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[…] The editors introduce Marx's writings on India and the careers of Roy and Dutt.
The first detailed Marxist critique of Gandhi appeared in Roy's early book, India in Transition, written in Moscow in 1922. The book grew out of discussions that Roy had with Lenin and other communist figures at the Second Congress of the Communist International. At this congress, Roy had argued, contrary to Lenin, that communist policy in the colonial areas must be to support proletarian rather than bourgeois movements. Lenin contended that bourgeois nationalist organizations like the Indian Congress could be considered revolutionary, and since no viable communist parties existed, these organizations deserved support. Roy replied that the Indian Congress and similar agencies could only betray the revolution: an Indian proletariat existed, and must be mobilized behind a communist vanguard. Liberation from imperialism could come only under communist leadership. The Roy–Lenin controversy was clearly over fundamental issues and would have implications for communist strategy in the future.
Roy later reflected upon his differences with Lenin and concluded, “The role of Gandhi was the crucial point of difference. Lenin believed that, as the inspirer and leader of a mass movement, he was a revolutionary. I maintained that, [as] a religious and cultural revivalist, he was bound to be a reactionary socially, however revolutionary he might appear politically.” In Roy’s view, “The religious ideology preached by him [Gandhi] also appealed to the medieval mentality of the masses. But the same ideology discouraged any revolutionary mass action. The quintessence of the situation, as I analyzed and understood it, was a potentially revolutionary movement restrained by a reactionary ideology.” Moreover, “I reminded Lenin of the dictum that I had learnt from him: that without a revolutionary ideology, there could be no revolution.”
These arguments formed the basis of the position on Gandhi that was developed by Roy in India in Transition.
The movement for national liberation is a struggle of the native middle-class against the economic and political monopoly of the imperialist bourgeoisie. [p. 399] But the former cannot succeed in the struggle, nor even threaten its opponent to make substantial concessions, without the support of the masses of the people. Because the Indian middle-class is still weak numerically, economically, and socially, hence the necessity of the nationalism in the name of which the people can be led to fight; the victory gained in this fight, however, will not change very much the condition of those whose blood it will cost.
The discontent and growing unrest among the masses, brought about by economic exploitation intensified during the war, was seized by the Congress under the leadership of the Extremists, and turned into a popular demonstration demanding national liberation. But in spite of their religious idiosyncrasies and orthodox inclinations, the social affiliation of the Extremists is identical with that of the Moderates. In the spontaneous mass-upheavals, they discovered the force which could be utilized for the triumph of the native bourgeoisie. But they could not develop the potentiality of the mass movement by leading it in accordance with its economic and social tendencies. Their tactics were to strengthen the nationalist movement by the questionable method of exploiting the ignorance of the masses. And the best way of exploiting the ignorance of the masses was to make a religion of nationalism. These tactics led to the appearance of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on the political horizon, and the temporary eclipse of all other politico-social tendencies in the shade of Gandhism, which has reached a crisis after having swept the country for two years.
In Gandhism culminate all the social tendencies that have always differentiated the two principles of Indian nationalism. In fact, Gandhism is the acutest and most desperate manifestation of the forces of reaction, trying to hold their own against the objectively revolutionary tendencies contained in the liberal bourgeois nationalism. The impending wane of Gandhism signifies the collapse of the reactionary forces and their total elimination from the political movement....
[…] Roy describes the national movement as a bourgeois rivalry with imperialism and calls Gandhism self-contradictory.
Gandhism will fall victim to its own contradictions. By Gandhism is meant the school of nationalism which has been reigning supreme in the Indian movement during the last three years. It can be put in another way: The Indian national movement, actuated by the spirit of Gandhism, cannot succeed because in that case it would defeat its own end. In spite of the pious desire of its leaders, post-British India cannot and will not become pre-British India. The Indian people will not be able to overthrow foreign domination until and unless all that is cherished by orthodox nationalists have become things of the past, of venerable memory. Sanctimonious antagonism to the “satanic Western civilization,” a tendency which in spite of its pathetic impotency, smacks of reaction, cannot be the life of a movement whose success will be marked by the crowning of the native bourgeoisie, who will prove to be as disruptive as the British ruler in so far as the social and religious ideals of orthodox nationalism are concerned. The victory of Indian nationalism will be the victory of the progressive middle-class, which may build a monument to the memory of the Mahatma for the valuable services he rendered them involuntarily, but which will never share his pious indignation against Western civilization, which is after all only a certain stage of social development through which every human community has to pass. This victory will be won, not through “suffering and soul-force,” but with blood and tears and will be maintained by blood and iron. But it must come. The introduction of “Western civilization” so heartily hated by Gandhi is the reward of the fierce fight for national independence to which he seeks to lead the people. He is working for something which is mortally antagonistic to the reactionary forces operating through him, and whose standard bearer he unconsciously is.
[…] Roy calls Gandhism petty-bourgeois humanitarianism and criticizes Gandhi's praise of limiting wants.
Capitalist civilization is rotten; but it cannot be avoided. Neither is it permanent. It must pass away in due course of evolution, giving place to a higher order of society, as the ones preceding it were replaced by it. But it will not collapse because sentimental humanitarians find it full of cruelty and injustice. It will break down under the pressure of its own contradictions. Whether we want it or not, it must be lived through somehow. It must be lived through in order that the fetters of moral and material ignorance that kept the human race bound hitherto can be broken, and mankind in all countries may have the facilities to strive for a higher stage of civilization. National freedom will not enable the people of India to go back, but to surge ahead.
In itself capitalist society has many defects; but it is undoubtedly an improvement on the patriarchal or feudal civilization for which Gandhi and his kind pine. Indian society is inevitably heading toward capitalist civilization, in spite of the premonitions of Gandhi, among many other prophets of similar creed. The desire to see it hark back is as futile as to expect a river to rush back to its [p. 402] source. Caught in the morass of such hopeless contradictions, Gandhism cannot supply the ideology of Indian nationalism. The revolutionary character of the latter is contrary to it. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that Gandhism, better said, the personality of Gandhi, exercised a considerable influence on the Indian movement in the last three years. Or in other words, just about the time that the National Congress was finding the first response among the ranks of the working masses, it came under the domination of a spirit which is essentially reactionary and non-revolutionary in a very frank way.
[M. N. Roy, India in Transition (Bombay: Nanchiketa, 1971), 202, 203–204, 205–208, 209–210.]
Like Roy, Dutt viewed Gandhi in familiar Marxist terms as a tool of the Indian bourgeoisie, collaborating with the capitalist structure established by British colonialism, and thus restraining the revolutionary will of the Indian masses. More than Roy, Dutt appreciated Gandhi's hold on the people and the Congress; but they both emphasized his predominant role as a reactionary. Their participation in this grand intellectual debate over India's history and future gave Marxism its critical force on the subcontinent.
[…] The editors note Dutt's long role as the Communist Party of India's leading ideologue.
The following excerpts from Dutt's India Today contain a trenchant analysis of Gandhi's leadership. Having already surveyed the events of 1919 to 1922 that led up to Gandhi's first non-cooperation movement, Dutt takes issue with the ostensible reasons for which Gandhi called it off after Chauri Chaura, in 1922.
The dominant leadership of the Congress associated with Gandhi called off the movement because they were afraid of the awakening mass activity; and they were afraid of the mass activity because it was beginning to threaten those propertied class interests with which they themselves were still in fact closely linked.
Not the question of “violence” or “non-violence,” but the question of class interest in opposition to the mass movement, was the breaking-point of the national struggle in 1922. This was the rock on which the movement broke. This was the real meaning of “Non-Violence.”
[…] Dutt describes the rise of the industrial working class and socialism in the mid-1920s.
In this critical balance of forces, with the certainty of big new struggles ahead in a far more advanced situation than a decade previously, the right-wing leadership once again turned to Gandhi, whom they had previously thrust aside, and whose star now once again rose. At the Calcutta session at the end of 1928 Gandhi returned to active leadership of the Congress. Whatever the views of the moderate leaders might be with regard to his personal idiosyncrasies, there was no question that he was the most subtle and experienced politician of the older group, with unrivalled mass prestige which world publicity had now enhanced as the greatest Indian figure; the ascetic defender of property in the name of the most religious and idealist principles of humility and love of poverty; the invincible metaphysical-theological casuist who could justify and reconcile anything and everything in an astounding tangle of explanations and arguments which in a man of common clay might have been called dishonest quibbling, but in the great ones of the earth like MacDonald or Gandhi is recognised as a higher plane of spiritual reasoning; the prophet who by his personal saintliness and selflessness could unlock the door to the hearts of the masses where the moderate bourgeois leaders could not hope for a hearing—and the best guarantee of the shipwreck of any mass movement which had the blessing of his association. This Jonah of revolution, this general of unbroken disasters was the mascot of the bourgeoisie in each wave of the developing Indian struggle. So appeared once again the characteristic feature of modern Indian politics, the unwritten article of every successive Indian constitution—the indispensability of Gandhi (actually the expression of the precarious balance of class forces). All the hopes of the bourgeoisie (the hostile might say, the hopes of imperialism) were fixed on Gandhi as the man to ride the waves, to unleash just enough of the mass movement in order to drive a successful bargain, and at the same time to save India from revolution....
Thus on the eve of rising mass struggle Gandhi proclaimed the fight on two fronts, not only against British rule, but against the internal enemy in India. This conception of the fight on two fronts corresponds to the role of the Indian bourgeoisie, alarmed as it sees the ground sinking beneath its feet with the growing conflict of imperialism and the mass movement, compelled to undertake leadership of the struggle, despite the “mad risk” (in Gandhi’s phrase in his letter to the Viceroy), in order to hold it within bounds (“to sit still would be to give rein to both the forces above mentioned”), and seeking to conciliate both with the magic wand of “non-violence.” However, “non-violence,” like the notorious “non-intervention” of later days practised by the democratic Powers in [p. 404] relation to Spain, was “one-way non-violence.” It was “non-violence” for the Indian masses, but not for imperialism, which practised violence to its heart’s content—and won the battle.
[…] Dutt recounts the 1930 campaign and the Irwin–Gandhi Agreement, then criticizes Gandhian village economics.
The propaganda of a primitive economy as a solution for India's problems is reactionary, not only because it leads in the opposite direction to that in which the solution must be sought (for the existing evils of poverty and misery are rooted in primitive technique, which is itself rooted in the social system of exploitation under imperialism), but because it serves as a diversion from the basic social tasks confronting the peasantry and the masses of the people. Agricultural development is impossible without tackling the question of the land, of landlordism and the re-division of the land. But here the voice of the agricultural idealists and worshippers of the vanished village community becomes weak and falters, and disappears into a vague and shame-faced defence of landlordism....
Herein lies the practical significance of this preaching from the standpoint of the big bourgeoisie, who tolerate and even encourage its Utopian yearnings and naive fantasies with a smile, because they know its business value for protecting their class interests and assisting to hold in the masses and maintain class peace. The social significance of Gandhi's historical role as the chosen representative and ablest leader of bourgeois nationalism in the critical transitions of the modern period has in practice coincided with his political role, despite the superficial contradiction between his social philosophy and the bourgeois outlook. The glaring contradictions and inadequacies in his many utterances and teaching, which can be easily picked out and exposed by the most elementary critic, are in fact the key to his unique significance and achievement. No other leader could have bridged the gap, during this transitional period, between the actual bourgeois direction of the national movement and the awakening, but not yet conscious masses. Both for good and for evil Gandhi achieved this, and led the movement, even appearing to create it. This role only comes to an end in proportion as the masses begin to reach clear consciousness of their own interests, and the actual class forces and class relations begin to stand out clear in the Indian scene, without need of mythological concealments.
[From R. Palme Dutt, India Today, 3rd ed. (1940; Lahore: Book Traders, 1979), 353, 357–359, 365–371, 373–374, 622–624, 626, 628–629.]
Rachel Fell McDermott, Leonard A. Gordon, Ainslie T. Embree, Frances W. Pritchett and Dennis Dalton, eds., Sources of Indian Traditions, vol. 2: Modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, 3rd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), pp. 396–407.