vladimir Lenin in
reference to imperialism and capitalism and also the revolutionary
thoughts of Trotsky.When asked what his last wish was, Singh replied that
he was studying the life of Lenin and he wanted to finish it before his
death. In spite of his belief in Marxist ideals however, Singh never
joined the Communist Party
of India
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To read abt Nehru on Socialism
