SOAS Research Online

Abstract

During the 1930s diverse elements within the Indian National Congress, each professing a belief in the tenets of western socialism, combined in a series of attempts to supplant the established leaders of the Congress---the Gandhiites. The Gandhiites responded with an effort to accommodate the socialists within the Congress and, simultaneously, to limit their ability to change Congress policy. By the end of the 1930s, it became obvious that socialism was a factor in Congress politics, not because of the strength of socialist parties in the Congress, but because socialism offered displaced elements in the Congress an opportunity to join anti-Gandhiite coalitions. Such coalitions failed because of the political genius and agility of their Gandhiite opponents and because of the lack of a community of interest (beyond the wish to displace the Gandhiites) among the elements of the coalitions. Chapter one is an examination of the development of the Congress constitution as an evolving model of the machinery of the Congress as the Gandhiites wished it to be. Chapter two is a discussion of the emergence of socialism in the Congress and of the ways in which socialists wished to change the Congress. Chapters three and four analyze the different ways in. which Gandhiites and socialists reacted to British attempts to reform the Government of India. Chapter five is an analysis of points of difference in the Congress which arose over policies instituted by the Gandhiites through provincial governments under their control. Chapter six is an analysis of the Gandhiite policy of non-interference in the political affairs of the princely states and of socialist reaction to that policy. The seventh and final chapter discusses the events which led Subhas Bose to form an anti-Gandhiite coalition in 1939. The failure of Bose's Forward Bloc marked the end of a phase in the socialist challenge to Gandhiite control of the Indian National Congress.