Thread by @shrikanth_krish

Socialism was v popular in Britain in the 1930s

Two Labour minority govts were formed in UK in the 1920s under Ramsay MacDonald

"National Labour" featured in coalitions for much of the 1930s too

(Contd...)

https://twitter.com/sanjeevsanyal/status/1087251753098203136

Socialism represented the zeitgeist, and no doubt influenced intellectual life elsewhere in the Empire

Even literary figures, from much earlier in the 20th century, like George Bernard Shaw, were influenced by Socialism

The 1930s was also the period of the rise of big government in much of the Western world, esp US

The era of New Deal reforms, and formulation of Keynesian economics

Even in UK, socialist economists and theorists like Harold Laski dominated the intellectual landscape in the 30s

Other influential figures in UK included socialists like Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the couple who helped found the London School of Economics in 1895 and also an early influential figure in the Fabian Society - an organization which left an impact even on Mr Jawaharlal Nehru

Also let's not mistake the Labour Party of the 20s and 30s with the one that exists in UK today

The Labour Party back in the 20s-30s was very much a socialist party. Committed to socialism in a fairly strict sense.

Sidney Webb was in fact the author of Clause IV of the constitution of the Labour party, which committed the party to work towards the public ("common") ownership of the means of production and distribution

The clause was drafted in 1918. It was only in 1995, that the clause was scrapped in favor of a new clause IV by Tony Blair - leading to a redefinition of the Labour party, and the birth of a more moderate center-left in UK

The reason I am mentioning all this is to bring to attention the sheer influence back in the 20s and 30s of ideas that would today be deemed far-left and anathema even by left-wing parties like the Labour Party in UK or the Democratic Party in US.

Socialism was the in-thing...Nobody was writing treatises on free market or traditional values back in the 20s

It was the age of Laski, Keynes, the two Webbs

Not David Hume or Edmund Burke or Adam Smith

It is but natural that educated Indians were also influenced by many of these ideas

To say that the British "delibarately" inculcated young Indians in socialism in order to weaken their "nationalism" is flawed

The books Indians read merely reflected what was current back then

There is a tendency among many Indian commentators to overrate the centrality of India while trying to explain the actions of others

Not every little thing needs to be explained in conspiratorial terms -

"Oh..the British did this, because they had such and such a reason"

What we call the "British" were a heterogeneous bunch back in the 20s - including rabid socialists, classical liberals, Tory conservatives, reactionaries..

The diversity of British Intellectual life no doubt contributed to the diverse currents in Indian intellectual life

Just as Britain of the 30s consisted of individuals as diverse as Churchill and Atlee, India too exhibited a similar range

With socialists like Nehru, Bose
Conservatives like Rajaji
Liberals like Tej Bahadur Sapru, Srinivasa Sastri
Traditionalists like Malviya

The full range

PS: This is not to say I approve of the zeitgeist of the 20s

I am v far from socialism and deplore the developments of the 20s-30s

The thread's purpose was merely to clarify that it doesn't take a "conspiratorial" theory to explain the rise of socialist ideas in 1920s India