India's Freedom Struggle Influenced by Marxism

http://solidarity-us.org/atc/195/marx-bose/
Date Written:  2018-07-01
Publisher:  Against the Current
Year Published:  2018
Resource Type:  Article
Cx Number:  CX23385

In India Marxism has influenced revolutionary figures to varying degrees. As inequality rises a renewed interest in Marx that engages local philosophies could invigorate a proletarian movement.

Abstract: 
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Excerpt:

Many of the key actors in India's freedom struggle too were influenced by Marxism to varying extents, from the early revolutionaries of Bhagat Singh's HSRA and the Communist Party to leftwing Congress leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhash Chandra Bose and others.

This legacy was carried forward in different ways in the post-independence era. Development planning, building public institutions to attain self-reliance, and more radical initiatives towards asset redistribution were undertaken in states where powerful movements of workers, peasants and deprived sections could create popular, democratic alternatives relatively autonomous from ruling-class influence....

For hugely populated countries like India, China and other developing countries, with a major proportion of the workforce outside the formal capitalist sector, the rate of exploitation remains much higher than in the advanced capitalist world, alongside higher levels of underemployment and informality. The rise in inequality is also more stark, annoying and potentially destabilizing.

Therefore, on the bicentenary of his birth, the ideas of Marx not only remain distinctly relevant but are also likely to gain wider currency as the gap between the promise of universal prosperity through globalization and the actual experience of joblessness, insecurity and deteriorating living standards widens for the younger generation in the workforce.