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From New International, Vol. VIII No. 8, September 1942, p. 245.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The liberal English bourgeoisie, irritated by the growth of the labor movement at home and frightened by the rise of the revolutionary struggle in India, is more frequently, more frankly and more sharply revealing what brutes the most civilized European “statesmen” who have passed through the highest school of constitutionalism, become when the masses are roused for the struggle against capital and against the capitalist colonial system, i.e., the system of slavery, plunder and violence.
In India, the native slaves of the “civilized” British capitalists have been recently causing their “masters” a lot of unpleasantness and disquietude. There is no end to the violence and plunder which is called the British administration of India. Nowhere in the world ... is there such poverty among the masses and such chronic starvation among the population. The most liberal and radical statesmen in free Britain ... are, as rulers of India, becoming transformed into real Genghis Khans, who are capable of sanctioning all measures of “pacifying” the population in their charge, even to flogging political dissenters.
There is not the slightest doubt that the age-long plunder of India by the English, that the present struggle of these “advanced” Europeans against Persian and Indian democracy will harden millions and tens of millions of proletarians of Asia, will harden them for the same kind of victorious struggle against the oppressors. The class conscious workers of Europe now have Asiatic comrades whose numbers will grow from day to day and hour to hour. (August 1908, Collected Work, Vol. XII)
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Last updated on 17 January 2015