Glimpses of the History - Mohit Sen

Indian Communist movement (1925-1995)

United Communist Party Of India

An Introduction

The United Communist Party Of India(UCPI) looks back on the seven decades of the existence of the organized formation of the communist movement in our country with both happiness and sorrow, pride and regret. The Indian communists have done much and sacrificed greatly for the Motherland, for our people and especially for the working class and the oppressed  and the exploited. They have formed part of the gallant company worldwide which have done more than any other party or movement to emancipate  nations and free peoples. Yet both in India and in the world as a whole they have missed great opportunities and done damage to the masses as well as their cause and themselves.

On the occasion of its seventieth birth anniversary,the UCPI  greets all communists, sympathisers and fellow fighters for the freedom and advance of India and the emancipation and progress of all the peoples and nations of the world. It wishes them well and appeals to them to come together to reflect on the past, shed all that was wrong and wicked and chart out a course of action to do better work for the country , people and the cause of communism.

I

The Beginning (1920-34)

The leap forward of the national revolution in our country under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi in the form of the nation wide Non-cooperation struggle of 1919-22 radicalizedthe masses, especially the youth and intelligentsia. An important part of this radicalization was the impact of the Great Socialist Revolution of 1917 in Russia and Tsarist Empire under the leadership of the Bolsheviks headed by the immortal Lenin. This great revolution caught the imagination of  many  nationalist revolutionaries whose heart and mind had been stirred by the Non-cooperation movement  led by the Mahatma. Some of them wanted to go quicker and further than the Congress and its great leader. From among this section of nationalist revolutionaries came the founders of the orgainsed communist in our country.

Four trends can be identified of such naitionalist revolutionaries:



( I )  Those operating from Germany,the USA, Turkey and Afghanistan-Virender

Chattopadhyay,elder  brother of Sarojini Naidu, M. Barkatullah, M.P.B.T Acharya, M.N.Roy and Ambani mukherjee

( II )  Those from the pan-islamic Khilafat movement who went abroad in  1914-16  and the Hizrat movement of the post First World War period-Mohannad Ali Sepassi,Rhamat Ali Khan,Firozuddin Mansoor,Abdul Majid and Shaukat Usmani.

( III )  those from the Ghadar party formed from among emigrtant Sikhs and other Punjabis in the USA – Rattan Singh and Santokh Singh.

( IV )  Those in India-from the congress, the national revolutionaries who believed in individual or group; armed action, the khilafat and Babbar Akali movement, the trade union struggles of the working class-Dange in Bombay, Singarvelu Chettiar in Madras, Muzaffar Ahmad in Calcutta and Inqilab group of Ghulam Hussain in Lahore.

All the representative of  these four trends were ardent anti-imperialist  revolutionaries, determined to be followers of Lenin and devoted to the cause of the Red Flag in India and the world. But most of them had weak link with the mass anti-imperialist movement in India and little as well as distorted knowledge of the role  and position of the Congress and Gandhiji. S.A.Dange was an exception, a brilliant exception. So was Singaravelu Chettiar. The rest were “left” sectarian and anti-Congress.

What is most remarkable was thatLenin himself had views and had worked out a theory of the national revolution in general and in India in particular with which the  views and  theory of Dange coincided.

In his controversy with M.N.Roy in 1920-21, Lenin insisted that the revolution in colonial, semi colonial  and dependent countries was different from the socialist revolution which had triumphed in Russia and which was taking shape in the developed capitalist countries. The revolution in these countries was a national revolution in which all national classes were objectively interested and bound to be involved.It was a revolution to free the nation as a whole from foreign rule and domination and not against capitalism as such. In India a mass national revolutionary movement was already in existence headed  by the Congress and its leader Gandhiji.The latter had based himself on the traditions of India, including religion, and succeeded in drawing vast millions, especially the peasantry, into the national revolution. The task of the communists was: to form themselves into an independent party, maintain that independence, struggle against and establish a close alliance with the Congress, struggle against attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic trends in the national liberation movement, seize the possibility of avoiding the capitalist stage of development and going over to socialism through definite stages of development, establish an alliance between national liberation movements, the Soviet Union and the working class movements in the imperialist countries. It is significant to note that  Lenin did not insist that the working class, much less the communist parties, should establish its leadership of the national revolution without which the latter would not succeed

M.N.Roy opposed the very concept of a multiclass national  revolution. According to him the struggle against imperialism could only succeed as a socialist revolution led by the working class headed by the communist party and based on the worker, peasant alliance. In India the first task for the communists was to break the influence over the masses of the congress and Gandhiji whom he regarded as the representative of  Indian bourgeoisie which collaborated with and was bound to surrender to imperialism.

It was tragic that though M.N.Roy was later expelled from the communist international, his views replaced those of Lenin in that body from 1928 onwards when Stalin took over its leadership. Only when this view was replaced by a return to and development of the ideas and theory of Lenin could communist parties make their proper contribution to the national revolution and even emerge as its leader. This happened, above all, in China and Vietnam where Mao Dzedong and Ho Chiminh headed the communist parties.

This could have happened in India had S.A.Dange headed the communist party in India. As far back as 1921 he wrote Gandhi Vs Lenin-a misleading title which he himself  used to admit in later years. From August 1922 he published an English weekly called The Socialist. He  criticized what he considered were the limitation of Gandhism and advanced the idea of combining the non-cooperation movement with the workers’ general strike in towns and peasent uprisings in the villages. He also insisted on the need to maintain the independence of the communists in India from any kind of external control.They were to be the communists of their country and people and not imitation Bolsheviks. From those early days he stressed the need for communists in India to know the history and traditions of their country. At the same time he advanced a comprehensive programme of radical socio-economic reforms with nationalization of railways, mines and big factories, ceiling on individual incomes, breaking up of large landed estates andestablishment of a system of peasant proprietors. Along with Singaravelu Chettiar he established close relation with the congress and attended its sessions. Very early on he played a leading role in the establishment of the AITUC in 1920 which was the first mass organization based on the class principle. It was precisely this class organization which had as its first president Lala Lajpat Rai and counted Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chander Bose as subsequent presidents.

It was tragic that the principle of integrating the class struggle with the national movement in the form of the national revolution worked out by Lenin and independently by Dange was more or less brushed aside by Stalin and the communist international which he controlled. It took decades for this principle to become the basis of a section the communist movement in India-the UCPI whose founder chairman was none other than  S.A.Dange.

As it happened after several experiments it finally came about that the communist party of India was founded in Kanpur on 25-26 December 1925. It is, however, worthrecalling that the attempt was made before that to form the workers’ and peasants’ party as an open party.Com Dange put forward the idea of a labour socialist party, M.N.Roy of a peoples party,Singaravellu set up a labour kisan party of Hindustan and labour swaraj party of the Indian national congress was established with blessings of C.R.Das and the active participation of the poet Kazi Nazrul Islam.It is an open question whether more time should have been allowed for these experiments to proceed and be reviewed so as to work out a proper orgainsational form for the communist movement in India.

Among those who came together in Kanpur was Satyabhakta who advocated that a legal,open and national communist party should be set up in India which should not be affiliated with the communist international. His views were rejected. Because S.A.Dange was in jail as one of the accused in the Kanpur Conspiracy case of 1924 he was not physically present on the occasion. Singaravellu Chettiar was elected presisent and S.V.ghate as one of the secretaries. Muzaffar Ahmad, also in prison in the same case with

Dange, was among  the committee members.Later in May 1927 at Bombay-S.V.Ghate was elected the general secretay of CPI-the first general secretary. He was and remained till the end of his life more than five decades later one of the closest friends and comrades of S.A.Dange. among the officer bearers elected at the same time were Muzaffar Ahmad,Singaravellu Chettiar, K.N. Joglekar,K.S.Lyengar,Zoumyendranath Tagore and Abdul Halim.

As at the founding congress so also at Bombay the directive given to communists was to work within the congress and form as strong as possible a leftwing within it.Though it consisted of a small membership and cou,d not function legally the communist party of India from 1925 to 1927 had begun to work with the skeleton type of organization all over the country loosely linked up. International connections were also established with the communist international through correspondence with M.N.Roy. The communist party of Great Britain and its trade union leaders also kept in contact. These connections and contacts were not easy because of illegal conditions in which the communists had to work, censorship and the activity of the British colonial intelligence services.

It would, perhaps, be useful at this stage to write something about these international connections and contacts. Thesearean important positive side. It was not financial or other forms of material help that mattered. These were practically nonexistent to start with and  some importance only from the early 1950s. Otherwise such forms of help were in the first two and a half decades about the same that the national revolutionary anarchists tried for and secured and less than what the congress received from sympathizers outside India. The motivation was the same-it was help for the struggle to free the nation and mobilize the masses.

Whatever gold there may have been in Mascow  remained there and certainly did not reach the communist pioneers in our country.

What did reach them but in a trickle till the mid 1940s were ideas through books and periodicals. Some of the works of Marx,Engels,Lenin,Trotsky and  Bukharin as well as writings of M.N.Roy, R.Palme Dutt and the publications of the communist international. Correspondence was largely intercepted by the colonial police. For example, it was only decades later that a letter from M.N.Roy was found in the national archives to Dange where the latter was asked to  Moscow as soon as possible since the ‘old man’(Lenin) was keen to meet him.The letter never reached Dange.

The method and theory of Marxism-Leninism came together with the inspiration of the triumph  and advance of the Russian Revolution. Both attracted and enthused not only communists in India. Mao Dzedong stated that it was the salvoes of the October Revolution that brought Marxism-Leninism to China. Ho Chiminh was similarly inspired when in exile in Paris. Pandit Nehru has written glowingly about the impact of the ideas of Marx,the deeds of Lenin and the new vistas opened up by the Russian Revolution. Mahatma Gandhi opposed what he  considered to be the violence inherent in the theory of Lenin but stated that his deeds and those of his comrades would be written in gold in the pages of history.  Earlier Balgangadhar Tilak,C.R.Das,Motilal Nehru.Lala Lajpatrai and later Netha ji Subhas Bose, Bhagat Singh and Sarojini Naidu were among the great national leaders who admired and respected communism, communists and the Soviet Union. Great cultural figures like Rabindranath Tagore,Subramania Bharati, Iqbal,Premchand,Nirala and scientists like Meghnad Saha,C.V.Raman, Jagdish Bose, P.C. Mahalanobis were part of the galaxy similarly affected. Thses great personalities apart  the workers,peasants,working intelligentsia.women and youth who got to know the emancipating ideas of  Marxism-Leninism and the achievements of the Soviet Union felt the glow of the possibility of a new, juster life and intensified their struggle for it.

The British communists were uncompromising champions of India’s freedom and fearlessly fought the British colonialists. No other party in the U.K. did so. Some of their trade unionists came to India at great personal risk to and sacrifice to help their Indian comrades.Their British citizenship did not save them from surveillan ec, harassment and arrest. George Allison, Ben Bradley, Lester Huthinson, Phillip Spratt came to our country and some of them were arrested along with Indian communists in the Meerut conspiracy case (1929). Shapurji Saklatvala , an Indian parsee distantly related to the Tatas and the first British communist member of parliament,toured India in 1927 and indicted British colonialism. He carried on a debate through correspondence with Gandhi ji which attracted great attention. All this was anti imperialist proletarian internationalism in  flesh and  blood.

While never forgetting these positive aspects of the international relations of the communist movement in our country, the negative aspects also cannot be overlooked. These aspects became particularly, pronounced after the sixth world congress of the communist international in 1928 when Stalin won monopoly of leadership and power in the communist international as the result of winning a similar position in the Soviet state and the communist party of the Soviet Union. But the negative aspects were an inherent aspect of these relations.

While the method and basic ideas of the theory of Marxism-Leninism have universal aspects their application to specific nations and specific situations is specific also. This requires  detailed concrete, factual knowledge which is best acquired  by those who are themselves a part of it. Attempting a global analysis of the stage and processes of different types of revolution in different categories of countries is not only a legitimate but a necessary  endeavour. But to go beyond that and prescribe solutions for concrete problems and situations in different countries at different times is unscientific and flies in the face of the basics of Marxism-Leninism and its method. The fact that all communist parties had first to be recognized by the communist international and function as its branches subject to the discipline of its central executive committee made error inevitable. This happened in the case of all communist parties which, basing themselves on the basics of Marxism-Leninism and its methods, were able to combine loyalty to the comintern  with working   out their own approach to their own problems made significant advance, e.g. China ,Vietnam, Yugoslavia and Italy. The communists in India did not have such a leadership though they had some leaders who triedto work out solutions independently, e.g. S.A.Dange and P.C.Joshi.

The negative aspects of the international connections of the communists had another source. Perhaps the most important problem of the application of the Marxist-Leninist theory and the method is to determine what is the specific unity and struggle of opposites to which such application  is to be made and what are the interconnections. The comintern concept was that it was the world revolutionary process as a whole which was the sphere of such application while national developments were subordinate to it and formed the sphere of interconnection. The same was its approach to classes within the nations. Class relations and struggle were regarded as primary within the nation and the nation itself was not regarded as the unit in which the unity and struggle of opposites operates for a long stretch of history which still continues. In any event whatever  may be the soundness or otherwise of what has been written above, there can be no denying the fact that the comintern by its very existence meant the under estimation of the national factor.

Finally, by the time the communist party of India had begun to function as an organized entity from the end of the 1920s and mid 1930s the comintern had passed under the total control of Stalin. The result was its increasing conversion into an instrument serving the direct and immediate needs of the Soviet foreign policy. Even more damaging was the imposition on the cominternof the dogmatic sectarian outlook and the dictatorial organizational methods which were the hall mark of his leadership.

The disastrous impact of Stalinism on the communistmovementin India was felt immediately following the 1928 sixth congress of the communist international.

This was particularly tragic because the mass activities of the CPI as well as its role inside the congress had significantly increased.

The highlight of its mass activities was the historic six month’s  strike of the textile workers in Bombay which began in April 1928. The Red Flag was accepted as their flag by more and more sections of the working class. At the end of the strike in October, 1928 was born the historic Girni Kamgar Union which was the largest trade union at that time in the whole of Asia and a model for militant trade unions in our country for close to two decades. The leader of this mighty movement and trade union was S.A. Dange.

He also played the leading role in heading the work of the communists in the congress. It is worth remembering that as long back as in 1921 in the name of communist party Maulana Hasrat Mohani had moved a resolution at the Ahmedabad  session of the Indian national congress that the goal of India’s independence should be complete independence. This was then defeated because of the vehement opposition of Mahatma Gandhi. The communist party participated in the gigantic nationwide mass demonstrations to boycott the Simon commission which had come to India to prepare a constitution for our country. At the Madras session of the congress in 1927 along  with Pandit Nehru and Subhas Bose the communist delegates, Nimbkar and Joglekar, sponsored a resolution calling the people to fight for complete independence. Gandhiji was not present but continued to oppose the demand. It was at the Calcutta session of the congress in 1928 that he worked out the compromise that if dominion status was not won in a year he would accept the demand. This was what happened when in the 1929 session of the congress at Lahore the pledge for complete independence was adopted when Pandit Nehru became the congress president for the first time. What the communists demanded in 1921 became the nation’s demand in 1929 when the congress and Mahatma Gandhi accepted it. The communists at that time worked independently and within the congress to popularize the demand and eventually won. They neither gave up their d emand nor became anti-congress because it was not being accepted.

In 1928-1929 the communist leadership with the agreement of the cominter tried the experiment of establishing workers and peasants party (in Punjab known as the Kirti Kisasn Party). These were to be broad based independent parties functioning legally and acting within the congress as part of its leftwing. They were not to substitute for the communist party which had also to be built up in addition to the AITUC as the militant class based mass organization of the workers. The Workers and Peasants Party was formed in the Punjab.U.P. Bengal and Bombay. Its all India conference was  held in Calcutta in December 1928. Among its prominent leaders were S.A.Dange, Sohan Singh, Muzffar Ahmad,Firozeuudin Mansur and P.C.Joshi.

The lively and growing communist movement in India was repressed with great savagery by the British colonialists. Their attack culminated in the all-india arrest of all important communist leaders and the launching of the Meerut conspiracy case in June 1929, though the arrests had taken place in March 1929. The case itself went on for four years with almost all the accused receiving long years of jail sentences thereafter. Prominent among the Meerut conspiracy case accused were S.A.Dange. P.C.Joshi, Muzaffar Ahmad,  S.V.Ghate, Sohan Singh  Josh, Dharani Goswami and G. Adhikari. In the dock along with the communists of India stood three British communists-Ben Bradley,Lester Hutchinson and Phillip Spratt. This was an unforgettable manifestation of anti-imperialist solidarity and proletarian internationalism.

The entire national movement  rallied in support of the Meerut accused. Defence committees were set up in the country and abroad as well. Pandit Motilal Nehru, Pandit Jawahar lal Nehru, Dr. Ansari were among the members of the central defence committee. Albert Einstein was a prominent signatory of the internationalappealcalling for the release. Solidarity contacts and messages were exchanged between the Meerut accused and the national revolutionary anarchists facing trial in the Lahore conspiracy case who  included Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev and Ajoy Ghosh-the latter was later to become the general secretary of the communist party of India.

Mahatma Gandhi visited the Merrut case prisoners on the eve of the historic  Lahore session of the congress which was to adopt the pledge of  complete independence.

He told the communists about this and said that now there were no important difference between them and the congress. He called for their cooperation in the next round of the freedom struggle-the civil disobedience movement of 1930-33. He assured them in reply to a question put by S.A.Dange that this time there would be no

Withdrawal of  the movement because of sporadic acts of violence by the masses as had happened in 1922 when he had called off the non-cooperation movement because some policmen had been burnt alive in Chauri Chaura.

Unfortunately, even tragically, precisely at this time the communist movement in India adopted a damagingly sectarian line. It was not alone in doing so. It happened throughout  the world. This was the result of the disastrous sectarian and adventurist line adopted by the sixth congress  of the comintern in 1928. This line became known to the communists in India just about the same time as when the Meerut conspiracy case was launched. This line was binding on them as their party was,as well all communist parties in the world, a branch of the communist international. This line instructed the communists in India to, first and foremost, establish their leadership of the anti-imperialist movement in the country.

This, the comintern theses stated, could only be done by destroying the mass influence of the congress, of Gandhji and of its left-wing represented by Pandit Nehru and Subhas Bose. Objectively this was stated to be both necessary and possible because the congress and its leaders represented the Indian capitalist class which was compromising with imperialism and bound to surrender to it. The class struggle with in the Indian nation was taken to be more intense  and important than the  struggle of all the classes of the Indian  nation against foreign domination. The comintern’s sectarian  slogan of class against class was made more sectarian in the case of our country, in the shape of the implicit slogan of class struggle against national struggle. The revolution in Russia was also presented as the model for all other revolutions irrespective of the history, traditions and socio-economic conditions of the country concerned. The victory of all revolutions was made dependent on armed struggle and civil war as had taken place in Russia in November 1917.

As a result of the adoption of this line by the communists of India they were cut off from the congress and the anti-imperialist national movement.  They lost heavily in mass influence and prestige. The experiment of the workers and peasants party was abandoned. The AITUC was split by breaking from the socalled  reformists. The communist party itself was split, including  inside the Merrut jail, by expelling all those considered to be reformists and the agents of the congress. By the early 1930s only a small number of communists remained and there was,in reality,no communist party organization in the country.

II



REBIRTH  AND ADVANCE (1934-1937)



From August 1933 onwards the communist leaders started coming out of jail and meeting one another as well as those who had not been arrested. They were bitterly divided among themselves. Despite this a provisional central committee was set up in December 1933 and P.C. Joshi began to function as the general secretary from 1934 onwards. The party was illegal and had to function from the underground. Step by step, province by province and even member by member the party was rebuilt and an all-India centre began to work. P.C.Joshi did a Herculean job and literally breathed life back  into the party.

New trends and currents had begun to emerge in the national struggle and its premier organization and leader, the congress. Mass struggles and constructive work further rooted the congress practically in every village and town of India and among all classes and communities of our people. Clearly pronounced left and socialist trends emerged in it. Pandit Jawaharla Nehru was the recognized leader of the leftists and socialists. He did tremendous work in taking socialist ideas to the masses. At the same time he remained firmly in the congress, became its second most important leader, the closest disciple and later the acknowledged heir of the  Mahatma.  Subhas Chander Bose was another immensely popular mass leader belonging to the left trend. Acharya Narender Deva , Jayaprakash Narayan, Achut Patwardhan, Asoka Mehta and others who considered themselves  to be the disciples of  Pandit  Nehru formed the congress socialist party in 1934 as an integral part of congress. Whatever  may have been  their differences with the communists they considered themselves  to be and were in fact their friends, either accepted Marxism-Leninism or  were sympathetic to its teachings and had great respect and admiration for the Soviet Union.

Fortunately for the communists a significant and positive change took place in the line of the comintern at this time. The victory of fascism in Italy in the late 1920s of the Nazis in Germany in 1933, the Japanese fascist invasion of China created situation in which the cominter leadership was compelled to revise its sectarian lint. In 1935 the seventh world congress of the comintern took place. It proclaimed the strategy of the anti-fascist and anti-imperialist united front of all classes, parties and persons who could be united to fight the fascists and imperialists. The communists in India were advised to maintain their independence, to work with all anti-imperialists, to take part in the Indian national congress, facilitate the process of formation a national revolutionary wing within it for the purpose of further developing the national-revolutionary movement of the Indian people against British colonialism. In February 1936 this line was further concretized in the document prepared by R.P.Dutt and Ben Bradley  which  called upon the communists in India to work for an anti-imperialist people’s front to establish which the congress would play a great and foremost part. Through  further transformation of its organisation the congress itself could become the form of realization of the front. It was also visualized that the congress socialist party could bring together all the radical elements in the congress including the communists. The latter while working with this perspective should take up the urgent demands of the masses, advance a programme of radical socio-economic transformations and advance the slogan of convening a  constituent assembly based upon universal adult suffrage to draw up the constitution of a free India

From 1936 onwards the commnists in India under the inspiring and dynamic leadership of P.C.Joshi adopted the line of working for a united national front. It called upon its members to join the congress and enroll masses under their influence to the congress. It called for the collective affiliation of trade unions and kisan organizations to the congress. It worked to give a push to the revolutionary direction of the national movement by concrete action of the left forces within the congress as well as by independent mass action outside it. In semi-legal conditions the communists from 1938s onwards brought out a paper significantly called National Front. Its editorial board consisted of P.C.Joshi, S.A.Dange, Ajoy Ghosh, B.T.Ranadive and Mohammed Zafar. They worked actively inside the congress keeping particularly close contact with Pandit Nehru, Z.A.Ahmad and Dr. K.M.Ashraf worked as secretaries in the AICC office when he was the president of the congress. Communists also worked within CSP with EMS Namboodripad being one of the favourites of  Sri  Jayaprakash Naryan. There were in the late 1930s and the early 1940s some seventeen AICC members who were at the same time recognized leaders the CPI. When congress sessions took place the communist delegates actively participated in them moving resolutions and amendments as well as issuing public appeals.

The communists in this period took the initiative to rebuild the unity of AITUC. They established the All India Kisan Sabha in 1936 with the help of prominent non-communist leaders like Swami Shahjanand Sarsawati and of which Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was a president. They established the All India Students Federation in 1936 of which Pandit Nehru was the patron. The progressive writers’ Association was established with Rabindernath Tagore as the patron, Premchand  as the president and Sajjad Zaheer as the general secretary. The PWA drew into its fold most of the leading writers in all Indian languages.

Apart from leading the struggles of the working class, peasants and students for their day to day  demands the communists organized sweeping struggles against India being made  a participant in the second world war by the British colonialists. This included the general strike of the workers in Bombay against the war. They were critical, alongwith Subhas Bose and other congress leaders, of the Mahatma for refusing to lead a nation wide mass struggle against the war and only agreeing in 1940 to launch an individual civil disobedience movement for the civil liberty to speak out against participation in the war.

An important event was the communist mobilization of support for Subhas Chander Bose being re-elected as the congress president in 1939. The CSP and other left congressmen participated in the campaign for Subhas against the candidate of rightwing Dr. Pattabhi Sitaramayya who was also said to have the blessings of the Mahatma. Bose was re-elected and the rightwing refused to co operate with him. Eventually he had to resign and Rajendra Prasad became the new president. In protest Bose started organizing the Froward Bloc which he eventually converted into a separate party outside the congress in mid-1939. The communists joined the left consolidaton committee formed on the initiative of Subhas Bose but along with Pandit Nehru refused to break away form the congress and sever ties  with Mahatma Gandhi.

The prestige,mass follwing and organization of the communists reached a new qualitative level  by 1941. They were held in high esteem as consistent and revolutionary anti-imperialists had admired for their sacrifice, integrity, comprehensive philosophy and organization skill. They also gained in stature because of the respect for and solidarity with the Soviet Union on the part of the congress and all other patriots.

A severe test for the  communists of India came with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941.The British colonialists were the allies of the Soviet Union against the Nazis. After long debated and with the direct intervention of the cominter acting through the communist party of Great Britain the communist party decided that the character of the war had basically changed. It decided that the best way to continue the struggle for freedom was to participate in the war. The best and most effective participation in this war would be a free India but it felt that the demand for a national government and for freedom would be strengthened and best fought for by first participating in the world wide war against fascism. This feeling was strengthened when the Japanese fascists defeated the allied armies and moved their army to the borders of our country.

China’s battle against the Japanese invasion had already evoked widespread support among our people. The congress had sent a medical mission to that country as a token of solidarity. The mission had gone to the area of China where the Chinese communists had established their power. Solidarity with the Soviet Union had already become a long established and time- tested  tradition in our country. The congress made it clear beyond the shadow of doubt that its sympathies were with the Soviet Union and China. The national government would join the allies against Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and imperialist Japan as an equal partner. It did not agree with Subhas Bose’s thesis that “our enemy’s enemy is our friend”. It respected his patriotism and courage in escaping from detention and going to Germany and the Japan to fight for our freedom. But it disagreed with him.

At the same time it did not agree with the communists that there could be co-operation with the British colonialists in the war effort without a national government or at least, effective control of the country’s governance by having key portfolios in the existing government and without the over riding authority of the Viceroy. The communists, on the other hand, thought that by cooperating with the war effort the demand for a national government or one in which the British colonialists would not have the over riding authority would be one. What the communists did was wrong was to go ahead and cooperate the British colonialists on their own. This error was made much worse when they not only opposed the August 1942 Quit India Resolution  but opposed the movement once it was launched. The communists campaigned, it is true, against the repression launched against the movement and for the release of Mahatma Gandhi and other congress leaders. But by opposing the movement and criticising  some of its leaders as fifth columnists and Japanese agents the communists alienated themselves from the national revolution. Only a few leaders like S.A.Dange expressed the view that even after disagreeing with the August 1942 resolution of the congress the communists should have joined the struggle once it was launched.

Despite this grave error the communists grew in numbers and used legal conditions to set up units in all the provinces of India . The first congress of the CPI was held in Bombay in 1943. P.C.Joshi was  re-elected the general secretary and G.Adhikari, B.T.Ranadive, R.D.Bhardwaj and Ajoy Ghosh were elected to the polit bureau.Among others selected to the central committee were C.Rajeshwar Rao, P.Sundarayya, E.M.S. Namboodripad, Bhowani Sen, N.K. Krishanan,Sohan Singh Josh, Mohan Kumaramanglam, Arun Bose. Som Nath Lahiri and Bhagwati Charan Panigrahi.

Weekly papers were published in English and all Indian languages-a pioneering achievement. So were the writings of Marx, Engles and Lenin.The Indian People’s Theatre Association was set up with the slogan-culture to the people and the people to the culture. Some of those who became celebrated artistes later-Balraj Sahni, Ravi Shankar, Sanjeev Kumar, Dina Pathak, Shankar Jaikishan and others-began their career in IPTA. Great writers like Jeevanandham, vallathol, Bishnu Dey, Makhdoom Mionuddin, Rahul Sankrityana, Majrooh Sultanpuri, Sri Sri, K.A.Abbas and others either joined the party or were its simpathisers. Scientists like Homi Bhaba, and P.C.Mahalnobis historians like D.D. Kosambi, Susohan Sarkar, Mohammad Habib came close to the party. So did the graphic artist Chittaprasad and the photographer Sunil Janah.

The AITUC spread to all parts of the country as did the AIKS and  AISF, Women’s organisatios and children’s organizations were set up.

The communists rendered sterling service to the lakhs of victims of the Bengal famine of 1943. Their simplicity, sacrifice and dedication earned them the respect of all the patriots including those who disagreed with them. In fact, despite their grave mistake in opposing the August 1942 resolution the communists emerged as among the intellectual and moral leaders of the nation. Relations between comrades and sympathizers at all levels were characterised   by warmth and closeness-the party was regarded as a close knit family.

Unfortunately all thses great qualities did not prevent the communists from committing another grave error. This was their attitude to the two nation theory and the demand for Pakistan advanced by the Muslim league. The communists had a glorious record in fighting against communalism and for the unity of the people, especially the working people. Unfortunately they, together with other leftists and progressives, had not given it the importance that it deserved. To begin with the communists were second to none in opposing the communalism of the Muslim league along with  opposing Hindu and all other forms of communalism. This position, however, began to change in 1942. National unity and communal unity was equated with congress-league unity. The congress was characterized as the freedom organization of all the India peoples and the Muslim league as the representative of the “Muslim nationalities” .Not only was the erroneous theory adopted of basing nationalism on religious grounds but India was mechanically equated with the Soviet Union.  India was characterized not as a nation but as a collection of nationalities, some of which had a Muslim majority. All nationalities, in the CPI’s view were to have the right of secession. Not only this was a surrender to Muslim communalism. It was a denial of the reality of India as a nation. The “Muslin nationalities” concept was corrected fairly soon, i.e. by 1946. The acceptance of the reality of the Indian nation come later, i.e. by 1951 in the CPI programme.

In 1944 Mahatma Gandhi was released and there was a historic correspondence between him and P.C.Joshi. It revealed Gandhiji’s firm opposition to the people’s war line of the CPI as well as more general misconceptions about the party. But he repeatedly stressed that he valued the discipline and dedication of the communists and would not like to loose their cooperation. This was the typical of  the great leaders generous approach. Even when at the 8 August session of the congress the CPI members opposed the Quit India resolution. He expressed both his  disagreement with them and admiration for their courage of conviction. P.C.Joshi expressed both his respect and polite but firm disagreement with some the views of the Mahatma. It was in the course of this correspondence that the CPI’s general secretary called Gandhiji ‘the nation’s father’-certainly one of the earliest occasions on which such a term was used.

When the war ended there was a national mass upsurge in India. There was a big wave of actions by all sections of the people all over the country. Some of the peak points were : demonstration in support of the demand to release the Indian National Amy officers who were put on trial: the Tebhaga movement in Bengal :  the Punapurra-vayalar  bettle in Kerla :  the Quit Kahmir upsurge:  strike actions of the police and army. The highest points were the Telegana armed struggle and the uprising of the RIN. Both took place in 1946.

The Telegana armed struggle started in 1946 in the Teugu-speaking areas of Hydrabad state. It  combined the struggle against British colonialism. The Nizam’s autocracy, feudal landlordism and the suppression the language and culture of the Andhras. It was great mass armed struggle of the men and women of thousands of villages led by the communist party.

Ravi Narayan Reddy was its legendry leader along with Badam Yella Reddy, D.Venkteshwar Rao, C.Rajeshwar Rao and P. Sundrayya and others. From 1946 to 48 it went from victory to victory. It was one of the greatest contributions of the communists to our national revolution.

The RIN uprising was the most advanced mass action of the armed forces against British colonialism. The naval ratings pulled down the Union Jack and hoisted the flags of the Congress, The Muslim league and the Communist party as the symble of national unity. It was the communist party which played the leading role in mobilizing the working class and the people of Bombay through a general strike and hartal and standing upto savage repression in which in the course of three days nearly 300 were shot dead and 1700 wounded. The communist party was alone in standing by the naval ratings till they called off their struggle in response to the Congress leadership.

The active participation of the communists in the postwar  upsurge of the national revolution  to some extent helped to repair the broken links between it and the mainstream of that revolution. It should be emphasized that such participation of the communists was carried out under the leadership of P.C. Joshi.

Under his leadership,too, the communists played an outstanding role together with the cogress in combating the terrible holocaust of communal killings and enormous transfer of population which took place prior to the partition of the country and on an even larger scale thereafter. In areas where the Red Flag had significant mass support communal riots did not take place at all. The communists appealed and worked for the establishment of the broadest possible front against communal offensive rightly seeing it as the  spearhead of the counter revolutionary counter attack by imperialism and its allies against the freedom struggle as it was moving to a triumphant climax.

Under his leadership, also, the communists in India were the first among communists anywhere in the world to recognize the on 15 August 1947 our country had become free. This was not an easy thing to do. At that time the reigning Stalinist dogma was no national liberation movement could win unless it was led by the working class headed by the communist party. In our case this movement had been led, according to the understanding prevalent at that time by the capitalist class represented by the congress. It was, above all, P.C.Joshi’s profound nationalism and strong common sense and the immense prestige that he enjoyed in the communist party that enabled the latter to take such a correct stand. It was a tragedy for the communist movement that this stand was soon reversed.

The communists in India had made an outstanding contribution to the national revolution in diverse ways-programmatically, setting up mass organizations based on the class principle, placing it in the international context, propagating the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, popularising socialism, developing Indian culture, conducting mass armed struggle. They were rightly respected for that patriotism, dedication, sacrifice and discipline. But the communists could have done much more had they not been imprisoned by Stalinist dogmatism from 1928 onwards.

This negative dogmatism prevented the communists from trying to understand the specific features of the history and traditions of their country and people, particularly the national revolution as it had taken shape historically. The insistence and top most priority given to establishing working class leadership of this revolution through the communist party led to the communists taking anti-congress positions, though this was partially offset be the personal understanding of  P.C. Joshi. Unfortunately he never gave this understanding to theoretical foundation nor did S.A. Dange and other pioneers build on their correct perceptions and search of the 1921-28 period. P.C.Joshi did  not work out the implications of his statement that in India that biggest class struggle was the national struggle.

An integral part of this dogmatism was the understanding that the Soviet revolution was the only way in which any revolution can succeed, i.e. through one or another form of armed struggle. Since the chief form of our national revolution was that of democratic  mass movements including hunger strikes, hartals, demonstrations, satyagraha,jailgoing and meetings, the communists in India and the world did not consider it as revolutionary at all. In fact even today many communists do not agree that our freedom struggle was a revolution at all.

The result was that despite all their contribution the communists in India remained a small force when the national revolution triumphed with the establishment of the national state following the over throw of the colonial state.