The third major development of the period 1935 was the increasing interest the Congress took in world affairs. The Congress had from its inception in 1885 opposed the use of the Indian army and of India resources to serve British interests in Africa and Asia.
It had gradually developed a foreign policy based on opposition to the spread of imperialism. In February 1927, Jawaharlal Nehru on behalf of the National Congress attended the Congress of Oppressed Nationalities at Brussels organised by political exiles and revolutionaries from the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America suffering from economic or political imperialism.
The Congress was called to coordinate and plan their common struggle against imperialism. Many left wing intellectuals and political leaders of Europe also joined the Congress. In his address to the Congress, Nehru said:
We realise that there is much in common in the struggle which various subject and semi-subject and oppressed peoples are carrying on today.
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Their opponents are often the same, although they sometimes appear in different guises and the means employed for their subjection are often similar.
Nehru was elected to the Executive Council of the League against Imperialism that was born at this Congress. In 1927, the Madras session of the National Congress warned the government that the people of India would not support Britain in any war undertaken to further its imperialist aims.
In the 1930s the Congress took a firm stand against imperialism in any part of the world and supported national movements in Asia and Africa.
It condemned fascism which had arisen at the time in Italy, Germany and Japan as the most extreme form of imperialism and racialism and gave full support to the people of Ethiopia, Spain, Czechoslovakia and China in their fight against aggression by the fascist powers.
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In 1937, when Japan launched an attack on China, the National Congress passed a resolution calling upon the Indian people “to refrain from the use of Japanese goods as a mark of their sympathy with the people of China.” And in 1938, it sent a medical mission, headed by Dr M. Atal, to work with the Chinese armed forces.
The National Congress fully recognised that the future of India was closely interlinked with the coming struggle between fascism and the forces of freedom, socialism and democracy.
The emerging Congress approach to world problems and the awareness of India’s position in the world were clearly enunciated in Jawaharlal Nehru’s Presidential address to the Lucknow Congress in 1936:
Our struggle was but part of a far wider struggle for freedom, and the forces that moved us were moving millions of people all over the world and driving them into action.
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Capitalism, in its difficulties, took to fascism. It became, even in some of its homelands, what its imperialist counterpart had long been in the subject colonial countries.
Fascism and imperialism thus stood out as the two faces of the now decaying capitalism. Socialism in the West and the rising nationalism of the Eastern and other dependent countries opposed this combination of fascism and imperialism.
While stressing the Congress opposition to any participation of the Indian government in a war between imperialist powers, he offered full cooperation “to the progressive forces of the world.
To those who stood for freedom and the breaking of political and social bonds,” for “in their struggle against imperialism and fascist reaction, we realise that our struggle is a common one.”