On a world scale the subjection of India has been the largest and most important basis of empire domination of the modern world. For centuries the wealth and resources of this vast territory, and the life and labour of its people, have been the object of Western capitalist penetration, aggression and expansion, and finally of absolute domination and intensive exploitation. The ending of this system will not only open up a new future for one-fifth of the human race. It will also mean a decisive change in the balance of world relations, a further weakening in the world system of imperialism, and a strengthening of the advance of freedom of the people throughout the world (Dutt 2007, p.1).

On the eve of the departure of the British coloniser, this Marxist theoretician, an eminent member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, announced the start of a new era, with the sub-continent searching for political, economic and social dignity. Considering the 2015 deadline for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), is the time ripe to make an assessment? And do we dare envisage a Marxist – or least Marxian - analysis to shine a light on the past? 

Of course, the Indian sub-continent is today divided into three states and the progress made since this time is far from negligible. But might we not agree with Rajani Palme Dutt in stating that, still today, ‘two facts stand out: one is the wealth... the natural wealth, the abundant resources, the potential prosperity of the entire existing population...; the other is the poverty..., the poverty of the overwhelming majority of the people....’ (Ibid. p. 21)? The author added – writing of the sub-continent as a whole – that: ‘Between these two lies the problem of the existing social and political order in India’.

These days we see a worrying mushrooming of experts floating ‘novel’ analyses. Rather, we should not neglect to re-visit the past. We envisage an analysis of R.P. Dutt and his work India Today as well as other documents available through the P.C. Joshi Archives of Jawaharlal Nehru University – works that have today fallen into neglect outside of Communist or Marxist circles. Looking back at the key episodes in the history of the Indian Communist movement, we will examine with Dutt its engagement in the political life of the Indian Union, then its contribution to construction of a ‘social’ India. Finally, we will look at the construction of an Indian Union in which prosperity – bragged about by so many today despite the crisis – might be brought to benefit a maximum number of men, women children: a true fulfilment of the MDGs.

References

Dutt, R.P. 2007 (reprint), India Today, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi, India.