Karl Marx’s Views on India

ABSENCE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND
OTHER FORMS OF COMMUNAL OWNERSHIP
REASONS FOR COMMUNAL OWNERSHIP OF LAND
SOCIAL STAGNATION AND THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY
DESPOTISM IN INDIA
FEUDALISM IN INDIA

ABSENCE OF PRIVATE PROPERTY IN LAND

History has clearly shown that Karl Marx never came to India. But he established something about India in his writings. Karl Marx only read the works of historians who had visited India and proposed his beautiful theory of Asian modes of production. He first established the Eastern idea of the absence of private ownership of land and then applied it to India. To all of these, in the case of India, Karl Marx said that property only exists as common property. According to this theory, the individual member as such is the owner only of a determined portion, hereditary or non-hereditary, since any portion of property does not belong to any member for himself, but only to him as immediate member of the community. . The individual is therefore only a possessor. What exists is only common property and only private property.

To be more specific, Marx relied solely on the work of Bernier, Mill, and Jones, as well as British colonial administrators such as Maine, Elphinstone, and Campbell, on the question of non-existence of private land ownership. in the East. social formation Looking at some of the writings of Karl Marx, one can conclude that he amply states that private ownership of land did not exist in the pre-colonial Indian social formation. In fact, this is evident when he says that it was the British who introduced the institution of private property to India.

OTHER FORMS OF COMMUNAL OWNERSHIP

Besides the Asiatic and Slavic forms of property that Marx applies to India, he speaks of two other forms of common property, Roman and Germanic. Unlike the Asian form, the Roman form and the Germanic form had individual ownership in addition to communal ownership.

Thus, in the Germanic form, community property appears only as a complement to individual property, with the latter as its basis, while the community exists only in the assembly of the members of the community, their gathering together for them themselves, for common purposes. On the other hand, in the Roman form, property appears to coexist in the dual form of state and private property.

In his letter to Engles, he writes that the land in the Roman form is occupied by the commune, the Roman land; a part remains with the community as such, separated from the members of the community, ager publicus in its various forms; the other part is divided, and each piece of land is Roman, because it is private property, a Roman domain, its own part of the laboratory; but he is only Roman insofar as he possesses this sovereign right over part of the Roman land

REASONS FOR COMMUNAL OWNERSHIP OF LAND

The reason why Orientals and Indians in our case never achieved private land ownership was, according to Marx, invented from different regions. His explanation, following Engels, was mainly climatic or geographical. Artificial irrigation being one of the foundations of agriculture in the arid or semi-arid regions of India, the economical and economical use of water required the intervention of the centralizing authority of the state. . The State intervened in the absence of private or voluntary associations, due to the low level of civilization and the excessive extent of the territories. For Karl Marx, this is the reason why one cannot speak of the existence of private property in pre-colonial India.

SOCIAL STAGNATION AND THE VILLAGE COMMUNITY

Karl Marx strongly argues that village communities in the Indian context were characterized by an inseparable unity of agriculture and handicrafts. Such a unique dual combination of agriculture and handicraft has provided the village communities with such self-sufficiency and necessary enough for their simple reproduction and stable existence. As such, it could be said that they were, as Bulla Badhra says, locked up in their independent organization and their separate life.8 According to the situation of the industry (not as in the modern sense of the word), in the village communities there were it was a natural division of labour, not as we see in the capitalist mode of production. The form of division of labor that existed in India's economically self-sufficient village communities paints a very different picture. This form of division of labor allows individuals to remain connected in making certain products, but does not imply a separate operation in making each product. Karl Marx describes such a primitive society based on common property

DESPOTISM IN INDIA

Another view that Marx had of India was that of despotism. He borrowed the views of Robert Patton and Richard Jones, who had previously posited an argument that, due to the absence of a landed aristocracy as a political counterweight, the power of the ruler is absolutely unlimited. According to Patton, the immense expanse of the country, as far as history can go, has borne perpetual sovereignties with undiminished power and splendor, without restraint, change, or restriction of any kind.10 None would be found anywhere. Karl Marx allusions to the actual abuse of political power by state officials, he believed, with Jones and others, that property belonged to the state and that by implication there were no privileged landowners as contenders for political power in pre-colonial times. The result of all this was despotism, he says. He goes on to argue that in the pre-colonial Indian social formation, despotism and homelessness appear to exist legally.

So it can be stated here that sovereignty in India consists of land ownership. The other reason for the existence of despotism was the existence and consequences of idyllic village communities. These village communities, together with the absence of private land ownership, formed a solid basis for the reality of despotism. What Karl Marx found most objectionable about these village communities was their closed nature, which in turn offered no possibility for internal social change or political development. Marx restricts the great oriental reality to the Indian context

FEUDALISM IN INDIA

If we critically read Karl Marx's writings on India, we realize that he does not really confirm the development of feudalism in India. But if he is very clear with this concept when it comes to Europe. But in the writings of other historians, India had definitely had a feudal face. Balu Badhra argues in his dissertation that Indian feudalism did not emphasize the economic contract to the same degree as certain forms of European feudalism, but the difference is not so significant that the use of the term feudalism for conditions prevailing in India during the period. The basic conditions for a feudal system were present in India. One noteworthy thing about feudalism in India, as Bulla Badhra argues, is that feudal developments in medieval India were uneven, just as no part of Europe was ever fully feudalised. It goes without saying that some economic, political, legal and social developments in medieval India are here labeled feudal, precisely because they are strikingly similar to similar developments in European feudalisms. For this reason, such feudal developments completely nullify Marx's Asian mode of production, especially with regard to the claim that there is no property in India.