INTRODUCTION
The developmental aspirations of the people of India unfolded themselves through the various stages of the freedom movement. The violent resistance of the Indian people to the British rule in 1857 and the subsequent tribal upsurges were defensive movements against foreign rule.
They were almost totally political. But the peasant struggles that occurred since the late nineteenth century had a clear economic perspective. They were against the oppressive land revenue system that came along with foreign rule even though the peasants were not always aware of the colonial mechanism and they often turned their wrath on the intermediate landowners like the zamindars and mouzadars.
After the consolidation of the British rule in 1858, new organisations and movements of the people came to the fore choosing ‗constitutionalist‘ strategies. Landlords formed their own organisations to demand reduction of Government revenue claims.
Simultaneously nationalist leaders like Dadabhai Naoroji, M.G. Ranade and R.C. Dutt started critiquing the colonial economic exploitation. They argued that the main reason of poverty in India was the colonial exploitation. The end of colonial rule was necessary for the alleviation poverty in India.
FOUNDATION OF INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS (INC)
In 1885 the educated elite formed the INC as an umbrella organisation of all sections of the Indian people beginning with the demand for adequate representation of the Indians in the senior Government services and the legislative bodies created by the Indian Councils Act of 1861.
Indeed, initially they did not take up the cause of the workers and peasants considering them as ‗local issues.‘ But individual nationalists were engaged in ‗philanthropic works‘ among the workers and the peasants.
The INC was founded with a modest constitutionalist outlook & chose the strategy of petitions and persuasion rather than pressure and agitation. In 1893 the Congress demanded the uniform introduction of permanent settlement of land to save the landholders from harassment by the Government.
As early as 1895 Dr Annie Besant, founder of the Indian Home Rule League and a leader of the INC, drafted a Constitution of India Bill envisaging a Constitution that guaranteed to every citizen freedom of expression, inviolability of one‘s house, right to property, equality before the law and in regard to admission to public offices, right to present claims, petition and complaints and the right to personal property.
At a special session at Bombay in 1918 on the Montague-Chelmsford Report, the Congress demanded that the new Government of India Act contain a declaration of the rights of the Indians containing, among other things, equality before the law, protection in respect of liberty, life and property, freedom of speech and press and right of association.
In 1925 a sub-committee set up by the All-Parties Conference chaired by M.K. Gandhi prepared a Commonwealth of India Bill that demanded self-government for Indians from the village upwards – the village, the taluka, the district, the province and India.It also demanded the rights to liberty, security of dwelling and property, freedom of conscience and to profess and practise religion, freedom to express opinion, to assemble peacefully and without arms and to form associations or unions, free elementary education, use of roads, public places, courts of justice and the like, equality before the law irrespective of nationality and freedom of the sexes.
The Motilal Nehru Committee Report of 1928 incorporated all these demands and added the right of all citizens to the writ of habeas corpus‘ protection in respect of punishment under ex post facto laws, non-discrimination against any person on grounds of race, religion or creed in the matter of public employment, office of power or honour and in the exercise of any trade or calling, equal access of all citizens to public road, public wells and places of public resort, freedom of combination and association for the maintenance and improvement of labour and economic conditions and the right to keep arms in accordance with regulations.
It will be seen that, although the above demands had certain economic implications, the demands were essentially political and elitist. It was not until the appearance in the scene of Gandhi that the socio-economic problems of the common people came to focus. Gandhi brought the common people into national politics. He had to reflect their aspirations.
GANDHI‟S CONTRIBUTION
Among the earliest Gandhian activities in the socio-economic field were his visit to Champaran in Bihar to save the peasants from the exploitation of the British indigo planters, his initiation of peasant satyagraha at Khaira in Gujarat against high revenue demands of the Government and his intervention in the labour dispute in the Sarabhai textile mills at Ahmedabad.
The three episodes in the early life of Gandhi suggest that, whereas Gandhi took a clear antiimperialist position, he was in favour of solving class conflict within the Indian society through persuasion. He was not in favour of class struggle within the Indian society.
In fact the Ahmedabad experience seems to have led him to pronounce his famous ‗theory of trusteeship‘ that advised the owning class to behave as the trustees of the national wealth in the interest of the working class. In fact, it was probably due to his influence that the Ahmedabad Textile Workers‘ Union kept away from the All-India Trade Union Congress when it was set up in 1920. Even the Congress leaders did not join it until the party‘s Gaya conference in 1922.
While the Congress fought for the interest of the peasants and farmers many of whom actively participated in its satyagrahas it was not until about the end of the freedom movement that it raised the demand for land reform, that is, abolition of zamindari and other intermediary rights in land and grant of ownership to tillers of land. In fact, as early as 1893 the Indian National Congress had demanded permanent settlement of land (as in Bengal) in order to protect the landlords against harassing extortions of the landlords in the ryotwari areas.
GANDHI‟S SUBSTANCE OF SWARAJ
On January 26, 1930 Congressmen all over the country took the pledge of complete independence as demanded in the Lahore Resolution of December 1929. On January 30, 1930 in Young India Gandhi laid down his perception of the ‗substance of independence‘ as follows:
1) Total prohibition.
2) Reduction of pound-rupee exchange ratio from 1 shilling 6 pence to 1 shilling 4 pence.
3) Reduction of land revenue by at least 50% and making it subject to legislative control.
4) Abolition of salt tax
5) Reduction of military expenditure by at least 50% to begin with.
6) Reduction of salaries of the highest grade services by half or less, so as to suit the reduced revenue.
7) Protective tariff on foreign cloth.
8) Passage of the Coastal Traffic Reservation Bill.
9) Discharge of all political prisoners save those condemned for murder or attempt to murder, or trial by ordinary judicial tribunals, and withdrawal of all political prosecutions.
10) Abolition of the C.I.D. or its popular control.
11) Issue of licenses to use fire arms for self-defence, subject to popular control.
The resolution of the Karachi session of the All-India Congress Committee that was passed in 1931 was the first clear statement of the socio-economic contents of the freedom movement. It laid down that the organisation of economic life must conform to the principle of justice, to the end that it must secure a decent standard of living.
The state would safeguard the interests of the workers and secure for them, by suitable legislation. Child labour in factories & mines was to be banned. Peasants & workers would be free to form unions.
Peasants were promised an equitable adjustment of the burden on agricultural land, immediate relief to the small peasantry through substantial reduction of rent & revenue, exemption in the cases of uneconomic holding & imposition of graded agricultural income tax.
Death duties at a graduated rate over property above a limit were envisaged. Relief of agricultural indebtedness and control of usury – direct and indirect - were promised. Military expenditure would be reduced. The state would also provide military training to its citizens. The ceiling of the civil servants‟ salary would be Rs 500.
The state would protect indigenous cloth against foreign cloth. Currency & exchange would be regulated in the national interest. The state would own or control key industries & services, mineral resources, public transport means.
When the Congress party came to power in several provinces in 1937, they tried to deliver on some of the promises. But they held power for a little over two years. Besides, there were pressures from European and native vested interests. The promises were only partially fulfilled. About twenty years after Karachi session, the Indian Constitution largely enshrined the promises made in 1931.
THE IDEA OF SOCIALISM
The Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 created an interest in socialism in India and small socialist groups emerged in the urban centres.
Completion of the first five-year plan by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1934 created an enthusiasm for planning in India.
Jawaharlal Nehru, who had shown great admiration for socialism as early as 1928, delivered his presidential address to the Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress announcing his conviction that ‗the only solution of the world‘s problems and of India‘s problems lies in socialism‘.
This statement created an ideological rift within the top leadership of the Congress and Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel issued a statement to the effect that he had ideological differences with Nehru on matters like the nature of capitalism.
The Idea of Planning
It has been seen that the idea of planning had acquired popularity in 1934. Jawaharlal Nehru was succeeded as Congress President by another radical young man, Subhas Chandra Bose. He set up a National Planning Committee with Jawaharlal Nehru as chairman and Professor K.T. Shah as secretary.
In 1940 a group of industrialists led by G.D. Birla, prepared what is known as the Bombay Plan. Towards the end of World War II, M.N. Roy, a leader of the Indian Communist movement and now a radical humanist, published a People‘s Plan. Unlike the Bombay Plan it primarily emphasised agriculture and advocated nationalisation of land and liquidation of rural indebtedness.
NATURE OF GANDHIAN ECONOMICS
It will be wrong to see the 1930 „substance of Independence‟ statement of Gandhi as either the whole or the core of Gandhi‘s economic ideas. Gandhi‘s economic ideas cannot be fully discussed in the present unit. Suffice it to say that it was dynamic and evolved from his pamphlet on Hind Swaraj written in 1907 through a long course of his leadership of the Indian national movement.
Initially he opposed machines as instruments of imperialist exploitation and deprivation of the common masses of the people. Later he watered down his opposition to machines. All through his life, however, he insisted upon the spinning wheel which could give the poorest Indian villager, particularly women, a means of independent earning.
Initially he opposed class contradiction by means of his theory of trusteeship and change of heart of the owners to solve the problem of exploitation. Toward the end of his life he appears to have grown disillusioned about the prospect of change of heart. He even ceased to emphasise the need for revival of the idyllic self-sufficient village community. But Gandhi never ignored the common man and went on stressing the need for revival of the small-scale and cottage industry. It is interesting to note that the National Planning Committee‘s sub-committee on agriculture headed by a Gandhian, J.C. Kumarappa, recommended an integrated policy of land reform beginning with abolition of zamindari and other intermediate rights and proceeding to grant of tenancy to the cultivator and imposition of ceiling on agricultural land holding.
GANDHIAN SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY
It is necessary to remember that Gandhi‘s economic thinking was a part of his broader social vision of sarvodaya (upliftment of all), that was originally conceived as antyodaya (unto the last).
Towards this aim he devoted a major part of his ‗constructive programme‘ towards the abolition of untouchability and the upliftment of the people he called ‗the Harijans‘ (now called ‗dalits‘).
Though he did not present a separate economic programme for them, his Puna Pact with Dr B.R. Ambedkar gave them a political status in British India‘s electoral system that was retained in independent India.
It has been already mentioned that the spinning wheel gave the women an amount of economic independence through their own labour. It should also be mentioned that it was Gandhi‘s satyagraha that brought the women into the arena of politics and liberated them from their domestic bondages.
THE CONSENSUS
The Indian national movement was, above anything else, a movement for political independence. It had to mobilise different groups and interests. It was necessary to avoid contentious issues that might divide the people and alienate sections of them.
Yet no politics is without economics and, to mobilise the largest section of the people, it was necessary to reflect their socioeconomic aspirations. Thus there appears to have crystallised three broad aspirations about the economy of an independent India:
(1) a capitalist dream of an industrialised India under minimal state control and state support;
(2) a Gandhian view of basically rural and self-sufficient economy with minimal state control and large industry;
(3) a socialist view of an industrialised India under strong state control and leadership.
As a result of the ideological debates evolved a basic minimum consensus on the course of economic development of India.
i) There could be no development without political freedom.
ii) A certain amount of state control was necessary for the economy.
iii) Basic natural resources should be nationalised.
iv) There was also an overwhelming opinion that zamindari and other intermediary rights in agricultural land should be abolished.
This basic consensus was, somewhat inadequately, reflected in the Congress manifesto on the eve of the provincial assemblies elections in early 1946. We call it ‗inadequate‘ because the 1946 elections were held on the basis of a franchise determined by property qualifications to only 15% of the British Indian population and did not have to reflect the aspirations of the poorer sections of the people that comprised 85% of the population.
However, the Congress swept the elections in all the non-Muslim-majority provinces and even the Muslim-majority province of the North-West Frontier Province.
In that manifesto the party promised to encourage, modernise and rapidly extend industry, agriculture, social services and public utilities.
The state must, therefore, own or control key and basic industries and services, mineral resources, railways, waterways, shipping and other means of public transport. Currency and exchange, banking and insurance must be regulated in the national interest.
Thus the foundation of state capitalism in India was laid. Somehow, this kind of economic thinking came to be considered by many as socialism.
Solved IGNOU Book Exercise & Solved Past 7 Attempts Questions
IGNOU BOOK EXERCISE
Q.1 Was there an economic perspective of the early national movement in India?
Answer : The peasant struggles that occurred since the late nineteenth century had a clear economic perspective. They were against the oppressive land revenue system that came along with foreign rule even though the peasants were not always aware of the colonial mechanism and they often turned their wrath on the intermediate landowners like the zamindars and mouzadars.
After the consolidation of the British rule in 1858, new organisations and movements of the people came to the fore choosing ‗constitutionalist‘ strategies. Landlords formed their own organisations to demand reduction of Government revenue claims.
Simultaneously nationalist leaders like Dadabhai Naoroji, M.G. Ranade and R.C. Dutt started critiquing the colonial economic exploitation. They argued that the main reason of poverty in India was the colonial exploitation. The end of colonial rule was necessary for the alleviation poverty in India.
In 1885 the educated elite formed the INC as an umbrella organisation of all sections of the Indian people beginning with the demand for adequate representation of the Indians in the senior Government services and the legislative bodies created by the Indian Councils Act of 1861.
Indeed, initially they did not take up the cause of the workers and peasants considering them as ‗local issues.‘ But individual nationalists were engaged in ‗philanthropic works‘ among the workers and the peasants.
The INC was founded with a modest constitutionalist outlook & chose the strategy of petitions and persuasion rather than pressure and agitation. In 1893 the Congress demanded the uniform introduction of permanent settlement of land to save the landholders from harassment by the Government.
As early as 1895 Dr Annie Besant, founder of the Indian Home Rule League and a leader of the INC, drafted a Constitution of India Bill envisaging a Constitution that guaranteed to every citizen freedom of expression, inviolability of one‘s house, right to property, equality before the law and in regard to admission to public offices, right to present claims, petition and complaints and the right to personal property.
At a special session at Bombay in 1918 on the Montague-Chelmsford Report, the Congress demanded that the new Government of India Act contain a declaration of the rights of the Indians containing, among other things, equality before the law, protection in respect of liberty, life and property, freedom of speech and press and right of association.
In 1925 a sub-committee set up by the All-Parties Conference chaired by M.K. Gandhi prepared a Commonwealth of India Bill that demanded self-government for Indians from the village upwards – the village, the taluka, the district, the province and India.It also demanded the rights to liberty, security of dwelling and property, freedom of conscience and to profess and practise religion, freedom to express opinion, to assemble peacefully and without arms and to form associations or unions, free elementary education, use of roads, public places, courts of justice and the like, equality before the law irrespective of nationality and freedom of the sexes.
The Motilal Nehru Committee Report of 1928 incorporated all these demands and added the right of all citizens to the writ of habeas corpus‘ protection in respect of punishment under ex post facto laws, non-discrimination against any person on grounds of race, religion or creed in the matter of public employment, office of power or honour and in the exercise of any trade or calling, equal access of all citizens to public road, public wells and places of public resort, freedom of combination and association for the maintenance and improvement of labour and economic conditions and the right to keep arms in accordance with regulations.
It will be seen that, although the above demands had certain economic implications, the demands were essentially political and elitist. It was not until the appearance in the scene of Gandhi that the socio-economic problems of the common people came to focus. Gandhi brought the common people into national politics. He had to reflect their aspirations.
Q.2 What was Gandhi‘s contribution to the economic thinking in the Indian national movement?
Answer : Among the earliest Gandhian activities in the socio-economic field were his visit to Champaran in Bihar to save the peasants from the exploitation of the British indigo planters, his initiation of peasant satyagraha at Khaira in Gujarat against high revenue demands of the Government and his intervention in the labour dispute in the Sarabhai textile mills at Ahmedabad.
The three episodes in the early life of Gandhi suggest that, whereas Gandhi took a clear antiimperialist position, he was in favour of solving class conflict within the Indian society through persuasion. He was not in favour of class struggle within the Indian society.
In fact the Ahmedabad experience seems to have led him to pronounce his famous ‗theory of trusteeship‘ that advised the owning class to behave as the trustees of the national wealth in the interest of the working class. In fact, it was probably due to his influence that the Ahmedabad Textile Workers‘ Union kept away from the All-India Trade Union Congress when it was set up in 1920. Even the Congress leaders did not join it until the party‘s Gaya conference in 1922.
While the Congress fought for the interest of the peasants and farmers many of whom actively participated in its satyagrahas it was not until about the end of the freedom movement that it raised the demand for land reform, that is, abolition of zamindari and other intermediary rights in land and grant of ownership to tillers of land. In fact, as early as 1893 the Indian National Congress had demanded permanent settlement of land (as in Bengal) in order to protect the landlords against harassing extortions of the landlords in the ryotwari areas.
GANDHI‟S SUBSTANCE OF SWARAJ
On January 26, 1930 Congressmen all over the country took the pledge of complete independence as demanded in the Lahore Resolution of December 1929. On January 30, 1930 in Young India Gandhi laid down his perception of the ‗substance of independence‘ as follows:
1) Total prohibition.
2) Reduction of pound-rupee exchange ratio from 1 shilling 6 pence to 1 shilling 4 pence.
3) Reduction of land revenue by at least 50% and making it subject to legislative control.
4) Abolition of salt tax
5) Reduction of military expenditure by at least 50% to begin with.
6) Reduction of salaries of the highest grade services by half or less, so as to suit the reduced revenue.
7) Protective tariff on foreign cloth.
8) Passage of the Coastal Traffic Reservation Bill.
9) Discharge of all political prisoners save those condemned for murder or attempt to murder, or trial by ordinary judicial tribunals, and withdrawal of all political prosecutions.
10) Abolition of the C.I.D. or its popular control.
11) Issue of licenses to use fire arms for self-defence, subject to popular control.
Q.3 Discuss the evolution of socialist thinking in the Indian national movement.
Answer : The developmental aspirations of the people of India unfolded themselves through the various stages of the freedom movement. The violent resistance of the Indian people to the British rule in 1857 and the subsequent tribal upsurges were defensive movements against foreign rule.
They were almost totally political. But the peasant struggles that occurred since the late nineteenth century had a clear economic perspective. They were against the oppressive land revenue system that came along with foreign rule even though the peasants were not always aware of the colonial mechanism and they often turned their wrath on the intermediate landowners like the zamindars and mouzadars.
After the consolidation of the British rule in 1858, new organisations and movements of the people came to the fore choosing ‗constitutionalist‘ strategies. Landlords formed their own organisations to demand reduction of Government revenue claims.
The Bolshevik Revolution in October 1917 created an interest in socialism in India and small socialist groups emerged in the urban centres.
Completion of the first five-year plan by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1934 created an enthusiasm for planning in India.
Jawaharlal Nehru, who had shown great admiration for socialism as early as 1928, delivered his presidential address to the Lucknow session of the Indian National Congress announcing his conviction that ‗the only solution of the world‘s problems and of India‘s problems lies in socialism‘.
This statement created an ideological rift within the top leadership of the Congress and Sardar Vallabh Bhai Patel issued a statement to the effect that he had ideological differences with Nehru on matters like the nature of capitalism.
The Idea of Planning
It has been seen that the idea of planning had acquired popularity in 1934. Jawaharlal Nehru was succeeded as Congress President by another radical young man, Subhas Chandra Bose. He set up a National Planning Committee with Jawaharlal Nehru as chairman and Professor K.T. Shah as secretary.
In 1940 a group of industrialists led by G.D. Birla, prepared what is known as the Bombay Plan. Towards the end of World War II, M.N. Roy, a leader of the Indian Communist movement and now a radical humanist, published a People‘s Plan. Unlike the Bombay Plan it it primarily emphasised agriculture and advocated nationalisation of land and liquidation of rural indebtedness.
Q.4 How did the economic thinking in the Indian national movement crystallise at the end?
Answer : The Indian national movement was, above anything else, a movement for political independence. It had to mobilise different groups and interests. It was necessary to avoid contentious issues that might divide the people and alienate sections of them.
Yet no politics is without economics and, to mobilise the largest section of the people, it was necessary to reflect their socioeconomic aspirations. Thus there appears to have crystallised three broad aspirations about the economy of an independent India:
(1) a capitalist dream of an industrialised India under minimal state control and state support;
(2) a Gandhian view of basically rural and self-sufficient economy with minimal state control and large industry;
(3) a socialist view of an industrialised India under strong state control and leadership.
As a result of the ideological debates evolved a basic minimum consensus on the course of economic development of India.
i) There could be no development without political freedom.
ii) A certain amount of state control was necessary for the economy.
iii) Basic natural resources should be nationalised.
iv) There was also an overwhelming opinion that zamindari and other intermediary rights in agricultural land should be abolished.
This basic consensus was, somewhat inadequately, reflected in the Congress manifesto on the eve of the provincial assemblies elections in early 1946. We call it ‗inadequate‘ because the 1946 elections were held on the basis of a franchise determined by property qualifications to only 15% of the British Indian population and did not have to reflect the aspirations of the poorer sections of the people that comprised 85% of the population.
However, the Congress swept the elections in all the non-Muslim-majority provinces and even the Muslim-majority province of the North-West Frontier Province.
In that manifesto the party promised to encourage, modernise and rapidly extend industry, agriculture, social services and public utilities.
The state must, therefore, own or control key and basic industries and services, mineral resources, railways, waterways, shipping and other means of public transport. Currency and exchange, banking and insurance must be regulated in the national interest.
Thus the foundation of state capitalism in India was laid. Somehow, this kind of economic thinking came to be considered by many as socialism.
PAST 7 ATTEMPTS IGNOU QUESTIONS
Dec 2020: What was Gandhi‘s contribution to the economic thinking in the Indian national movement?
Answer: Same as Q.2 of above.
Dec 2019: Discuss the Evolution of Socialistic Thinking in the Indian National Movement.
Answer : Almost same as Q.3 of above.
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