political questions – there was an economic side to consider as well.
This was in part a consequence of young urban intellectuals, schooled
in non-hierarchical principles, being forced to discover and confront the
nakedness of exploitation and poverty in India. The older generation’s
unquestioning acceptance of the Indian’s right to exploit the Indian even
as they questioned the British right to do the same was at the very least
anomalous. Many of Jawaharlal’s generation later rendered this difference
in terms of a backward ‘feudal’ polity and a corresponding attitude
bolstered by the British protection of their Indian collaborators and
intermediaries, and therefore of the preservation of an old feudal order
that would have vanished without British support and without British
obstruction of Indian capitalist development. But they did not yet have
the intellectual tools to put it in such precise terms.
There was, however, a wider politics emerging. The aftermath of the
Russian Revolution had a strong impact on India, which came to be
manifested in the growth of left-wing parties, Workers’ and Peasants’
Parties (which were initially a front for the Communist Party) founded
between 1926 and 1928, and eventually, more openly, the Communist
Party of India. There was an increase in trade unionism, trade union
organised workers’ agitations and great strikes in the late 1920s, all lead-
ing to fear on the part of the government as well as of Indian capitalists.
For a while a sense of shared interest in suppressing workers’ movements
made the government more inclined to compromise with Indian capi-
talists, who for their part argued that without better conditions for
business they had no choice but to further exploit workers and inevitably
stoke the fires of discontent; therefore it was the government’s job to help
Indian business. This was reflected in the bargaining surrounding the
imposition of tariffs in India. Hitherto, India had been one of the most
open markets in the world, with the British assuming that a combination
of political control and international competitiveness would enable them
to dominate Indian markets. Now, with strong competition from Belgian
and German steel, and from Japanese textiles, as well as with the need
to use tariffs as a source of government income, these assumptions had to
change. The problem was to set the tariffs at a level that excluded foreign
competition but not British goods, and to accommodate some of the
Indian capitalists’ demands at the same time. This was a delicate balancing
act, not always smoothly achieved. What was clear was that the govern-
ment and the Indian capitalist class would come together in cooperation56 THE YOUNG GANDHIAN