Modern Indian History

'No two countries were so benighted at birth'. What led the author to this conclusion?

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

At midnight on 14- 15 August, 1947, India shed 190 years of colonial subjugation and became an independent country. In the Durbar Hall of what was to re-christened Rashtrapati Bhawan, Nehru announced India’s tryst with destiny. But only hours later, Indians realized that they had been administered a poisoned pill. Independence came with Partition, and the partition turned out to be a surgical operation without anaesthesia. In Punjab and Bengal the line of separation followed the borders not even of districts but of tehsils. The new lines divided families, separated buyers from sellers and sundered friendships that had endured for generations. People felt betrayed for no one had been consulted; no one had been warned and no one was given a chance to express second thoughts or to reconsider their choice. Partition came with the finality of a hammer blow. Without hope of reprieve, all that people were left with was their anger. And they vented it on the ‘other community’ whom they blamed for their suffering.
What followed has become one of the darker chapters of human history. Millions died. Many millions more were forced to leave their homes and start a new life as destitute in another nation. No two countries were so benighted at birth. It was almost as if in parting the British had done their best to ensure that these independent nations would fail. But India did not fail. Today it is possible to look back and say that India has not only survived but has, in a modest way, flourished.
Borrowing from Amartya Sen, we can justifiably claim that we have successfully made the voyage from independence to freedom. In his thought provoking work Development as Freedom Sen argues that freedom is at once the ultimate goal of all social and economic arrangements and the most efficient means of realizing general welfare. The key to this is ever-widening range of choice. It is the widening capacity to choose—an abode, a place of education, a profession and a way of life—that gives meaning to freedom. It also gives meaning to the very notion of development.
Today there are hosts of statistics that demonstrate our modest yet substantial success. Indians live two and a half times longer than they did at independence; they eat on an average a third more than they did and their diet has become infinitely more varied; they are on an average seven times better off than they were in 1947; and the proportion of Indians below the poverty line has fallen from more than half to less than a quarter. But these capture only the lesser part of our achievement. The more important part is the quiet, virtually unnoticed revolution that has occurred in our thinking.

The author of the passage is most likely

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
The American civil war, the Indian independence struggle, the end of South Africa’s apartheid, all began with dissatisfaction with the status quo. India, with its huge cultural diversity, has always been susceptible to brewing dissatisfactions of various hues. According to current figures, anywhere between 150 and 250 districts, in more than fifteen states, are affected by Maoist violence. On the surface, one would feel that it is again an ideological fight but scratching further, one would discover that ideology has been spawned by the force of circumstance and most of the players, inhabiting nearly forty percent of India’s territory, are just caught up in a maelstrom of events and consequences beyond their control.
That the Maoist movement has managed to find a broad based appeal is symptomatic of a systemic malaise within the nation, its administration and the society. Instead of trying to find fault with the rebels, the country will be better served by those who try to find the reasons for its spread. And let us not give undue importance to the rabble rousing, self-serving ideologues but let us talk about the common citizen, who has no desire to take sides with any ideology and just wants to live a life of peace and plenty. In the last sixty years or so since independence the quality of life of the ordinary citizen has also improved considerably. Many Indians are living a life of comfort and access to resources that their predecessor generations might not even have thought possible. The benefits of progress however have failed to reach a vast majority of the so called Maoist infested populace and herein lies the rub.
A strange dichotomy is that the problem is endemic in some of the most natural resource rich states in the union but it is the denizens of these states that are struggling to find two square meals a day. The nation’s progress has bypassed most of them barring a few oasis of prosperity where a few cities have managed to keep up with the mainstream progress. In a land where caste barriers and resulting discrimination are nearly as rigid and rampant as they were centuries ago, and economic empowerment is lopsided, it is not difficult to find reasons for disenchantment with the democratic, socialist republic. For immense personal gains, corrupt politicians and opportunistic bureaucrats, colluding with greedy corporations have been exploiting the abundance of natural resources without sharing the spoils with the people of the land. The tribals, whose culture and existence is being threatened by the mining activities have been forced to take to the gun when there has been no restitution from the governance. Giving this struggle the name of clash of ideologies is unnecessary glamorization of the issue. Even if their struggle against state oppression succeeds in formation of an independent small nation, the liberators will turn oppressors and the wheel will have turned a full circle for the masses.

What message does the author intend to communicate when he states, “Giving this struggle the name of clash of ideologies is unnecessary glamorization of the issue”?

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question.
The American civil war, the Indian independence struggle, the end of South Africa’s apartheid, all began with dissatisfaction with the status quo. India, with its huge cultural diversity, has always been susceptible to brewing dissatisfactions of various hues. According to current figures, anywhere between 150 and 250 districts, in more than fifteen states, are affected by Maoist violence. On the surface, one would feel that it is again an ideological fight but scratching further, one would discover that ideology has been spawned by the force of circumstance and most of the players, inhabiting nearly forty percent of India’s territory, are just caught up in a maelstrom of events and consequences beyond their control.
That the Maoist movement has managed to find a broad based appeal is symptomatic of a systemic malaise within the nation, its administration and the society. Instead of trying to find fault with the rebels, the country will be better served by those who try to find the reasons for its spread. And let us not give undue importance to the rabble rousing, self-serving ideologues but let us talk about the common citizen, who has no desire to take sides with any ideology and just wants to live a life of peace and plenty. In the last sixty years or so since independence the quality of life of the ordinary citizen has also improved considerably. Many Indians are living a life of comfort and access to resources that their predecessor generations might not even have thought possible. The benefits of progress however have failed to reach a vast majority of the so called Maoist infested populace and herein lies the rub.
A strange dichotomy is that the problem is endemic in some of the most natural resource rich states in the union but it is the denizens of these states that are struggling to find two square meals a day. The nation’s progress has bypassed most of them barring a few oasis of prosperity where a few cities have managed to keep up with the mainstream progress. In a land where caste barriers and resulting discrimination are nearly as rigid and rampant as they were centuries ago, and economic empowerment is lopsided, it is not difficult to find reasons for disenchantment with the democratic, socialist republic. For immense personal gains, corrupt politicians and opportunistic bureaucrats, colluding with greedy corporations have been exploiting the abundance of natural resources without sharing the spoils with the people of the land. The tribals, whose culture and existence is being threatened by the mining activities have been forced to take to the gun when there has been no restitution from the governance. Giving this struggle the name of clash of ideologies is unnecessary glamorization of the issue. Even if their struggle against state oppression succeeds in formation of an independent small nation, the liberators will turn oppressors and the wheel will have turned a full circle for the masses.

According to the passage 'the eradication of landlordism and casteism' was

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

For decades, the working class in South Asia has been politically smothered by Stalinist parties. With ruinous results, the Stalinists have systematically subordinated the working class to one or another section of the national bourgeoisie on the grounds that the unresolved problems of the democratic revolution—including the eradication of landlordism and casteism and the establishment of genuine equality among the subcontinent’s myriad peoples—is possible only through a bourgeois-led ‘national’ movement.

On the basis of the suppression of an examination of the key strategic experiences of the international working class, those experiences that have formed the substance of the disputes between the various currents claiming to represent the continuation of the revolutionary Marxism, Stalinists, Maoists and Centrists for decades have subordinated the working class to bourgeois nationalism, social democracy and petty bourgeois radicalism.

The counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism on the world stage and all the variants of Indian Stalinism, from the CPI through the Naxalites for their adherence to the Menshevik-Stalinist theory of two-stage revolution, need to be laid bare and exposed as counter revolutionary currents inside the working class movement.

Failure of Stalinists and Maoists to present a real opposition and a viable alternative to the bourgeois rule has left the space open for bourgeois nationalist and reformist movements to occupy space.

We must therefore develop a systematic and historically-grounded critique of Stalinists, the role the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy and its satellite Communist parties played in propping up world capitalism. But this is a complicated problem, because of the political-ideological domination the various Stalinist currents including its Maoist variant, have exerted, and continue to exert, over the working class and socialist-minded toilers and intellectuals in India. Such a critique is not only fundamental for understanding how capitalism survived the 20th century and the political problems that the working class now confronts, but also sheds critical light on the programme and perspective that must guide the working class in the next period of revolutionary upheavals.

Stalinism was the ideology of a privileged bureaucracy that succeeded in usurping power from the working class in the then USSR under conditions where the revolution (notwithstanding the post-World War I revolutionary upsurge of the German working class) had remained isolated in what was an extremely backward country. The bureaucracy with its doctrine of ‘socialism in one country’ repudiated the internationalist programme on which the revolution had been based and with increasing self-consciousness oriented toward securing a recognized placed in the capitalist-dominated world order, in the process, transformed the national Communist Parties into instruments of its counter-revolutionary foreign policy.
We must understand what Stalinism was and why it arose, the key revisions of Marxism with which it is associated (including socialism in one country, the two-stage theory of revolution, social fascism, popular frontism, and peaceful co-existence with world bourgeois), point to the key strategic experiences of the world working class that demonstrate the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism, lay bare its destructive impact on the South Asian revolution, and indict the Soviet and Chinese bureaucracies for ultimately serving as the mechanism through which capitalism has been restored in the former USSR and the People’s Republic of China.

The Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy systematically strangled the world socialist revolution, promoted a nationalist-opportunist ideology and politics that acted, as Trotsky said, as the syphilis of the world labour movement, and mercilessly persecuted and sought to physically annihilate the revolutionary cadres of the Fourth international.
It is also necessary to review the record of Stalinism in India, tracing back to the origins and evolution of the CPI and its various offshoots including the Naxalite movement. This overview would clearly show how Stalinism systematically confused and disorganized the revolutionary-minded elements, making both the Stalinist parties—CPI and CPM—an integral part of the bourgeois order.

The author backs a systematic and historically-grounded critique of Stalinists because he believes

Directions: Read the following passage and answer the question that follows.

For decades, the working class in South Asia has been politically smothered by Stalinist parties. With ruinous results, the Stalinists have systematically subordinated the working class to one or another section of the national bourgeoisie on the grounds that the unresolved problems of the democratic revolution—including the eradication of landlordism and casteism and the establishment of genuine equality among the subcontinent’s myriad peoples—is possible only through a bourgeois-led ‘national’ movement.

On the basis of the suppression of an examination of the key strategic experiences of the international working class, those experiences that have formed the substance of the disputes between the various currents claiming to represent the continuation of the revolutionary Marxism, Stalinists, Maoists and Centrists for decades have subordinated the working class to bourgeois nationalism, social democracy and petty bourgeois radicalism.

The counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism on the world stage and all the variants of Indian Stalinism, from the CPI through the Naxalites for their adherence to the Menshevik-Stalinist theory of two-stage revolution, need to be laid bare and exposed as counter revolutionary currents inside the working class movement.

Failure of Stalinists and Maoists to present a real opposition and a viable alternative to the bourgeois rule has left the space open for bourgeois nationalist and reformist movements to occupy space.

We must therefore develop a systematic and historically-grounded critique of Stalinists, the role the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy and its satellite Communist parties played in propping up world capitalism. But this is a complicated problem, because of the political-ideological domination the various Stalinist currents including its Maoist variant, have exerted, and continue to exert, over the working class and socialist-minded toilers and intellectuals in India. Such a critique is not only fundamental for understanding how capitalism survived the 20th century and the political problems that the working class now confronts, but also sheds critical light on the programme and perspective that must guide the working class in the next period of revolutionary upheavals.

Stalinism was the ideology of a privileged bureaucracy that succeeded in usurping power from the working class in the then USSR under conditions where the revolution (notwithstanding the post-World War I revolutionary upsurge of the German working class) had remained isolated in what was an extremely backward country. The bureaucracy with its doctrine of ‘socialism in one country’ repudiated the internationalist programme on which the revolution had been based and with increasing self-consciousness oriented toward securing a recognized placed in the capitalist-dominated world order, in the process, transformed the national Communist Parties into instruments of its counter-revolutionary foreign policy.
We must understand what Stalinism was and why it arose, the key revisions of Marxism with which it is associated (including socialism in one country, the two-stage theory of revolution, social fascism, popular frontism, and peaceful co-existence with world bourgeois), point to the key strategic experiences of the world working class that demonstrate the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism, lay bare its destructive impact on the South Asian revolution, and indict the Soviet and Chinese bureaucracies for ultimately serving as the mechanism through which capitalism has been restored in the former USSR and the People’s Republic of China.

The Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy systematically strangled the world socialist revolution, promoted a nationalist-opportunist ideology and politics that acted, as Trotsky said, as the syphilis of the world labour movement, and mercilessly persecuted and sought to physically annihilate the revolutionary cadres of the Fourth international.
It is also necessary to review the record of Stalinism in India, tracing back to the origins and evolution of the CPI and its various offshoots including the Naxalite movement. This overview would clearly show how Stalinism systematically confused and disorganized the revolutionary-minded elements, making both the Stalinist parties—CPI and CPM—an integral part of the bourgeois order.