INDIAN CAPITALISM 5 integration of the Indian economy into the world capitalist system. Bipan Ghandra, the historian of modern India, articulates this view sharply and in its most explicit and detailed form: The Indian bourgeoisie, a basically homogeneous class in its economic and political relationship with imperialism, developed from the beginning as a strong, independent, class. Its dominant sections have never had any alliance or partnership with international finance capital or with the emerging giant corporations. Its monopoly structure developed entirely on the basis of its own financial and industrial structure. In its economic and political relations and attitude the Indian capitalist class was on the whole anti-imperialist and anti-foreign capital. Even today, in spite of the increase in 'technicaF collaboration agreements and in spite of the growth in 'foreign investment5, it cannot be said that the national bourgeoisie, big or small, is entering into partnership with the giant foreign corporations, or that there is a single major or economically strategic sector of the Indian economy which is under the domination of foreign capital. However^ while the basically homogeneous capitalist class, big or small, is anti-imperialist, anti-foreign capital, and follows a completely independent path of development, the same cannot be said for Indian capitalism. In the striking presentation of the view by Bipan Chandra: While India's dependence on imperialism is not the result of the Indian capitalist class's domination by the imperialist capitalist class, it is still very much there because of the dependence of the Indian economy on imperialism which in turn is due to its being an integral part of the world capitalist economy. Thus, the 'external' restrictions on the Indian economy and its development are 'structural', i.e., the product of it being a well-structured part of world capitalism which inevitably produces development in one of its parts while producing undcrdevelopment in the other.8 ^ 5 The immediate stage of revolution in these underdeveloped countries is socialist. The Indian left has not been able to appreciate this because it has no 'theory of colonialism'. To hold the view that the bourgeois-democratic revolution is not yet completed in India and that the people's democratic revolution must precede the socialist revolution means, from the standpoint of history, to slur over the unique and singular features of the Indian socio-economic formation in its development; from the standpoint of economics, to fail to understand the colonial mode of production and the underdevelopment that has been generated from the time India became a well-structured part of world capitalism; from the standpoint of politics, to evade the whole question of the world socialist revolution. Bipan Chandra asserts that the Indian bourgeoisie, a consistently anti-imperialist class from its origins, has completed, or virtually completed, the bourgeois-democratic revolution. This, of course, has been done in a 'non-revolutionary' way: the political tasks first, and then the economic task. To his ultra-'left' fellow-travellers like Gunder Frank,4 the question of the