I recently got interested in the caste system in India which was like old european class system on steroids.I heard it was originally a racial segregation practice imposed on the original aborginal/dravidian Indian population by the invading indo european tribes from Iran.
I read a lot of posts and articles related to this archaic practice.Reading all those one would think it is done by a large majority over small minority but no,I was surprised to read about the actual statistics of caste population-the lower caste people comprises of the 74% of the population in India.If this was somewhere else like Europe or Asia,this country would have been ripe for a communist revolution.
So why is it that a communist revolution has not happened in India yet?
Why does'nt India have a communist revolution?
Other urls found in this thread:
marxists.org
en.wikipedia.org
reddit.com
en.wikipedia.org
twitter.com
This is what Marx had to say about India:
marxists.org
The caste system was also pushed by British colonialism. It's not very popular with the broad masses of the Indian population, but this is the thing: Caste systems usually predate a bourgeois revolution, because capitalism frees up labor and needs a free movement of labor. This would be the orthodox view, but it's not quite what we see in India these days. Capitalism has already degenerated there in a way that the elites and the ruling party promotes the caste system to maintain the economic relations created by capital. One could see the Indian independence movement and the subsequent erection of Indian state capitalism as the bourgeois revolution India needed. India is still quite a state capitalist country, with the biggest public sector after China (and Cuba and the DPRK, of course). I think according to some other measurements, India even has a bigger state sector than China.
That being said, the communist movement is quite strong in India. If there is a chance of a large-scale revolution within the next 20 years, it would probably be carried out in India, and it would be carried out by Marxist-Leninists.
Well the Pentagon predict a large-scale uprising in urban areas in India by about 2027. Considering India is basically half way between 1914 Russia and Germany in terms of its industrialisation; it is perfectly possible that there will be a legitimate balls-to-the-wall revolution.
Also the Indian Trade Union movement is growing and really fucking fast.
They're trying. The Naxals have retreated in the East but they're still alive, and the Indian Communist Party is pretty big in some areas, especially Kerala.
The amazing thing is, India would have enough industry to be self-sustainable, India is one big fucking factory, and it would probably survive sanctions. Of course there is also a push towards a service economy, but I honestly don't see how porky could outsource industry again. Also, with the population growth and the growth of the Indian proletariat, the rate of profit will continue to go up, so there is no reason for porky to really switch to the service sector.
Indian communists are quite cool, they build strong dual power everywhere. Worker affiliations and worker activism are part of the Indian society, and they get things done, so if there was a revolution, it would be pretty democratic, as in, a proper dictatorship of the proletariat.
Wow source?
Ask this British spy
There is still small partisan warfare going on.
Why it doesn't have a full blown revolution?
I guess lack of any bigger leftist movement to lead the revolution.
Yeah India has a lot of promise. The main issue with be land reform however, and in the wrong hands it could go all Great Leap Forward again…
'friad I don't have it, I saw it in a thread on here like 5 months ago.
Indonesia, Bangladesh, Nigeria are all still viable
I found something interesting from a reddit thread
Why is this "Nehrus achievement" now? Look up our history, starting say 500 bce from when we have reliable records and show me how many civil wars we have had in total and in particular, peasant rebellions (something that has plagued contemporary states from China to Russia to then Byzantium and Egypt and even large parts of Europe).
reddit.com
Maybe it has to do with that?
They are'nt revolutionary and resembles more like social democrats than actual communists
Intereseting quote from Marx on India
"Hindostan is an Italy of Asiatic dimensions, the Himalayas for the Alps, the Plains of Bengal for the Plains of Lombardy, the Deccan for the Apennines, and the Isle of Ceylon for the Island of Sicily. The same rich variety in the products of the soil, and the same dismemberment in the political configuration. Just as Italy has, from time to time, been compressed by the conqueror’s sword into different national masses, so do we find Hindostan, when not under the pressure of the Mohammedan, or the Mogul, or the Briton, dissolved into as many independent and conflicting States as it numbered towns, or even villages. Yet, in a social point of view, Hindostan is not the Italy, but the Ireland of the East. And this strange combination of Italy and of Ireland, of a world of voluptuousness and of a world of woes, is anticipated in the ancient traditions of the religion of Hindostan. That religion is at once a religion of sensualist exuberance, and a religion of self-torturing asceticism; a religion of the Lingam and of the juggernaut; the religion of the Monk, and of the Bayadere."
The thing is in a diverse country like India the porky castes that makes up the intellectual space has made sure that the working classes will never unite against them.They do this by a method of divide and rule to make the working classes hate each other.They use every card in their hands-religion,caste,region,language and even food habits to make sure the working classes are polarized and never unite against the oppression.I am someone from TN and feel like the the land owning castes that make up the bulk of the dravidian parties in here are using the Tamil language issue to create hatred against working class immigrants from other states and even creating hatred against working class people in northern india as a whole.
India has an under-developed production economy at a time where more production is becoming automated, and they also have a growing population that they struggle to educate enough to create a valid job pool for foreign companies
if anything india is a time bomb: they put their stakes on foreign nations and have under-funded their own efforts, an example is how they are even unable to produce sufficient munitions for their army, or on an more extreme end, the fascinating record of ships sunk and capisizing, including the aircraft carrier the russians scammed them into buying.
tldr: big population, lack of education, pollution, desertification and ethnic/religious tensions == potential uprising
it has even been mentioned china could arm rebels in north-east india if a civil war or breakup were to happen
Indonesia and Bangladesh are already very similar to India in development, there is not much room for extensive growth there. It will have to come from Black Africa, the last great reservoir of reserve labour.
the Indian caste system has been going on for at least a millenium, where's the revolution.
give it afew decades, the population boom ought to do it
They had continuous population booms and the last few times they just let them starve to death when the going got tough.
this time there is ample access to arms, and no overbearing british empire
Obviously you did,it's the Idpol of choice since 2014.And all are playing it even this supposedly castiest ruling party.It's a mainstay in our media these days,even though the caste system that have been codified under the IPC is a generalized category and not something that us Hindus adheres to uniformly across the nation. It varies a lot in terms of customs,level of prejudice and categorization. And it's anything but "RACIAL" , there's no "race consciousness" among hindus let alone in this Dravidian/Aryan lines.Even the leading figure of Dalit empowerment ,Dr. Ambedkar disregarded this angle. You are terribly misinformed about Hinduism in general and playing directly in the politics that have been working strenuously against our Party , attacking us for some of our Leader being Brahmin and for "privileging class over caste".
Like said the only people that have been virulently Racist are this Dravidian Politicians. Anti-northern/bihari , who makes up the bulk of our labor force , runs amok . A element of this could even be found within the marathi extremist Shiv Sena.
Most communist parties that are active have shifted to Center Left.I am from West bengal and same happened with our last CM , Kerala is much worse however . The issue here isn't much with the parties themselves but with the Globalization which have deliberately weakened the Class Consciousness of our people.
The caste system isn't uniform or monolithic say historically,culturally or geographically.The worst aspect of the caste system that is embodied in the Manusmriti in our times don't come from a Hindu tradition rather is a piece that was complied by the British rule in order to make Hindu Laws.
The caste system and its discontent was dealt with within Hindu tradition way before modernity . It was done by our saints and Gurus. The issue here i think is typically Monotheistic and 1st world view of an entity that is radically different.
What us third world folks now need is something along the like Samir Amin proposed instead of giving into Historical Determinism.Capital thrives on such "praxis" that is all to atomistic and neoliberal.
Especially since India has, unlike most other countries that attempted socialism, a strong tradition of western liberal thought, which is likely to be a check on degeneration into bureaucratic oligarchy will help maintain genuine proletarian democracy.
What was this wikipedia entry even supposed to provide ?
FYI sati too wasn't practiced throughout India either , the southern part never had such traditions but it rose among the Rajputs and similar warrior clans.
As far as the manusmriti goes this doesn't say much,the brit's effort to codify the social structure of the subcontinent within a liberal constitutional form required them to take in the demographic(islam,hindu,buddists etc.) into consideration . While doing so in case of Islam was relatively easy , in case of the Hindus there were no such unifying texts , manusmriti by then was lost and only available in bit and pieces that wasn't adhered to religiously or may i say constitutionally,it was then compiled for better or worse. Giving it a constitutional legitimacy under common law.
Also
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
(fck bentham too)
Caste is currently illegal in India, you can't claim any entitlement even if you come from a line of whoever.
The original intention of Caste comes from The Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna says that He created the fourfold Varna and Ashrama system according to each living entity's 'guna'(quality) and 'karma'(action).
Varna literally means 'color' and yes this has been used for racist/xenophobic ends throughout time. But varna is intended to mean one's material position, according to one's predisposition towards a certain kind of work, and what they've acquired through merit. In Varna one is either a:
Brahmin, or priest. They are the 'highest' caste and are meant to lead society, but they have taken a vow of poverty and should be essentially beggars.
Ksatriya, or paladin. These are the warriors, but also saintly kings. They protect Righteousness and provide for people.
Vaisha, or merchants. One could argue that the caste system still exists, based on this class alone. It is clear that the business class is hyper-inflated, and that all the other classes serve business interests only.
Sudra, or Das, or servants. That's the proles.
I won't get into the Ashrama part, but that is the spiritual counterpart. Also the 'Aryan invasion' theory is heavily debated and generally not accepted, and to nitpick, the word 'indo-european' didn't exist until the 18th century Germans invented it to make a link that isn't really anything, as there is no historical subject of Indo-europeans.
India needs to stop looking west, they've been in this horrible, truly pathetic (not mocking, it's sad) way of rejecting the Indian as savage and embracing the 'Babu' or 'Mister/Sir' culture ever since colonization. This is a little esoteric, but I believe that Vishnu incarnated as Sri Ramakrishna (an illiterate, but fully realized saint) in the late 1800's just to show people how unimportant socalled 'wealth' and 'education' is.
Showing how poor the British administrative perception of India, which came from Mill, was.
Do you have any suggestions to counter it?Seems like ts spreading to other south indian states and it even looks like even psuedo communists have brought in to this psuedo race nationalism.
bump because it's a quality thread so far
As people have already said in the thread political uprising is almost inevitable, but it is unlikely to be Marxist in nature and if it is it will likely be coopted by some other group before the establishment of a socialist state.
The only hope is if it is backed by china.
seems like you're just describing 60 years of India under state capitalism.
India and China can never have converging geopolitical interests by pure virtue of their geography, regardless of who's in charge.
They have multiple ongoing Maoist insurgencies, but aside from that the US has made Asia their special project since the end of the Korean War, and have been relentless in doing everything they can to see as many communists as possible executed and the rest undermined or corrupted. See: Communist purges in Indonesia.