Thanks information from review of late K.Balagopal in Economic and Political Weekly in 2009.by Harsh Thakor is a freelance journalist
A landmark book in exploring the oppressive nature of the Social Order of India and its historical origins
‘India Waits’ by Swedish Marxist Jan Myrdal, first published in 1984 and then in 2018 and 2025, reconstructs the building of the Indian state, and the transition of it’s ideology as a historical process from Chadragupta , Sher Shah. The British Raj and Indira Gandhi’s emergency. Myrdal’s Marxist approach is an attempt to de-mystify the exploitation and degradation of contemporary India and discovers a historical trail from the divide and rule tactics in reign of Chandragupta, periods of Moslem and British rule, which laid the ideological foundation of Nehru’s dynasty. He descends through the bylanes or tunnels of history to explore all the questions serious historians of India have been asking, and to provide some kind of answers of his own.
Myrdal expresses outrage at the grinding poverty, the enormous waste of human potential and violence unleashed on members of lower castes.
Myrdal must be complemented for chronicling exploring and dissecting the transition of a Colonial state into an autocratic one of a pseudo democracy.
The book also gives us an abject warning that rise of Hindutva poses a great danger and could take on the role of the German race in Hitlerite Germany.
The central theme of the book’s ideological hope is based on the Naxalite and Maoist insurgents. Documenting his travels through Sirsilla, Jagtial, and peasant guerrilla camps in Andhra and Bihar, Myrdal canvases a most illustrative picture of a disenfranchised rural underclass raising their fists against feudal oppression. His uncompromising research enables readers to transcend boundaries of urban, middle-class narratives to come to terms with the ground reality of India's poorest.
Written from a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist perspective, he projects balanced and analytical view of armed insurgency and the future of a communist revolution in India.
Tracing and linking historical origins
Myrdal makes a testament that if you venture on a serious study of nature of Indian Society, you go down the dark tunnels through 1857 and the East India Company, through Mughal mansabdars and Afghan adventurers, through temple-building and land-grants, through Manu dharmasastra, the Gita and Kautilya, through the Buddha, the Upanishads and the Vedas, to arrive out of breath at the mythical figure of the Aryan warrior with his hymns, his horse and his spokeless chariot. They give a profound explanation of why the poor of India are as oppressed as they are and why they are oppressed in the manner they are. Myrdal most coherently diagnoses how in India the past has so comprehensively eaten into the present that leaves you with little choice. His discussion of Subhas Chandra Bose unfolds the extreme complex dynamics of those times, when the world was to be saved from fascism by imperialists who had colonised and brutally subjugated a large part of mankind, and when communists had to choose between saving their skins, saving mankind from fascism, and liberating the colonised Africans and Asians from imperialism.
Criticism of British Intellectuals
Myrdal is most hard-hitting when he discusses the ideological content of intellectual activity, He points out that the outlook of British Orientalists like William Jones was shaped by the 'tax-collecting interests of the East India Company', whereas it was the rising German bourgeoisie that produced the best Indologists. At another place he points out that there is not a single British writer not even in the thirties, when most of them were leftists—who wrote of the Indian people's struggles from an anti-imperialist standpoint.
The racist content of British Orientalists' ideas about India is discovered in a discussion of the acrimonious debate between James Fergusson and Rajendra Lala Mitra concerning the history of Indian architecture.
Nature of Indian independence
Myrdal summarises why morally the independence won in India was a transfer of political power and morally was no victory for the workers and peasants. He cited important examples of m k Gandhi’s compromising nature and how major armed rebellion was impeded by the Congress party. Myrdal undertakes an extensive exploration to most illustratively showcase how economic oppression perpetrated and the Chinese revolutionary model was still relevant. He gives a vivid picture of the characteristic of India that sow the seeds for fascist weeds to bloom and how the current trends of fascism trace their origin sin the Congress party that was installed to power in 1947.
Significant that the author disagreed with Rajani Plame Dut’s analysis of the 1857 rebellion and on other important questions., particularly his pro-Moscow line.
Myrdal gives an illustrative account of the brutality of the British in supressing the 1857 uprising and during Jalianwalabagh and elsewhere , which Myrdal recounts after painstakingly exploring contemporary records, which does not often find a place in our history books, which are bent on proving that victory Indian independence was won without shedding a drop of blood, that the British get the unsolicited bonus that their brutality goes unmentioned. Interestingly, Myrdal diagnoses that the failure of the 1857 Indian uprising engineered the failure of the European revolutions of 1848.
Indian Communist Movement
Myrdal does justice to the tenacity and dedication with which the communists fought (and let us remember in our mood of denigration that they fought long and hard in certain parts of the country), notwithstanding CPGB and upper caste leaders. He evaluated what was absent was a total or grounded perspective concerning the capture of state power, the necessary strategy and the path of struggle. He analysed the role played by the extraordinary complexity of the agrarian conditions of India, and the national linguistic and communal diversity of the land, which took it’s toll on the minds of the Indian communist leadership, He examined how their intellectual cretinism is in sharp contrast to the genius thrown up by the revolutionary movements of other lands.
He was harshly critical of B T Ranadive declaring with an empty pomposity that "Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin are the authoritative sources of Marxism. It has not discovered new sources beyond these In Myrdal’s view it was the self-confession of the old communist leaders that they can never be a new source of Marxist theory or practice.
In Myrdal’s view the Indian revolution has failed. Because many of the communist leaders were brahmins, that they never got a single idea of their own, But, that the CPI was dogmatically tied to the British CP, a party that had no clue of how to bring about a revolution in its own land.
The future which India wails for Myrdal looks to the communist revolutionaries who broke out of the CPI(M) in the late sixties.
He explosively hits out at India’s traditional Left (such as the CPI(M)), analysing them as an exponent of a parliamentary system that dismantles any revolutionary momentum.
Myrdal recognises Naxalbari as a historic epoch, ushering a new dawn in India. He analyses it not only as a turning point because of being a revolutionary uprising but because it represented a new quality of the Indian masses. He asserted how Naxalbari was the first time peasants fought not just for partial demands but seizure of state power.in history of Indian peasant struggles.
Myrdal also is critical of the ‘annihilation line’ propounded and practiced by Charu Mazumdar, completely mistrusted mass action. Still, he expresses admiration of the contribution of Charu Mazumdar towards formulating path of Naxalbari. Myrdal recognises Naxalbari as a historic epoch, ushering anew dawn in India.
Telengana Armed Struggle Role
Myrdal traced the anti-feudal resistance of the 1980’s in Andhra Pradesh to the 1946-51 Telengana armed struggle. , where the mighty gentry had been overpowered by he peasant movement, inspite of the land finally being grabbed from the poor peasants. He narrated how the Telengana Armed struggle evolved into a war of liberation, with political power of peasants being established, covering 3000 villages with a population of 3,000,000. He described how power was now held by local councils of villages, elected democratically. Myrdal satirically remarked how it cost Jawaharlal Nehru more troops to fight the peasants of Telangana than to wage his first war against Pakistan. Myrdal underscores why the Telengana uprising ushered a new dawn in Indian history or Communist Movement.
Investigation of Naxalite Movement
Myrdal spent much time in Andhra and visited Sirsilla and Jagtial then recently declared 'disturbed areas', the forests of Khammam where he appears to have got hold of the photographs that adorn the book, and, of course, Bihar. He does not engage into any polemics with the Parliamentary Left, though his antipathy towards them is obvious. The book is a testament of Myrdal being no wild-eyed radical Utopian but a serious observer of Indian (and Chinese) politics. However his leaning towards the revolutionary Left is beyond doubt. He interacted with them, talked to them, visited the areas which they were then organising, and examined the hardships which they underwent. Myrdal expressed high admiration for the personal and political qualities of the Naxalites, both times he visited. On last visit he when meting cadres of the CPI(Maoist) armed squads Myrdal expressed how deeply impressed he was by their outstanding level of political and intellectual discussions and practical work.
Myrdal does justice to the goals and practices of the Naxalite of CPI(ML) groups, making a testament of how they represented genuine revolutionary democracy, having their roots cemented in an unjust social order, where morally the oppressed enjoyed no rights. Myrdal undertakes an extensive exploration to most illustratively showcase how economic oppression perpetrated and the Chinese revolutionary model was still relevant. He gives a vivid picture of the characteristic of India that sow the seeds for fascist weeds to bloom and how the current trends of fascism trace their origin sin the Congress party that was installed to power in 1947.
Myrdal gives an illustrative and intrinsic coverage of the nature and work of the armed squads, making a testament of how they rooted in the very hearts of the people.and were crystallising the blossoming of a genuine people’s culture. He carries most gripping and interview with squad leaders of the CPI(ML) Chandra Pulla Reddy group party which are enriching for readers. He made a testament of armed squads being political organisers, not anarchists or bandits, who did not plunder or commit acts of individual terrorism. He made an appraisal of their mass organisations being genuinely illegal and how the struggle for democratic rights was the principal one, narrating how the downtrodden people inhabiting the forests, lacked any legal rights. Myrdal underscored why armed struggle was not practiced out of romanticism, but out of dire necessity., to achieve an agrarian revolution. He noted there was no peoples war in progress in India or no liberated or consolidated revolutionary base areas,inspite of guerilla warfare taking place.
Myrdal undertook a case study of the village of Jagtial Taluk,of Andhra Pradesh. narrating the maner the peasant association or Rytu Colie Sanghams. carried out three executions. He described the role of private armies of landlords in safeguarding the interests of landowners and the factors that engineered agitation for basic economic demands.
Poverty and Casteism in Bihar
A most soul-searching revelation on the state of Patna and Bihar and how the condition of the villagers remained wretched. Myrdal noted caste struggle characterised the violently unstable villages of India and that the struggles were bloody because the oppressed are resisting.
He vividly describes how caste riots and caste conflicts breed acrid smoke like development, with massacres of lower caste men and rape of women a routine feature. A example was given of how in Kerserwa village in Sesaram district landlords and police caught four young lower caste men, tie them up and rode their horses over them, to break their ribs. The riders were not prosecuted. Myrdal makes a testament that caste and class aspects intersected, with caste struggles not about ancient customs or peculiar traditions.
Myrdal gives a detailed narration of an incident in Pipra, where a notorious landlord Niranjan Singh destroyed the land allotted to twenty-seven families of untouchables, who worked as landless labourers of landowner Bhola Singh and destroyed their crops. On February 25th,1980 the landowners of the Kisan Suraksha Samiti led by Bola Singh representing the Bhumihar community, for a duration of six hours shot, burnt and plundered the untouchables to punish them for demanding their lawful minimum wages.It was a result of the agricultural labourers revolting under leadership of the CPI(ML), to secure the regulated minimum wage for day’s labour of Rupees 6.
Myrdal noted caste struggle characterised the violently unstable villages of India and that the struggles were bloody because the oppressed are resisting.
Nature of Indian feudalism
Myrdal illustrates how the landowners, usurers, and their relations among government officials lived off the villages, scuttled the plans and hindered development. Myrdal traced this to the British systematization of exploitation, by carrying home the surplus. Myrdal made a striking dictonomy of India with Maoist China in the same period., comparing Indian villages to the Chinese communes. He asserted that Indian misery was not a result of lack of qualified experts, with many knowledgeable people in India. He described how Indian poverty manifested the poverty of the third world-the upper class being feudal and semi-feudal, squandering and consuming money with the poor growing poorer. He noted how as distinguished from European feudalism, in Indian feudalism the largest portion of surplus from agriculture went to non -productive consumption.
Return to India
When he returned to India in 2010,
Myrdal found a paradoxical situation, discovering that the movement
of the agrarian poor had penetrated well beyond the pockets he knew.,
with the presence of the CPI(Maoist) But he also found it many times
more difficult than in the past to visit and investigate those places
or to have an open discussion with the people—or even, for that
matter, to deliver a lecture at Kakatiya University at Warangal as he
did during his last visit. He encountered a firsthand experience of a
terribly brutalised state tightening its noose over the militant
agrarian poor and their leaders.
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