DDK HistoryF.p65 - CSIR

1.3] FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS 13
were to create a new Indian bureaucracy, bourgeoisie, proletariat,
and army, leading ultimately to the severance of India from British
rule.
“All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do will neither emancipate nor materially
amend the social condition of the mass of the people, depending not only on the
development of the productive power, but of their appropriation by the people. But
what they will not fail to do is to lay down the material premise for both. Has the
bourgeoisie ever done more ? Has it ever effected a progress without dragging
individuals and people through blood and dirt, through misery and degradation ? The
Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered among them
by the British bourgeoisie till in Great Britain itself the now ruling classes shall have
been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindoos themselves shall have
grown strong enough to throw off the British yoke altogether. At all events, we may
safely expect to see, at a more or less remote period, the regeneration of that great
and interesting country....” (New York Daily Tribune, Atigust 8, 1853, “The future
results of British rule in India”).
What has to be done is to take stock of later studies under Marx’s
direct inspiration by his colleague Engels, 19 on the nature and decay
of tribal organisation. These, applied to modern discoveries in the
field, will give us new results.
Thus, the more important question is not who was king, nor
whether the given region had a king, but whether its people used a plough,
light or heavy, at the time. The type of kingship, as a function of the
property relations and surplus produced, depends upon the method of
agriculture, not conversely. What was the role of caste in breaking up
tribal groups to annex them to society ? Where did the metals come
from ? When did commodity-exchange crops like the coconut become
important; what relation did they have to communal and private landholdings
? Why have we no large-scale chattel slavery in the classical
period, no proper serfdom in the feudal ? What is the reason for survival
of mesolithic rites, continued worship of stone-age gods even today
among all classes ? These questions have at least to be raised, their answers
worked out as far as possible, if one adopts the new approach. Dynastic
changes of importance, vast religious upheavals, are generally indicative
of powerful changes in the productive basis, hence must be studied as
such, not dismissed as senseless flickers on the surface of an unchanging
substratum.