50 Years Of Business As Politics
Has a sufficient time elapsed for us to view 1947 "" Independence and partition "" in historical perspective? Perhaps not. It is true that the 50th anniversary of Independence is less than a year away. But historically there is nothing magical about the figure 50 "" it indicates no more than two generations (one generation is reckoned by historians of India as about 25 years and the date of an event is calculated by this yardstick whenever the number of generations since the event is available). But now that the Congress seems to be tottering to its demise, the struggle it led for freedom before 1947 may perhaps be seen in a clearer outline, and from a fresh perspective. As Hegel reminded us, the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the fall of dusk.
The number of Congressmen who are important in the Congress today, and who were important in the freedom struggle, can be counted on a hand, perhaps even on one finger. More than just the lapse of half a century divides this generation of Congressmen and that of 1947. They are a world apart. This lends a certain perspective "" the struggle leading to independence stands out in a firmer historical focus. In the meanwhile, events have happened "" events of world historical importance "" which dictate that we take a fresh look at the legacy of 1947. Congressmen today seem to be engaged in a collective exercise of harakiri. But what were Congressmen like in 1947?
It is necessary to emphasise here that the perspective on that generation has changed dramatically in course of the 1990s because of the far-reaching events on the world political scene. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of market economies in Dengist China has silently, imperceptibly and effectively altered the vision of Indian historians, though the alteration has not yet reached the text books of the history of Indian independence.
In the mid-1970s, the Soviet Union was still strong, Mao was still alive, and in India the Naxalite movement had strongly affected the interpretations of Indian historians. One school that emerged then was the 'subaltern' school, which concentrated its ire on the Indian National Congress, comparing its middle class 'elitist' role in the freedom movement unfavourably to the historical mission of the Leninist and Maoist movements. A number of other Marxist and radical historians, too, fell into the habit of measuring the non-co-operation, civil disobedience and Quit India movements by the yardstick of Mao Tse-Dong's (spelt Mao Tse-Tung then) Long March to power. They found the Congress-led movements restricted and wanting in enough popular participation by this yardstick. They talked of Gandhi's 'imperfect mobilisation'. There was a lingering regret among many Indian academics at the time that what happened in China did not happen in India. They searched for reasons why India had not experienced a 'total' revolution like China. This question preoccupied them to the exclusion of other perspectives which turned out to be more meaningful as events in the world outmoded their intellectual perspective.
As the Long March turned into a rout in China, such preoccupations appeared to be quaint reminders of a bygone intellectual era, more so as the reforms of Gorbachev convulsed the Soviet Union and the Warsaw bloc. A senior liberal historian, Amales Tripathi, caustically reminded a younger subaltern historian, Gyanendra Pandey, that quoting the 'thoughts of Mao Tse-Dong proves nothing at all'. The meteoric rise of Deng Hsiao Ping, and even more notably, his bloody suppression of the student demand for freedom at Tiananmen Square had by then put paid to that clap trap.
Naxalite slogans which had once rung through the corridors of the Presidency College of Calcutta "" 'China's Chairman is our Chairman', 'Red Salute to Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung', 'Your name, My name, Naxalbari Vietnam', "" gave way to widespread demonstrations of student anger in the same campus as the students of Tiananmen Square fell for democratic liberties.
A curious thing then happened in the academic profession of history. On the eve of the break up of the Soviet Union, India emerged as some sort of a model for capitalist development to Soviet historians. A team of historians from the Soviet Union visited Calcutta University's history department. One of them, A I Chicherov, startled his hosts by asking a question that was the exact opposite of what Marxist historians of India had been asking so long. He did not ask why India had not experienced a Russian or Chinese type revolution. Instead, he asked why India had been able to develop liberal democracy and market economics more effectively than the Soviet Union.
Those who had so long asked for guidance from Moscow and Beijing could no longer find any comfort in the question being asked by their Soviet colleagues. Shortly afterwards, the Soviet Union fell apart. China, for its part, embraced market economics as a guiding principle. In this sphere, but not in the sphere of democratic liberties, it forged ahead of India.
There is irony here: irony in the altered situation, irony also in the altered historical perspective. Chicherov's type of question did, however, impel historians to take a closer look at the relationship between the Congress leader and the Indian capitalist before Independence. The two had grown independently of each other, but between 1920 and 1947, a closer interaction had been established. In the longer term historical perspective, this ensured the simultaneous growth of democratic liberties and market economics. The nexus between the business class and the political class is the price we have had to pay for this.
(The author is a well-known historian) >