‘Yeh azaadi jhooti hai!’: The shaping of the opposition in the first year of the Congress raj

Abstract

Within a year of Indian independence, the Communist Party of India declared independence to be a false dawn and the whole Socialist bloc within the ruling Indian National Congress cut its ties with the national government. The speed with which the left disengaged from what had been a patriotic alliance under colonialism surprised many at the time and has perplexed historians ever since. Some have looked to the wider context of the Cold War to explain the onset of dissent within the Indian left. This paper points instead to the neglected domestic context, examining the lines of inclusion and exclusion that were drawn up in the process of the making of the new Indian constitution. Once in power, Congress leaders recalibrated their relationship with their former friends at the radical end of the political spectrum. Despite some of the well-known differences among leading Congress personalities, they spoke as one on industrial labour and the illegitimacy of strikes as a political weapon in the first year of national rule and declared advocates of class politics to be enemies of the Indian state. Congress thus attempted to sideline the Socialists and Communists and brand them as unacceptable in the new regime. This paper focuses on this first year of independence, emphasizing how rapidly the limits of Indian democracy were set in place.

A Gandhian answer to the threat of communism? Sarvodaya and postcolonial nationalism in India

“…By 1949, however, the two had formally split, as the socialists formed their own party. 20 Nonetheless, the leadership of the two sets remained close, and they struck periodical alliances over specific issues. 21 After the Communists achieved success in China by mobilising the peasantry, however, the prospect of a communist revolt in rural India came into clearer focus.…”