In recent years, there has been a growing engagement with the question of imperialism and, in particular, with the Leninist theory of imperialism across the left. This renewed interest is welcome. As capitalism passes through a period marked by intensified geopolitical rivalry, uneven development, and new forms of dependence, scholars and activists have increasingly returned to classical Marxist analyses in an effort to understand contemporary realities. In this context, it is worth revisiting a body of debates that has received far less attention than it deserves: the discussions within the Communist International concerning the economic consequences of imperialist domination in colonial and dependent countries. Among the most important of these were debates over the extent to which imperialism hindered or promoted industrial development in the colonies—a question with significant implications for revolutionary strategy and for the broader Marxist understanding of capitalist development on a world scale. This article examines these debates with particular focus on the Indian case. Focusing on discussions among Comintern theorists and communist activists during the interwar period, it argues that these exchanges constituted an important effort to enrich and concretize the theory of imperialism through engagement with the actual trajectory of colonial development. Far from being merely a dispute limited to national particulars, the debate over India's industrialization raised fundamental questions about the relationship between imperialist domination, industrialization, and uneven development that remain relevant today.

Comintern, the Second Congress and the Early Roy-Lenin Debate

While Lenin’s classic Imperialism had outlined the colonial system of imperialism, with the export of capital to colonial and dependent countries taking on a new role, a concrete analysis of imperialist exploitation of these countries in the current epoch would be undertaken in the Comintern since its founding in 1919, with communist and workers’ parties established in several of the colonies, semi-colonies and dependent countries. Establishing a clear political perspective on the colonial question would, however, take several years – till the Sixth Congress in 1928, to be precise. These years would witness the unprecedented growth of national liberation struggles against imperialism. While the Soviet Republics were established in several erstwhile colonies of the Russian Empire in the wake of the October Revolution, the national liberation struggles in China, India, Egypt and Turkey, etc., would take different trajectories. Moreover, changes in imperialist policy, such as those of British imperialism in India, would also present new questions to be resolved. In these circumstances, it was of urgent need to work out the strategy and tactics of revolution in the colonial and dependent countries. What were the prevalent production relations? Which classes were to be united with? Which classes would be the main target of the national liberation struggle? These were some of the essential questions for revolutionary practice in the dependent countries that were taken up in the Comintern discussions.

The Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies adopted in the Sixth Congress (1928) would elucidate the perspective that the revolutionary struggle in these countries would have an anti-feudal and anti-imperialist character, with the agrarian revolution as its axis, led by the working class.^[1] The Chinese Revolution would later prove to be, without a doubt, the most outstanding and successful application of this understanding in practice. However, the struggles within the Comintern to establish this line merit much wider discussion among anti-imperialist scholars and activists than they are accorded. This is not only because communists from around the world, especially the colonized world, were attempting to concretely and scientifically analyze the dynamics of imperialism to devise revolutionary strategy and tactics to drive their struggles for liberation. What also makes a study of these debates critical is that a number of divergent and contending positions that were debated in this process continue to re-emerge today in anti-imperialist discourses, and can be better addressed by mapping their historical roots.

The Second Congress of the Comintern (1920) took up, for the first time, the colonial question as an independent subject, and the draft theses were prepared by Lenin, appointed Chairman of the Colonial Commission. Taking as the starting point the fundamental difference in character between nationalism of the oppressed nations and that of the oppressor nations in the era of imperialism, and a rejection of the reactionary, pro-imperialist colonial policy of the Second International, the theses stated that the colonial policy of the Comintern “must be based mainly on the union of the workers and toiling masses of all nations and countries in the common revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the landlords and of the bourgeoisie” and orient towards “bringing about the closest possible alliance between all the national and colonial liberation movements with Soviet Russia. The forms of this alliance will be determined by the stage of development of the communist movement among the proletariat of every country, or of the revolutionary liberation movement in the backward countries and among the backward nationalities.”^[2] Where feudal-patriarchal relations predominate, “[a]ll Communist Parties must support by their deeds the revolutionary liberation^[3] movements in these countries”, and in particular, the peasant movement. “Support for the peasant movement in the backward countries against the landowners and every form and remnant of feudalism is particularly necessary. What must be striven for above all is to give the peasant movement as revolutionary a character as possible and wherever possible to organize the peasants and all victims of exploitation in soviets and thus bring about as close a link as possible between the Western European communist proletariat and the revolutionary movement of peasants in the East, in the colonies and in the backward countries.”^[4] (emphasis ours)

M. N. Roy, on account of several disagreements with Lenin, and on encouragement by the latter, drew up a set of Draft Supplementary Theses. It was through this debate that the line struggle over the colonial question would begin in the Comintern. The debate itself centered on the following issues: assessment of the level of economic development in the colonies; the relation of the bourgeoisie to imperialism in the context of the prevailing production relations in the colonies; and, finally, the assessment of the revolutionary potential in the colonies and the tactical line of action to be pursued in relation to the colonial bourgeoisie.^[5] According to Roy, India had a large rural proletariat, established by British colonialism since the time of pre-monopoly capitalist colonialism, and a small but growing industrial proletariat, established by what he called the policy of industrialization of India pursued by the British Empire: “In recent years, the industrial development in British India has gone up at such a pace as cannot be imagined here in Europe… This also applies to Egypt, the Dutch Indies and China.”^[6] (emphasis ours) Hence, he argued, this led to a polarization of interests between the national liberation struggle, led by the emerging middle classes, and the revolutionary class struggle led by the proletariat against the British and Indian capitalists: “The masses of India are not imbued with the national spirit. They are interested solely in questions of social and economic nature… a revolutionary movement in India in so far as the wide masses are concerned, has nothing in common with the national liberation movement.”^[7] (emphasis ours) Moreover, M. N. Roy had elaborately formulated the proposition that a fundamental contradiction existed between the interests of the bourgeois or petit bourgeois nationalists and those of the masses and that the two streams were growing further and further apart.^[8]

It is sometimes erroneously asserted that Lenin came around to accept Roy’s positions as being valid for colonies where production relations were of a relatively more advanced type, even if the former’s original theses retained validity for the more backward colonies. Sobhanlal Dutta Gupta’s archival research substantively concludes, however, that Lenin continued to disagree fundamentally with Roy on these issues, and in the course of the debate, Roy’s draft supplementary theses were drastically altered. It is these amended Supplementary Theses that were adopted side-by-side with Lenin’s Colonial Theses, once there was no major contradiction between them. Lenin observed that Roy’s theses “were framed chiefly from the standpoint of the situation in India and other big Asian countries oppressed by Britain. Herein lies their great importance to us”, and hence these divergences were accommodated.^[9] It is interesting also that J.V Stalin would later go on to say, “Why were the Supplementary Theses needed? In order to single out from the backward colonial countries which have no industrial proletariat [from countries] such countries as China and India, of which it cannot be said that they have ‘practically no industrial proletariat’.”^[10] This does not necessarily imply, however, that there was a fundamental difference, in terms of production relations, between colonies and semi-colonies like India and China, and those that lacked an industrial proletariat:

It is true that Lenin did not place the levels of development of the colonies on an equal plane but, unlike Roy, he did not feel that in colonies like India, pre-capitalist production relations were being rapidly replaced by capitalist ones as a result of the new colonial policy of British imperialism; on the contrary, he felt that colonies of all varieties were predominantly characterized by an overwhelming majority of the peasantry, which indicated the level of production relations in the colonies.^[11](emphasis ours)

To fully appreciate the import of these debates, it needs to be understood that a lack of clarity on capitalist and pre-capitalist production relations, and even fundamental questions such as what constituted the proletariat as a class, was widespread in this Congress, even among revolutionaries from the colonial countries. With the proletariat, they would often lump together the millions of semi-proletarian (especially poor and landless peasant) masses exploited by pre-capitalist relations, whose class demands were in fact distinct. Hence, like Roy, many others would posit an impending urban-centric socialist revolution, based on this overestimation of the growth of the proletariat and underestimation of the peasantry and semi-proletariat. Sultan-Zade of Iran, for example, compared contemporary Iran to Russia before the October Revolution. Lenin’s position, by contrast, was that the principal task in colonies and semi-colonies was to win over the vast peasant masses. It was to this end, and conditional on being allowed to organize toilers’ Soviets as mass organizations among the peasants, that support could be lent to, and a tactical alliance formed with, sections of the bourgeoisie. Of course, this alliance would in no way surrender the class independence of the proletariat. These would be the basic lines of the debate that would unfold in the Comintern in the ensuing years.^[12]

The next thorough discussion of the colonial question would happen in the Fourth Congress (1922). M. N. Roy, the spokesperson for the colonial countries, again gave his viewpoint on the economic policy of imperialism in the colonies, in his Report on the Eastern Question. Delegates from other colonies and backward countries like Orhan from Turkey, Nik-Bin from Persia and Liu Yen-Chin from China, supported Roy’s main propositions. While his line on the industrialization of colonies and the class character of the colonial bourgeoisie was not directly challenged, the colonial delegates’ propensity to push for socialist revolution was challenged in favor of agrarian revolution as the principal strategy. Moreover, the Theses on the Eastern Question adopted by the Congress would differ significantly from Roy’s position on key issues: whether industrial growth in colonies was a salient aspect of imperialism rather than a temporary measure, whether the agrarian population was being proletarianized or not, and whether the revolutionary potential of the national bourgeoisie was exhausted. Roy’s answer to each of these was in the affirmative, whereas the Comintern Theses answered consistently in the negative.^[13]

It may be noted that M. N. Roy had elaborated upon his stances in his work India in Transition, published in 1922. He attempted to make the case for British-led industrialization of India (a reversal of British imperialism’s prior colonial policy of de-industrialization) to have been occurring in the wake of the First World War, whereby, he argued, imperialism had given the Indian bourgeoisie exactly what they had wanted – instead of constraining the latter, their capitalist development was being encouraged. His next work, What do we Want? (a programme written the same year, 1922), claimed that “if extensive industrialization of a country would mean the liberation of the peasantry from feudal bondage, the expropriation of the free cultivator, the gradual elimination of individual production and the transformation of the pauperized peasants into proletarian wage-slaves, this was exactly what was going to happen in India.”^[14](emphasis ours) Accordingly, his programme reflected the perspectives of a socialist revolution rather than an agrarian-centric democratic revolution. This notion that “the laws of capitalist development are common to the East and West” was also held by V. Vilensky, as also by Trotsky who also spoke of “feverish industrialisation” of colonial, semi-colonial and, generally speaking, of all backward countries. Roy would advance these views again in the Fifth Congress (1924), primarily in his debate against Manuilsky who delivered the Report on the National-Colonial Question.^[15] The debate on the economic policy of imperialism vis-à-vis industrialization of colonies continued between the Fifth and Sixth Congresses. Eugen Varga articulated the majority standpoint of the Comintern, in a report in mid-1925: “Domestic industry and handicrafts, developed to a high degree in India, are not being superseded so much by the development of big industry in the country itself as by the import of foreign manufactures, especially from England. The development of native factory industry has far long been successfully checked, and the homeworkers and craftsmen deprived of employment have not been able to find work in native factories… The labour released by the changed circumstances has found no place in industry.”^[16] (emphasis ours) This perspective was also present in the Theses on the Eastern Question of the Fourth Congress. In his next book, The Future of Indian Politics (1926), M. N. Roy again interpreted facts about British export of capital to characterize the dependent growth of Indian capitalism as constitutive of industrialization:

In the new state of world economy, it has become impossible for the British capitalists to extract tribute from India in the shape of a large unpaid surplus of export over import… To arrest the shrinkage of British trade with India, caused by the reduction in the latter's export trade, her purchasing power should be otherwise increased. This can be done by raising the standard of living of the Indian people. The standard of living of the Indian people, again, cannot be raised unless the choking grip on her economic life is considerably loosened. On the other hand, since a sufficient market for Indian raw produce cannot be found abroad, it must be created inside the country. This again must lead to industrialisation.^[17]

His close associate G. Luhani even argued that the foundations had been laid in India for what he described as “an industrial revolution after the model of that which happened in Europe generally in the 19th Century.”^[18]

These views would also be echoed, at the time, by R. P. Dutt of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). In his book Modern India (1926), he said the claims that “the peasant basis of Indian society gives it a peculiar character which will separate it from the lines of capitalist development and class struggle” were “based on traditions and sentiments which no longer correspond to realities in India. [There are, however, differences between the perspectives outlined by Roy, and those by the CPGB theorists, which will be discussed later.] Capitalism in India is already far advanced. The industrialisation of India is the keystone of modern economic and political policy. The class struggle has reached the most extreme intensity in the past half dozen years. The peasantry are becoming more and more proletarianized by the workings of Capitalism, and forced into the field of social struggle.”^[19] (emphasis ours) Later he would amend these positions somewhat (see next section.) Varga’s response, in 1928, analyzed available data to elucidate upon certain socio-economic realities: (1) increasing agrarianization of India’s population with the development of industry; (2) a general regression of industry as seen from urban population and occupation statistics; (3) decline in industrial growth after the war boom, and the smaller size of basic industries.^[20] Varga explained, in this light, the temporariness of the phenomenon of industrial growth in India. R. P. Dutt, while amending his earlier stance in some respects, nevertheless continued to argue that there was “no ground for drawing from the present situation a conclusion of the abandonment of industrialisation or reversion to the pre-war period.”^[21]

Another important aspect of this clash of perspectives concerned the class nature of the tasks of the revolution in colonial and semi-colonial countries and the united front. This unraveled in the course of the Stalin-Trotsky debates on China, which is beyond our scope to cover in detail here, but it suffices to state that the line upheld by the Comintern remained: agrarian revolution as the principal task, and the utilization of an anti-imperialist united front towards this goal, while retaining the class independence of the proletariat.^[22] In our view, this perspective is also compatible with Mao Tse-tung’s class analysis of Chinese society, his characterization of the national bourgeoisie, and his approach of agrarian revolution and united front.^[23] Sobhanlal Dutta Gupta concludes, “In a way, India and China provided two different types of experience. So far as India is concerned, the Comintern was primarily preoccupied with the economic policy of imperialism. In the case of China, however, the Comintern’s involvement was basically political, concerned as it was with the united front tactics of the CPC… It will be seen however, as it became evident very soon at the Sixth Congress, that the two issues constituted virtually two aspects of a single issue, namely, the revolutionary struggle against imperialism in the colonial countries.”^[24]

The Sixth Congress and the ‘Decolonisation’ Debate

The dynamics of imperialism in the colonial and semi-colonial world, particularly in India, were debated at great length, intensity and theoretical detail at the Sixth Congress of the Communist International (1928). A debate ensued on the dynamics and modus operandi of imperialism mainly with respect to British imperialist policy in India at the conjuncture that developed in the interwar years, and three broad positions emerged in the debate. The first may be described as the decolonisation thesis, which held that imperialism was either loosening its grip over colonial societies or had fundamentally altered its modus operandi by actively promoting industrialization in the colonies, thereby opening the possibility of a smooth and gradual transition out of colonial rule. Closely related to this was a second position, the indigenous capitalist development thesis, according to which a section of the Indian bourgeoisie emerging in the interwar years was nationalist in character, increasingly antagonistic to imperialism, and capable (albeit in an embryonic form) of leading capitalist development.^[25] This view was associated with the CPGB and later systematized in R. P. Dutt’s India Today, echoed by Khrushchev-era Soviet Indologists such as V. I. Pavlov and also R. Ulyanovsky in his later years, and also promulgated in liberal-nationalist Indian historiography by figures such as Bipan Chandra and Aditya Mukherjee. The third position, articulated most coherently at the Congress by Otto Kuusinen, emphasized continuity: imperialism continued to obstruct the independent development of the productive forces in India, even if it made tactical and temporary concessions under specific historical pressures.

Although the term ‘decolonisation’ was popularly associated with M. N. Roy, the argument itself had a longer genealogy. Roy had already advanced the thesis as early as 1921, claiming that the First World War marked a radical shift in imperial policy towards Indian industrialization. According to Roy, the Montagu–Chelmsford reforms (reforms implemented through the Government of India Act of 1919, which granted limited constitutional concessions and expanded Indian representation within the colonial administration, partly in response to growing nationalist pressures during and after the First World War)^[26] had forestalled a potential revolutionary alignment between the Indian bourgeoisie and the masses by accommodating bourgeois interests within the colonial framework.^[27] What is crucial, however, is that this view was not confined to Roy alone. Variants of it circulated widely among pro-imperialist ideologues and sections of liberal opinion. References have been made to “crude notions of ‘decolonization’ popular both in ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ interpretations,” which suggested either that imperialism withdrew voluntarily or that it continued domination while encouraging industrialisation, thereby eliminating any fundamental contradiction with the colonial industrial development.^[28] Kuusinen’s intervention at the Sixth Congress, while explicitly distinguishing between the proponents of the decolonisation thesis in the Comintern from the pro-imperialist intelligentsia who also upheld a similar position, nevertheless rejected the theory as objectively incorrect:

And, of course, I never was of the opinion that our comrades speak in the sense about de-colonisation as do the imperialists or their lackeys… All this, however, does not excuse the objective incorrectness of this theory.^[29]

According to Kuusinen, the early concessions granted by imperialism during and immediately after the First World War were not evidence of a structural shift but were a peculiarity of the political juncture generated by wartime unrest and revolutionary ferment. Once this movement was “betrayed” by the Indian bourgeoisie in the aftermath of 1922, imperialism, he argued, “once more reverted to its policy of hindering India’s industrial development”.^[30] This assessment directly contradicted claims that imperialism had embarked on a sustained programme of colonial industrialization. At the core of Kuusinen’s position was a materialist understanding of the role and nature of imperialism. He insisted that while colonial exploitation necessarily involved some encouragement of production, such encouragement was strictly subordinated to metropolitan interests:

Since, however, colonial exploitation presupposes some encouragement of colonial production, this is directed on such lines and promoted only in such a degree as correspond to the interests of the metropolis… Real industrialisation of the colonial country, in particular the building up of a flourishing engineering industry which would promote the independent development of its productive forces, is not encouraged but, on the contrary, is hindered by the metropolis.^[31] (emphasis ours)

Here Kuusinen made a decisive analytical distinction between industrial development in general and industrialisation proper. At a later session of the Congress, he clarified:

Industrialisation means the transformation of an agrarian into an industrial country, it means a general thorough industrial development, above all development of the production of the means of production… This is not a question of whether any industrial development had taken place in India – this has certainly been the case – it is rather a question of whether it is the policy of British imperialism to industrialise India.^[32] (emphasis ours)

This formulation directly undermined the argument that the existence of factories, mills, or tariff protection constituted evidence of thorough-going capitalist industrialization. Kuusinen further reinforced his position with empirical observations, noting that even at the height of the interwar boom, at most ten per cent of British capital exports to India went into manufacturing, while the bulk flowed into non-productive or extractive channels. Opposition to Kuusinen’s position came from several quarters within the Comintern. One Cox spoke of a “fundamental law” of imperialism transforming colonies into spheres of industrialization. Saumyendranath Tagore interpreted the Indian Industrial Commission of 1916 as signaling a decisive policy turn by British imperialism. Others invoked isolated references to Lenin’s points on the export of capital in his Imperialism. Arnot claimed that Britain was industrializing India simply because capital was being exported; Bennett went further, suggesting that railways would automatically usher in rapid industrialization, invoking Marx’s early writings in isolation from their historical context.^[33] Kuusinen addressed these contentions, emphasizing that capital export per se did not determine the character of development. While loan capital exported to settler colonies such as Canada or Australia could and did promote industrialization, the same did not hold for colonies like India:

Loan capital is being exported by England to Australia or Canada, or by America to Germany. This can promote industrialisation… (In India)… British export capital serves for the greater part unproductive purposes…^[34]

Industrialization, War, and Imperial Strategy, c. 1914–1947

To put the above debate in perspective, a glance into the political-economic developments of India of the interwar period may be of help. World War I did mark a significant, if limited, shift in British industrial policy towards India. This change was driven by three interrelated considerations: the rise of rival imperialist powers (particularly the United States and Germany), the military security of the British Empire, and the political necessity of accommodating the Indian big bourgeoisie at a moment of intensifying mass unrest. By 1915, British officials openly acknowledged that continued laissez-faire would reduce India to a dumping ground for foreign manufactures. The Montagu–Chelmsford Report (1918) explicitly linked industrial development in India to imperial military and economic strength, noting that an industrialized India would be a welcome asset to the Empire after the war. Industrialization in this period was therefore a means of strengthening imperial power and buttressing the latter’s war requirements at the critical juncture.^[35] The industrial policy introduced by the British state after the First World War functioned as the economic complement to the political reforms of the Government of India Act, 1919. Faced with heightened social unrest, the ideological impact of the Russian Revolution, and the growing presence of Indian capital, the colonial regime sought to stabilize its rule by extending limited concessions to sections of the Indian bourgeoisie prepared to collaborate with imperial interests. These concessions were designed to channel political and economic development in directions that would reinforce the Raj and contain mass discontent. This policy marked a modification of Britain’s earlier strategy, which had combined active state investment in infrastructure with a laissez-faire approach to industrial development, thereby securing India’s role as a market for British manufactures and a supplier of raw materials. In the post-war context, this framework was adjusted through a degree of guided industrialization, selective protection, and the introduction of imperial preference in tariff policy. The objective was to promote industrial growth within India while preserving the complementary relationship between the interests of Indian elites and the requirements of the metropolitan economies, safeguarding British capital, and limiting the entry of rival imperialist powers. Japanese and American firms began to penetrate Indian markets, and Britain’s share of India’s foreign trade declined. This heightened British concerns over losing economic control. Strategically, India had long functioned as a military reservoir for the British Empire, but modern warfare underscored the need for a regional industrial base to supply munitions and materials. As the Montagu–Chelmsford Report stated, industrial development had become a matter of “almost military necessity.”^[36] Clive Dewey later observed that peacetime industrial policy was increasingly conceived as preparation for the next war.^[37] The outbreak of World War I dramatically escalated the demands placed upon India’s economy as well as its population. Although British elites initially preferred to confine the conflict to Europe and resisted deploying non-white soldiers against white armies, the scale of the war soon forced a reversal of this position and Indian troops were dispatched to France despite inadequate training and equipment, suffering heavy casualties in unfamiliar and hostile conditions. The war starkly exposed the racial hierarchies embedded within the imperial system. By the end of 1918, over 1.44 million combatants and non-combatants had been recruited in India, and more than 1.38 million had been sent overseas. This included not only soldiers but also doctors, engineers, and technically skilled personnel, depriving Indian civilian society of already scarce expertise. Fatalities numbered between 53,000 and 70,000. Recruitment relied more and more on coercive methods, especially after news of battlefield disasters circulated among rural populations. Recruitment patterns reflected long-standing colonial strategies. The recruitment policies for the army confined enlistment to designated “martial races” and military districts, typically drawn from economically precarious peasant regions with limited industrial or public employment opportunities. It was low wages, chronic underemployment, and ecological vulnerability that made military service appear as one of the few viable livelihood options for these populations.^[38]

According to the economic historian Amiya Kumar Bagchi’s synthesis of various scholarly estimates, India transferred between £479 million and £596 million to Britain through cash contributions, material supplies, and loans: amounting to between 6.4 and 8.3 percent of national income over five years.^[39] In addition, India exported vast quantities of railway tracks, locomotives, rolling stock, ammunition, and military equipment, severely constraining domestic capacity. At the same time, India’s public debt rose sharply. Between 1914 and 1919, rupee debt increased from Rs 4,453.8 million to Rs 6,625.7 million, while sterling debt rose from Rs 2,656 million to Rs 3,037.9 million. Servicing this debt imposed a long-term fiscal burden on Indian taxpayers. To preserve London’s position as a global financial center and restrict gold imports, colonial authorities imposed deflationary monetary policies that further depressed real incomes. Crucially, such policies were feasible because of the colonial state’s centralized control over India’s external economy and the commanding position occupied by large British firms across key sectors.^[40] The war thus intensified extraction while reinforcing the structural dependence of the Indian economy on imperial finance and trade.

In the interwar period, shifts in imperial policy were interpreted (by scholars of an essentially pro-colonial vintage) as evidence of Britain’s declining grip and India’s gradual economic decolonization. Improved bargaining outcomes in trade agreements such as Ottawa (1932) and the Indo-British agreements of the 1930s were portrayed as Britain’s “capitulation” to Indian interests. These claims are refuted by an examination of the facts, such as that foreign capital inflows into India were limited and overwhelmingly took the form of loans rather than productive industrial investment. When interest payments, dividends, and home charges are set against capital inflows, India experienced a net outflow of capital throughout the colonial period, especially after World War I.^[41]

The Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO) expanded not primarily as a national industrial project but as a strategic imperial asset. Throughout World War I and the interwar years, TISCO maintained exceptionally close ties with the colonial state, sometimes even at the cost of short-term profits. A significant portion of Tata’s capital came from princely states, while the British Indian government provided preference capital and guaranteed markets. The railways and government departments accounted for the bulk of TISCO’s sales. When TISCO applied for protection, it was the first case referred to the Tariff Board, and its strategic importance to the Empire east of Suez was explicitly cited in granting statutory protection and bounties. During financial crises in the early 1920s and the Great Depression, TISCO was repeatedly rescued by British capital and the colonial state. Loans were extended by the Imperial Bank of India, debentures were sold on the London market, and additional capital flowed from British and American sources. Indeed, this was the case precisely because the Tatas did not represent rivalry but subservience to British interests, and such was the case with various other Indian capitalists that developed in this period.^[42] New groups of Indian big capitalists: the Birlas, Goenkas, Singhanias, Dalmias, Sri Rams, Walchands, and others, also entered industry in the inter-war years. Their capital accumulation had its origins in trade, speculation, brokerage, and wartime profiteering, all of which was carried out largely in collaboration with foreign capital. Marwari firms exemplify this trajectory. British rule created the conditions for their migration and expansion by integrating India into foreign-oriented commerce. Marwaris became natural intermediaries for European agency houses, distributing imported goods domestically and procuring raw materials for export. Even by 1930–31, Indian firms accounted for less than 15 percent of India’s foreign trade.^[43]

After the period of wartime enforced protection, the colonial government introduced discriminating protection in 1923. This was driven by Britain’s weakened global position, India’s wartime debt, and fiscal pressures following the 1919 reforms.^[44] Protection thus functioned simultaneously as a budgetary device and a political concession to Indian capital. However, the absence of a coherent industrial strategy and the persistence of deflationary finance limited its developmental impact. Various British businessmen in India, especially those tied to export sectors such as tea and jute, generally opposed protection, preferring existing arrangements that guaranteed dominance over external trade, finance, and government-dependent industries. Indian capitalists, by contrast, consistently supported tariff protection, which provided relief from Japanese competition and facilitated entry into import-substituting industries.^[45] Yet this support did not translate into a challenge to the British imperial economic structures, and Indian big business sought political and economic concessions, according to one scholar, “with the least disturbance to the existing social order.”^[46] World War II created extraordinarily favorable conditions for Indian big capital. Defense production expanded rapidly, strikes were outlawed under the Defence of India Rules, wages were suppressed, and prices soared. For industrialists, especially in textiles, profit levels reached unprecedented heights. Firms such as the Sri Rams and Walchands benefited enormously from war contracts. Shipbuilding, steel processing, and engineering expanded under direct government patronage. However, these projects remained deeply dependent on foreign expertise, machinery, and design. The Hindustan Shipyard, for instance, was planned, supervised, and constructed by British engineers and operated primarily to meet imperial wartime needs.^[47] Thus, wartime industrialization intensified production without altering the underlying relations of dependence and subordination. As a British business journal candidly admitted in 1944, British and Indian capital had long functioned in “working partnership,” with ownership, capital, and direction deeply interwoven.^[48] This is the socio-economic base that India would inherit after the end of direct colonial rule in 1947. The characterization by, for instance, Kuusinen, about the dependent and fettered nature of inter-war industrialization in India, therefore, corresponds well with the facts.

Conclusion

The Comintern debates examined above possess more than merely historical significance. They speak directly to contemporary discussions on imperialism, development, and the changing place of the Global South within the world economy. Today, the rapid industrial growth of countries such as India, Brazil, Philippines, and others has led some observers to argue that classical theories of imperialism have become obsolete, or that imperialism no longer acts as a barrier to industrial development in the periphery, or that these countries are no longer dominated by imperialism. Similar claims, in different forms, were already being advanced within the Communist International nearly a century ago.

The strength of the Comintern discussions lies in their refusal to reduce the question to a simple opposition between industrial growth and stagnation. The crucial issue is not whether industrial development occurs at all under imperialism, but rather the character, limits, and consequences of that development. Development of industries can coexist with dependency, unequal exchange, foreign domination of strategic sectors, and forms of accumulation that reproduce rather than overcome subordinate integration into the world economy. The existence of industrial growth therefore does not, by itself, settle the question of imperialism.

The historical debate also serves as a reminder of the need to analyze concrete developments rather than relying on abstract formulas. The Comintern theorists sought to understand how the tendencies identified by Lenin operated in particular colonial formations and under changing historical circumstances. In doing so, they enriched the theory of imperialism. The same task confronts us today. Rather than treating the contemporary industrialization of parts of the Global South as either proof of the demise of imperialism or ‘decolonisation’ of some kind, it must be examined in its interconnections with global production relations, networks, international finance, technological dependence, and geopolitical rivalries.

1. Communist International, Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-Colonies.

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2. Quoted in Adhikari, Documents of History of Communist Party of India Vol. 1, 198-205

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3. Originally ‘bourgeois-democratic’ but later amended to ‘revolutionary liberation’, see Sobhanlal D. Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, 1920–37 (Kolkata: K. P. Bagchi & Company, 1960), 33-34 for Lenin’s intervention.

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4. Quoted in Adhikari, Documents of History of CPI I, 198-205

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5. Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 2.

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6. Speech Introducing Draft Theses quoted in Gupta, Comintern, India and Colonial Question, Chapter 2

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7. Speech Introducing Draft Theses quoted in Gupta, Comintern, India and Colonial Question, Chapter 2.

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8. Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 2.

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9. Lenin quoted in Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 2.

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10. Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 2.

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11. Ibid.

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12. Ibid.

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13. Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 3.

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14. M.N. Roy quoted in Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 3.

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15. Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 3.

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16. E. Varga quoted in Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 3.

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17. M.N. Roy quoted in Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 3.

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18. Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 3.

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19. R.P. Dutt quoted in Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 3.

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20. Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 3.

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21. R.P. Dutt quoted in Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 3.

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22. While Sobhanlal Datta Gupta (whose archival research this section largely draws from) considers the view of the national bourgeoisie as tending to split into revolutionary and reformist wings, the former being partners in the revolutionary anti-imperialist front and the latter being a hindrance due to their vacillating nature and mass influence, as Stalin’s departure from Lenin’s interventions on the anti-imperialist united front in the Second Congress, we deem it fit (especially in light of the experience furnished by the likes of China and India) to regard it as being a meaningful development that is consistent also with Lenin’s positions.

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23. See Mao Zedong, “Analysis of Classes in Chinese Society” (1926), Marxist Internet Archive; Mao Zedong, “The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party” (1939)

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24. Gupta, Comintern, India and the Colonial Question, Chapter 3.

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25. Jairus Banaji, “The Comintern and Indian Nationalism,” in A Marxist Mosaic: Selected Writings 1968–2022 (Leiden: Brill, 2024), 599–644.

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26. See footnote 44.

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27. Banaji, “The Comintern and Indian Nationalism”

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28. Aditya Mukherjee, Imperialism, Nationalism and the Making of the Indian Capitalist Class, 1920–1947 (New Delhi: SAGE Publications, 2002), 32.

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29. O. W. Kuusinen, “Concluding Speech on the Colonial Question,” International Press Correspondence, Sixth World Congress of the Communist International, vol. 8, no. 81 (November 1928)

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30. Kuusinen quoted in Banaji, “The Comintern and Indian Nationalism”

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31. Ibid.

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32. Ibid.

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33. Banaji, “The Comintern and Indian Nationalism”

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34. O. W. Kuusinen, “Concluding Speech on the Colonial Question,” International Press Correspondence, Sixth World Congress of the Communist International, vol. 8, no. 81 (November 1928)

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35. Ghosh, Indian Big Bourgeoisie, 221-3.

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36. Montagu-Chelmsford Report quoted in Ghosh, Indian Big Bourgeoisie, 223.

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37. Clive Dewey cited in Ghosh, Indian Big Bourgeoisie, 224.

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38. Amiya Kumar Bagchi, “Indian Economy and Society during World War One,” Social Scientist 42, no. 7/8 (July–August 2014), https://www.jstor.org/stable/24372918

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39. Bagchi, “Indian Economy and Society during World War One”

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40. Ibid.

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41. Aditya Mukherjee, “The Return of the Colonial in Indian Economic History: The Last Phase of Colonialism in India,” Presidential Address (Modern India), Proceedings of the Indian History Congress (December 2007), 17-18.

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42. Ghosh, Indian Big Bourgeoisie, Chapter 8.

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43. Ibid.

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44. The “1919 reforms” refer to the Government of India Act 1919, commonly called the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms, enacted by the British Parliament after World War I. These reforms expanded limited Indian participation in legislative councils, introduced dyarchy in provincial administration, and reorganised fiscal and political structures as a partial concession to Indian pressures following the war.

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45. Manali Chakrabarti, “Why Did Indian Big Business Pursue a Policy of Economic Nationalism in the Interwar Years? A New Window to an Old Debate,” Modern Asian Studies 43, no. 4 (July 2009): 979–1038, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X08003703

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46. Chakrabarti, “Why Did Indian Big Business Pursue a Policy of Economic Nationalism,” 1013.

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47. Ghosh, Indian Big Bourgeoisie, 240-241.

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48. Capital (1944) cited in Ghosh, Indian Big Bourgeoisie, 244.

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