The Indian National Congress and the Capitalist Class: A Symbiotic Alliance or Comprador Capitalism?
Author(s): Neeraj Singh
Authors Affiliations:
M.A.History(2026)
Department of History University of Delhi
DOIs:10.2015/IJIRMF/202607009 | Paper ID: IJIRMF202607009This paper investigates the complex and calculated collaboration between the Indian National Congress (INC) and the home-based capitalist class during the anti-colonial era in India. Rejecting the notion of the comprador bourgeoisie, which proposes that indigenous capitalists were simply imperialist collaborators, it maintains that the Indian capitalist class arrived at the state of national bourgeoisie as a self-sufficient group. They viewed British imperialism with structural antagonism because of their diverging economic interests on issues of tariffs, exchange rates, and foreign investment. In order to manage the vagueness of their position, capitalists employed the Pressure-Compromise-Pressure (P-C-P) tactic to use Congress-led mass movements to secure colonial concessions while additionally offering the necessary financial patronage required to keep the organisational machinery of the INC afloat. This economic dependency allowed business elites notable policy leeway by which they were often successful in curbing the rise of labour radicalism, as is exemplified by the Bombay Trade Disputes Act 1938 and in stigmatising members of the leadership of the socialist radical movement. Finally, the article concludes that this co-evolutionary connection not only guided India towards a non-revolutionary route to independence but also set another milestone by defining the structure of independent, post-1947, state-sponsored, autonomous, capitalist development.
Neeraj Singh (2026); The Indian National Congress and the Capitalist Class: A Symbiotic Alliance or Comprador Capitalism?, International Journal for Innovative Research in Multidisciplinary Field, ISSN(O): 2455-0620, Vol-12, Issue-7, Available on – https://www.ijirmf.com/
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