AHC: Communist India

Your challenge, is to create a Communist India, with a POD of 1914. India can be independent, but also part of a greater 'Communist Commonwealth', or pulling a Yugoslavia with the Soviet Union.
 
I don't know how India would become a communist state but if it does and goes through the same or similar economic growth as China then it'll be in a much better position than it is now.
 

MrP

Banned
There have been democratically elected Communist governments at the state level in India, so even with a post-independence POD, this is not implausible.

Flocc should have useful input on that.
 
Your challenge, is to create a Communist India, with a POD of 1914. India can be independent, but also part of a greater 'Communist Commonwealth', or pulling a Yugoslavia with the Soviet Union.

The problem is that Congress, the main Indian political party, for most of the 20th century is both ubiquitous and left wing. Unless they turn right, it's going to be hard to organise resistance on the left they can't co-op. In my rather uninformed opinion, you'd need to butterfly Congress or make them substantially more right wing in order to give the communists a chance. Have Communists ever overthrown a left wing government?
 
If the POD is 1914, there is all sorts of mayhem you can play. If Britain decides that they want to try to hold on to India by force, and the Soviet Union is the world's premier anti-colonial power, there is no reason why Congress might not take a hard left turn towards an Indian variant of state socialism, or be pushed aside by Communist revolutionaries.
 
The problem is that Congress, the main Indian political party, for most of the 20th century is both ubiquitous and left wing. Unless they turn right, it's going to be hard to organise resistance on the left they can't co-op. In my rather uninformed opinion, you'd need to butterfly Congress or make them substantially more right wing in order to give the communists a chance. Have Communists ever overthrown a left wing government?

Afghanistan in 1978 might count, but then again I'm not sure how left wing the republic really was.
 
Make not Nehru, but Vallabhbhai Patel and C. Rajagopalachari the leading figures in the Congress Party. Like Nehru, they were both important in the independence movement, so they had the credibility to become prime minister. But unlike Nehru, Patel was more in favour of a close relationship to the USA / NATO, whereas Rajagopalachari favoured free-market economics over state planning. So with both of them in charge of Congress, that leaves a gap on the centre-left side of things, where a stronger Communist Party might fit in. Nehru might set up a Congress split-off party (a centre left-wing version of OTL Swatantra), therefore weakening the Congress' voter base, but the Communists become the main force on the left and thus present themselves as the only nation-wide alternative to Congress.
 
Two Words: No Hitler

Remove Hitler from the equation. Once the Depression hits, have those in the UK focused on salvaging their economy by turning inwards using the Commonwealth to spur growth. Likewise, watch India go militant as the British refuse to grant them their promised independence. The Soviets move in to help covertly, maybe have the British try to turn the Muslim minority against the Hindu majority, all out civil war, etc. That might be enough.
 
Despite pretensions otherwise, virtually nobody in the NAM was genuinely nonaligned, nor did it ever really pretend to be an effective 'third way' in the Cold War. India is no exception.

I still think calling India Soviet-aligned is a bit strong. India was certainly a Fabian Socialist state and sympathetic to the USSR but much of that was because first Pakistan was cozying up to the US and then China warmed up to the US after the Sino-Soviet Split. The relationship deteriorated even further when the US tried to block Indian intervention in the Bangladeshi Liberation War.

You are right in that the Indian victories against Pakistan were one of the few major triumphs of Soviet weaponry over US weaponry.
 
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