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“Nehruvian Socialism/” 1927–1937: Nationalism, Marxism, and the Pursuit of Modernity

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.