Fascism for India

One thing I am extremely anxious to make clear at the outset. It is true that I was once a politician, and the picture the public have of me is that of a politician. But I entreat you to cast it out of your mind; think of me plainly as a man of the world, a man of affairs, one who amid the distractions and anxiety of professional life desires to reflect, study and observe on the great currents of the world's doings. In one sense it is the duty of every man and woman to be political, Just as it is to be good and honorable. To that extent, I am a politician, as indeed I hope all of you are, but no more. This word of warning is necessary in special measure, because the title of the article indicates aspects of current controversy. Once you are warned, however, no damage can be done.

THE MEANING OF FASCISM

Fascism is new, the word and the thing, and not all of us have managed to understand it. We do not know Italian, and such literature as we have in English about Fascism is not particularly sympathetic to the movement, nor distinguished by discernment. On account of an accident into which it is not necessary now to go, the intelligentsia in England and America had been long hostile to it, and educated India took the cue from the English Liberals. The only Indian of international significance, Rabindranath Tagore, who came into contact with Italy, gave his verdict against Mussolini. In spite of all these discouraging features, there is no doubt as to the main facts. The Fascist regime and the rule of the Duce has managed to survive over six years, and Italy is still delirious in its loyalty to Signor Mussolini. Italy which in 1922 was in anarchy and without national weight or international prestige, is today in a commanding position. There were cities and Princes of influence and renown in the days of the Renaissance; but if you want a precedent period of equal authority in the counsels of the world, you should go to the days of Imperial Rome. Italy is one and complete; her authority in Southern Europe is unquestioned; there is a goodly Empire building up for her in Africa, and it would not be very long before a larger Empire is carved, if need be, at the point of the sword. The man and the spirit which wrought so conspicuous a change in this short space of time are worth understanding, and it should be our business to discover whether there is anything in it from which profit and guidance can come to students and publicists in India.

Fascism has been taken to mean the repudiation of the democratic method of discussion and representative government, and there is some truth in the identification. We should not be surprised at either the repudiation or the criticism. There is nothing strange in the emergence of dictatorships in the middle of national crises. Representative government broke down in England, the modern home of democratic government, during the war and Lloyd George's dictatorship was no less absolute in practice than that of Mussolini. Here in India, under the conditions of 1920-22, we had the dictatorship of Gandhiji and nothing less than the dictatorship sufficed to meet the needs of the time. We need not therefore be particularly alarmed or suspicious of Fascism, because it is a dictatorship. But in truth, the dictatorship is no vital part of Fascism. You can have Fascism without the dictatorship; and the world's history is full of dictatorships which knew not Fascism.

The two ideas are separable; not only are they separable, but there is no inherent integral connection between the two. There is no doubt that the particular aspect of Fascism which has caught the imagination of the world is the dictatorship, or more accurately the Dictator Mussolini. Mussolini himself has taken no trouble to hide the fact of his dictatorship; on the other hand, he has again and again made it clear that he happens to be where he is by the force of his own will and character, and not by the suffrage of Italy. He is the Duce and it is well for Italy; and there is an end of the matter.

It will, however, be a profound mistake to believe that the dictatorship is of the essence of Fascism. Its life-breath is a certain doctrine and practice of politics. Put in one word, it is this: the Political State can be founded and maintained only by a self-conscious order, powerful and deliberative, and it is the order of property-holders. Where that order is overthrown, there will be anarchy and the tendency to ultimate dissolution. What I shall do first is to establish this thesis. The State is formed by an active minority in every community, a group of governmental experts supported in the long run, if it is to survive, by soldiers or professional fighters. Right of it all, there is the public opinion of the people taken as a whole, what Rousseau called the General Will. But the General Will is a very passive thing; to vary the metaphor, it is more like a limit within which governments should function. The General Will in itself is no active agency of administration. If any State transcends the limits of that public opinion, shocks it by moral turpitude or visible inefficiency or violation of the decencies of life, the common people rise by a sudden onrush of anger and overthrow, physically if necessary, the State. There is a revolution; but if the revolutionaries fail in their turn to organise themselves as an instrument of government, if an active minority among them do not contrive to take the place of the government that is overthrown, there will be anarchy and political dissolution. As it happens, there is an illustration of this principle working itself out practically before our eyes. King Amanullah Khan, a vital and admirable spirit, started reforming and modernising his people. They were prepared to tolerate a good deal in the way of reformation; but when it came to his abolishing the purdah and sending off the girls of great families to Europe, the General Will of Afghanistan was shocked, and like every live people, Afghans proceeded to overthrow the sacrilegious individual, and Amanullah whose throne seemed embedded a year ago on rock is now a fugitive in Kandahar. But the moral of the case is something else. One government having been overthrown, no Successor to Amanullah Khan has yet come about! because there is no individual or body of men capable of getting along with the business of government, of forming a State. For the moment, Afghanistan seems to have gone into bits, a kind of primitive aparchy. Amir Habibullah holds a kingdom which is described as covering an area seven miles round about Kabul; somebody else has captured Jallalabad; Amanullah and his wonderful Queen Souriya are in Kandahar; and a fourth and a fifth. The minority that could take up the reins of government allover Afghanistan and assure for the community security and peaceful existence has not yet been found. If you think of the Germany of 1918, you will at once perceive the contrast. The Kaiser was overthrown, one State was destroyed; there were a President and a Republic to take their place and keep up the continuity of things and orderly government in Germany. In Germany the change of Government was achieved, because there was a class of people, an order of society, which could build up and sustain the fabric of government. The difficulty in Afghanistan is that government centred in a man and his family and his dependants; when that man was found unacceptable to his people, and his family exiled, there was found no one fit or strong enough to take his place. I do not say Afghanistan will not be constituted as a State again; but for the moment, the way does not seem clear.

This minority, this order on which is founded the whole business of rule, has to exist, or government is impossible. The composition of the order is an extraordinarily difficult matter and experience has to be the true guide in all cases. The characteristically Indian solution was to form a caste, make it a hereditary business; and like all the ancient solutions, it was based on commonsense. Government and defence are the concern of experts, and one of the most obvious ways of soundly training a man is by bringing him up in it. The Kshatriyas were brought up on that system, and in their way Kshatriyas were good enough and more than good enough. In Europe also, the .feudal system was based on birth and caste. Between the tenth century and the nineteenth, the order of noblemen, carried on government. But for reasons into which it will be useless to go at present, the building up of rule on birth is impossible in our day and time. Birth may be repudiated; but the creation of the State from an order or class is unescapable. Democracy and votes may say which party or caucus should not form a government or which party might; but the State can be constituted only by a minority.

When Tsarism was overthrown in Russia in 1916, a new government was not constituted in a hurry. But when Lenin finally triumphed, he founded his government on the proletariat or the property-less workers. The resort to the proletariat as the instrument of his will was determined by two conditions. The Tsar had established his authority on the basis of birth and property, and the instinctive and inevitable reaction was far to the left; Lenin dared not entrust his fate and policy to a class whose authority he had overthrown and on whose loyalty he could not rely for a minute. From the inherent necessity of the situation, he could turn only to the proletariat, the dispossessed, to support him in the regime he set up. If, on the other hand, Kerensky or the minority, the so-called Menshevists, had managed to survive as a government, the order on which they relied would have been any body in the world; but it could not have been the proletariat. The fact that Lenin was a Bolshevist should not be permitted to mask the fundamental truth that he had to rely on an order and that the order was the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat, which was with Marx a phrase, was erected into the most disturbing fact of our generation.

Naturally the world is full of the dispossessed; according to a familiar saying, "The poor are always with you." The example of Bolshevism caught Europe like a fever. In Hungary, Bela Kun attempted to set up the dictatorship of the proletariat but he failed. In Germany, in France, and the other settled States of Europe, Bolshevism tried to capture power without success. In India, true to our habit of over-taking the thought and activity of Europe a whole dozen years afterwards, the Communists are trying to secure power in government and in the counsels of the nation. The Congress Working Secretary is a Socialist and for the moment, his ark of salvation is in Moscow. Bolshevism may be a good thing or a bad, a workable programme or a species of political insanity; but it is a movement whose vitality is by no means exhausted. Fascism is a reaction against Bolshevism in Italy and it came about in the following manner.

ITS RISE IN ITALY

Italy's share in the Great War was curious and, among the victorious Allies, unique in disappointment and sense of tragedy. She originally belonged to the Triple Alliance, and if she had stood by the full measure of her obligations, Italy, instead of being on the side of the Allies, would have been with Germany. But there was a party strong enough to ensure the neutrality of the country in the earlier months of the war. Even when finally she cast in her lot with the entente Powers, it was by no means a United Italy which thus went into battle. When the war ended and the Versailles Conference met, her claims to Fiume were turned down in spite of the secret treaty between France, England and Italy, President Wilson refusing to be bound by it. The Italian Government thought that it would be able to enforce its demands at the Conference if it appealed to the Italian people over the heads of the Governments met together at the Conference. The expected result did not materialise and consequently the prestige of the Government received a great shock. The march of D’Annunzio to Fiume and his holding it in the name of the Italian people in spite of the Italian Government, made the position infinitely worse, and the confidence of the community in the governing classes was shaken. The agitation against the Government was re-enforced by the old neutralists, the people who were from the beginning against the intervention of Italy in the war, and they turned popular feeling into anti-national and anti-patriotic channels. In 1920, there was a malicious campaign of hatred and contempt against those who had served in the war, had been wounded and received decorations. "In certain districts" says Professor Salvameni, "where Anarchist and Communist propaganda was most prevalent, a man found to have done his duty with honour in the war or to have returned home disabled, was regarded as a crime which had to be concealed lest punishment should follow." The most significant aspect of it all was that Government was incapable of protecting the ex-soldiers whose only crime was that they had served the State faithfully and well. But the most dramatic and famous consequence of Bolshevism in Italy was the occupation of the factories. Disputes having arisen between workmen and employers, the engineers having threatened a strike for a month in August 1919, began to deliberately produce less than the usual output. At the end of the month, the firms, alarmed at this development, declared a lock-out, and the answer of the workmen to this move was to lock themselves in. In other words, they took possession of the factories and refused to give them up to their lawful owners. This was clearly illegal; and if there was any grit or strength in the government or the law courts, they should have been ejected at once. But Signor Giodotti, however, followed a policy which seemed to contemporaries to be the climax of weakness, but which judged by after-events was subtly calculated to destroy not only Bolshevism, but also the governing order to which he belonged. He did not interfere with the workmen, but allowed them to remain in possession. Now there was only one thing for the workers to do if they intended to win. They should have gone boldly forward, and by a revolutionary act captured government as Lenin did in Russia. But for reasons into which we need not enter, they did nothing of the kind. The consequences were inevitable. The men who had locked themselves in soon found out that they had killed the goose which was laying the golden eggs. Mere technical ability to do the work inside the factory was not sufficient to keep the factory going. Raw materials had to come in, the manufactured articles had to be sent out and marketed, finance and external administration were necessary; in short, a hundred incidents in the continued life of the business which the easy stealers of other people's property were by no means equal to. The Government was not able to deal with the intruders, but the conditions of modern life drove them out. Through this and several other happenings, the process of Bolshevisation, the swinging to the left, the tendency to the dictatorship of the proletariat, was definitely checked. The nation drunken with the phrases of the war and demoralised by slackness, was shocked into sudden sobriety. It began to look about itself, saw where the source of national strength lay, and decided that Liberalism as an instrument of government had proved impotent and that Bolshevism was a dangerous delusion. It had to turn to a new order for the formation of the State, and if the order was not there, it had to be brought into existence by a deliberate, cold-blooded act of creation. Mussolini who saw the vision and represented in himself his country at its highest, stepped forward and established through Fascism that order. There is no denial of the rights of the workers. His famous conception of the Corporative State, where the propertied class and the workers are both given their due, is inconsistent with such denial. But it is equally clear that the basis of the order is the propertied class. The final word is not said about his conceptions. It is a bold constructive genius, going forward in a mood of experiment; and it will be the rashest and most gratuitously foolish thing to prophesy how Mussolini will end. My belief is that parliaments and legislatures are not inherently inconsistent with Fascism. As long as the Duce is there, a Parliament is a mockery; because it is the essence of all parliaments to discuss affairs and, the part of no single man being overwhelming, to improve and clarify issues by such discussion. Where however there is a man of supreme vision, parliaments will be tolerated by sensible men as the platform of his speaking, so that the whole of the world may hear. Where, however, a high average is created by contact with masters, parliaments will fulfill a useful function.

A LESSON FOR INDIA

Now having understood that Fascism is a propertied order which has taken up the burden of the Italian State, the question naturally arises what application it has to Indian conditions, whether it has a lesson for us. A preliminary consideration should be emphasized to avoid a possible fallacy. As long as the Indian civil Service, mostly British, and the British Army are in India ruling us, it seems an idle speculation attempting to define the elements of Indian Fascism. The criticism is perfectly just. If I were convinced that the present regime will continue indefinitely, I would not have dared talk to serious men about Fascism. Nor would anybody else for that matter be justified in giving thought or effort to Bolshevism, Parliamentarianism or any other form of government. But I venture to think that the Bureaucracy is not to function indefinitely here. The declaration of August 1917 is there as the sheet-anchor of British policy. I do not say that the declaration may not be repudiated or stultified in effect, but till either of these contingencies happens, we must take it that the ending of irresponsible government and the establishment of popular government is only a matter of time and occasion. Whatever the Simon Commission may or may not do, it is getting increasingly clear that the provincial governments will be made wholly responsible to the legislatures. As long as our business is to wrest power from the bureaucracy, there is no room for parties or the definition of the place or people with whom power should rest.

I want you to assume, therefore, that provincial autonomy is coming in a short while. I want you to assume that the provincial legislatures will have more power, will be larger in size, be more varied in interest and composition. The problem now becomes important as to who is to carry on government. You will no doubt say the party that happens to possess, a majority in the council. But which is the majority to be? The Fascist answer will be, "the order of property-owners."

You will be able to see the issue clearly if we approach the question from another side. There are certain classes who are now attempting to capture political power who certainly do not belong to the propertied order. Consider the Indian Labour Movement. There are mill-hands, miners, workers on the railways; the organisation is not in their own hands just now, because the men at the top like Dewan Chamanlal and Mr. Giri, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose, do not belong to the labouring classes. But that is only a matter of time. Then there are the so-called depressed classes who are essentially agricultural labourers. We hear a good deal about the implications of caste and untouchability, but at root, they are just agricultural laborers, for without them Indian agriculture will break down. They are the very lynch-pin. But you will observe that the common element is that all of them, mill-hands, miners and depressed classes, do not own property. There may be individuals energetic and careful enough to own property, in land, the most characteristic Indian form; but as a class they do not own property; in other words, they constitute the proletariat in this country. Now the depressed classes count somewhere about seventy millions. They are no doubt a minority; but it is a substantial number, and if there is political organisation on the basis of an alliance between themselves and the factory labourers, the prospect of a proletariat government is by no means idle. The exact method of its coming about is of minor importance; but the vital consideration is that the emergency is there. A Cabinet supported by the Indian Bolshevists need not themselves be labourers any more than Lord Haldane or Lord Chelmsford, who were members of Mr. Macdonald's Cabinet, were labourers. What I fear is that the labourers will be exploited by the intelligentsia for their own purposes.

Now I do not believe it is good for the proletariat itself that it should be governed or influenced by the intelligentsia which is of the bourgeoisie. If the labourers should find their own leaders or frame their programme, the position would be different. They will have their needs and will know how to achieve them. But the trouble today is a mixed and dangerous brew which can be to the good of nobody in the world.

As against this danger of Bolshevism or the triumph of an exploiting group of the intelligentsia working in the name of the depressed classes and the mill-hands, there are only two alternatives. It may be the middle classes or the property-owners. But the middle classes may be dismissed without great difficulty. Essentially, the middle classes, the English-educated folk, are caught in a perpetual flux. They start as young people, ex hypothesi without property, but with intelligence, trained minds, and the instinct of getting on. When they succeed and get on in years, they accumulate property and by such acquisition get out of the property-less middle class in which they started. Economically their functions are no deeper laid than this and it is clearly far too exiguous to furnish the permanent element of any governing order.

Now the order of property-holders in India is essentially based on land. There are other forms of property; there are the capitalists in the big towns and industrial centres, the bankers. But they are a drop in the ocean. The only property that is of consequence now in India is land.

Land is permanently settled land or subject to periodic revision of settlements. The former belongs to the Zemindars, the landed magnates; the latter are small holders. Whether the creation of the permanently settled estates was right, or whether the recognition of farmers of revenues as owners of the areas for whose Imperial revenue they were just responsible, are historical questions of great interest but they are of no present practical consequence. What is of present interest is that the continuance of the permanent settlement is vital to the Zemindars; and it is of nearly equal importance to the smaller land-holders in the ryotwari areas that there should be no revision of settlements. I suggest that it is in the interests of permanently settled Zemindars to help put an end to revision in ryotwari lands. For whenever revision takes place, and there is always bitterness of feelings when there is fresh assessment, the Zemindars are shown up in a baleful light. Attempts are therefore made from time to time to expropriate their interests. There is a strong feeling among the Zemindars that the recognition of their tenants as the owners of holdings amounts to an act of expropriation. The proposed tenancy legislation in Malabar savours of the same thing, one of the grounds stated by the Governor for vetoing Mr. Krishnan Nair's Bill being that there was confiscation without adequate compensation. One may go further. Under the new Constitution, it is quite on the cards that the Permanent Settlement itself may go. For, that measure was a covenant a hundred years ago between the East India Company and the Zemindars that the Company would not ask for increased revenue at any time in the future. When the Crown assumed responsibility, the covenant was observed. But once the power of legislation and government passes into the hands of popularly-elected councils and their ministers, the whole situation is altered.

If the majority is in favour of scrapping the Settlement, nothing in the world can prevent them in the long run. If the Ministry proposes such a measure, and the council and electorate are clearly of the Ministry, I do not see how the Permanent Settlement can be saved. But there is one possibility; the Zemindars may organize themselves as an order of Fascism and capture the seats in Council and Government; the very condition of their success will be to tell the holders of ryotwari lands that they also will have the benefit of Permanent Settlement. If the Zemindars and the small holders of land join forces on the basis of such a programme, they can control the situation. They can carry an overwhelming number of seats in the Council. The coalition of the proletariat and one section of the intelligentsia cannot prevail against them.

Then there are the Europeans, who are in India for trade and business. They own plantations in the hills, factories and places of business in the towns. I am not

sure of the amount of total European capital in the country; but the United Planters of South India have invested £IS millions. The figures taken on the whole must be enormous, running to hundreds of millions. How are we to deal with the non-official Europeans? The record of the European when he first came to India was clean enough; he came as a trader and he did good to himself and to the governments and peoples among whom his lot was cast. We need not go into intervening history, the temptation for conquest and exploitation, and all the evil that flowed from it. Now he is here, he and his vast interests which it is the business of every honest Indian government to safeguard. The Englishman will in reality go to the position from which he started; a businessman, not an active ruler or Providence on earth. But he cannot be quite as he was in the old Mogul days; he cannot be altogether a businessman. He happens to be a citizen also, a citizen with vast interests, himself a property holder, a manifest Fascist. Reflection will show that his interests are the same as that of the property owners, and there is no essential conflict between himself and the Indian in this respect. If only the European in India will be loyal to the constitution and not try to overthrow it on the strength of his race or previous position as ruler, I do not see the slightest reason why he should not form a valuable ally of the order of Indian property-owners. For in truth, he is one of them himself. I have said that the European will go to the position he essentially occupied in the seventeenth century; but the historical miracle and mystery will be that he and the Indian will be alike under an English King and flag, but under an Indian government.

AN INDIAN MUSSOLINI?

Whether the Indian struggle will yield up a Mussolini, I do not know. We want one badly. Gandhiji had in him the makings of one; but his medievalism, his antipathy to machinery, the cult of the charka, his war with the spirit of modernity, all these are handicaps. For when all is said and done, the Fascist is a modern of the moderns, a forward-looking spirit, no ascetic but a fighter. When Amanullah Khan came from Europe and set about the career of reform which has destroyed him, I wished he would set up a Kingdom in India and set about reforming us as Mussolini did, getting rid of the priests and the medievalists, the purohits, the moulvis and fundamentalists, and make us work to great ends. But he has failed with his own people and Fascism has no use for failures. We must go forward without flinching and trust that the fundamental institutions of property and family and society will ultimately justify themselves and cannot be finally vanquished as long as we are in this body of flesh.