Ideology in organized Indian politics, 1880-1948
Date
1983-03-28
Authors
Tayal, Maureen
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Abstract
This paper is an attempt to place in perspective the ideologies which have helped
shape South African Indian politics.
The history of organized Indian politics from the 1880s to the 1940s is mainly the
history of trader politics - an almost unbroken line of accommodation to the demands
of the ruling white minority; or, at most, selective reformism. This line has twice been
breached though. Between 1907 and 1913, and again in the 1940s, a radical leadership
emerged in the Transvaal and Natal which attempted to transform Indian politics. The
process of transformation began at the level of ideology. Thus the two periods of radicalism
are useful focal points: they demand an examination of not only the new ideologies,
but also the old.
No attempt is made here to discuss the course of the passive resistance movements
which were the end result of Indian radicalism, except insofar as is necessary to explore
some of the issues which this paper has sought to address: the articulation of trader and
radical ideologies; the potential of radical ideologies to forge cross-class or, indeed crossrace
alliances; the extent to which that potential was realized, and the role of the Indian
lower middle classes in that realization.
The paper begins, however, with a discussion of Indian social stratification at the
turn of the century, and in the 1940s. This is meant, first of all, to provide the background
to an understanding of the nature of the essentially conservative, entrenched
political parties which the radicals attempted to transform. The discussion also illuminates
the conditions under which radicalism emerged. Finally it sketches the social
and economic conditions of the mass of the Indian people in order to identify their
specific interests. The varying extent to which, and the way in which, those interests
were represented by Indian politics at different times is in itself a significant commentary
on changes in the content of their ideological underpinning.
Description
African Studies Seminar series. Paper presented 28 March 1983
Keywords
East Indians. South Africa, South Africa. Politics and government