Smith asks whether "the Indian bourgeoisie has turned India into a prison house of nations." The phrase was used by V.I. Lenin, the leader of the Bolshevik Party, to define the imperialist Russia of the Czars.

The Czarist empire was founded on the military conquest of peoples throughout Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Lenin pointed to the "Great Russian chauvinism" that marked relations from Moscow to these subject peoples.

It was only with the proletarian revolution of October 1917 and the formation of the new Soviet republic that oppressed nationalities within the former empire were able to win self-determination. The Bolshevik-led Communist International also stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the oppressed nationalities in Asia and the Middle East in the struggle against imperialist domination.

Unlike Czarist Russia, India is not an imperialist power. A country of vast size and diverse populations, it remains a semicolonial country exploited by imperialism and marked by both the achievements and limitations of its independence struggle and battle for national unification.

Most semicolonial countries today have unresolved questions of national rights; how could they not? It is only the proletarian revolution, not capitalist governments, that can begin resolving these questions. Popular revolutionary governments of working people have no interests in maintaining national oppression, since they represent the class interests of workers and farmers. It is the profit-driven and dog-eat-dog system of capitalism that benefits from the divisions among the toiling population.

Whatever the divisions and discrimination encouraged by its capitalist rulers, India is home to not just Hindus but many national and religious groupings. Some 140 million Muslims live within its borders--almost equaling the total population of Pakistan.

The Militant has condemned the Indian government’s repression of oppressed peoples, such as the Indian army’s notorious and bloody attack on the Golden Temple in 1984, in which thousands of Sikhs were killed. Such actions are a setback to the fight for unity among working people of all nationalities and beliefs.

Revolutionaries also oppose, and point to the danger of, the development of Hindu nationalist forces, like the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has a record of encouraging attacks on Muslim communities like the recent assaults on Muslims in Gujarat province. As Smith writes, such forces are used by the Indian bourgeoisie to divide and rule the country’s working people.  
 
Kashmir
The history of the partition of the Indian subcontinent by British imperialism, the blow it dealt to the unfolding revolutionary struggle there, and how Pakistan was formed as a spearhead of imperialism against the Indian revolution were addressed in "What’s behind the India-Pakistan conflict" in the January 21 issue.

Threatened by rebellions throughout its empire, the weakened British colonial power was forced to grant nationhood to India in 1947. The old colonial setup could not be maintained in face of a powerful movement for independence, in which hundreds of thousands of workers were playing a growing part. That movement had begun to point the way forward to unite working people around their common national interests.

But London sought to keep what economic, political, and military influence it could. Collaborating with the reactionary Muslim League, the British imperialists pressed for partition. Fearing the growing intervention of the masses in the Indian independence struggle, the bourgeois Congress leadership agreed to the postwar division.

The question of Kashmir goes back to this historic blow dealt to the Indian revolution, which had begun to unite working people across all the old lines of division fostered by the colonial power. India under British rule included 600 princely states. In order to create as much turmoil as possible, London gave the maharajas of these kingdoms, who had ruled in collaboration with the British crown, the right to decide in which of the two countries their territory would lie. In the case of Muslim-majority Kashmir, the Hindu maharajah opted for India.

As fighting broke out, the British governor general Lord Mountbatten accepted the accession, and at the same time proposed that a referendum be held to confirm or reject it. The fighting ended with a UN-brokered cease-fire and with Kashmir divided between the two countries. The two governments agreed to hold a plebiscite on the area’s status--a commitment never honored by New Delhi.

The Militant has for some decades supported the holding of the long-postponed referendum.  
 
Pakistan a reactionary bastion
Playing up their "credentials" as the heads of a Muslim state, successive Pakistani regimes have posed as champions of the Muslim peoples across the region. In spite of the fact that they have consistently opposed any call for Kashmiri independence, Pakistan’s rulers have used the controversy to try to gain ground against their larger rival, including sponsoring armed groups to attack Indian territory.

The tensions between India and Pakistan have sharpened under the impact of the growing imperialist military presence in the region. Today the imperialist powers, with Washington well to the fore, have thousands of troops in new garrisons, along with formidable naval and air forces, stationed throughout Central and South Asia and the Middle East. Some 1,200 U.S. troops are edging closer to a combat role in the southern Philippines.

A direct consequence of the defeat of the Taliban government in Afghanistan is the influx of al Qaeda and similar forces back into Pakistan. The bombing of the U.S. consulate in Karachi, which took the lives of 11 Pakistani citizens, along with other armed actions, indicate that the consequences of this development go beyond Kashmir.

This growing military, economic, and political intervention in the region stands as a deep threat to working people on the Indian subcontinent. They can be aided by working-class forces and youth living inside the United States and the United Kingdom who educate, organize, and fight to get the imperialist military forces out of the region. This can be a spur to workers and peasants in India to join in a common struggle against their common enemy: Washington, London, and the other imperialist powers. Working people in the subcontinent have common interests and a common destiny. An anti-imperialist struggle joined by the toilers in India and Pakistan is the strongest way to push back reactionary Hindu nationalists and government assaults by both New Delhi and Islamabad on national and religious rights, and to make new gains in the fight for the national unification of India.  
 
 
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