Commuhdlism 22$
as these imperialist-retarded bourgeois forces. And it is
within these new multi-nationalist ideologies that the masses
of the people also are struggling for their freedom. It is
significant that the rise of the new minor ' nationalisms * in
India has coincided more or less with the awakening of the
peasantry. Since the time of the 1937 elections, when the
Indian nationalist movement reached its most radical policy
and went furthest in its contact with the villages, the
peasantry has bestirred itself mightily—and largely in local-
4 nationalist" form. Within the Congress itself, languager
group l provinces * have had to be recognized. Partly
as the result of propaganda, partly because of its social
status, the peasantry of various sections of India has
awakened to political consciousness and to a struggle for
freedom, in terms of local culture and of minor traditional
groups.
This fact has been used (it was even partly created) by
the reactionaries to disrupt the united nationalist demand.
It has been used by the several bourgeoisies to strengthen
their separatist struggles. But it remains a fact.
The new situation in India has an instructive parallel in
the condition of the Tsarist Russian Empire about 1912.
There the dominant bourgeoisie was the Great Russian,
attempting to control and to subjugate the entire country,
economically and culturally. The middle classes of the out-
lying nationalities, much less developed, resented and
suffered under this subjugation ; and they struggled des-
perately for their own freedom to exploit. They harnessed
the democratic sentiment of their respective masses to
their separatist nationalisms ; and the peoples longed for
freedom in nationalistic guise. Meanwhile the reactionaries
used these divergencies. They played off one against
another, and, giving freedom to none of these struggling
groups, they maintained the status quo.
At the present time, then, there are three main aspects
of the communal problem in India. One is its creation and
use by the reactionaries, British imperialism and the landed
interests and so on in India ; reactionaries endeavouring to