Will India Become a Superpower?

Sixty years ago, in the summer of 1948, our nation, then newly born, was struggling for its very survival. In January, Mahatma Gandhi had been murdered by a Hindu fanatic. The act had shocked many Indians, but apparently it had the approval of some. According to one news report, the jailed assassin, Nathuram Godse, received an average of 50 letters a day expressing admiration for his action. This was part of a much wider right-wing, religious, reaction against Partition. Hindu and Sikh refugees from Pakistan were calling for retribution against the Muslims who had stayed behind in India. The relations between the two communities were poisoned further by the tribal invasion of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. With the raiders aided and equipped by the Pakistani army, the religious conflict had, inevitably, become a national one. A bloody battle was on in the high mountains of the Himalaya, as the Indian Army sought to rid Kashmir of the intruders.

Six weeks after Godse fired those three shots from a Beretta pistol in New Delhi, the then undivided Communist Party of India (CPI met in a secret conclave in Calcutta. At this meeting, the leadership of the CPI was taken away from a gentle and very cultured Kumaoni named P.C. Joshi. Joshi wanted the Communists to collaborate with Jawaharlal Nehru 's government in building the new nation. His replacement, an austere Maharashtrian named B.T. Ranadive, believed on the other hand that the transfer of power from British to Indian hands was a sham, and that Nehru and his men were puppets of the Western imperialist powers. He took the Communists towards a new 'people 's war ' line, which mandated the overthrow of the Indian State through armed struggle, and its replacement by a single-party dictatorship.

In June 1948, the infant Indian State looked very fragile indeed. It was pierced from the left by the Communists, and pinched from the right by the Hindu extremists. And there were other problems aplenty. Eight million