Alternativa 18 (1993).

453-473

“Nehruvian Socialism,” 1927-1937:

Nationalism, Marxism, and the
Pursuit of Modernity

Sanjay Seth*

The specter of colonial nationalists invoking Marxist rhetoric in the

pursuit of what are clearly nonrevolutionary ends is all too familiar.
For a long period (although less so today, following the collapse of
“socialism” in Eastern Europe) many nationalist movements-and later
many postcolonial regimes-were publicly committed to some variety
or other of socialism. Frequently such claims were manifestly absurd.
Talk of socialism was designed to win over or placate the lower orders
of society or was used ,in an effort to exert leverage over the United
States or the Soviet Union, and so on. The nationalist leadership or
state elite that employed this language only too clearly had another
agenda, overt or covert, to which the references to socialism were
subordinate. In short, the “rush to socialism” was all too evidently
a cynical exercise, and it bred cynicism among many of those who
observed it.
Between 1927 and 1937, crucial years in the history of Indian
nationalism, Jawaharlal Nehru was one of those nationalists who
announced his faith in socialism, declaring that for India the struggle
for national independence had to go hand in hand with a struggle
for social transformation. In the years following 1937 the emphasis
Nehru placed on socialism lessened, but there seems little doubt
regarding the sincerity of Nehru’s convictions in the earlier period
under consideration, and the energy with which they were pursued.
The case of “Nehruvian socialism,” this article will suggest, was an
exception to the pattern referred to above-an exception that tells
US something about the character of this (influential) strand of Indian
nationalism as well as about the nature of Marxism.

*Depament of Politics, LaTmbe University, Bundoora, Victoria 5083, Australia.

453
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454 “NehruniunSocialism,”1927-1937: Nutionalism, Murrism, and the Pursuit oj Modernity

Marxism, I shall first seek to show, was a constitutive element in

Nehru’s thought; it helped him to define and sustain his nationalism,
rather than being opportunistically and artificially added onto it. I
will further seek to demonstrate that despite this, Nehruvian socialism
did represent an appropriation of Marxism in the service of what was-
and here this article is indebted to Partha Chattejee’s analysis of
Nehru’s nationalism-a modernizing, rationalist, statist, and
nonrevolutionary nationalism.’ The explanation of this does not lie,
however, in Nehru’s cynical skulduggery, nor even (as is suggested by
Chattejee) in his selective and one-sided use of Marxism. Rather, what
needs to be explained is how, if Nehru’s thought was consistent and
coherent in its use of Marxism (as I argue it was), it nonetheless equally
consistently andcoherently yielded a non-Marxist politics. Formulated thus,
the question directs us away from explanations couched exclusively
in terms of the motives of nationalists, and toward an exploration of
the nature of Marxism. I conclude by investigating what it was about
the Marxism of this period that made it prone to, even ripe for,
appropriation by modernizing nationalists such as Nehru.

Socialism and the Congress

In 1927, while in Europe, Jawaharlal Nehru proclaimed himself to be

a socialist. A year after his return to India, in his presidential address
to the Lahore Congress on December 29,1929, he declared:

I must frankly confess that I am a socialist and a republican, and

am no believer in kings and princes, or in the order which produces
the modern kings of industry, who have greater power over the lives
and fortunes of men than even the kings of old, and whose methods
are as predatory as those of the old feudal aristocracy.‘

More than six years later, upon the occasion of his second presidential
address to the Indian National Congress (INC) at Lucknow, Nehru
reaffirmed his commitment: “I am convinced that the only key to the
solution of the world‘s problem and of India’s problem lies in socialism,
and when I use this word I do so not in a vague, humanitarian way
but in the scientific, economic sense.”’
In the intervening years, Nehru had propagated his socialist ideal
at innumerable youth and trade union conferences, peasant gatherings,
and Congress-organizedpublic meetings. He had urged the desirability
and at times the inevitability of socialism in many of his published
writings, most notably the series of newspaper articles published in

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 Sanjay Seth 455

October 1933 under the title “Whither India?” and in his acclaimed
An Autobiography, written in jail betweenJune 1934 and February 1935.
Above all, Nehru had propagated socialism within the Indian National
Congress, seeking to educate and persuade the INC’s membership of
its necessity. He constantly urged the Congress to define its goal of
independence more clearly,and to do so by making social and economic
change for the benefit of the “masses” central to that definition. Such
urgings sometimes brought Nehru into conflict with the more
conservative elements that dominated the Congress, but they also
yielded some limited successes. The adoption of a Resolution on
Fundamental Rights by the INC at its Karachi Congress in 1931,which
declared, “This Congress is of the opinion that in order to end the
exploitation of the masses, political freedom must include real economic
freedom of the rnillion~,”~ was the result of Nehru’s persistent efforts.
The emphasis placed by the Congress on economic issues during the
1937 provincial assembly elections had much to do with Nehru’s urgings,
and he was the most energetic and effective campaigner for the Congress
in the lead up to the election. Nehru was also virtually the sole architect
of the anti-imperialist and generally progressive policies on
international issues adopted by the INC.
Nehru’s socialist declarations were frequently delivered from
congressional platforms and were usually couched in the first person,
as in the two passages quoted above. The use of the first person was
a consequence of Nehru’s position-that of a nationalist and a socialist
who pIayed a leading role in a heterogeneous, nonsocialist nationalist
organization. The sometimes president and frequent general secretary
of the Congress could speak only for himselfwhen speakingof socialism.
This “position” was itself an indication of one of the defining features
of Nehru’s socialism-the fact that nationalism, and a commitment
to the Congress, were the foundations upon which his association was
based. Nehru’s conversion to socialism in the 1920s did not compromise
his absolute dedication to the nationalist cause and to the Congress
as the vehicle for its pursuit This did not mean that Nehru’s socialism
amounted to no more than public declarations. It did mean, however,
that Nehru’s various activities in promoting the socialist ideal were
constrained by his commitment to nationalism and to the Congress.
Nehru sought, above all else, to radicalize the Congress-to introduce
socialist elements, step by step, into the program and practice of the
INC, at a pace that would not endanger the unity of an ideologically
diverse organization. The task of promoting socialism therefore became
an essentially ideological one of winning over increasing numbers of
adherents, and thereby facilitating the radicalization of the Congress.
If, as all this suggests, Nehru’s case was one of a nationalist who

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456 “Nehruoian Socialism,“ 1927-1937: Nufionalism, M u m i m , and fhc Pursuit of Modernify

sought to combine his nationalism with socialism, any study of Nehru’s

socialism must also consider his nationalism.

The Unity of India

The first question Nehru had to address-as indeed did any Indian
nationalist-was “What is India?” In other words, what was this entity
for which “independence” was being sought, and what constituted its
unity and distinguished it from other nations?
This question had become particularly pressing and particularly
difficult to answer with the growth of communalism in the 1920s. Indian
nationalists had to establish not only that the British had no right
to dominion over India but also, in argument and in practice, that
there was an India-a unified collective entity rather than a congerie
of (warring) religions, castes, and princely states.
Part of Nehru’s answer to the question of what constituted the unity
of India was culture. In an article directly addressed to this question,
entitled “The Unity of India,” Nehru wrote that despite the immense
variety of India, “the tremendous or fundamental fact of India is her
essential unity throughout the ages.. . . This Indian background and
unity were essentially cultural.”5
Nehru was only too well aware, however, that Indian civilization
was composed of many religions, languages, and customs-composed,
in short, of many cultures. What allowed for all these to be assimilated
into a single, all-encompassing “culture”? His answer was that Indian
culture was a synthesis. This culture was dominated, it is true, by one
particular strand within it, Hinduism. Hinduism in premodern times,
however, was “vague, amorphous, many sided, all things to all men.
It is hardly possible to define it.’’a Because it could not be defined,
because it was a way of life rather than a religion, it was inclusive
rather than exclusive. Indian culture was Hindu only in the sense that
it was marked by a flexibility and tolerance that enabled it to synthesize
the many cultures of invaders of India into the one culture-one
dominated not by any specific set of beliefs and practices but by the
principle of tolerance.’
Culture, then, was part of Nehru’s answer as to what constituted
the unity of India. Taken by itself, however, this answer did not satisfy
him, for this unity was the combination (or synthesis) of so many
particularities of religion, caste, custom, and so on that it was not an
inner or organic unity. Moreover, as we shall see, Nehru was a vehement
critic of many of these particularities. It was not upon these that he
wished to found an independent nation.

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 Sanjay Seth 457

Furthermore, such a unity was an unconscious one. Culture provided

bonds that united Hindus and Muslims, Bengalis and Pathans, and
so on; but it did not provide a subjective desire to realize and express
this unity politically, in the form of a nation-state. It was only with
the rise of nationalism that an objective unity began to find subjective
expression. In Nehru’s words, it was “The growth of a powerful
nationalist movement in India, represented by the National Congress”
that had “demonstrated the political unity of India.” It was “This
voluntary organisation, commanding the willing allegiance of millions”
that had “played a great role in fixing the idea of Indian unity in
the minds of our masses.”*
Culture provided the foundations for unity, but this unity found its
active expression in an organization, one that represented the will of
the people. This organization was the Congress, which was at once
proof of the unity of India (because it commanded the “willing
allegiance of millions”) and the instrument for forging that unity. It
was the latter because even the Congress was not an adequate or
complete expression of the unity of India. It was an instrument in
pursuit of the goal that would properly express that unity-Swaraj, or
independence.
What exactly was meant by Swaraj? Seeking to present this idea in
a form relevant and accessible to a semirural audience in the town
of Sultanpur, Nehru described it as follows:

Swaraj means a kind of fianchayaii [village council] rule under which

the common people will elect their representatives and manage their
own affairs. . .apanchayatirule in which all the people of the country-
whether they are Hindus, Muslims, or people of any other faith-
will have equal rights and they will rule their country, with the help
of these rights?

The unity of India was to be embodied in a nation-state in which

all people, irrespective of their religious and other identities, would
have equal rights-above all, the right to representation. The Indian
nation would represent the Indian people without regard to their
numerous particularities. This was the message Nehru took to the Indian
masses: in The D i s c w q of India he described how he endeavored to
explain to ordinary folk that,

what counted ultimately were the people of India, people like them
and me, who were spread out all over this vast land. Bharat Mala,
Mother India, was essentially these millions of people, and victory

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458 ”Nehruuian Socialism,” 1927-1937: Nationalism, Marxism, and the Pursuit of Modernity

to her meant victory to these people. You are parts of this Bhurut
Mutu, I told them, you are in a manner yourselves Bhrut Mutu.’”

This, it is very apparent, was an eminently modern nationalism.

The nation was the people who constituted it, and whom it represented.
But this people was itself, of course, aconstruct-to characterize Hindus,
Muslims, and so on as “the people” was to abstract from their
particularities a common essence, and thereby construct them as
homogeneous. Thus the demand for an Indian nation was at once
made possibk because an abstract and homogeneous people were
posited, and its achievement also created this people. The Indian nation,
once founded, would, through its panoply of abstract laws and juridical
rights, constitute out of Punjabis, Gujaratis, Hindus, and so on an Indian
people.
Culture, then, was a point of departure in Nehru’s argument for
the unity of India, but the argument itself departed from its reliance
upon culture, It was a shared culture-with all the particularities of
religion, caste, language, and region thus implied-that conferred unity
upon India. But India was not simply culture; this unity ‘found its
concrete expression, its material embodiment, in the form of a nation-
state-which would posit and render its own foundations abstract and
homogeneous-as a peopIe. India was thus the Indian people stripped
of all their particularities; the citizen was the foundation of the nation.
The constituent elements of this nationalism were rooted in a history
and a culture other than that of India. Some of the central concepts
in Nehru’s nationalism-the people, democracy, rightsi representa-
tion-derived from a sensibility different from that which informed
the nationalism of a Tilak or a Gandhi. This “sensibility” made its
first appearance, and was elaborated, in the course of the European
Enlightenment, and it was this Enlightenment sensibility that was at
the heart of Nehru’s very notion of India. We turn now to a further
examination of this aspect of Nehru’s thought.

Rationalism and Historicism

The independent India for which Nehru struggled was’onethat would

be modern. According to Nehru, one of the central aspects of modernity
was the sovereignty of reason. Nehru was one of her most ardent
champions. Thus he urged a youth conference to “reject also everythirig,
however hallowed it may be by tradition and convention and religious
sanction, if your reason tells you that it is wrong or unsuited to the
present condition.””

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 Sanjay Seth 4.59

As this passage indicates, Nehru espoused reason in a battle against

unreason. “Our chief enemy [in India] today,” he wrote, “is absence
of reason, and its necessary consequence-bigotry.”l* The corrective
to this, which Nehru continually urged, was to “honour reason more
and test everything by the light of that reason.. . . We must cultivate
the spirit of enquiry and welcome all knowledge whether the source
of it is the East or the West.”1’
Reason or its synonym, science, were the “spirit of the age,”“ and
they had thus also to be applied to the manner in which the
independence struggle was conceived and conducted. The mysticism
and revivalism that had accompanied the growth of Indian nationalism
had to be rejected. “Our politics,” Nehru wrote, “must be either those
of magic or of science.” His own preference was unequivocal:
“Personally,I have no faith in or use for the ways of magic and religion
and I can only consider the question on scientific grounds.”15
Such an Enlightenment espousal of reason, science, and critical
enquiry-of rationalism, to employ a convenient shorthand-was not
new in the history of Indian nationalism. Such an outlook, albeit in
a less consistent and uncompromising version, more or less dominated
the Congress before the advent of the extremists and‘later of Gandhi.
Such a rationalism, however, sat uneasily with nationalism. Because
the rationalist or scientific outlook was usually seen as a peculiarly
European product, and its arrival in India was inseparable from the
British conquest of India, admiration for and a desire to emulate this
“virtue” were not easily compatible with a militant nationalism. This
was precisely the dilemma of the Indian liberal nationalists in the
latter part of the nineteenth and the early twentieth century-their
rationalism compromised their nationalism. And, as Indian nationalism
took a more aggressive turn at the end of the nineteenth century,
this liberal tradition came to be denounced by many for its uncritical
adoption of European values and standards, and for the ineffective
nature of its political agitation.
In the case of Nehru, rationalism was not compromised in any such
way, for his rationalism was accompanied by a rejection of essentializing
categories in favor of a historicism. Thus according to Nehru the contrast
often drawn both by imperialists and by the revivalist strands of Indian
nationalism-between a “materialistic” West and a “spiritualistic”
East-was entirely without foundation. “Differences there are,” he
acknowledged, “but they are chiefly due to different stages of economic
growth.”16
The differences between East and West were the product of their
different trajectories of economic development, and thus of their
different histories. Science and industry were the products not of Western

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460 “Nehruvian Socialism,” 1927-1937: Nationalism, Mamism, and tkc Pursuit of Modernity

culture, but of history; that they were so closely associated with the
West was a function of the uneven nature of historical development,
not of any essential superiority of Westerners or their culture.
Specifically, these differences were largely a result of the industrial
revolution in the West:

Fundamentally there was no basic difference between the East and

the West before the advent of the machine age. . . .The real difference
that we observe today between the East and the modern West was
therefore introduced by the industrial age. The virtues of the West
are the virtues of industrialisation:science, organisation,cooperation,
activity; and the so-called virtues and vices of the East are those
which, in a large measure, could be found in the West before the
machine age.”

The virtues of the West were in this way acknowledged, but also
immediately historicized, and thereby detached from their Western
origins. Rationalism and nationalism were thereby reconciled with the
aid of historicism. Western science, industry, and even social institutions
could now be praised and emulated by a militant nationalism-precisely
by postulating their sociohistorical origins, rather than their origins
in a specific spirit or culture. Indeed, it was now possible for nationalism
to assume a radical, transformative position, to criticize Indian culture
vigorously from a modern rationalist perspective without ceasing to
be nationalist, Nehru told a student audience:

I see no particular reason to pride ourselves on our peculiarities,

angularitiesand insularities. . . . I am not unconsciousof the greatness
of our past. But when I study our later history and survey our present
condition I see very little of the chosen people about us.. . . Indian
civilisation today is stagnant.”

Because Western virtues were no longer seen as specifically Western,

a project for the transformation of India along Western lines was now
compatible with the most militant of nationalisms. Nehru could bluntly
write to Gandhi:

You have stated somewhere that India has nothing to learn from
the West.. . . I entirely disagree with this viewpoint and I neither
think the so-called Rama Raj was very good in the past, and nor
do I want it back. I think the western or r u t h industrial civilisation
is bound to conquer India.ID(emphasis added)

Such a n outcome-the transformation of India along Western, “or

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 Sanjay Seth 461

rather industrial,” lines-was, Nehru frankly declared, precisely what

he desired:

I believe in industrialisation and the big machine and I should like

to see factories springing up all over India. I want to increase the
wealth of India and the standard of living of the Indian people and
it seems to me that this can only be done by the application of science
to industry resulting in large scale industrialisation.’O

Thus Nehru’s rationalism went hand in hand with a desire to

“modernize” India. These were, in fact, but two sides of what Nehru
termed the “spirit of the age”-the spirit of science or reason, and
its achievements (industry, technology, etc.). This commitment to a spirit,
which had its origins in Europe, was reconciled with nationalism by
the aid of a historicism that owed much to Marxism.

Nationalism and Internationalism

“Reason” for Nehru was not merely a category or a yiewpoint; it was,

in his view, in the process of being actualized in history. Science,
industry, and technology were all so many manifestations of the march
of reason through history-of progress. Progress was the development
and spread of science and industry-the progressive universalization
of reason. This development and spread of science and industry led
to the creation of a single world, one marked by increasing
commonalities and interdependence. As Nehru never tired of repeating,
“The world has become internationalised.. . . No nation is really
independent, they are all interdependent”*’
Nehru saw the increasing internationalization of the world as a
symptom of progress. He lamented the Indian nationalist movement’s
ignorance of world developments and sought to remedy what he saw
as its insularity. Through his writings and speeches and the resolutions
he sponsored through the Congress, Nehru was the architect of what
eventually emerged as a coherent foreign policy, covering most of the
important issues and events of his day-peace, empire, China,
Abyssinia, Spain, and so on.
But if internationalism was an embodiment of progress, what then
of nationalism-the elevation of the particular? Nehru’s response was
uncompromisingly honest. Nationalism, he would declare, was normally
narrow, provincial, and particularistic, and as such it was contrary to
the real movement of history. “Although the myth of nationalism
flourishes and holds men’s minds, it is an outworn creed and

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462 “Nehruoian Socialism,” 1927-1937: Nationalism, Marrism, and the Pursuit of Modernity

internationalism approximates more and more to reality.”PPSuch a

narrow nationalism was not what he wished to emulate. He once said,
“I do not want our country to be a victim of that narrow nationalism
which is now to be found in almost all countries of Europe and Africa.”45
Here indeed was a mature nationalism-one that pointed to Europe
not as the justification for its own project, but as an example to be
avoided. At the same time, this commitment to internationalism did
not lead to a rejection of nationalism as such. Instead, a distinction
was made between “good” and “bad” nationalisms, distinguished by
their content and their hisston’cal context (for nationalism also did not
escape history).
For, Nehru’s argument ran, even if reason (in the form of science
and industry) was becoming universal, the manner of this universal-
ization was a profoundly unreasonable and inequitable one. One of
the specific historical mechanisms by which the world was increasingly
becoming “one” was imperialism.Thus the increasing interdependence
shown by the nations of the world was not one between equals but
between imperialist powers and the colonized. This was not a true
internationalism, for it lacked the crucial elements of equality and
freedom. “The British Empire and real internationalism,” as Nehru
put it, “are as poles apart, and it is not through that empire that we
can march to internati~nalism.”~‘
The real internationalism that Nehru sought required not a rejection
of nationalism but an affirmation of it-“progress can only come
through more and more internationalism. But there can be no real
internationalism unless the component parts are entirely free. . . . Thus
though we must look forward to an international order, we can only
reach it by achieving national independence first.”*)
In Nehru’s thought, then, the universal and the particular, nationalism
and internationalism, were reconciled by means of the crucial mediating
concept of imperialism. Indeed, not only were they reconciled, but
national freedom was found to be essential to the achievement of real
internationalism. Not all nationalisms were progressive-all too often,
nationalism was “narrow and aggressive.” But where it was the
nationalism of the oppressed, and where it was self-consciously anti-
imperialist and internationalist, it was an essential part of the progress
of history,

Nehruvian Socialism

Nehru’s nationalism, we see, w a s a rationalist, modernizing and

universalizing nationalism. Marxist historicism and the concept of

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 Sanjay Seth 463

imperialism were what made this combination possible, and what

enabled Nehru to combine nationalism with rationalism, and
nationalism with internationalism.
It should not be thought, however, that Nehru merely “borrowed”
from Marxism selectively in order to fill embarrassing gaps in a non-
Marxist discourse. The notions of history and its progress were, as
we have seen, central to Nehru’s thought. In his 1936 Congress
presidential address, he urged his audience, “Let us try to develop
the historic sense so that we can view current events in proper
perspective and understand their real significance. Only then can we
appreciate the march of history and keep step with it.”Pa
This historic sense, Nehru wrote in his autobiography, was provided
for him by the Marxist conception of history- “History came to have
a new meaning for me. The Marxist interpretation threw a flood of
light on it, and it became an unfolding drama with some order and
purpose, howsoever unconscious, behind it. In spite of the appalling
waste and misery of the past and the present, the future was bright
with hope, though many dangers inter~ened.”~’
Thus Nehru’s Marxist historicism was part of his more general
acceptance of the materialist conception of history. For Nehru historical
materialism represented, as it did for most of his contemporaries, a
form of economic determinism. He characterized Marxism thus:
“Essentially it is based on certain scientific methods of trying to
understand history, trying to understand from past events the laws that
govern the development of human society.. . . Marx showed that the
economic factor was the most important factor.”P*
This Marxist economic reductionism gave Nehru, or so he thought,
the means by which to understand India’s problems and their solutions:
“as I conceive it, the fundamental problem of India really is economic
in its various aspects.”PgThus, for example, communalism-that bane
of the Indian nationalist movement-was analyzed by Nehru as a case
of elites pursuing their economic interests by manipulating the religious
sentiments of the masses, a manipulation made possible by the economic
disparities between the two communities.It was this same understanding
that informed Nehru’s persistent (and partially successful) efforts to
persuade the INC to link the nationalist demand to the most pressing
economic and social needs of the peasantry and proletariat. Such a
recognition of the importance of economic factors ultimately led,
according to Nehru, to socialist conclusions: “Nationalism . . though .
inevitable under the present conditions, offers no solution of the basic
.
economic problems of the country.. . Socialism, on the other hand,
directly tackles all such problems.’’So
If Nehru’s historicism was part of his more general acceptance of

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464 “Nehruoian Socialism,” 1927-1937: Nationalism, Mamism, and the Pursuit of Modernity

historical materialism, he similarly did not simply use the concept of

imperialism rhetorically. Although the concept was not developed or
used rigorously by him, it played a similar role in his thought to the
role it played in Lenin’s. By distinguishing between oppressor and
oppressed nations, it legitimated certain nationalisms, while adopting
a critical stance to nationalism in general. Furthermore, Nehru drew
what a Marxist might (and what Indian communists did) consider to
be the “logical conclusion” from the theory of imperialism-namely,
that as a n anti-imperialist struggle, the Indian struggle for
independence had of necessity to tend toward also being a n
anticapitalist struggle.
It was not the case, then, that Nehru appropriated certain elements
of Marxism in order to bolster a rationalist and modernizing
nationalism. Nehru’s nationalism was constructed upon a foundation
that was not only rationalist but also socialist. Nor, as I shall now argue,
did Nehru conceive of these as different elements simply added together.
I n “Whither India?” Nehru answered the question posed by his title
as follows:

Whither India? Surely to the great human goal of social and economic
equality, to the ending of all exploitation of nation by nation and
class by class, to national freedom within the framework of an
international cooperative socialist world federation?’

This passage contains many of the elements that we have identified

as central to Nehru’s thought. The goal that India had to pursue was
a universal one, embodied in a cooperative federation of nations. The
path to this universal goal, however, required an end to imperialism;
it required national freedom instead of national oppression. The goal
was also one of social and economic equality, a goal to be achieved
by, and embodied in, socialism.
Underpinning all this was a notion of progress-a goal to which
humanity tended, marked by the triumph of reason, universality, and
justice. There were, as Nehru recognized, different conceptions and
measures of progress, and he urged his nationalist colleagues to adopt
the right measure, for only then could progress be properly recognized
and facilitated:

Most of us have grown up under the nationalist tradition and it is

hard to give up the habits of a lifetime . , . the process of crossing
over to a new ideology [socialism] is always a painful one.. .. But
the crossing has to be made, unless we are to remain in a stagnant

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 Sanjay Seth 465

backwater, overwhelmed from time to time by the wash of the boats

that move down the river of progress.”

Here socialist theory, with its emphasis upon economic equality and
international cooperation, pointed to the direction in which to move
and provided the criteria by which progress was to be measured. It
thus not only made possible a worldview that saw history as the progress
of reason, it was a constitutive part of that rationalism. In fact, in
helping to define the ultimate human goal, socialism was not only
part of, but was the highest point of, rationalist thought.
If this was so of socialist theory, it was also true of socialism as
a social system. The conflict between capitalism and socialism, Nehru
wrote,

is not, fundamentally, a moral issue, as some people imagine . . . the

question now is whether the capitalist system has not outlived its
day and must now give place to a better and saner ordering of human
affairs, which is more in keeping with the progress of science and
human knowledge.”

Socialism, in other words, was that “saner” and &ore “scientific”

ordering of society-it was the application of science and knowledge
to human affairs. It was thus part of-indeed the culmination of-
the march of reason through history. If what we have termed
“rationalism” was a constitutive element in Nehru’s nationalist vision,
socialism was in turn a constitutive element of his rationalism, and
not something external to and added on to it.

Nehruvian Socialism and Marxism

Does this mean, then, that Nehru was a Marxist? In support of an

answer in the affirmative are the facts that Nehru publicly committed
himself not only to socialism but to Marxian, or “scientific,” socialism.
As a nationalist he repeatedly emphasized that national independence
could only be achieved-and, moreover, would only be truly
meaningful-if it enlisted the support of the poor and oppressed, and
if national independence had a socialistic content. On international
questions there was usually not much to distinguish his position from
that of communists. Here, then, was a nationalist who had imbibed
the lessons of Marxism, one who was living proof of the communist
contention that any militant and clear-minded nationalism had perforce
to have socialist leanings.

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466 “Nehruoian Socialism,” 1927-1937: Nationalism, Marxism, and thr Punuit of Modernity

Against characterizing Nehru as a Marxist we have the fact that

his efforts to combine nationalism and socialism took place largely
within the INC and were constrained by it. Nehru did not assign a
preponderant role to the working class in the struggle for national
liberation, as the communists did. For this and other reasons, for most
of the period under consideration Indian communistswere denouncing
Nehru as an “agent” of a bourgeoisie eager to compromise with
imperialism rather than fight it-although after the Seventh Congress
of the Comintern in 1935, Indian communists were to reverse that
position, assidiously seeking to woo Nehru. All these are certainly reason
enough to avoid mistaking Nehru for a communist, a label he himself
repeatedly disavowed.” Whether they are reason enough to eschew
calling him a Marxist is another matter. Obviously, to raise the question
of whether Nehru was a Marxist is also to raise the issue of what
it meant to be a Marxist in the colonies; it is to raise the question
of what differentiated Marxism from other political philosophies that
also made national liberation a central concern and goal. This is an
issue I shall return to.
The question I have posed can be answered by switchingour attention
to the histon’cul meaning of Nehruvian socialism. Here the historical
record would seem to provide a clear answer, demonstrating as it does
the gap between Nehru’s socialist protestations and what was actually
achieved, and even what he in actual fact sought to achieve. Nehru
was not a Marxist.
Such an exercise in debunking would be to the point in demonstrating
the limitations of Nehruvian socialism and, in the ultimate analysis,
the inaptness of the latter term. It would also be politically salient
because Nehru’s legacy continues to be a matter for political debate
and contestation. However, such an analysis would leave unexplained
why Marxism was, nevertheless, an important element in Nehru’s
thought. It would highlight, but not explain, the gap between the
historical significance of Nehruvian socialism and its intellectual
content.
To explain this, one could take the argument a decisive step further
by situating Nehru’s thought within another non-Marxist project and
specifying the relation between this and Nehru’s socialism, as Partha
Chatterjee has done so well. Chatterjee has argued that nationalists
like Nehru appropriated Marxism’s emphasis on economic factors as
the “motor” of social development, and Marxism’s claims to possessing
a “scientific” outlook, finding in these “a particularly useful theoretical
foothold from which they could reach out and embrace the rationalist
and egalitarian side of Marxism, leaving its political core well alone.”’s
For nationalists who sought to modernize their nation, the criteria

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 Sanjay Seth 467

of economic progress provided a scientific basis upon which to

distinguish the progressive from the backward. Marxism “provided a
new scientific legitimation to a whole set of rationalist distinctions
between the modern and the traditional, the secular and the religious,
the progressive and the obscurantist, the advanced and the backward.”s6
Chatterjee suggests, as we have done, that for such a nationalism
Marxism appeared (and hence its attraction) as “the most advanced
expression yet of the rationalism of the European enlighten men^""
Once interpreted in this way, Marxism was then appropriated by
a modernizing, secular, rationalist, but nonrevolutionary nationalism.
This nationalism-a new development in the history of nationalist
thought in India-represented a “reconstruction” of nationalist
thought, “a reconstruction whose specific form was to situate
nationalism within the domain of a state iu!eology’”8 For in this
nationalism the establishment of an independent Indian nation-state
was desired not simply as a question of sovereignty; that state was
also seen as the motor, the instrument, for the modernizing of India.
This was a nationalist datisme, “explicitly recognising a central,
autonomous and directing role of the state and legitimising it by a
specifically nationalist marriage between the ideas of progress and
social justice.”sg
This reading is highly persuasive. We have already discussed the
importance of Marxism to Nehru’s nationalism-how it enabled him
to adopt a critical and transformative stance toward Indian society,
how it enabled him to combine nationalism with internationalism, and
so on. Situating Nehru’s Marxism within another project in this way
explains why his Marxism nevertheless did not lead to a revolutionary
politics. It also, we may note in passing, helps to explain the post-
Independence trajectory of Nehru’s politics-the efforts to modernize
and create some degree of economic equality through state-sponsored
capitalism.
Despite its explanatory power, however, to the extent that such an
analysis implies-as even Chatterjee does-that Nehru’s appropriation
of Marxism was deliberately selective and hence ~uperficial’~(even
if the suggestion of cynical “trickery” is avoided), it is mistaken. What
was distinctive about Nehru’s thought, as I have sought to show, was
that Nehru’s appropriation of Marxism was not carefully selective and
superficial. Nehru was not a communist, it is true; but nor did he
simply borrow a few phrases and concepts from Marxism to buttress
a modernizing, datist nationalism. Marxism, as argued, was rather a
central, constitutive element in what was, still, a modernizing and etatist
nationalism.
Chatterjee’s analysis, then, takes us further, but it still leaves us with

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468 ”Nehruoian Socialism,” 1927-1937: Nationalism, Marxism, and the Pursuit of Modernity

a paradox: Nehruvian socialism did not cynically “use” Marxism for

non-Marxist ends, yet it did represent the appropriation of Marxism
in the service of a nationalism that was not Marxist.

Nationalism, Marxism, and Modernity

How was this possible? If the answer does not lie in Nehru’s
opportunism, in concluding we should perhaps look more closely at
what kind of Marxism it was that Nehru appropriated. Let us do so
first by focusing upon the relationship of Marxism to its intellectual
heritage.
Mam’s thought was at once heir to the Enlightenment, and an attempt
to develop a radical critique of some of the central concepts
Enlightenment thought bequeathed to subsequent intellectual systems.
“Enlightenment” is used here in a very broad sense, to include many
post-Enlightenment intellectual developments: as used here it denotes,
in effect, modernity-a “way of thinking,” embodied in certain notions
and concepts,which was born in the eighteenth century and has shaped
the Western intellectual tradition since.
Prominent in this way of thinking were notions of the paramountcy
of reason; of history as progress, and particularly as a process of the
mergence of reason into its own: of knowledge as science (a conception
of knowledge deeply indebted to the developments in natural science);
an evolutionist view of history and a view not only that history has
order and meaning but that order and meaning reside in history; and
so on. Not all of these notions were “discovered” by the Enlightenment,
and some (certainly historicism) do not, strictly speaking, belong to
it at all. But the Enlightenment sensibility marks the ground in which
such conceptions grew, until they gained a currency that marked them,
precisely, as features not of Enlightenment thought but of “modern”
thought.
Mam, as is obvious at first glance, also accepted many of these
notions. At the same time, he sought to subject this whole intellectual
system to a far-reaching critique, in at least two important senses. He
accepted and developed some of the central categories of bourgeois
thought, thereby revealing their contradictions and limitations-the
method of an ‘immanent critique’. His Economic and Philosophic
hfanuscri)ts and the first part of Capital Z (on value) are particularly
good illustrations of this.
Marx also sought to show that all systems of thought were products
of particular historical and social conditions. Thus the Enlightenment
became the bourgeois Enlightenment, and its most fundamental

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 Sanjay Seth 469

propositions (and errors), it w a s suggested, bore the marks of these

historical conditions. It w a s not simply a question of errors and
shortcomings of particular thinkers (though these existed), which were
to be discovered and then corrected or else rejected. Marx’s relationship
to pre-Marxist thought, rather, w a s first to show the conditions that
produced and shaped that thought; and second, recognizing these
fundamental (because historical) limitations, to develop a new world
view based upon different historical conditions, precisely by
“overthrowing” and “superseding” past systems of thought-by
subjecting them to a radical critique.
If Marxism, in the hands of its founder, bore such a twofold
relationship to Enlightenment thought-as part of the modernity the
Enlightenment ushered in, but also as a critique of it-it is also true
that in Marx’s thought this relationship was uneasily maintained. In
Marx’s writings, the project of critique is always present, but always
also partial and incomplete. It is this that provides many ambiguities-
but also much of the creative tension-in Marx’s thought,
In Marxism, as it came to be systematized by Engels and leading
figures of the Second and Third International-Plekhanov, Kautsky,
Stalin, and also (although here the picture is more cofnplex) Lenin-
much of this ambiguity and tension was lost, Marxists came to conceive
of their theory as a science, above all as a science of history. This
was possible precisely because history was assumed to be a rigid
evolutionary process, governed by ironclad laws. Scientism and
evolutionism came to reinforce each other-history and society were
governed by “laws,” and science was the grasping of these laws in
thought.
Marxists thus came to accept and incorporate the central notions
and categories of the Enlightenment. To be sure, their content was
transformed. Progress was above all a matter of economic progress;
science was itself imbedded in history, and thus shaped by historical
conditions; and so on. But, with their new content, these concepts
became central to Marxism. And Marxism’s relationship with
Enlightenment thought thus changed fundamentally. Marx’s immanent
critique was not pursued. In the hands of most of his successors his
historical critique now took the form of saying: Enlightenment thought,
because of the historical circumstances of its production, is “blind”
to things such as the class “motor” of social development, to the
historically bound nature of its own vision of society, and so on. That
is, Enlightenment categories were treated as “mistaken” in the sense
that they were incorrectly or incompletely developed. But take away
the veil and the self-samecategories-of reason, science, and progress-
were held to yield truth. Reason, science and progress were not themselves

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470 ”Nehruoian Sorialism,” 1927-1937: Nationalism, Marxism, and the Pursuit of Modernity

to be subjected to a critique. Marxism became and presented itself,

often explicitly, as the fulfillment and true heir to the Enlightenment,
a knowledge expunged of its “bourgeois” limitations and mistakes, and
thus constituted as a true science.
Thus, even where Marxism remained, politically, a radical,
transformative project, it no longer aimed at a critique of Enlightenment
thought. Indeed, its political radicalism increasingly rested upon its
particular manner of interpreting and appropriating this thought.
Science revealed that history’s laws led to socialism; science and
historical evolution were the guarantors of the truth and ultimate victory
of socialism.
It is this-Marxism as a scientific theory of historical evolution-
which lent itself to appropriation by a theory and a project that was
not Marxist. In Europe this took the form not of Marxism being
appropriated but rather of one section of the Marxist-inspired workers’
movement abandoning revolutionary politics. After the great split in
the communist movement in the aftermath of World War I and the
Russian Revolution, that section of it which remained faithful to the
politics of the Second Congress of the Communist International soon
ceased to be qualitatively different from other brands of radical or
liberal politics. Marxism in its Leninist form, which had broken with
some of the potiticul consequences of such an uncritical assimilation
of Enlightenment concepts, provided in its emphasis on class struggle,
the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the necessity of revolutionary
rather than evolutionary roads to ,socialism a “political core,” which
continued to distinguish Marxists of this type from other radicals and
liberals. Wherever this core was diluted-as during the Popular Front
period and later in Eurocommunism-the differences between Marxism
and other post-Enlightenment radical political philosophies narrowed.
However, in the East, Marxism in its Leninist reformulation itself
narrowed the gap between its positions and one of the main forms
of non-Marxist politics in the colonies-nationalism. It did so the
moment it introduced and made central to its politics a distinction
between “oppressor” and “oppressed” nationalisms, and endorsed the
latter. At the Second Congress of the Communist International, in 1920,
Lenin’s “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions” insisted that
communistsdistinguish “between the oppressed, dependent and subject
nations and the oppressing, exploiting and sovereign nations.” Finding
that in countries of the former type nationalism was historically
inevitable and moreover was progressive, the theses went on to call
on communist parties to find ways of assisting and developing national
liberation movements in the colonies and semicolonies?’ Subsequent
Comintern Congresses arrived at different formulations on how this

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 Sunjay Seth 471

was to be done, but Lenin’s dictum that the colonial question was
first and foremost a national question remained virtually
unchallenged.‘*
Thus when a communist politics came to be developed in and for
India-a small Communist Party of India was founded in 1925-
nationalism’was at the heart of it. The “political core” of Marxism
in the colonies-that which distinguished it from others seeking national
liberation-shrank to a series of propositions relating to strategic and
organizational questions. Thus in the East there was this added element
that had the effect of narrowing the gap between Marxism and other
political philosophies and movements, making possible an appropri-
ation of Marxism-the Marxist endorsement of nationalism (and, one
could add, Soviet socialism’s strong emphasis on the state as the
instrument for industrialization).
It was this combination of Marxism’s endorsement of nationalism and
its development into the most consistent form of Enlightenment
rationalism that facilitated its appropriation by a nationalism of the
Nehruvian type, one that was also committed to modernization and
also wedded to notions of science and progress. In the colonies, where
Marxism was not a critique of modernity, and whert it was largely
shorn of a distinctive political core, it could be appropriated by a
rationalist and modernizing nationalism without doing violence to
Marxism-that is, without cynicism and careful selection. Indeed, such
a “fusion,” amounting to the appropriation of Mamism bj nationalism,
would be successful. It would result in the production of a nationalism
that could at once be critical of India yet nationalist, internationalist,
and rationalist-a nationalism that could define progress and identify
its project as representing progress in the very measure that it was
genuine rather than cynical and selective.
This, then, was the meaning of Nehruvian socialism. Marxism was
attractive to it because it helped underwrite a modernist and statist
nationalism; and its appropriation of Marxism was possible because
of the nature of Marxism as it developed after Marx and because of
the position Marxists came to adopt toward colonial nationalism.

Notes

1. Partha Chattejee, Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World (London: Zed

Books, 1986).
2. Jawaharal Nehru, Selected Works, S. Copal, ed. (Orient Longman. 1972),
vol. 4, p. 192. (Hereafter this work is cited in the form, SW followed by the
volume number.)

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472 ”Nehruoian Socialism,” 1927-1937: Nationnlism, Marrism, and thc Pursuit of Modrmity

3. SU: 7, p, 180.
4. SU: 4. p. 511
5. J. Nehru, “The Unity of India,” in The Unity of India: Collected Writings
1937-40 (London: 1948), pp. 14-15. (This article was first published January
1938.)
6. Ibid., p. 77.
7. For a discussion of how Nehru sought to avoid essentialist constructions
of India by grounding Indian identity in “history”-and the problems attendant
on this-see SanjaySeth, “Nationalism,National Identity and ‘History’:Nehru’s
Search for India,” Thesis Eleven, no. 32 (1992).
8. Ibid., p. 19.
9. J. Nehru, “Speech at Sultanpur” (June 27,1936). SU: 7, pp. 297-298.
10. J. Nehru, Discovery of India (Calcutta: 1956), p. 63,
11. J. Nehru, “Presidential Address to Bombay PresidencyYouth Conference”
(December 12,1928). SU: 3, p. 205.
12. J. Nehru, “The Past and the Present” (August 1934), SU: 6, p. 439
13. Ibid.. p. 436.
14. J. Nehru, “Address to Indian Science Congress,” in The Unity of India,
note 5, p. 175.
15. J. Nehru, “Whither India” (October 1933). SU: 6, p. 3.
16. Ibid., p. 5.
17. J. Nehru, “Paper Read to International League of Women for Peace and
Liberty” (September 19271, SU: 2, p. 333. Similarly, in a speech to a student
meeting in Bombay (May 20,1928) Nehru declared that “Europe of the Middle
Ages was much the same as Asia of the Middle Ages.” SW 3, p. 185.
18. May 20,1928, SW, 3, pp. 185-186.
19. January 11, 1928, SU: 3, p. 14.
20. Nehru, note 15, p. 26.
21. J. Nehru, “India and the Need for International Contacts” (May 13,1928).
SU: 3, p. 379.
22. Ibid.
23. J. Nehru, “On the Indian Situation” (March 2,1927), SU: 2, p. 297.
24. Nehru, note 15, p. 16.
25. J. Nehru, press interview in Calcutta Uanuary 16, 1934), SU: 6, p. 90.
26. SU: 7, p. 180.
27. J. Nehru, An Autobiography (London, 1936). pp. 362-363
28. J. Nehru, “Address to Congress Socialist Party” (November 7, 1936). SU:
7, p. 542.
29. J. Nehru, “On the Indian Problem” (February 4,1936). SU: 7, p. 92
30. J. Nehru. “On the Indian Situation” (November 12,1935). SU: 7, p. 37.
31. Nehru, note 15, p. 16.
32. Ibid., p. 12.
33. Ibid., p. 8.
34. See, for example, Nehru. note 27, pp. 366,591.
35. I! Chattejee, note 1, p. 145.
36. Ibid., p. 140.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid., p. 132.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid., especially p. 140.

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 Sanjay Seth 473

41. K Lenin, “Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Questions,” in

Lenin, Colkcted Works, vol. 31 (Moscow 1966), pp. 145-151.
42. For a more detailed discussion of this, and of its implications for Marxism
as a theoretical system and as a political movement in the colonies, see Sanjay
Seth, “Lenin’s Reformulation of Marxism: The Colonial Question as a National
Question,” History of Political Thought 13, no. 1 (Spring 1992).

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