Text VI : COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA IN DIFFERENT PERIODS

(Extracts from articles, pamphlets etc.)

The Initial Period (1921-25)

1

Excerpts From

Gandhi Vs. Lenin

— by SA Dange

Gandhi and Lenin

Common Aim: To destroy social evils of the day, especially the misery of the poor and to subvert despotism.

Source : Chapter III of the book with the same heading

2

From

Manifesto to the 36th Indian National Congress, Ahmedabad, 1921

You have met in a very critical moment of the history of our country to decide various questions affecting gravely the future of the national life and progress. The Indian nation today stands on the eve of a great revolution, not only political, but economic and social as well. ...

This newly acquired political importance obliges the Congress to change its philosophical background, it must cease to be a subjective body, its deliberations and decisions should be determined by the objective conditions prevailing and not according to the notions, desires and prejudices of its leaders. ... The old Congress landed in political bankruptcy because it could not make the necessities of common people its own, it took for granted that its demands for administrative and fiscal reforms reflected the interests of the man in the street, ... You, leaders of the new Congress, should be careful not to make the same mistake because the same mistake will lead to the same disaster. …

[The new Congress] has discarded the old impotent tactics of securing petty reforms by means of constitutional agitation. Proudly and determinedly, the Congress has raised the standard with “Swaraj within a year” written on it. Under this banner, the people of India are invited to unite, holding this banner high you exhort them to march forward till the goal is reached. ... But the function of the Congress, as leader of the nation, is not only to point out the goal, but to lead the people step by step towards the goal. ... Several thousand of noisy, irresponsible students and a number of middle-class intellectuals followed by an ignorant mob momentarily incited by fanaticism cannot be the social basis of the political organ of a nation. The toiling masses in the cities, the dumb millions in the villages must be brought into the ranks of the movement if it is to be potential. How to realise this mass organisation is the vital problem before the Congress. ... Is it not a fact that hundreds of thousands of workers employed in the mills and factories owned by rich Indians, not a few of whom are leaders of the national movement, live in a condition unbearable and are treated in a manner revolting? Of course by prudent people such discomforting questions would be hushed in the name of the national cause. The argument of these politicians is “let us get rid of the foreign domination first”. Such cautious political acumen may be flattering to the upper classes, but the poor workers and peasants are hungry. If they are to be led on to fight, it must be for the betterment of their material condition. The slogan which will correspond to the interest of the majority of the population and consequently will electrify them with enthusiasm to fight consciously is “Land to the Peasant and Bread to the Worker”. The abstract doctrine of national self-determination leaves them passive, personal charms create enthusiasm loose and passing. ...

[The People’s] consciousness must be aroused first of all. They must know what they are fighting for. And the cause for which they fight must include their immediate needs. ... The first signs of the end of their age-long suffering should be brought within their vision. They should be helped in their economic fight. The Congress can no longer defer the formulation of a definite programme of economic and social reconstruction. The formulation of such a constructive programme advocating the redress of the immediate grievances of the suffering masses, demanding the improvement of their present miserable condition, is the principal task of the 36th Congress.

Mr. Gandhi was right in declaring that “The Congress must cease to be a debating society of talented lawyers”, but if it is to be, as he prescribes in the same breath, an organ of the “merchants and manufacturers”, no change will have been made in its character, in so far as the interests of the majority of the people are concerned. ... If the Congress makes the mistake of becoming the political apparatus of the propertied class, it must forfeit the title to the leadership of the nation. Unfailing social forces are constantly at work, they will make the workers and peasants conscious of their economic and social interests, and ere long the latter will develop their own political party which will refuse to be led astray by the upper class politicians.

Non-cooperation cannot unify the nation. If we dare to look the facts in the face, it has failed. It is bound to fail because it does not take the economic laws into consideration. The only social class in whose hand non-cooperation can prove to be a powerful weapon, that is the working class, has not only been left out of the programme, but the prophet of non-cooperation himself declared “it is dangerous to make political use of the factory workers” ...

For the defence and furtherance of the interests of the native manufacturers, the programme of swadeshi and boycott is plausible. It may succeed in harming the British capitalist government, though being based on wrong economics, the chances of its ultimate success are very problematical. Rut as a slogan for uniting the people under the banner of the Congress, the boycott is doomed to failure, because it does not correspond, nay it is positively contrary, to the economic condition of the vast majority of the population. ...

It is simply deluding oneself to think that the great ferment of popular energy expressed by the strikes in cities and agrarian riots in the country is the result of the Congress, or, better said of the non-cooperation agitation. ... The cause of this awakening, which is the only factor that has added real vigour and a show of majesty to the national struggle, is to be looked for in their age-long economic exploitation and social slavery. The mass revolt is directed against the propertied class, irrespective of nationality. This exploitation had become intense long since but the economic crisis during the war period accentuated, it. The seething discontent among the masses which broke out is open revolt on the morrow of the war was not, as the Congress would have it, because the government betrayed all its promises, but because the abnormal trade boom in the aftermath of the war intensified the economic exploitation to such an extent that the people were desperate and all bonds of patience were broken ...

What has the Congress done to lead the workers and peasants in their economic struggle? It has tried so far only to exploit the mass movement for its political ends. ... Of course it should not be forgotten that with or without the leadership of the Congress, the workers and peasants will continue their own economic and social struggle and eventually conquer what they need. They do not need so much the leadership of the Congress but the latter’s political success depends entirely on the conscious support of the masses. Let not the Congress believe that it has won the unconditional leadership of the masses without having done anything to defend their material interests.

His personal character may lead the masses to worship the Mahatmaji, strikers engaged in a struggle for securing a few pice increase of wages may shout “Mahatmaji ki jai”, the first fury of rebellion may lead them to do many things without any conceivable connection with what they are really fighting for; their newly aroused enthusiasm, choked for ages by starvation, may make them burn their last piece of loin cloth; but in their sober moments what do they ask for? It is not political autonomy nor is it the redemption of the Khilafat. It is the petty but imperative necessities of everyday life that egg them on to the fight. ... They rebel against exploitation, social and economic, it does not make any difference to them to which nationality the exploiter belongs ...

Words cannot make people fight, they have to be impelled by irresistible objective forces. The oppressed, pauperised, miserable workers and peasants are bound to fight because there is no hope left for them. The Congress must have the workers and peasants behind it, and it can win their lasting confidence only when it ceases to fight because there is no hope left for them. The Congress must have the workers and peasants behind it, and it can win their lasting confidence only when it ceases to sacrifice them ostensibly for a higher cause, namely the so-called national interest but really for the material prosperity of the merchants and manufacturers. If the Congress would lead the revolution which is shaking India to the very foundation, let it not put its faith in mere demonstrations and temporary wild enthusiasm. Let it make the immediate demands of the trade unions, as summarised by the Cawnpore workers, its own demands, let it make the programme of the kisan sabhas its own programme, and the time will soon come when the Congress will not stop before any obstacle, it will not have to lament that swaraj cannot be declared on a fixed date because the people have not made enough sacrifice. It will be backed by irresistible strength of the entire people consciously fighting for their material interest. ...

While the Congress under the banner of noncooperation has been dissipating the revolutionary forces, a counter- revolutionary element has appeared in the field to misled the latter. Look out! The revolutionary zeal of-the workers is subsiding, as shown by the slackening of the strike movement, the trade unions are falling in the hands of reformists, adventurers and government agents, the aman sabhas are captivating the attention of the poor peasants by administering to their immediate grievances. The government knows where lies the strength of the movement, it is trying to divorce the masses from the Congress. ... The consciousness of the masses must be awakened; that is the only way of keeping them steady in the fight.

Fellow countrymen, a few words about Hindu-Moslem unity which has been given such a prominent place in the Congress programme. The people of India are divided by vertical lines, into innumerable sects, religions, creeds and castes. To seek to cement these cleavages by artificial and sentimental propaganda is a hopeless task. But fortunately, and perhaps to the great discomfiture of the orthodox-. patriots, who believe that India is a special creation of providence, there is one mighty force that spontaneously divides all these innumerable sections horizontally into two homogeneous parts. This is the economic force, the exploitation of the disinherited by the propertied class. This force is in operation in India, and is effacing the innumerable vertical lines of social cleavage, while divorcing the two great classes further apart. The inexorable working of this force is drawing the Hindu workers and peasants closer and closer to their Moslem comrades. This is the only agency of Hindu-Moslem unity... it is being realised practically by the development of economic forces.

Fellow countrymen, let the Congress reflect the needs of the nation and not the ambition of a small class. Let the Congress cease to engage in, political gambling and vibrate in response to the social forces developing in the country. Let it prove by deeds that it wants to end foreign exploitation not to secure the monopoly to the native propertied class, but to liberate the Indian people from all exploitation — political, economic and social. Let it show that it really represents the people and can lead them in their struggle in every stage of it. Then the Congress will secure the leadership of the nation, and swaraj will be won, not on a particular day selected according to the caprice of some individuals, but by the conscious and concerted action of the masses.

MANABENDRA NATH ROY
ABANIMUKHERJI
1 December 1921

Source: One year of Noncooperation, Chapter I.

3

From

The Indian Trade Union Congress

- MN ROY

“One of the most interesting features of the Congress was that the same Mineowners’ Association which asked the government to break up the Congress ended by requesting a hearing before the assembly of the organised workers. Permission to speak before the Congress was granted to the president of the association who declared the intention of reducing the working week to 44 hours, and invited the representatives of the striking miners to open immediate negotiations. Promises were made in the name of the owners that decent houses would be built and schools provided for the workers’ children. Still more, a deputation from the owners publicly apologised for having attempted to suppress the Congress and presented a resolution condemning their own action. This incident shows the strength acquired by the organised workers of India in the short period of their activity.”

Finally it mentions that “Two resolutions were unanimously passed: one appeals to the workers of the world to secure peace and bread for Russia” and the second declaring that “wars can be avoided only by the united efforts of the working class of the world”. ...

Source: Inprecor, Vol. II, No.l, 3 January, 1922.

 

4

From

The Revolt of Labour In India

— Shramendra Karsan^[1]

“It is a happy augury for India that labourers are taking a leading part in the political movement. For it is they who will make India free. Mahatma Gandhi, ‘professor of pacifistology, has been able to become the leading figure in India today due to the masses’ confidence in him. The moment he betrays them in the attainment of their political-economic and social aspirations he will at once lose his influence over them. Beneath the political agitation is concealed the weapon of labour, which will be used at the opportune moment for the emancipation of the masses.

“The study of Indian labour problems then suggests that if the principal object of the labour movements in the world today be collective bargaining with the capitalists then their only recourse is a ‘mollycoddling’ method to force arbitration. But if labour is conscious of the fact that it produces all wealth and it should dictate the methods of distribution, then there can be no other way to establish the principle but the seizure of the control of the government. The government in such cases will undoubtedly be controlled by the majority which is the labouring masses. That is what the revolt of labour in India means. This is its positive, real and full meaning. And as the cause of labour is one, its International significance is quite evident.”

Source:  Inprecor, Vol. II, No. 12,14 February, 1922

Note:

1.   Most probably this was a pseudonym of MN Roy.

 

5

From

“The Awakening of India”

— By Evelyn Roy

... the arrest of Gandhi marks a temporary setback to the progress of the revolution in India. However badly, he has steered the unwieldy mass of Indian energy and opinion into one broad channel of ceaseless agitation against the existing system during the last two years. If his leadership was confused, it was because the movement itself was a chaos which bred confusion; though he has made blunders of first magnitude, he at the same time groped a way for the people out of the blind alley of political stagnation and government repression into the roaring tide of a national upheaval. The Indian movement is ready for a new leader because it is becoming every day more clarified, its inherent contradictions are becoming palpable even to its component parts, but this very clarification spells disintegration, unless some new leaders are hurled into the breach ...

May there soon arise from the ranks of Indian labour, or from the intellectual proletariat at war with foreign rule, a class conscious Gandhi who will crystallise the political confusion that reigns in the Indian movement by formulating a clear and definite programme based upon the needs and aspirations of the overwhelming majority of the Indian people by boldly raising the standard of the working class, and by declaring that only through the energy and lives of the Indian proletariat and peasantry can swaraj ever be attained.

Source: Inprecor, Vol. II, No. 32-33,5 May 1922.

 

6

Extracts from the Editorial of The Vanguard,
vol. 1, no. 1, 15 May 1922

Our Object

... The Indian movement, like all other political movements in history, is the expression of the urge for social progress. It is a revolt of the oppressed against all that has kept them in subjugation and stagnation. ...

It is a mistake to think that the movement is the creation of great personalities. On the contrary, leaders are created by the movement. The greatness of the leader comes in where he can understand the forces behind him and can guide the movement in accordance with the natural trend of these forces. The compromising politics of the moderates, those venerable fathers of Indian nationalism, brought the extremists, who under the leadership of Gandhi assumed the title of non-cooperators, into power. But the outstanding leaders of the non-cooperation movement have so far failed to appreciate the real magnitude of the forces they are called upon to marshal on the arena of national struggle. Believers in the false philosophy which teaches that a few great men can shape the destinies of a nation, these leaders neglected to look deep into the causes which brought about the gigantic popular upheaval. They failed to understand the forces which infused fighting spirit in the hitherto inert masses. Instead of leading the rebellious masses in accordance with their immediate demands, these leaders sought to impose on them their own will and idiosyncrasies. ...

However, the movement cannot always be either betrayed by the moderates or misled by the visionary non-cooperators. The masses, who are the backbone of the struggle for national liberation, are learning to find their own way. Bitter experience gained in hard struggles is clarifying their vision ... we are entering a new phase in our struggle for freedom. We will no longer grope in the dark. We will no longer exhort the hungry people to suffer for some visionary swaraj to be attained by “soul-force” purified in the fire of poverty. Although it will be stupid to talk of premature violence, we are, nevertheless, of the opinion that non-violent revolution is an impossibility. The Indian masses — the workers organised in trade unions, the peasants forming their own fighting organs in the form of the Akali Dal, kisan sabhas, aikya sabhas etc. — call for a realist orientation in our political struggle. To help the formation of this much-needed realist orientation is the object of THE VANGUARD.

 

7

Extracts From An Article In Vanguard, 75 May 1922

Mr. Gandhi: An Analysis — I

— by Santi Devi

And so, Mahatma Gandhi, variously described as “the greatest apostle of non-violence since the days of Buddha and Jesus”, “the prophet of spiritualised democracy”, and “the greatest man of the world”, is in jail, condemned to six year’s incarceration by the very judge who in passing sentence paid tribute to him as “a great patriot and a great leader, and even those who differed from you in politics look up to you as a man of high ideals and a leading noble and even saintly like”. ...

... it [the present article — Ed.) is aimed to estimate as carefully and impartially as may be the essential qualities of Gandhi the saint, philosopher, politician and patriot as applied to present-day Indian conditions and to derive what valuable lessons we may from his failures as well as successes of the past three years.

Gandhi The Saint

No one can know of the life and personality of Mr. Gandhi and fail to render tribute to him as “a saintly man who purifies us at sight”. ...

... Six years’ simple imprisonment, “with everything possible to make him comfortable”, is the utmost they [the British imperialists] dare attempt, and this merely to remove him from the arena of active politics. When the storm dies down a little, they will let him free. For they will soon learn, if they do not already know, that Gandhi the saint in prison becomes to India's adoring millions Gandhi the martyr. ... It is well and truly said that, “Mahatma in jail is more powerful than Mahatma free”, not alone for the constant impetus it gives to Indian nationalism by working upon the sympathetic indignation of the masses, but because in jail his qualities of sainthood can radiate at their fullest and best uncongested by the exercise of those more worldly faculties of political leadership in which Mr. Gandhi is not so conspicuously successful.

Gandhi the Philosopher

As a philosopher, Mr. Gandhi is neither original nor unique. He merely reiterates, in an age peculiarly out of tune with his teachings, the ancient doctrine of Hinduism whose ramifications are spread through the world and which are spread at various times to inspire the prophets and saints of other lands. ...

... Is it because Mr. Gandhi sees his people disarmed and bleeding, helpless and hopeless before the superior might of the conqueror, that he counsels the philosophy of non-violence with is after all a philosophy of despair when by analysis it is patent that no one believes in its ultimate fulfilment ? For thousands of years the Indian people have listened to such counsels; for thousands of years they have heeded them, bowing their broken lives before the inscrutable working of providence, accepting their earthly lot without complaint and looking to death willingly for their deliverance. Non-violence, resignation, perfect love and the release from the pain of living — this is the substance of Indian philosophy handed down through the ages by a powerful caste of kings, priests and philosophers who found it good to keep the people in subjection. Mr. Gandhi is nothing but the heir of this long line of ghostly ancestors — he is the perfect product of heredity and environment. His philosophy of satyagraha is the inevitable fruit of the spiritual forebears. What is unfortunate is that Mr. Gandhi’s revived philosophy of other-worldliness coincides with a most unprecedented growth in Indian national life — the growth of a spirit of revolt against material privation on the part of the Indian masses. His time-honoured doctrines of orthodox Hinduism have conflicted with this news spirit of rebellion, have temporarily controlled and arrested its development, thanks to his saintly personality, which has more hold on the imagination of the Indian people than his outworn doctrines of self-annihilation. For this involuntary service, the British government has every reason to be grateful to him and it was a dim realisation of his pacific influence upon the unruly masses as well as a very wholesome fear of rousing the fury of the people to the breaking point, that made the government stay its hand so long before arresting him. It was only when Mr. Gandhi had himself prepared the way to his own arrest by schooling the masses to calmness and had stemmed the flood tide of the spontaneous upheaval of social and economic emancipation by rebuking every outbreak of mass energy, every manifestation of force on the part of the people, and by throwing the entire weight of his loved personality on the side of peace, non-violence and non-resistance that the bureaucracy dared to arrest him. The story of his political career is best studied in a separate chapter which we will title “Gandhi, the Politician and Patriot”.

 

Extracts from an article in Vanguard, 15 June 1922

Mr. Gandhi: An Analysis — II

— By Santi Devi

Mr. Gandhi is in jail, but Gandhism as a force in Indian politics lives on, influencing the course of the movement for good or ill ... A careful survey of his speeches and writings, as well as of his programme and tactics is enough to convince anyone that his personal and political life are merely an application of his philosophical doctrines of soul-force, self-abnegation and non-violence — of the ultimate triumph of spirit over matter. The result has been to create as the dominating force in Indian nationalism for the past three years, what has cleverly been dubbed “transcendental politics”...

Gandhi as a politician

“Swaraj by non-violence must be a progressively peaceful revolution such that the transference of power from a closed corporation to the people’s representatives will be as natural as the dropping of a fully-ripe fruit from a well nurtured tree. I say again, that such a thing will be quite impossible of attainment but I know that nothing less is the implication of non-violence” (MK Gandhi).

Here is Mr. Gandhi’s political philosophy in a nutshell. On reading it one is tempted to enquire in what way does this differ from the conception of sincere British imperialist, who openly declares the civilising mission to be to fit the Indian people for self-government by an evolutionary process of gradual, progressive stages. ... There is no contrast between his and Mr. Gandhi’s professed mode and the means to attain it. To find a contrast we must turn to the histories of past revolutions, which were made not by love and peace but by blood and iron. The English revolution of 1640; the French revolutions of 1789, of 1848 and 1870; the German, Italian and Hungarian revolutions of 1848; the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, to cite only a few of the great liberation movements of modern times. Was there ever a revolution in the history of the world which was not ushered by force? Gandhism would learn something by a study of the past. But no, it declares, “India is a special creation of providence, she has a spiritual heritage to transmit to the world; she has evolved a spiritual civilisation like to none ever witnessed ...”

... while India’s starving millions are rioting, striking, looting and killing — in a word, behaving exactly like other normal people under the stress of hunger, overwork and privations — the burden of proof as to India’s spiritual heritage rests upon Indians themselves. ... We venture to suggest that India's spirituality is merely the remnant of medievalism clinging to the new organism about to be ushered into being as Indian nationhood. And in this connection we can but quote the profound saying of Marx — “Force is the midwife of revolutions.”

So much for the philosophy — Now for the programme and practice of Gandhism ... what swaraj is, what kind of government it implies, what definite benefit it will confer on the various classes of the Indian people, remains a vague undecided uncertainty. We know what swaraj is not only since the Ahmedabad Congress of December 1921, full three years after the movement was under way, swaraj is not “outside the British empire”, as the rejection of Hasrat Mohani's resolution definitely snowed. Swaraj is therefore some form of dominion home rule, as Mr. Gandhi himself reluctantly defined it, based upon “four anna franchise” — i.e., the right to vote being limited to those who had obtained the membership m the Congress Party by paying the regular dues ...

... The awakenings of both the peasants and proletariat were independent of the nationalist movement for swaraj; one was economic, the other political. But the nationalist movement, which needed the support of the masses immediately stepped into the leadership of this economic revolt; it sought to guide and control the activities of the people to enforce its own demands; it called hartals or strikes and suspended them at pleasure; announced boycott of foreign cloth and liquor shops, the universal use of the charkha and commanded the masses to obey. In return for this usurpation of a popular upheaval for economic betterment, what did the Congress give the masses? ... Did it hold up the banner of a material swaraj within the comprehension and necessities of the rebellious Indian people ?

No, on the contrary, it held before the eyes of the famished workers a fabulous “spiritual” swaraj, to be attained not by the brief, energetic and wholesome birth-pangs of a revolution but by the old, familiar method of suffering, sacrifice, nonresistance, repentance and prayer. The Indian masses, who had come to the end of their capacity to suffer and endure, must “purify” themselves and become perfectly nonviolent in thought, word and deed before the swaraj of the rishis, the swaraj of a handspinning, handweaving, beast-of-burden India would descent upon them like a boon from heaven. Swaraj will come, next week, next month, next year, when the hungry, naked Indian toilers had transcend-dentalised themselves. Mahatma Gandhi said so; Mahatma Gandhi was a great saint, a great sage, an incarnation of god himself, whom the white rulers could not harm, did not dare to touch; therefore, simple, ignorant men must trust, believe and blindly obey ...

Swaraj never came. One by one, then in dozens and hundreds, the national leaders went to jail. Every attempt at self-defence, at aggressive action by the masses met with sharp reproof from Mr. Gandhi — with worse than reproof, with public lamentations, fasting and prayer. The golden promise of swaraj was growing dimmer. The daily misery of the people grew ever worse; government repression, machine-guns and jails killed all the spontaneity and enthusiasm of the early struggle. Every chance for direct action was curbed by the mandate of the Mahatma; after Bardoli, the very non-payment of taxes that had swept the peasants with a thrill of hope, as well as all forms of aggressive mass actions were called off. The bewildered people were told to spin and pray for swaraj. Then came the final blow. The Mahatma, the divine incarnation, all wise, all powerful, was arrested by the white infidels, tried and sentenced to six years in jail. The heavens did not fall, neither the earth yawn at this blasphemy, doors of the jail remained locked upon the saviour of the people who remained peaceful, mute and unresisting, as he had bidden them, his expectation that the miracle justified their obedience. There came no miracle to reward their faith. British raj remained securely enthroned, swaraj was locked in the cell of the Mahatma. Waiting masses were told from behind the bars to “spin and pray”.

Mr. Gandhi as political leader cannot escape responsibility for the lamentable state of chaos that besets the Indian movement today. Gandhism must be held accountable for its mistakes as well as honour for its achievements. Constructive contribution of Gandhism in national movement as a whole are : (1) the use of mass action for the enforcement of political demands; (2) the building up of a nation-wide organisation such as the Congress Party; (3) the liberation of the national forces from governmental repression by the slogan of non-violence; (4) the adoption of noncooperation and civil disobedience, especially nonpayment of taxes as tactics in the struggle against foreign rule. Non-cooperation and civil disobedience, if property wielded, are powerful weapons in the hands of a disarmed people against machine-guns and bombing planes. But Mr. Gandhi has always shrunk from putting his brilliantly conceived tactics to proper use. The boycott was not an original contribution of Gandhism; it had been used in the partition of Bengal crisis in 1906, and Gandhism spoiled the possibility of its successful application by stressing homespun khaddar at the expense of mill-made swadeshi instead of encouraging Indian industrialism by every means.

The shortcomings and failures of Gandhism may be summarised succinctly. The most glaring defect was lack of an economic programme to win the interests and allegiance of the masses, and to make swaraj intelligible to them. Next, and closely related to this omission, was the obstinate and futile desire to unite all the Indian people, landlords and peasants, capitalists and proletariat, moderates and extremists, in a common struggle for an undefined goal. Oil and water cannot remain mixed; lion and the lamb do not lie side by side; each man follows his own material interests, in the fight for a spiritual swaraj. At the slightest danger to their property and profits these zamindars and mill-owners rally to the side of the government of law and order. If it was desired to change this government for the benefit of the majority of the people, it was necessary to sacrifice the interests of the handful of landlords and capitalists to the needs of the hungry stomachs and the naked bodies of the Indian workers and peasants. This the Congress never had the courage to do, and we cannot see that it had even the desire. ...

The third great defect of Gandhism was the intrusion of metaphysics into the realm of politics; the confusing of spiritual with temporal aims; ... Revolution is not a religion, neither is swaraj “a mental state”. To undermine, overthrow British imperialism is a material problem and to build up a national state in which the condition of the people will be improved is a question of economics, not metaphysics. ...

The fourth great defect of Gandhism is its reactionary economics. ... To go “back to the Vedas” back to the charkha, is to put away the progress of two thousand years and all the bright hopes of a future age when all will be free to cultivate their spiritual side because they have conquered, not run away from, the tyranny of material laws ....

The fifth grave error of Gandhism was its vacillations and inconsistencies, its lack of steady driving power towards a given goal. To declare non-cooperation with a satanic government, and then to seek compromise with its viceroy, to pronounce modern civilisation to be rotten to the core and “Parliaments are the emblem of slavery”, and at the same time to define swaraj as "home rule within the empire", to promise swaraj on a given date and then postpone it; to declare mass civil disobedience and then postpone it — these are a few of the innumerable and bewildering contradictions of Gandhism, which lost for it the confidence of the. masses and respect of all thinking people. ... Gandhism is not revolutionism, but a weak and watery reformism, which shrinks at every turn from the realities of the struggle for freedom. ...

Gandhi the Patriot

In closing what has been a dispassionate analysis of Mr. Gandhi’s influence upon the Indian movement, a heartfelt tribute must be paid to Gandhi the politician. We believe that Mr. Gandhi’s political career is inspired by a deep love for his suffering countrymen, a love nonetheless noble for having made great tactical mistakes ...

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi will live in the annals of his country as one of its saints and patriots, long after his political failures are forgotten.

 

8

A note appearing in The Socialist, 21 October, 1922

Fall In Union Membership

— a Comment

The Labour Gazette publishes a quarterly review of trade union activities in the Bombay Presidency. The third quarter of 1922 shows a decrease in the membership of the Bombay unions. The decrease is mainly found in the number of members of the BB & CI and GIP Railwaymen’s Unions in Bombay. The secretary of these unions states that it has been necessary to remove the names of a number of members from the rolls, as in spite of numerous reminders, subscriptions were not forthcoming,

For the cause of this we must dive even deeper. The union men cease to take interest and pay subscriptions because the union ceases to interest them. Union leaders forget that a union is a fighting weapon and not a banking institution to build up “fixed deposits” and “reserves”. Union leaders seem to be more actuated by a desire to please union men with the bank-reserves at their credit and naturally the worker comes to the conclusion with his instinctive logic that his own pocket or stomach-bank is as good as any other chosen by the secretary for the sums of his subscription money.

 

9

An article in the same issue of The Socialist

“Frame The Demand”

— by SA Dange

The Akali arrests have gone up over 2,500 and the Gurdwara Prabhandhak Committee deserves unstinted praise for its highly efficient organisation and conduct of the campaign. The reason for this is ascribed to many things and as usual the non-cooperator philosopher is ready with his deduction that his non-violent satyagraha has proved its superiority because the Akalis have remained non-violent and some philosophers have gone to the length of saying that it has proved successful, though the end is not in sight as yet.

However, if we excuse this hastiness of an impatient philosophy to install herself in a position of acceptance and look to the striking point in the Akalis, we shall find that the efficiency of the whole movement is due to the military discipline of the community. It is not the philosophic faith in the creed of non-violence that makes the Akali sacrifice himself so nobly. A few days back he marched with as much heroism and joy to cut the heads of his enemies on the war front. Violence or non-violence to him is the same. To him matters only word of superior command, as far as methods of fighting are concerned, for he has been bred to it. For himself he determines to fight and leaves the tactics, methods and means to the best judge. ...

But what is going to be the solution of the Akali tangle? In the hurry and confusion of the fight it is likely that the real issues, on which the struggle began, may be lost sight of and a false issue may occupy the ground leaving the source of the evil as it is. Anyone can see that the press of the country while speaking of the Akalis now is concerned mainly with the question whether government was cruel or not in the handling of the jathas, and the Congress Inquiry Committee too is engrossed in proving from thousands of witnesses that government was hard-hearted, and everything else that militarism can be accused of ...

What we mean to drive at is that the aim of the Akalis should be formulated and immediate demands outlined. The whole community should be made conscious of the aim of its fighting, which is not simple cutting of trees at Guru-ka-baug or removal of a few mahants. The evil of it is still deeper.

The Akalis are tillers of the soil, which is administered by the mahants in the interests of wheat speculators and exporters. During war time a great many Akalis were drawn off from the land. Demand for wheat in the foreign market raised the price of wheat and the Akali peasant was for a time prosperous. The high prices were so tempting that the Akali sold almost every grain, with the result that a shortage and wheat famine followed and Punjab was obliged to import wheat for consumption.

The prosperity of the war time soon faded away. The peasant became pauper as before and the return of disbanded men burdened the soil with more mouths and thus enhanced the evil; but the high rate of expropriation with which they were saddled by the mahants was not reduced. The Akalis looked for the source and found it in the mahant, who is merely the tool in the hands of higher expropriating organisations.

Simple removal of the mahant will not benefit the Akalis. It cannot free them from the high land tax, and the scourge of wheat cornering and speculation carried on by high finance like that of the Rallies. Only the freedom of the land from the high tax, common holding and equitable distribution will end the Akalis’ expropriation.

 

10

from

Message Of The Communist International To The Gaya Congress

To the All India National Congress, Gaya, India.
Representative of the Indian People !

The Fourth Congress of the Communist International sends to you its heartiest greetings. We are chiefly interested in the struggle of the Indians to free themselves from British domination. In this historic struggle you have the fullest sympathy and support of the revolutionary proletarian masses of the imperialist countries including Great Britain.

We communists are quite aware of the predatory nature of western imperialism, which brutally exploits the peoples of the East and has held them forcibly in a backward economic state, in order that the insatiable greed of capitalism can be satisfied. ... We are [not ?] in favour of resorting to violence if it can be helped; but for self-defence, the people of India must adopt violent means, without which the foreign domination based upon violence cannot be ended. The people of India are engaged in this great revolutionary struggle. The Communist International is wholeheartedly with them.

The economic, social and cultural progress of the Indian people demands the complete separation of India from imperialist Britain. To realise this separation is the goal of revolutionary nationalism. ...

Dislocation of world capitalist economy, coupled with the strengthening of the world revolutionary nationalist movement caused by the awakening of the expropriated masses, is forcing imperialism to change its old methods of exploitation. It endeavours to win over the cooperation of the propertied upper classes by making them concessions. From the very beginning of its history the British government found a reliable ally in the feudal landowning class, whose dissolution was prevented by obstructing the growth of higher means of production. Feudalism and its relics are the bulwarks of reaction; economic forces, that give rise to the national consciousness of the people, cannot be developed without undermining their social foundation. So the forces that are inimical to British imperialism are, at the same time, dangerous to the security of the feudal lords and modern landed aristocracy. Hence the loyalty of the latter to the foreign ruler.

The immediate economic interests of the propertied upper classes, as well as the prosperous intellectuals engaged either in liberal professions or high government offices are too closely interlinked with the established order to permit them to favour a revolutionary change. Therefore, they preach evolutionary nationalism whose programme is “self-government within the empire” to be realised gradually by peaceful and legal means.

This programme of constitutional democracy will not be opposed by the British government for ever, since it does not interfere with the final authority of imperialism. On the contrary its protagonists are the potential pillars of imperial domination. ...

The social basis of a revolutionary nationalist movement cannot be all inclusive, because economic reasons do not permit all the classes to participate in it. Only those sections of the people, therefore, whose economic interests cannot be reconciled with imperialist exploitation under any makeshift arrangement, constitute the backbone of your movement. These sections embrace the overwhelming majority of the nation, since they include the bankrupt middle classes, pauperised peasantry and the exploited workers. To the extent that these objectively revolutionary elements are led away from the influences of social reaction, and are free from vacillating and compromising leadership, tied up spiritually and materially with the feudal aristocracy and capitalist upper classes, to that extent grows the strength of the nationalist movement.

The last two years were a period of mighty revolutionary upheaval in India. The awakening of the peasantry and of the proletariat struck terror in the heart of the British. But the leadership of the National Congress failed the movement in the intensely revolutionary situation. ...

In leading the struggle for national liberation the Indian National Congress should keep the following points always in view :

• 1) that the normal development of the people cannot be assured unless imperialist domination is completely destroyed,
• 2)  that no compromise with the British rulers will improve the position of the majority of the nation
• 3)  that the British domination cannot be overthrown without a violent revolution, and
• 4)  that the workers and peasants are alone capable of carrying the revolution to victory. ...

In conclusion we express our confidence in the ultimate success of your cause which is the destruction of British imperialism by the revolutionary might of the masses.

Let us assure you again of the support and cooperation of the advanced proletariat of the world in this historic struggle of the Indian people.

Down With British Imperialism !
Long Live The Free People Of India !
With Fraternal Greetings,

Humbert-Droz
Secretary,
Presidium of the Fourth Congress
of the Communist International.

 

11

From

The Programme^[1]

Our movement has reached a stage when the adoption of a definite programme of national liberation as well as of action can no longer be deferred. ... The ambiguous term swaraj is open to many definitions, and in fact it has been defined in various ways according to the interests and desires of the different elements participating in our movement. ... Therefore a militant programme of action has become indispensable. ...

Programme of National Liberation

... The first and foremost objective of the national struggle is to secure the control of the national government by the elected representatives of the people. But this cannot be achieved with the sanction and benevolent protection of the imperialist overlords, ... Any measure of self-government or home rule or swaraj under the imperial hegemony of Britain will not amount to anything. Such steps are calculated only to deceive the people. ... The Congress must boldly challenge such measures and declare in unmistakable terms that its goal is nothing short of a completely independent national government based on the democratic principle of universal suf: rage.

Theory of Equal Partnership a Myth

The theory of “equal partnership in the British commonwealth” is but a gilded version of imperialism. Only the upper classes of our society can find any consolation in it, because the motive behind this theory is to secure the support of the native landowning and capitalist classes by means of economic and political concessions, allowing them a junior partnership in the exploitation of the country. Such concessions will promote the interests, though in a limited way, of the upper classes, leaving the vast majority of the people in political subjugation and economic servitude. The apostles of “peaceful and constitutional” means are nothing but accomplices of the British in keeping the Indian nation in perpetual enslavement. ...

No Change of Heart

Those preaching the doctrine of “change of heart” on the part of the British rulers fail to dissociate themselves clearly from such halfway measures. ... A determined fight which is required to conquer national independence for the Indian people is conditional upon a clearly defined programme, and only such a programme will draw the masses of the people into the national struggle as takes into consideration the vital factors affecting the lives of the people.

Therefore, the Indian National Congress declares the following to be its PROGRAMME OF NATIONAL LIBERATION AND RECONSTRUCTION :

• (1)  Complete national independence, separated from all imperial connection and free from all foreign supervision
• (2)  Election of the national assembly by universal suffrage. The sovereignty of the people will be vested in the national assembly which will be the supreme authority.
• (3)  Establishment of the federated republic of India.

Social and Economic Programme

The principles which will guide the economic and social life of the liberated nation are as follows :

• (1)  Abolition of landlordism. All large estates will be confiscated without any compensation. Ultimate proprietorship of the land will be vested in the national state. Only those actually engaged in agricultural industry will be allowed to hold land. No tax farming will be allowed.
• (2)  Land rent will be reduced to a fixed minimum with the object to improving the economic condition of the cultivator. State agricultural cooperative banks will be established to provide credit to the peasant and to free him from the clutches of the moneylender and speculating trader.
• (3) State aid will be given to introduce modern methods in agriculture. Through the state cooperative banks agricultural machineries will be sold or lent to the cultivator on easy terms.
• (4) All indirect taxes will be abolished and a progressive income tax will be imposed upon incomes exceeding 500 rupees a month.
• (5) Nationalisation of public utilities. Mines, railways, telegraphs and inland waterways will be owned and operated by the state under the control of workers’ committees, not for profit, but for the use and benefit of the nation.
• (6)  Modern industries will be developed with aid and under the supervision of the state.
• (7)  Minimum wages in all the industries will be fixed by legislation.
• (8)  Eight-hour day. Eight hours a day for five and half days a week will be fixed by law as the maximum duration of work for male adults. Special conditions will be laid down for the woman and child labour.
• (9) Employers will be obliged by law to provide for a certain standard of comfort as regards housing, working conditions, medical aid, etc. for the workers.
• (10) Protective legislation will be passed about old age, sickness and unemployment insurance in all the industries.
• (11) Labour organisations will be given a legal status and the workers’ right to strike to enforce their demands will be recognised.
• (12)  Workers’ councils will be formed in all the big industries to defend the rights of labour. These councils will have the protection of the state in exercising their functions.
• (13)  Profit sharing will be introduced in all big industries.
• (14)  Free and compulsory education. Education for both boys and girls will be free and compulsory in the primary grades and free as far as the secondary. Technical and vocational schools will be established with state aid.
• (15)  The state will be be separated from all religious creeds, and the freedom of belief and worship will be guaranteed.
• (16)  Full social, economic and political rights will be enjoyed by the women.
• (17)  No standing army will be maintained, but the entire people will be armed to defend the national freedom. A national militia will be organised and every citizen will be obliged to undergo a certain period of military training. ...

Analysis of Our Forces

... With the purpose of developing all the forces oppressed and exploited under the present order and to lead them in the struggle for national liberation, the Indian National Congress adopts the following

ACTION PROGRAMME :

• (1)  To lead the rebellious poor peasantry in their struggle against the excesses of landlordism and high rents. This task will be accomplished by organising militant peasants’ unions which will demand : (a) abolition of feudal rights and dues; repeal of the permanent settlement and talukdari system; (b) confiscation of large estates; (c) management of the confiscated estates by councils of the cultivators; (d) reduction of land rent, irrigation tax, road cess, etc.; (e) fixed tenures; (f) no ejection; (g) abolition of indirect taxation; (h) low prices; (i) annulment of all the mortgages held by moneylenders etc.
• (2) To back the demands of the peasantry by organising countrywide mass demonstrations with the slogan of “non-payment of rent and taxes”.
• (3) To organise mass resistance against high prices, increase of railway fare, postage, salt tax and other indirect taxation.
• (4) To struggle for the recognition of labour unions and the workers' right to strike in order to enforce their demands.
• (5)  To secure an eight-hour day, minimum wage and better housing for the industrial workers.
• (6)  To back up these demands by mass strikes to be developed into a general strike at every available opportunity.
• (7)  To support all strikes politically and financially out of the Congress fund.
• (8)  To agitate for the freedom of press, platform and assembly.
• (9)  To organise tenants’ strikes against high house rents in the cities.
• (10)  To build up a countrywide organisation of national volunteers.
• (11)  To organise strikes of the clerks and employees in the government and commercial offices for higher salaries.
• (12)  To enter the councils with the object of wrecking them.
• (13) To organise mass demonstrations for the release of political prisoners. ...

December 1922

Source: One Year of Non-cooperation, Chapter X.

Note:

1.   Better known as Roy’s Programme for the Indian National Congress.

 

12

Excerpts from an article published in Vanguard, Double Number, 15 October — 1 November, 1923

The Next Step

Now that the liquidation of the non-cooperation campaign can no longer be obscured by phrases, the question that faces those who are not in conformity with this liquidation is.: “what next ?” ...

... The revolutionary significance of the non-cooperation programme lay in the fact that its realisation demanded mass action. The programme of paralysing the government could not be realised by the efforts, however sincere and determined they might be, of the educated few, ... the determination to paralyse the government by withholding all support presupposed the necessity of eventually falling back upon ether social forces — forces that are more vital for the existence of the government and even the shortest period of non-cooperation which can seriously injure the government. These are the productive forces of society, namely, the workers and peasants. The profit that British imperialism makes out of its domination over India is not produced by the lawyers and students. Clerks contribute but little to it. The toil of the workers and peasants, who constitute more than 90 per cent of the population, goes into the accumulation of this profit. Any act that will cut into the source of this profit will weaken the position of the government.

... The refusal of the Indians to enlist in the army and that of the troops to fight will be the beginning of the end. Nearly 40 per cent of the entire revenue comes from the peasantry only in the form of direct land rent. If this source of income is disturbed the whole structure of the state will crack.

... The idea of paralysing the government by withholding popular cooperation evolved out of the objective situation which did not permit any other form of direct fight with the established order. This spontaneously evolved form of struggle was taken up by the Congress under the leadership of Gandhi whose subjective limitations, however, hedged in the revolutionary programme of non-cooperation. The wave of revolutionary mass movement, which alone could have led to the realisation of the non-cooperation programme, precipitated the clash between the objective and subjective factors that went into the making of the non-cooperation campaign. The Congress succumbed in this fatal clash. The journey towards Delhi, then the councils, the negotiation with the bureaucracy and finally compromise with imperialism was begun.

... Those revolutionary patriots who are not satisfied with the turn the Congress has taken at Delhi should not waste their time in recrimination. Their slogan should be “Forward !” ... They should invoke by all means those forces of revolution which were shunned by the Congress. The next step therefore is the organisation of a People’s Party comprising all the exploited elements of our society. Such a party alone will carry the non-cooperation to its logical consequences.

September 1923.

13

Excerpts from an article published in Vanguard, Vol.3, No. 4.

Manifesto On The Hindu-moslem Unity And Swaraj

1 October 1923

Hindu-Moslem unity has been justly regarded as the chief pillar on which the future swaraj of India is going to be built. Much enthusiasm was shown on the question and indeed good deal of work was done in the direction during the apparently triumphant march of the non-cooperation movement under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and his lieutenants Ali brothers. Cooperation between Mahatma Gandhi as the leader on one hand and AH brothers and his followers on the other was regarded as an emblem of unity. But this union was not very desirable to many people. Some revolutionary thinkers believed that the union was artificial. A number of Hindu politicians had the opinion that the Musalmans were exploiting the Mahatma's popularity to further their pan- Islamic plans which were always looked upon by the Hindus with suspicion, while the reactionaries in the Moslem camp held this submission of the Ali brothers as the leaders of Indian Moslems (to the authority of the Mahatma) contrary to Islamic laws. How can a believer follow the lead of an unbeliever? This was the question on the lips of many a maulvi. The apparent triumphal progress of the movement however obliged these maulvis and pandits to keep their tongues in control. But as soon as the popular movement subsided and the Mahatma and his lieutenants were shut up in jails, these reactionary elements came out in the open and by their mischievous propaganda created disturbances among two communities.

The scene of Jallianwala Bagh and other bloody struggles, the Punjab, first of all became the scene of civil war between the Hindus and Musalmans. The troubles originated in this unhappy province spread to other prbvinces of India. ...

The root cause of all these troubles occurring in the country after the immediate collapse of the movement is that religion was allowed to play the chief part in the movement. It may be comparatively easy to fire politically backward people with religious fanaticism; but it is impossible, even dangerous, to base a political movement on such unreliable ground. The recent occurrences amply prove this impossibility and dangerousness. If the hostility against the British imperialism is made a religious issue, the hostility thus aroused can at any moment turn into antagonism among the two great Indian communities as they do not profess the same religion. It is precisely what happened now …

The khilafat demands constituted one of the principal planks of the non-cooperation platform. The khilafat movement however was essentially a political movement based on religious principles. The Ali brothers and other Moslem leaders succeeded in convincing Mahatma that the Khilafat problem was to Indian Moslems a question of life and death. Mahatma being himself a religious man assumed the championship of the khilafat movement, and a bargain was struck — Hindus to support the khilafat agitation and Moslems to take active part in swaraj movement and perhaps by and by give up cow-killing to spare the religious sentiments of their Hindu countrymen. This was the basis of the union. It was artificial in that it did not take into account operation of the material forces which alone could bring about a solid and durable national unity. It was built on the unreliable foundation of religious sentimentalism. The present debacle was a foregone conclusion of such an ill started movement.

Now to improve the situation those causes which had so much grave dangers should be eliminated. In this connection the announcement of Mushir Hossain Kidwai, that the khilafat committees should be dissolved and their activities transferred to the field of Indian politics, is valuable. The proposal has not been accepted by other leaders of the khilafat movement. The suggestion of Mr. Kidwai is useful in the way of improving the relations between the Hindus and Moslems. Action taken along the lines of the proposal will make for the growth of homogeneousness of the Indian national movement. The just complaint of most of the Hindu patriots that the Musalmans do not take an active part in the Indian affairs would be removed and the religious character of the movement would be replaced by a predominating political character. The Hindu Mahasabha movement which is a reaction to separate Moslem political organisations, especially the khilafat conference — would ultimately die down. ...

The Indian Moslems should take lesson from the decision of the grand national assembly of Angora which has declared the separating of the Khilafat from the sultanate, i.e. separating of the religion from politics. No protests from the ulemas of India will induce the progressive elements of the Turkish nation to change their decisions. Turkey has entered a new era of progress by separating religion from politics. The example of nationalist Turkey should help the Indian Moslems to decide in which direction their politics should go. Let them liberate themselves from the yoke of the British before they think of liberating other Musalmans of the world. This cannot be done until and unless they unite heart and soul with their countrymen, Hindu and other communities of India. ...

Have the Hindus and Moslem masses nothing in common in India? Are both of them not suffering equally under the ruthless exploitation of British imperialism? Are they not economically ruined by the British and Indian capitalists and landlords? ... The masses — the common workers and peasants — are however as a matter of fact already united by virtue of their common economic interests, only the consciousness of this union is interfered with by large doses of conflicting religious dogmas administered by interested parties. Religious propaganda is an indigenous method of exploitation of the ignorant masses by the able doctors of divinity. This they have to do in order to preserve feudal rights of the upper classes, without whose support they cannot live and prosper.

The lower-middle-class intellectuals who sincerely desire the freedom of their country should free themselves form these religious and communal disputes. ... They have to replace the religious propaganda and metaphysical abstractions by economic slogans to make the masses conscious and subsequently to lead them to the fight for national independence without which their own economic emancipation is impossible. When the cry of “land to the peasants and bread to the workers” is raised the masses whether Hindus or Moslems will rally to their standard.

The problem of national freedom cannot be solved unless a new programme is adopted and new tactics employed. ... Our work is to agitate and organise the masses on an economic programme and finally to lead them to a general strike or you may call it civil disobedience. Let us have no negotiation with the enemy on the eve of civil disobedience, let us carry the fight to the finish. The police and military recruited from poor peasants and workers, who have to sell themselves to the British in order to earn their livelihood, will ultimately be won to our side.

So let our programme be the economic emancipation of the masses, which must have the national freedom as its prerequisite.

One may think that this is a wrong method, as by doing so we will alienate the sympathies of the upper classes — our own capitalists, landlords and religious leaders. ... Some people will say that all Indian landlords and capitalists are not aiding the British, on the contrary, they are participating in the national struggle. So far so good, let us launch the fight on an economic programme in the interest of the masses, and if these landlords and capitalists still fight against the British imperialists the sincerity of their patriotism will be proved. Why sacrifice the interests of 98 per cent in order to please the remaining 2 per cent and especially when we know that no national freedom can be obtained without uniting the masses on economic grounds. If these 2 per cent are honestly fighting for the masses, they will continue to fight even if we adopt more concrete programme and more militant tactics.

The country is in a state of confusion now. The Congress is split into factions engaged in bitter recriminations on petty question. One is after council entry hoping thereby to obtain perhaps another installment of precious reforms. The other is in a hopeless bewilderment, not knowing what to do. ... The khilafat conference does not know where to go …

In order to clear off this confusion and to put a new life in the movement a party subordinating all religious and communal questions to the great politico economic question should be organised. The programme of the party should be neither going to the golden age of vedas, nor saving the empire of the khalifa but to free the Indian people from the political and economic serfdom. The party should speak to the Indian masses in terms of their daily needs — land, bread, housing, clothing etc. Its immediate goal would be to free India from the domination of England. The ultimate goal would be economic emancipation of the people, to create a society having no blood-suckers and wage slaves — a classless society. ...

THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA.

14

Excerpts from a commentary published in Labour Kisan Gazette, Vol. 1, No. 4.

Comrade Nikolai Lenin In Memoriam

31 January 1924.

Lenin, the great, has passed away and joined the choir invisible. The world, the worker's world is today poorer by the passing away of its great teacher and redeemer. ... It is the worker — the true salt of the earth — that mourns or ought to mourn for him who showed him the path of deliverance from bondage, privatian and misery. Teachers and prophets, statesmen and scientists, philosophers and metaphysicians equally great and equally learned have appeared from time to time, and tried to redeem the worker’s humanity from its age-long suffering and serfdom, but it was reserved to Nikolai Lenin to apply the only true and correct method of removing the great ills of life which the great capitalist interests of the world have brought upon the once happy human race.

It was his great master Karl Marx who found the great truth of historical materialism trodden underfoot, reviled and ridiculed by the powerful and the ignorant among mankind, but he lived long enough to see the great worker’s philosophy understood by the thoughtful and accepted as the method of ridding poverty and misery from this mundane existence. It was for the first time in the history of the world demonstrated with scientific precision and accuracy that most of the misery with which the majority of the world have become affected were due to the selfish aggrandisement of a few among the powerful over the toiling many. And he taught further that it was only by rendering the few powerless to continue the evil that the suffering workers will have to get rid of their misery, and attain to the life of knowledge, labour and ease, which today is the monopoly of a very few among mortals. Today Nikolai Lenin stands unrivalled among the sons of men who have tried to alleviate human sufferings and it is now left to the workers to follow his method. ...

The great revolution in political thought and philosophy which Nikolai Lenin brought in his own country may be destroyed, may even be swept away by the selfish nature of a few among men, but it will revive again and again and ultimately encompass the world, and finally render the life of the worker tolerable and pleasant throughout the world. To him who has done so much and who has given the worker a clear vision of his glorious realm in which every human being shall have the right to labour and to live like all his fellows, we lift up our hands in love, devotion and reverence.

 

15

Excerpts from an article published in The Socialist, 31 January 1924

Lenin Is Dead

The Russian revolution was an accomplished fact in 1917. For four years the capitalist press of the world was overthrowing the bolsheviks and killing Lenin. He could not be killed and they have never succeeded in killing him. Lenin is dead. We are afraid, this time, the wires have flashed a sad truth.

…    …    …    …    …    …    …

Lenin was introduced to the Indians by Reuter and the capitalist press as a monster who reveiled in massacres. The present writer tried, with what scanty information he could collect, at that time (April 1921) to present a faithful picture of the Russian revolution, of Marxism and the man, who was fighting for Marxism in Russia. The book Gandhi vs Lenin was meant to apprise Indians of the inherent fallacies of pacifism and the certain failure of pacifist methods in accomplishing a revolution in capitalist economy and political structure. But at that time pacifism was at its height of power in India. In 1921, we quoted the hero of pacifism thus, "We shall continue patiently to educate them (the masses) politically till we are ready for safe action. ... As soon as we feel reasonably confident of non-violence continuing among them in spite of provoking executions, we shall certainly call upon the sepoy to lay down his arms and the peasantry to suspend payment of taxes. We are hoping that the time may never have to be reached. ... But we will not flinch when the movement has come and the need has arisen.”

The time came and went. And ultra pacifism looked on and waited. When one of the greatest personalities in the world was thus experimenting with fallacies, Lenin with an unerring eye grasped the key of the Russian revolution. ...

Lenin and his followers possessed that single virtue that alone brings success in social upheavals. That single virtue was lacking in the class and the men that led the Indian movement. The highest spirit of revolution was absent in the class that led India from 1918 to 1923. ...

 

16

Excerpts from an article in Inprecor, Vol4, No. 19.13 March 1924.

The Abolition of The Khilafat

- MN Roy

The news of the abolition of the khilafat by the Turkish national assembly has burst upon the world as a bombshell. Ample space has been devoted to this topic in the bourgeois press of Europe. ...

Every imperialist country is weighing the event in the scale of its own interest. All are visibly disturbed, because it looks as- if the days when they all considered Turkey as legitimate prey are over. Nationalist Turkey has plunged herself into a revolution which will transform her so as to make European imperialism, which never gave up the hope of keeping her under perpetual domination, very uncomfortable.

It need not be said that the revolution of the Turkey national assembly is a great revolutionary step. ... The boldness of the step becomes evident when it is remembered that the position of Turkey has been morally fortified by the fact that 240 millions of Moslems in the surrounding countries owed her allegiance as the custodian of the holy sea. She has been looked upon as the leader of the Moslem world because of this fact. Her latest struggle for national liberation was interpreted by the Moslems in other lands as the struggle for the defence of the faith. Turkey was supposed to be defending the khilafat. So it can be easily imagined what a tremendous shock the news that the Turks hove abolished the khilafat will be to the Moslem world. Not only the present khalif who divested of temporal power only a few months ago is deposed, but the time-honoured institution itself is abolished. It is going farther than any other people has gone before. Neither the papacy of the Roman church, nor the patriarchate of the Greek church was ever abolished by any bourgeois revolution. They were only deprived of all influence over the state. ...

Turkey today sends a new message to the Moslems of other countries. Her message is that the struggle for national liberation cannot be fought within the bounds of theocratic tradition and the social institution that accompany it: that nationalism cannot be circumvented by religion. The revolutionary significance of this message is incalculable. This message has been given a graphic form in these words of Ismet Pasha : “If Constantinople is today in our hand, it is because we have fought to the death the Greeks and the khalif. If other Moslems have shown sympathy for us, this was not because we had the khalif, but because we have been strong.” The implication of these words is clear. Turkey now bids for the leadership of the Moslem world, not on the ground of a religious mission, but as a secularised state which has not only warded off foreign attack, but has successfully grappled with reaction at home. She faces the Islamic world, not in the supposed role of the defender of the khilafat, but as the grave-digger of that antiquated institution which for a long time has become the instrument of foreign imperialism.

As a matter of fact, the so-called-khilafat movement, which has been more evident in India than in any other country, becomes an anomaly in consequence of the action of nationalist Turkey. Although they somehow managed to reconcile themselves with a republican Turkey liberated from theocratic control, the Indian khilafatists will find it hard to swallow the wholesome words of Ismet Pasha. ... the revolutionary action of the Turkish nationalists is sure to rebound upon the Indian political horizon. There must be much searching of hearts among the Indian Moslems. There too the days of religious nationalism and extraterritorial patriotism must come to an end.

If the Indian Moslems still persist in their notion of a religious confederation, they will surely land in the camp of reaction and all their anti-British talk will ridicule them in the face. But the real grievance of the Moslem masses of India was not concerning the khilafat, it was not of a religious character. The grievance lies much nearer home and is essentially mundane by nature. Therefore the only way to prevent the Indian Moslems from falling into the snares of scheming reaction will be to abandon the treacherous ground of extraterritorial religious patriotism in favour of a healthy nationalism more concerned with material well-being than the spiritual salvation of the people. ...

The liberation of the premier Moslem country from the age-long traditions of religion opens up a new era in the history of the entire east as far as the Indian archipelago; this concerns particularly the Islamic people. The fond belief of the orthodox Indian nationalists, both Hindu and Musalman, that their country is immune from the so-called western civilisation is going to be shattered. In the course of normal progress the social and political institutions of every human community must be secularised. Civilisation is a stage of human progress which makes for the dissipation of ignorance upon which religion is based. It does not assume a different form at different points of the compass. The epoch-making character of the event with which the Turkish national assembly entered upon its fifth year of existence is graphically brought home by an editorial article in the official organ Ileri. The article, published the day after the memorable resolution was taken, was entitled, “Goodbye, Orient”.

 

17

From an item published in The Masses, 10 October 1926

The Communal Strife

The most outstanding and at the same time the most deplorable feature of the present situation in India is the communal strife. Communal riots are spreading all over the country. ...

Causes

There is a class of people whose mission is to go on adding fuel to the fire. They keep up the conflagration of internecine strife to gain some definite political and economic ends. This class consists of the following elements : (1) Parasitic class of priests who masquerade as maulanas and mahatmas and whose influence among the masses tends to decrease in proportion as the country goes more and more through the capitalist exploitation. It is to their material interest to kindle and to feed the flame of religious fanaticism. Faced with the menace of unemployment, so to say, they are creating work for themselves. (2) Reactionary politicians who lost ground during the nationalist movement of non-cooperation. (3) Unemployed intelligentia. The hitherto weak and less numerous muslim intellectuals are struggling against their powerful hindu rivals to get administrative posts in the country. (4) The petty-bourgeois elements engaged in trading business in the town and village. Here again the young muslim bourgeoisie in entering into a keen competition with their strong hindu compatriots. (5) Lumpen proletariat and goondas who are used by the police to start the affray. They are paid for it. …

The Hidden Hand

There is another agency which is interested to see that the civil war is kept going on. This is the hidden hand of imperialism. AH kinds of diplomatic and ingenious methods are used to encourage the communal strife, with a double purpose. ...

The British diplomats adapt their harangue according to the community which they wish to please at a particular time in order to enforce their “divide and rule” policy. When muslims are destined to be the “favourite wife” the British empire is represented to be the biggest muslim empire in the world as it counts millions of mussulmans under its yoke. ... The muslims who are sometimes called “virile” by flattery, are led to think that they must have special consideration in any scheme of swaraj because as predecessors of British rulers they have a “special status”. It is on the basis of the “special status” that the muslims demand a greater percentage of the seats than in proportion to their actual number. On the other hand when the muslims are “conspiring with his majesty’s enemies outside India” and it is desired to placate hindu feelings, it is discovered that the British are as pure Aryans in origin as the hindus. At the same time the bogey of pan-is-lamism with all its dangers to hinduism is made a subject of propaganda in the imperialist press. It is preached that if law and order are set at naught in India, if the Britishers are forced to withdraw, the Afghans would invade the country and would ensalve and loot the hindus with the support of the Indian muslims. ...

The mixing of religion with politics is another factor which leads to resuscitation of communal bickerings. A political movement based on religion cannot but lead to religious aggressiveness and thus defeat its own purpose. There can only be a temporary cooperation among the different religious communities who join hands in the struggle against a common enemy. Once this struggle is slackened the allies fall foul of one another, and the weapon used against the third party is employed more vigorously among each other. The people of India may have any number of religions, but politically and economically they find themselves in the same situation. Therefore it is on this basis only that a permanent union among the people can be effected. The movement for national emancipation must be divorced uncompromisingly from religion, otherwise it will bring ruin and disaster in its wake. There lies the only hope for the success of the struggle. ...

18

Agricultural Policy of British Imperialism in India

(Abridged)

GAK Luhani

Recently, Lord Reading, the outgoing viceroy of India, announced the appointment of a commission to study the agricultural condition of the country. This comes after a series of official statements, both in India and England, that agriculture is the greatest problem confronting India today. ...

It is significant that this discovery of the importance of agriculture has been made now. Many of the swarajist critics of the British government’s new agricultural policy have, however, missed the significance. They have run away with the hasty assumption that it is meant to divert the “attention of the public from the political problems (namely agitation for autonomy etc.) which alone are important”.

Now, the new agricultural policy of the British government is not designed to take attention away from the “political problems”. That may or may not be one of its effects in the sense of the swarajist interpretation. On the other hand it is clear that it is designed as a further overhauling and modernisation of the mechanism of oppression.

... Till the beginning of the last imperialist war, India was used by the British capitalists as a vast reservoir of raw materials, and in the second place as a dumping ground for the industrial products of England. There was undoubtedly here and there a considerable amount of British capital “working” on the spot in India, invested in the nascent industries. There was also developing an active participation of native capital in these industries.

But the economic characteristics of pre-war India remained, in spite of the commencing processes of industrialism, those of an industrially backward country. The proletariat consisted, for the most part, of the vast masses of the miserably paid agricultural workers and the coolies on the plantations, with a fringe of industrial workers, properly so called, in the large cities like Bombay, Kanpur, Calcutta and Madras. The function of these labouring masses was to produce raw materials and to prepare them for export to England and in the second place to absorb, according to their buying capacity, the industrial imports from England. The surplus-value from this process had been shared between the foreign and the native bourgeoisie, the lion’s share of course going to the former.

Already during the war, a start was made with a more extensive development of Industries, for the immediate purpose of supplying the war needs of British imperialism in the Near and the Middle East. Since then the industrialisation of India has become the accepted policy of British imperialism, as laid down by the industrial commission 1916-1917. There is now a constant flow of capital from London to various industrial areas in India where, in collaboration with capital supplied by the native bourgeoisie, the foundations have been laid for what is practically an industrial revolution after the model of that which happened in Europe generally in the 19th century in the period of transition from the economy of guild and craft industries to the higher economy of high scale industrialism.

As is well known, the industrialisation of a country must have in the beginning, as its basis, a “protected” home-market. This is the necessary condition of its growth. It means that the competition of foreign countries for the supply of goods to India must be regulated, controlled and, if necessary, made to cease. This is precisely what is being done in India now by a system of protective tariffs, "discriminate protection" and bounties. The large firm of steel manufacturers in India, namely, Tata and Co, has received large bounties. Many other industries are “protected”.

But the absence of foreign competition is only one of the factors in the creation of a home-market. Another and a more important factor is the buying capacity of the population concerned; because protected industries means higher prices. The second phase of the industrial policy of the British government is precisely to take measures to increase the buying capacity of the Indian peasants, who as the overwhelming majority of the population, are responsible for the greatest consumption of goods.

The appointment of the agricultural commission is a step towards estimating the actual economic position of the Indian peasantry with a view to increase its power of absorbing the products of the new industrialism. ... The labours of the commission will leave the Indian peasants, in the future as in the past, completely at the mercy of the landlords, the hierarchy of rent-collecting intermediaries, and the sahukar (moneylender) to whom the indebtedness of the peasant has assumed colossal proportions.

Nor will there by any attempt to abolish the system of minute fragmentation of holdings which obtains in many parts of India. No measures are to be taken to improve the position of the small holders. As a matter of fact, legislation is being proposed in some provinces to buy out the large number of small holders with the double purpose of facilitating large capitalist farming and pauperising vast masses of the peasants for their eventual employment as necessary manpower in the new intensive industrialism. ...

Source: Inprecor, 22 April 1926

 

19

Gandhi And Labour Organisation

The growing urgency of the labour question in India, reflected in the greater attention now paid to it in the nationalist press and in nationalist speeches, has compelled Gandhi also to define more clearly his attitude in respect of it. In particular, the open letter addressed to him by comrade Saklatvala has made it necessary for him to declare himself. It has, of cource, been obvious for a long time past, in practice if not admittedly, that he is on the side of the employers in the class struggle, if only by the denial of its existence, but his recent admissions in defining his attitude towards labour organisation bring out his class position very clearly and are therefore worthy of some notice. In the first place, it is to be noticed that Gandhi is not opposed to labour organisation, but as he says, “as in everything else, I want its organisation on Indian lines, or if you will my lines”. What then are the distinguishing features of Gandhi’s specifically “Indian” type of labour organisation. The kind of organisation that he advocates appears from his statements and practice to be characterised by four features. Firstly, it is built up on the lines of class harmony:

“I do not regard capital to be the enemy of labour. I hold their coordination to be perfectly possible” (Reply to Saklatvala, 17 March 1927).

“We should not begin by blaming the capitalists” (Interview, 24 March 1927).

“One word as to policy. It is not anti capitalistic. The idea is to take from capital labour’s due share and no more, and this not by paralysing capital. (Letter to Saklatvala, 10 May 1927).

Secondly, the primary object is to free the worker from his vices and to make him a better workman. At the annual meeting of the Communist Movement in India Ahmedabad Labour Union last October, Gandhi advised the workers to work in the mills as if they were the owners. In the interview above mentioned he declared : “I should begin by real education of the worker in making him feel his own dignity and power and persuade him to give up the vices of drink, etc to which he is addicted.” Thirdly, Gandhi's labour organisation is to be kept away from contact with the independent labour and trade-union movement, because “the labourers have no mind of their own when it comes to matters of national policy or even the general welfare of labour itself”, and the existing movement is disunited and often “under selfish and highly unscrupulous guidance”. Thus, he is convinced that “an all-India union can only exist on paper”. Finally, his labour organisations must be kept away from politics:

“Its direct aim is not in the least degree political. I have not therefore the remotest idea of exploiting labour or organising it for any direct political end. It will be of itself a political power of first-class importance when it becomes a self existing unit. Labour in my opinion must not become a pawn in the hands of the politician on the political chess-board” (Letter to Saklatvala).

These characteristics give a fairly clear idea of what Gandhi conceives to be a specially Indian form of labour organisation. It is interesting to compare them with the features exhibited by the so-called company unions or yellow unions organised by the employers in the United States and in Europe in order to counteract the power of the independent labour unions and to prevent the workers from joining the latter. In the first character, of class-collaboration, the two are identical. Strangely enough, the same thing applies to all the other features. In both cases, the unions are organised on welfare lines in order to get the most out of the workers, they are carefully kept aloof from the wicked socialistic or bolshevistic trade unions, and they are also strictly forbidden to middle with politics. By what miracle have all the characteristically Indian or, if you like, Gandhist features been already anticipated and adopted by the capitalists of western civilisation ? Can it really be true that Gandhi's ideas of labour organisation, instead of being specially Indian, are simply the ordinary ideas of the capitalist employer who is ready enough to give the workers what he considers their “due share” (as long as it leaves handsome profits for himself) but anxious above all to prevent his wage-slaves from acting for themselves? The question must be asked as to what is the difference between Mahatma Gandhi’s labour organisation and that of the most anti labour capitalist employer. In externals they are both exactly alike, and that is in itself the most damning indictment of Gandhi's views.

Source: The Masses of India, Vol. 3, No. 6, June 1927

 

20

Extracts from

Manifesto Of The Workers’ And Peasants’ Party To The Indian National Congress

The appointment of the Statutory Commission, by the attention it has attracted and the passion it has aroused, is likely to dominate the attention of the Indian public for some time to come. ...

The vocal section of the nation is practically unanimous in advocating boycott of the Commission, as at present constituted, and there is no doubt that the silent masses will be found eager to supper’, an attitude of boycott. The rally of all sections, including many representatives of the bourgeoisie, (Liberal and Moderate politicians) to trie idea of boycott is to be welcomed, and their co-operation on a common platform with the National Congress, if that is possible, is desirable.

But it seems to the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party necessary to utter a warning as to the dangers of such co-operation. The majority of the moderate leaders enter the Boycott campaign with motives different from those which animate the mass of the people and their popular representatives. Their protest is against the personnel of the commission, not against its functions and the imperialist policy which it is designed to carry out. Their participation in the propaganda of boycott will tend to lead India into the futile demand for representation on the Commission (in one form or another, either by actual Indian membership, or in a parallel Indian Commission, or in a “Round Table conference”) instead of along the fruitful path of mass protest against, and boycott of, any and every Commission responsible to the British Government.

It is essential that in its desire to retain the support of moderate sections, the Congress should not be led to sacrifice its principles or to modify its campaign.

First, it must be made clear that the Congress boycotts the Commission, not because of its personnel, or any accidental circumstance of its appointment, but on principle. The Congress does not recognise the right of the British Government, or of any Commission appointed by it, whether containing Indian members or not, to determine the nature of the future Government of India. The Indian richer classes, because of their own sectional interests, are unwilling to break the British connection, and are forced to admit Britain’s right to political dictatorship in India. The mass of the people, represented in the congress, whose interests are opposed to those of the richer classes, cannot agree to this position. They stand for complete national independence.

Second, it is necessary that the Boycott campaign should not be confined to the futile and unrepresentative Legislatures. ...

But such a campaign, which should aim at the eventual Non-Payment of Taxes, and the declaration of General Strike, will not receive the support of the landowners and commercial and industrial capitalists, whose sectional interests are directly threatened thereby. The experience of the Non-Cooperation movement clearly shows this fact. But the peasants and the working class, who form the great majority of the nation, with the “intellectual” and middle classes, whose fundamental interests are with the masses, cannot hold their hand for fear of frightening the upper strata, who have so often in the past led them astray. The Indian bourgeois class, with its political spokesmen, has again and again proved to be a broken reed. The masses must learn to stand without their support.

A “Round Table Conference” ?

It must be said that the Swaraj Party itself cannot be exempted from this charge. Organised as it is solely for Assembly and Council work, in which it represents part of a thin upper crust of less than five per cent of the population, it inevitably tends to voice the views of the upper classes, and with few exceptions its members are to be looked upon as equally guilty with the bourgeois Liberals, Moderates and Responsivists.

The official demand, which the Swaraj Party, supported by other sections, has often made in the Assembly, is for a “Round Table Conference”. This idea is superficially more attractive than the demand for Indian membership of the Commission, since it permits India's representatives to be appointed nominally by India, instead of by the British Government. But it is fundamentally a demand of the same type. A Round Table Conference is essentially an instrument of compromise, and the issue is one which permits of no compromise. India requires strength, and the demand for a Round Table Conference, a demand which appeals merely to those classes which can gain from a possible compromise with Imperialism, in no way adds to India’s strength. …

 

A Constitution For India

It has been often suggested that the Congress should officially prepare a Draft Constitution, which should be presented to the Government as the minimum demand with which it can be satisfied. It is clearly necessary that the demands of the people must be put forward in an authoritative form by the National Congress, and such sanctions as it is within the power of the people to adopt must then be used to gain those demands. And among the demands to be presented, a constitution drafted by representatives of the Indian people will take an important place. ...

Thus India must demand an absolutely unrestricted National Constituent Assembly, elected by universal adult suffrage, which shall be the supreme organ for expressing the will of the people. Nothing short of that can be accepted. India must become a democratic country.

But, while it is necessary to put forward the demand for a constitution drafted by the representatives of the people, and establishing a Constituent Assembly, such a demand by itself does not more than touch the fringe of the real needs which the masses feel and suffer. It is a necessity, but only a preliminary. It is required to provide the means whereby the needs of the people can be expressed and remedied. And these needs are primarily social and economic.

The National Government must guarantee to the peasants:

• The land belongs to the toiler.
• Reduction of land rents.
• Exemption from rent for poor peasants.
• Protection against the avarice of money-lenders.
• Assistance by means of credits to the cultivator.

For the industrial workers there must be guaranteed :
The eight-hour day.

• A minimum living wage.
• Legislation in regard to working conditions and housing.
• State provision for the unemployed.

Public utilities must be the property of the nation. Railways,

Telegraphs, Waterways, etc. must be run for the public use.

Workers and peasants must be given full rights of combination and of strike.

There must be free primary education for all.

Freedom of religion and worship, freedom of the press and of speech.

These are the main points of a programme which will unite the overwhelming majority of the people and set them in irresistible action. ...

A NATIONAL CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY, guaranteeing complete national independence and the democratisation of national life in every respect — this must be the main plank of the Congress platform. The battle to realise this programme must be fought with the slogan “Land, Bread, and Education”.

The appointment of the Statutory Commission gives us an opportunity to start this battle in right earnest. This insulting demonstration that Imperialism is still in the saddle and intends to remain on our backs, has stirred the nation as it has not been stirred for many years. The reaction of public opinion has been healthy and vigorous. The Congress must seize its chance, place its popular democratic programme before the people, and transform the Boycott of the Statutory Commission, in spite of doubtfyl friends and timid allies, from a mere parliamentary demonstration into the final nation-wide fight for Swaraj.

Calcutta,
The 22nd December, 1927.

21

An Open Letter To The All Parties Conference

(abridged)

Gentlemen,

The All Parties Conference meets at a momentous hour and faces a momentous task. The nation has shown by its reception of the Simon commission that it wants swaraj and is able and willing to fight for it. Its has fought the first engagement, and won. It now waits expectantly for the next steps. What that step is to be, whether it will lead us on to victory, or to defeat, or worse, to an ignoble compromise, depends upon you.

The nation demands what the British government will not grant — independence, democracy, and the abolition of the evils of poverty and ignorance. Nothing but our strength will win these for us. Our aim must be political, power, our strategy to rally and organise the whole might of the nation to bear upon the subject.

Our chief need is therefore a programme, an authoritative statement of our aims and methods, that each man may know how and for what he is to fight and sacrifice. The time has gone when we can be satisfied with vague words. We must know that what we aim at is worth our efforts to attain it. You propose to draft a constitution. We feel that far more is required. A programme for the nation must have many planks, of which its future constitution may be one. And we must know how our programme and constitution are to be put into practice. ...

We shall raise a further question. Your conference consists of representatives of political parties, communal, commercial and similar organisations, and elected members of legislatures. We venture to say that it is no fit body to draft the nation's constitution or to lead its campaign for freedom. It is almost as unrepresentative as the legislatures, which speak for 2 per cent in the name of the whole. Your conference will not even be able to achieve unity among the national institutions. The National Congress has voted for complete independence. If the decision is a serious one, how is agreement possible with those who will not demand separation from the British empire ?...

The nation requires a really representative and authoritative leading organ, which can rouse and organise the population as a whole, can draft its constitution, and begin the solution of the pressing economic and social problems which confront it. The All Parties Conference, or the National Congress, must decide to convene a national constituent assembly which shall undertake these tasks.

The national constituent assembly must be elected by universal adult suffrage. ... It is deplorable that some of the draft constitutions already prepared contemplate a far more limited suffrage. If the people as a whole take part in the movement for independence and that is a condition for its success, their interests cannot be neglected. They must be guaranteed a democratic state completely free from foreign control, and full political rights including universal adult suffrage. They need freedom to organise and to express their views, by speech and in the press, the abolition of racial, caste and other discrimination, equality of the sexes, universal primary education, and further, guarantees of such elementary economic rights as a working day legally limited to eight hours, a legal minimum wage, nationalisation of the chief services and basic industries, and the abolition of feudal institutions, the despotic native states and the uneconomic system of landlordism. ...

We are, gentlemen, your allies in the cause of complete independence.

9 February 1928                                                                                                             EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Workers and Peasants Party  

Source:   Meerut Record, P 1831

 

22

All India Conference Of All Genuine Anti-imperialists To Launch The Anti Imperialist League

For The Overthrow pf British Imperialism In India.
For The Victory of The National Democratic Revolution.
For The Revolutionary Anti Imperialist United Front of The Toiling Masses Of India.

COMRADES, Brothers and Sisters !

The overthrow of British Imperialist rule in India and the establishment of COMPLETE INDEPENDENCE has become the most urgent necessity for the exploited and oppressed masses of the country.

... The workers and peasants and revolutionary section of middle classes must combine to fight against British Imperialism and its native ALLIES. The revolutionary anti-Imperialist united front of the workers and peasants and the revolutionary sections of the middle classes must be our answer to the counter- revolutionary united front of British Imperialism and Indian princes, landlords and capitalists.

Here comes the question of organisation. Is it necessary to set up a new anti-Imperialist united front organisation ? Does not such an organisation exist already ?

Many genuine revolutionaries think that the Indian National congress is such an organisation. Let us survey the history of the congress Does it show that the Congress is anti-imperialist? Arising out of the needs of the young capitalist class in India to put itself on a basis of understanding and good-will with British Imperialism, the Congress has consistently pursued the interests of the capitalist class. The growing strength of British Imperialism necessitated effective pressure being brought to bear against it for extorting concessions from it, and so the masses had gradually to be drawn into the movement which was primarily meant to safeguard the interests of the native exploiting classes. This made it further necessary that while the energy of the masses was utilised for the interests of the capitalists, it should be held completely in check and prevented from finding revolutionary channels. That is why for the last several years the capitalist leadership of the Congress has been following the policy of wearing a revolutionary mask in order to deceive the masses. Behind this mask the capitalist Congress leadership is pursuing unhampered its efforts to strike a bargain with British Imperialism. The Madras Resolution in favour of COMPLETE INDEPENDENCE followed by the Calcutta session’s support to the “Dominion Status” constitution drawn up and agreed upon by all sections of the capitalist class and still later the Delhi manifesto accepting the Viceroy's offer for a Round Table Conference — these leave no doubt that the capitalist Congress leadership will never support the ANTI-IMPERIALIST REVOLUTION. The inevitable disillusionment of the revolutionary middle class rank and file of the Congress was averted and postponed at Lahore by the Congress leadership again accepting the slogan of COMPLETE INDEPENDENCE. But what does the subsequent history of the Congress show ? The masses demonstrated on the 26th of January their readiness to WAGE A REAL FIGHT AGAINST BRITISH IMPERIALISM, but the Congress leadership put forward the eleven demands of compromise and surrender, and these demands were nowhere repudiated except by the revolutionary sections outside the Congress. The Congress leadership led the revolutionary masses into the morass of the Salt Law campaign in order to divert their energy into futile channels. While the masses fought heroically the Congress leadership carried on the most abject negotiations for “peace” with British Imperialism. When the GIP workers came out on strike against the Imperialist administration, the congress leadership instead of supporting them asked them to surrender immediately. The congress leadership is holding in check the No-Tax and No-Rent campaign of the peasantry everywhere. The Congress leadership has nothing to say against British Imperialism sending the brave revolutionary youths of Lahore to the gallows, provided the-ordinary legal procedure is followed.

There ought to be no doubt in the mind of any genuine revolutionary in India about the counter-revolutionary role of the congress and its capitalist leadership. The Congress machinery is so framed as to assure the hegemony of the capitalist class within it. Whenever there is a revolt in the anti-imperialist rank and file of the Congress against the treacherous leadership, revolutionary phrases and revolutionary gestures are immediately devised to delude the masses and maintain their loyalty. But they are no more than phrases and gestures. The Congress leadership will never put a genuine Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Programme before the masses.

The idea of overthrowing the counter-revolutionary leadership in the Congress and replacing it by a Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist leadership is an illusion. There will always be found enough leaders in the congress to wear the mask of revolution more successfully than their predecessors and thus to deceive the masses more effectively. In December 1929 Jawaharlal Nehru appeared as a Revolutionary, while his father has to recede in the background; in September 1930 Jawaharlal is able to say “father and I are in complete agreement”. The capitalist leadership of the congress could play its role more effectively through Jawaharlal than through Motilal and others at Lahore. When Jawaharlal is exposed, other “left” phrase-mongers will be serviceable enough to carry out the same task.

Therefore, it is an ideal dream to think of “capturing” the congress and converting it into a genuine anti-imperialist body. The capitalists and their allies and agents only can consciously join the Congress. The workers and peasants and revolutionary middle class youth must combine on an INDEPENDENT united front platform to organise the fight against British Imperialism and one of the main task of the united front will be to expose and counteract the treacherous manoeuvers of the congress and its leadership.

We, therefore, propose that as a preliminary step towards launching an ALL-INDIA ANTI-IMPERIALIST LEAGUE into existence for fhe purpose of carrying out the united front programme of the NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION, the genuine anti-imperialist revolutionaries in Bombay should meet in a Conference at an early date and discuss and settle the immediate organisational and political tasks.

1. (Miss) Pramila Ranadive
2. (Miss) Krishna Kumari Sardesai
3. (Mrs) N Nargolkar
4. VSS Shanbag
5. MG Sampat
6. GK Shaligram
7. BS Kamat
8. MP Joshi
9. Mangaldas Goradia
10. PM Karkhannis
11. DV Pradhan
12. HG Dabholkar
13. V Gupte
14. J Mehta
15. BT Asher
16. SS Jadhav
17. DV Deshpande 18. MI Bhat 19. DV Solanki 20. GK Sohani 21. RA Jagtap 22. HK Nargolkar 23. GP Patankar
24. MG Hajirnis 25. PK Ashar 26. HA Veerkar
27. LG Mankarni 28. VN Arwani 29. GN Jambhekar
30. CR Choubal 31. M Joshi 32. VB Khale 33. IH Jani
34. SS Dave 35. PS Taskar 36. K Roy 37. KM Desai
38. K Karnik 39. P Prabhakar 40. SK Donde 41. YB Gupte
42. YV Mokashi 43. K Ganesh 44. G Dinkar 45. GP Pradhan
46. Shivroop Singh 47. BP Gharpure 48. J Adhikari
49. AA Kanekar 50. KP Karnik 51. AK Sohani
52. Abdul Rashid, etc., etc.

Please add your signatures here and send your names and addresses to the Honorary Secretaries, Organising Committee, Anti-Imperialist Conference, Patel Buildings, Poibawdi, Parel, BOMBAY.

 

23

Manifesto on the Round Table Conference.^[1]

[Issued by the Communist Party of India to the Rank & File of the Indian National Congress.]

The Round Table Conference has achieved its purpose. A formula has been hit upon to betray the anti-imperialist struggle that has been going on in India for the last nine months. The socialist-imperialist MacDonald has given a clarion call to the most faithful allies of Imperialism to rally round the new slogan of a Dominion Federal Constitution. The Military chiefs of Bikaner and Bhopal reecho this call. The Liberal Bourgeoisie, the Shastris and Saprus enthusiastically support the new slogan as heralding a new era pf liberty, ... And the congress leaders, who only the other day talked about a fight to the finish, and vociferously demanded complete independence for India, who posed to the rank and file of the congress as anti-imperialist fighters by refusing to participate in the Round Table Conference proceedings, are now talking about a suspension of the civil disobedience campaign and even total withdrawal of it, only if political prisoners are released and a few changes are made in the proposed Dominion Constitution. In the mean while heads continue to be broken. Young revolutionaries continue to be hanged; those who condemn the proposed betrayal continue to be imprisoned and the anti-imperialist rank and file of the congress who will not compromise unless definitely betrayed by the leaders, continues to be shot, beaten and tortured in imperialist jails; and the press gag which prevents a correct and revolutionary mobilisation of anti-imperialist opinion continues as strong as ever.

... Besides Imperialism, the Round Table Conference was composed of the most die-hard enemies of Indian Independence, the Indian bourgeoisie as represented by the liberals, the military chiefs and the landed capitalists. ...

An analysis of the fundamental basis of the proposed new constitution clearly reveals its conspiratorial character. The corner stone of the new constitution is its Federal character, under which the imperialist bloc of native capitalists, Zamindars and imperialists is to be reinforced and solidified by the mobilisation of the Princes, Highnesses and Maharajahs, the most subservient flunkeys of Imperialism.

... Simultaneously with this mobilisation of all imperialist elements in the central legislature, care is taken to prevent the extension of the anti-imperialist front by guaranteeing autonomy to the states under the caption of a Federal Government with autonomous units and thus preventing a unification of the anti- imperialist forces in British India and the states. The new constitution thus has for its basis only a consolidation of imperialist forces to fight the rising tide of the anti-imperialist mass movement in India.

Along with this consolidation on the political field by the formation of a bloc with the native vested interests, Imperialism is consolidating itself on the economic field by creating a Reserve Bank under its full control. The mobilisation of the capital resources of India in the interests of British Finance Capital will guarantee imperialist hegemony of India's economic policy, even if the transference of the Finance portfolio on which a certain section of the Indian bourgeoisie is laying so much stress is realised. It will inaugurate the era of Finance Capital in all its fullness and will put all the departments of the State at the complete mercy of the central apparatus of Imperialist exploitation. It will also ensure that Imperialist debts will not be repudiated.

... But what is the attitude of the Congress leaders, of the working committee of the Indian National Congress, which was supposed to be at the head of the struggle for independence ? ...

... According to the newspaper reports of the 3rd February, the working committee has decided to call off the Civil Disobedience movement if petty concessions such as freedom to boycott British goods etc. are given.

These are facts which should clearly reveal to the rank and file of the Congress the class affiliations of the Congress leadership. ... The fact that they are negotiating for a compromise with imperialism on the basis of RTC proposals clearly reveals them as agents of the Indian bourgeoisie doing their job of betraying the struggle for independence.

... What is the duty of the rank and file of the Congress at this critical moment ? The rank and file should reiterate its faith in complete independence. They must make it clear that complete independence can only mean the overthrow of British Imperialism. They must make it plain to all, that the fight for complete independence involves not only a bitter struggle against imperialism but also against the native allies of imperialism — the Indian bourgeoisie, the princes and the Zamindars. Without this extension of the anti-imperialist front to the workers, peasants and the exploited subjects of the native states, without this mobilisation of all the anti-imperialist forces under a revolutionary leadership, it will not be possible to carry on ruthless struggle against imperialism. Without this centralisation of the anti-imperialist forces, throughout India, the leadership of the Congress will safely be able to betray the struggle for independence.

The rank and file of the Congress should not develop a defeatist attitude because of the temporary break up of the petty bourgeois front in the cities. ... On the other hand despite the Congress leaders, unknown to the city petty bourgeoisie, the struggle in now being carried on an extensive front in the villages. At many places peasant masses are rising in open revolt against money lenders, zamindars and other sections of the villages, and imperialism is using all its might to crush the growing peasant revolt throughout India. At many places the peasants have started confiscating the Zamindars’ lands and repudiating the money lenders’ debts. But unorganised and isolated as they are, they are being easily crushed by imperialist repression; and the big newspapers are either refusing to publish this news or openly asking Imperialism (in Berar) to put down this revolt with a firm hand.

The treachery of the negotiators is all the more heinous in face of the growing peasant revolt in the villages. But how can the rank and file stop this betrayal of the struggle for Indian Independence? As has been pointed out this can only be done by organising all the anti-imperialist forces in India and centralising them to carry on a most ruthless struggle against Imperialism. For this purpose the rank and file of the Congress should proceed to revive the anti-imperialist League — a league of all anti-imperialist elements in India to chalk out a common programme for intensifying the anti-imperialist struggle. Tremendous propaganda for this Conference should be made in all the anti-imperialist sections. The Conference should meet before the Karachi session of the Indian National Congress so that the negotiators can gauge the extent of the anti-imperialist discontent in India.

In the meantime the rank and file of the Congress must immediately go to the villages, form revolutionary peasant committees (soviets), summon local conferences of the peasantry and organise the peasant revolt the basic programme of total repudiation of debts and rents, inevitably leading to confiscation of the zamindars’ lands, and removal of other local grievances. In the cities the rank and file should immediately organise the unorganised workers and the unemployed on a class basis wherever there are no anti-Imperialist organisation in the cities. Thus and thus alone India’s triumphant march towards Independence can be secured, and all efforts at arriving at a treacherous compromise can be defeated. Therefore,

Forward to the anti-imperialist Conference. Forward to a revolutionary alliance of the workers and peasants and the rank and file of the Congress. Organise the peasant revolt. Long live the revolutionary toilers and the rank and file of the Congress. Down with the conspirators against Indian Independence.

The Executive Committee of the
Communist Party of India
(a section of the Communist International)

Note:

1.   The undated Manifesto was published in February 1931

 

24

The Karachi Congress and the Struggle Against Imperialism^[1]

The Karachi Session of the National Congress meets at the time of a new defeat of the movement which it has been leading. This defeat is the result of a stab in the back of the toiling masses of India from the hands of those who pretended to lead the struggle of the masses. THE GANDHI-IRWIN AGREEMENT, planned and approved of by the leadership of the National Congress, is a shameful betrayal of the Indian people unheard of in the history of the Indian Struggle for Independence. ...

The National Congress betrayed to British Imperialists thousands of workers, peasants and revolutionary youths — even those who fought in the ranks of the National Congress movement. The revolutionary workers of Bombay, Calcutta, Peshawar and Sholapur who organised resistance to the violence of the English authorities, have been sold out by the National Congress. Gandhi agreed with Lord Irwin that they must continue to rot in prisons. The revolutionary youths and Meerut prisoners are handed over to British hangmen by the National Congress: Gandhi declared it was “unjust” to ask their liberation. The heroic revolutionary youths of Bengal, by the agreement of the National Congress, must face death sentences or life imprisonment : Gandhi agreed with Lord Irwin that they must remain in prison. Those peasants who, fighting against the yoke of British Imperialism and its agents the zamindars, landowners and moneylenders, had refused to pay taxes, are betrayed by the Congress. Gandhi agreed with Lord Irwin that they will not get back their land sold by the authorities. The National Congress approves of this new robbery of the Indian peasants. ...

... No one gained anything from this agreement except the leaders of the National Congress who are preparing to betray the Indian masses on an even larger scale. Their policy was (to seek) permission to participate in the continuation of the Round Table Conference, to collaborate with the imperialists in working out the new scheme for the British exploitation of India.

This scheme is already established by the Round Table Conference in London. The scheme means the strengthening of British rule in India, concentration in the hands of the Viceroy of even greater military and financial power than he had before. This scheme gives the Viceroy the right to control autocratically seventy percent of the Indian budget. This scheme proclaims the amputation of Burma from India, the separation of Sind, Orissa and the North Western Provinces. This scheme provides for the direct participation of reactionary princes in the exploitation not only of their own people but of the whole of India. This scheme establishes a thoroughly anti-democratic fake legislature, controlled by the nominees of the imperialists and reactionary princes. To assist the realisation of this scheme, to receive its portion of the exploitation of India by British capital, the National Congress has again betrayed the movement, has formed a bloc with British capitalists against the toiling masses of India.

Why this shameful betrayal such as has never been known in the history of India ? It was possible because the National Congress is an organisation led by and representing those classes who are interested in the greater exploitation of the toiling masses. ... It cannot and will not lead a real revolutionary struggle of the toiling masses because the National Congress is more afraid of the masses than of British imperialism. Gandhi & Co. have no less fear of revolution than has Lord Irwin.

... Leaders of the National Congress try to scare people by exaggerating the forces of British in India, and the power of British capitalism. ...

We, representatives of the All-India Communist Party in this tragic moment of the Indian national revolutionary movement, appeal to the Indian workers, peasants and all sincere revolutionary elements of the city and country, over the heads of the bourgeois traitors of the National Congress and call them to struggle for :

• 1.  Complete independence of the country through revolutionary fight against Imperialism.
• 2.  Confiscation of land of the Government and its agents zamindars, big landowners, moneylenders, capitalist planters. Abolition of peasant rents and cancellation of all peasant debts to the saukars.
• 3.  Confiscation of factories, banks, rail-roads, and all enterprises belonging to the imperialists and those bourgeoisie who defend and support them. Annulment of all State debts to imperialists.
• 4.  Eight hour day for workers. State minimum wage. Unemployment, sickness, old age and maternity insurance through the expropriation of the employers and the Government. Equal wages for equal labour without sex or race discrimination. Freedom of press, speech, assembly, organisation, strike, picketing and demonstrations. Unrestricted recognition of trade unions, factory committees, unemployed associations.
• 5.  Abolition of all caste, religious and national privileges. Complete equality regardless of race, caste, sex or religion.
• 6.  Unconditional release of all political prisoners including those imprisoned for uses of violence.

We, COMMUNISTS, address the Karachi Session of the National Congress with this Manifesto not because we could hope to improve this organisation or because we hope to be able to replace its present leadership with another composed of the so-called “left” elements of the National Congress. ...

We, COMMUNISTS, address this Congress in order to call the workers, peasants, and sincere middle class revolutionary elements, especially the revolutionary youth to protest against the treachery of the National Congress, to denounce its counter- revolutionary role, and to leave this organisation and organise themselves outside the National Congress in a revolutionary opposition to it.

We call the workers to protest against the betrayal by the National Congress, denounce the reformist agents of the National Congress in the trade union movement, join the Communist Party, join the revolutionary trade unions, from factory, shop, mill, pithead, dockyard, harbour, plantation committees and to prepare and organise the Central Strike.

We call the peasants not to believe the National Congress and not to carry out its invitation to abandon the struggle, but to refuse to be taxed, to refuse to pay rent, to organise peasant committees for the seizure of the land of the zamindars, and landowners which belongs to the people.

We call all sincere revolutionary rank and files of the National Congress to protest against the Gandhi-Irwin agreement, to denounce the National Congress, which carries out this agreement, to leave the National Congress, organise themselves outside of it, and join a revolutionary anti-imperialist united front of Indian workers and peasants. We must not be afraid of the traitors of the National Congress if they hypocritically accuse us of breaking their unity. There can be no unity between those who fight for the victory of Indian Independence and those who betray it.

Against the traitors of the National Congress and over their heades, we call the masses to continue the revolutionary struggle for the political and social liberation of India.

Down With The Gandhi-irwin Agreement.
Down With The Treacherous bourgeois National Congress
Betraying The Indian Revolution.
Long Live The Indian Revolution.

The Central Committee of
the Communist Party of India
(A Section of the Communist International)

Note:

1.   The pamphlet was distributed at the Karachi session of Congress (end of March 1931).

 

25

Meerut Communist Conspiracy Case  1929-1933

The General Statement of 18 Communist Accused

(Excerpts)

[ This is a large document containing eight chapters each subdivided into several sections and subsections. We have completely omitted Chapters II, III and VIII entitled Capitalism, Socialism and the Soviet Union, and, Communism and Bourgeois Social Institutions respectively. Many sections and subsections of the chapters excerpted have also been totally left out. The full document is published by National Book Agency, Calcutta, under the name Communists Challenge Imperialism from the Dock, with an introduction by Muzaffar Ahmad. The 18 Communists accused were G Adhikari, Ajudhia Prasad, G Basak, BF Bradley, G Chakravarty, Shamsul Huda, D Goswami, SV Ghate, KN Joglekar, PC Joshi, MA Majid, RR Mitra, P Spratt, Muzaffar Ahmad, Sohan Singh Josh, SS Mirajkar, Shaukat Usmani and RS Nimbkar. -Ed. ]

The General Statement

This is a case which will/have political and historical significance. It is not merely a case launched in the ordinary course of its duties by the police against 31 criminals. It is an episode in the class-struggle. It is launched and conducted as part of a definite political policy. It is an attempt on the part of the Imperialist British Government of India to strike a blow at that force which it recognises as the real enemy which will ultimately bring about its overthrow, which has already taken up an attitude of irreconcilable hostility towards it, and has already shown a very menacing strength — the masses of the poor and exploited population of this country. It is an attempt by the Imperialist Government to strike a blow at its enemy, not only by removing from the field the mere 31 individuals, but by reading a lesson to all who would follow the line of the mass revolutionary struggle in future, and by establishing a number of convenient legal precedents, which will facilitate the smashing of the workers’ and peasants’ movement by ‘lawful’ and ‘constitutional’ means. This case, in spite of the denials of the Prosecution, is an attack upon the workers' Trade Union Movement, an attack upon the peasants’ movement and an attack upon the movement for the Independence of India from British Imperialism.

In this statement we shall be concerned principally with the case in this aspect, i.e., in its real aspect. With the legal side of the case we shall have little to do. We are concerned with historical processes and changes in which legal systems and Penal Codes are only by-products. When we are trying to set up an entirely new system of laws we cannot be expected to pay very much respect to the existing one.

We do not plead for mercy, or even for justice, before this Court. This is a class court, and in relation to an offence directed against the ruling class itself, the conception of justice has no meaning. We know that this court will not give us justice, but nevertheless we do not passively offer ourselves as a sacrifice to the cruelty of Imperialism. We challenge imperialism that it will not dare to provoke the oppressed classes and the oppressed people of the whole of its empire, by wreaking its revenge upon us.

In a Communist conspiracy case it is expected of the accused that they will show whether or not they profess to be Communists. So at the outset of our statement we want to inform the Court and through it the world especially the world of capitalism and imperialism, and the world of the land owners and feudal lords of India, that we are Communists. We repeat the words of Marx and Engels, “Communists scorn to hide their views and aims. They openly declare that their purposes can only be achieved by the forcible overthrow of the extant social order.”

Our party, the Communist party of India, was not at the time of our arrest duly affiliated to the Communist International, and we were not all members of any Communist Party. But nevertheless we fully subscribe to the system of thought and the well-thought and scientific political programme laid down for the world revolution by that most powerful world-wide revolutionary organisation, the Communist International.

From the study of historical facts we have no doubt that India will play its part in the development of the world. We have no doubt that ultimately the proletarian revolution will take place in India, resulting in the establishment of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat, which organising society on the principles of Socialism, will gradually eliminate classes and prepare the way for the evolution to the stage of Communist society, wherein everybody will work according to his capacity and will share the social product according to his needs.

We are equally convinced by the same study, that in a colonial country, such as India is, the revolution which will precede the proletarian revolution, will be of the nature of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. This will achieve the complete freedom of India from the control of British Imperialism, and the complete abolition of all feudal and pre-feudal forms of social organisation and will result in the establishment of an Independent Democratic Republic. This is the revolution for which we were working, and we are convinced that the programme which we put before the country, the programme of the united anti-Imperialist front of all those classes capable of carrying through the revolution, was the only correct programme for attaining it.

Our programme and the activity which we undertook in our efforts to put it into effect, have been much misunderstood and also intentionally misrepresented by the Prosecution and by the Magistrate who committed us. We think it necessary both for the court and for the assessors that the chief particulars in which the Prosecution has tried to lead them astray should be corrected by us. This is the main purpose of our statement.

Our Social Theory

Our statement is made in terms of the theory of Marxism and Leninism. It is a matter of experience that this theory and the attitude of mind which it involves is very difficult of comprehension to members of the bourgeois class, and particularly so, we gather, to members of the British Bourgeoisie. The Prosecution have clearly failed to understand it. They have shown this not merely by the abuse — “grotesque”, “fantastic”, “antiquated” — which they have levelled at it, but by their attempt to explain it to the Court. ...

We were arrested and tried because we were considered a danger to the State, that is, to the British rule in India. And we were a danger to the State, not because of anything we did or could do ourselves, but because we represented powerful historical forces, which are changing the whole world, and are incidentally making for the overthrow of the present regime in India. It is a conspiracy, not of 31 men, nor even of the whole of the Communist International, but of objective conditions and processes,  and it is these  alone which  determine  historical events. ...

... Our actions, therefore, and the movement in which we took part, are no arbitrary inventions of ourselves, or even of “Moscow”. The revolutionary movement arises from the conditions of the present period of the world generally and India particularly. Our actions as individuals were in accordance with the necessities of the periods as we saw them. We saw the line of the historical forces, and followed it. ...

The Indian National Revolution Inevitable

Our attitude to Indian affairs accords with the general views here described. We shall deal with the matter a little more fully afterwards. We consider that the way in which the economic and political life of the world generally and of India in particular have developed make it certain that the Indian national revolution now developing, will culminate fairly soon in the revolutionary overthrow of British imperialist rule.

India has been under political subjection for a long time. Its economic and political evolution has been held back. Its industrialism is still backward and ill-balanced and dependent to a very great extent on foreign supplies of the means of production. Its agrarian relations are still mostly in various stages of feudalism, its agricultural technique extremely primitive. Politically it has yet taken hardly any steps towards the establishment of bourgeois democracy. The country is not only held back in its development but is economically exploited for the benefit of the British bourgeoisie. In consequence of all this the position of the masses of the people is one of extreme poverty and social backwardness while even the bourgeois class as a whole is seriously hampered in its development. This position cannot be remedied within the system of Imperialism, and consequently the situation is objectively revolutionary, and actually these conditions have for some time been giving rise to various kinds of movements of protest of increasing intensity.

India has been under Imperialist domination for a long time. But capitalist large scale industry, the great ferment and revolutionary agent, which wherever it has gone, has quickly upset the old order, has entered only recently. This is the reason for the rapid revolutionising of the situation in the present period. But the world outside India is also developing.

The system of capitalism generally has reached in recent years a condition of acute crisis. Whether or not Lenin’s diagnosis is accepted, it must be admitted as the fact that at any rate since the year 1914 we have seen an uninterrupted series of wars and revolutions of absolutely unprecedented magnitude and universality, accompanied by general economic crisis and other political disturbances, extending throughout the world. And one at any rate of these revolutions has succeeded in establishing a radically new social order, which is looked up to all over the world by the oppressed classes and people as a model for the new order for which they are striving. Now this condition of universal change and unsettlement has its reactions upon India and cannot but have the effect of hastening and intensifying the revolutionary movement which in any case is bound to develop by reason of India's internal circumstances. This is a short sketch of what we mean by the objective necessity or inevitability of the Indian national revolution, and why we cannot but laugh at the Prosecution's picture of a placid and contented India disturbed by the efforts of Moscow to goad it into an unwilling revolution. We have no objection to the help of the Communist International and the Russian working class; in fact we consider that India should welcome such help. But the Indian revolution will be due, not to anything which the Communist International may do but to British Imperialistic exploitation and oppression, and the poverty and misery of the masses of the people of India. ...

The National Revolution

The Indian Bourgeoisie In Relation To The Revolution

... Although the revolution maybe of bourgeois democratic type it does not necessarily follow that it will be carried through or led by the bourgeois class itself. The situation in India and the position of the bourgeoisie leads us to conclude that this is the case here : the bourgeoisie will not lead the national revolution.

Our discussion of the policy of Imperialism in relation to Indian industry led to the conclusion that that policy was on the whole one of discouragement of industrialisation, and hence the interests of the Indian bourgeoisie and the British clash fairly sharply. This is certainly the fact, as recent political events have shown, and in order to get a correct perspective it is necessary to bear this fact in mind. Nevertheless we consider that the Indian bourgeoisie is not objectively capable of pursuing a revolutionary policy. The main reasons for this are as follows:

• 1) The close association of British and Indian capital in Indian industry. ... The British policy is to increase the association of British and Indian capital, under the domination of the former, so that conflict will become increasingly difficult.
• (2) The dependence of Indian merchant capital on export and import, which is largely concerned with British goods or is controlled by British interests. This section, the so-called “comprador” bourgeoisie is as in China normally very “loyal” to the foreign interests. Some section of it however has been penalised by the recent alteration of the exchange ratio, and simultaneously hit by the general trade crisis and has become discontented. Its consequent participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement has caused some surprise.
• (3) The close connection between the Indian bourgeoisie and the indisputably loyalist landowning interests. The source of the “primitive accumulation” of a good deal of Indian industrial capital is land. A number of leading princes are partaking in industrial activity both in British India and in their states. The lower ranks of the Indian bourgeoisie also are connected with agrarian exploiting interests, as a great deal of capital unable to find remunerative Investment in industry is applied to money-lending, the acquisition of land, and retail trade. In view of the explosive nature of agrarian relation such interests are necessarily politically reactionary.
• (4) The general weakness and backwardness and the deeply divided character of Indian capitalism. It has not even a single united political party. Its forces are divided among the Congress, the Liberal Federation, and various communal and other organisations, which reflect real differences of interest in some cases, though they are able to come together on certain issues, namely in the All Parties Conference and the boycott of the Simon Commission. The bourgeois class split (though the split was only temporary) over the issue of the Round Table Conference and the Civil Disobedience Programme. In view of this weakness, which is realised by the bourgeoisie, and the growing and already very sharp clash of class interests in both industry and agriculture it is clear that a revolutionary policy and movement, which would necessarily have to involve the masses, could not be kept under control by the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeois class in short is too weak, and its interests are bound up too closely with both British imperialism and Indian feudalism, while the contradiction between its interests and those of the masses, its only possible revolutionary allies, is too direct to enable it to embark upon a policy of revolutionary overthrow of British rule.

The Bourgeois Nationalist Movement

This analysis is confirmed, and the non-revolutionary character of bourgeois nationalism shown, by its history. It is unnecessary to follow that history in detail. It is enough to consider the two occasions on which the Indian national bourgeoisie have been driven to organise open mass movements against British Imperialism (the Non-Cooperation Movement of 1919-1922 and the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930-1931). On both these occasions the bourgeois groups who have financed and actually controlled the movements, and bourgeois and petty-bourgeois politicians who have actively led them, have been extremely careful to restrain their followers and prevent them from becoming revolutionary. It is a fundamental mistake to consider either the Non-Cooperation Movement or the Civil Disobedience Movement as revolutionary. They of course both contained certain revolutionary elements and possibilities of development, but these have not been allowed to develop. ...

A section of the so-called “left” leaders of the Congress (principally Messrs. Jawaharlal Nehru, Srinivas Iyengar and Subhas Chandra Bose) launched the Independence League, which purported to be a serious Independence Party. But as is shown conclusively in p 56 (“Political Resolution” of the All India Workers’, and Peasants’ Party Conference, December 1928 ) from a study of the actions and published programme of the League, the formation of this organisation was simply a demagogic device, having no serious purpose to secure Independence behind it. The conclusions of the AIWPP Conference were confirmed completely when many of the leaders of the Independence League accepted the Congress resolution, which went back to Dominion Status, making Independence contingent on the compliance by the Government with certain conditions by the end of this year. Others of the Independence League leaders abstained from voting, while only a small section put up in a fight against this disgraceful retreat. After that nothing more was heard of the Independence League. At the end of the year (1929) the conditions had of course not been fulfilled, and Independence had to be reaffirmed, though the leaders were obviously very unwilling. None the less when the Civil Disobedience campaign began, Independence, even as a demand to be put forward for bargaining purposes was dropped, practically without any dissent from the members who had voted for it. During the negotiations between the Government and the imprisoned leaders in 1930 Independence was not the demand put forward by the latter. ...

... The Indian bourgeoisie cannot pursue a revolutionary policy. It may act for a time in more or less vigorous opposition to Imperialism but it can never go to the point of revolution against Imperialism. In its actual political activity it is normally as much concerned to check the beginnings of the revolutionary movement of the masses as it is to oppose the Government; and when seriously threatened by the mass revolution, it will become directly and actively counter-revolutionary, and will join with Imperialism against the masses. The claims of the bourgeoisie to represent and lead the whole of the nation are untenable. The bourgeoisie represents for a time a force wavering and vacillating between the counter-revolutionary bloc of Imperialism and its allies, the princes and landlords and the loyal upper classes, and the revolutionary bloc of the workers and peasants and the town poor, the petty bourgeoisie and the revolutionary youths. It vacillates for a time between the two great camps of revolution and counter-revolution, assisting to a certain extent, especially in the early stages, in the growth of the revolutionary movement, but later coming more and more to hamper its growth, to confuse the issue and mislead it, and eventually, as the revolution gathers strength, finding itself forced to line up more and more definitely with the forces of counter-revolution. ...

The Revolutionary Anti-imperialist Front

The workers and peasants

Among the masses we have always held a view that the industrial working-class must take the leading place. This has caused the Prosecution some amusement, but we insist that it is natural and correct. In spite of comparatively small numbers, the working-class inevitably will take the lead of the peasantry in the revolutionary struggle.

The principal motive power of social progress in the modern period lies in large-scale industry. The industrial town is the leader in society today. The village can only follow. The peasantry represents a backward reactionary mode of production, which is doomed to disappear. Such a, class can hardly take the lead in a movement of social advance.

In consequence of its mode of production and life, the peasantry is culturally more backward than the working class. The working class, being directly confronted with capitalism, achieves a more thorough understanding of the nature of the modern society than the peasantry. It acquires further a more complete class consciousness. It can form general ideas and policies and fight for them. The peasantry on the contrary is condemned to a relatively narrow range of interests. General political policies will not readily penetrate its understanding. This narrowness was shown for example during the civil war and intervention in Russia. The working class knew what it was fighting for and was consistently “Red”. The peasantry on the other hand, in many areas after seizing the land, would accept the rule locally of whichever side was temporarily successful, and rose again to fight only when the “whites” attempted to re-establish landlordism. The local narrowness of the interests of the peasantry is also well known. They will readily join together and fight against their own exploiter, moneylender or landlord, but only with much greater difficulty will they organise over large areas, as a class, to fight the landlords as a class. The working class, on the other hand, very easily acquires a national and even an international class consciousness. In view of its more developed culture, if the two classes are associated, the working class inevitably takes the lead.

Further, in contrast to the peasantry, the working class is a more homogeneous class. There is very little clash of interests between different strata of the working class. The working class is concentrated and disciplined to act as a united force by the conditions of its life and work, in a way that neither the peasantry nor any other class can be. It is given by its experience of exploitation a more complete understanding of the nature of the economic and political system. It therefore comes to be imbued with a more thorough revolutionary outlook than any other class. Its position is one of consistent and obvious exploitation. The poverty of the peasantry however is not always obviously due to the exploitation of other classes. It may appear to be due as much to the general parsimony of nature or to some particular natural catastrophe. The individual of the peasant class may hope to a certain extent by hard work and good fortune to rise to a position of comfort. Such prospects for the workers are comparatively slight. All these considerations go to show that the consciousness, understanding and revolutionary determination of the working class must be superior to those of the peasantry.

Finally, the working class is placed in such a position, in control of strategic points, the big towns, the decisive parts of the productive system, the transport and lines of communication etc. of society, that the force of its attack is immensely greater than the relative weight of its numbers.

The peasantry has existed as a class for many centuries, and since the days of Jack Cade and John Ball has from time to time risen in revolution against its oppressors. But its revolutionary movement has never been successful. In the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, it succeeded, because in both cases it was led by another revolutionary class, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat respectively, which concentrated on the political achievements of the revolution, leaving the peasantry to its own concern, the land. In the “green revolution” in Eastern Europe after the war, the peasantry has achieved in some countries a partial success, by allying with the bourgeoisie against the landowners on the one hand and the working class on the other. As would be expected in such circumstances, the success of the peasantry has been only partial and temporary. The bourgeoisie having crushed the working class with the aid of the peasant armies, and secured its political power, has begun to re-establish landlordism.

In India at the present day the difference between the two classes is to be seen. Though backward the organisation of the working class is far in advance of that of the peasantry, as are also its political experience and consciousness. The working class is becoming rapidly an active and conscious revolutionary class. Then peasantry indulges spasmodically in local insurrectionary movements, but as a whole it is still only potentially revolutionary.

The working class in India, in the sense of an organisable active force, apart from the agricultural proletariat, numbers some five millions. It is a small class compared with the peasantry. But the working class in China, which has played and is playing a definitely leading part in the revolution, is relatively and absolutely smaller than the Indian working class. Even the number of the Russian working class was at the time of the revolution a relatively small fraction of that of the peasantry.

We conclude therefore that the working class can and will be the leading class in the Indian revolution. While the peasantry will establish for the revolution the indispensable base in the country by seizing the land and overthrowing the feudal-capitalist system of exploitation in operation there, the working class, assisted by auxiliaries form various sections of the town poor, artisans and the petty bourgeoisie, will conduct the decisive attack upon the centres of the State power, and will be principally concerned in establishing the new State and the new order. The working class and the working class party will be the deciding and directing force.

The Programme of the National Revolution

We have said that the Indian revolution must be essentially a bourgeois democratic revolution, modified by the conditions of a colonial country. This is the case, although we have also concluded that the classes which will carry through the revolution are the working class and the peasantry, supported by the petty bourgeoisie, and although the bourgeoisie will inevitably oppose the revolution.

The prosecution and the Magistrate have stated repeatedly that we aimed immediately at setting up “a workers’ republic on Soviet Lines”, (Committal Order, page 7), or aimed immediately at the Dictatorship of Proletariat (Committal Order, page 88). That is, we are said to look upon the Indian revolution as being not confined to the bourgeois democratic stage but as going immediately beyond it to the socialist revolution, as was the case in Russia. ...

... It [the immediate conquest of the revolution] will be in essence a typical bourgeois democratic revolution, achieving at the same time independence from Imperialist rule and establishing, not the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie but the rule of the masses.

A popular workers’ and peasants’ army will be created, and the prohibition on the carrying of arms by the masses reversed. ...

The State which will be set up will be democratic, participated in by all except those who definitely support the counter-revolution. Freedom of association and discussion will be instituted for the masses for the first time in the history of the country. In short, the programme outlined in the publications of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party (p 523 “Call to Action” Appendix) will be put in force. ...

The Workers’ And Peasants’ Party, The Party Of The National Revolution

The policy of carrying through the national democratic revolution will be conducted, as we have shown, by united front of three main classes, the working class, the peasants and that miscellaneous group which we call the petty bourgeoisies. In the period when we were working in the movement, we conceived of the Workers' and Peasants' Party as the organisational form of that united front. Its publications show that it regarded itself as a party representing these three classes and that its policy was essentially the attainment of the national democratic revolution. It did not aim immediately at the dictatorship of the proletariat, nor did it put forward socialism as part of its programme. The propaganda of its individual members may at times have mentioned these things as ultimately to be attained, but its policy and programme as such demanded only independence and democracy and described only the way to get them by carrying through the national revolution. We have outlined already the programme of the national democratic revolution, and shown that it coincides with that of the WPP. The constitution of the WPP of Bengal (p 523: “Call to Action”) states that the aim of the Party is : The attainment of Complete Independence from British Imperialism and thorough democratisation of India, based on economic and social emancipation and political freedom of men and women. ...

... We repeat that the WPP was not a Communist Party, it was the Party of Independence and of the national democratic revolution, and nothing more.

The Communists And The Nationalists

... As for the next point, there is no doubt that on questions of policy we are strongly opposed to all the gentlemen whom the Prosecution named — Messrs. Gandhi, Jawahar Lal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose etc. But the reason why we oppose them is that we stand for national revolution and they do not. All our propaganda and publications contain this theme, that these leaders of “nationalism” are not leaders of the national revolution but leaders of a national reformist movement, They are not “striving for Independence in India” as the Prosecution says of them. In fact that is our complaint against them. They are striving for Dominion Status in India, or something even less than Dominion Status. They want a compromise with Imperialism in accordance with the interests of the bourgeoisie, as we have just explained. They want a compromise with Imperialism, we are against a compromise with Imperialism, but on the contrary want to overthrow it. We are therefore entitled to ask, which are the better nationalists, we or they ? ...

We claim that Communists can take part in the national revolution. We go further and say that the Communist Party of India will play a leading part in the national revolution. We have declared that we believe that the working class will be the leading class in the national revolution. It follows that the working-class party, the Communist Party, will play a part of great importance as the leading and organising force in the national revolution, just as the Communist Parties of China, of Indonesia, of Korea, and other colonies are doing.

Our simultaneous support of nationalism and internationalism involves no contradiction. The ultimate equalitarian federal union of free peoples' States at which we aim cannot be attained on the basis of national oppression. It would be impossible, as the Social Democrats profess to think, for any Empire to pass directly into the union. The first step is that such a national unit must attain freedom. It can then enter the union freely on an equal basis. From this point of view then the attainment of freedom from Imperialist oppression is a step forward towards Internationalism. And as we have shown the national revolution means an essential advance not only in this respect but in many others also. Hence we support it. ...

 

The Agrarian Problem
Class Struggle The Fulcrum Of The Whole Issue

The apologists of Imperialism as well as of nationalism persist in denying the class nature of the agrarian problem. Technical improvements, liberalisation of the bureaucratic machinery and the partial transfer of the financial control into the hands of the indigenous bourgeoisie is all that they think is necessary for the solution of this problem. The Imperialists are never tired of the “civilising and cultural mission”, of the era of technical improvements they have opened. They wax eloquent over their duty “to educate the backward races for prosperity, progress and culture”. The same hypocritical lies have been repeated parrot-like by the Labour lackeys of Imperialism from their Cabinet seats. ...

The denial of class conflict in agrarian conditions is based on a wilful misunderstanding of the economics of agrarian production and appropriation. The Imperialists however deny class struggle in words only. The agrarian policy of Imperialism is based on its own class interests, which are directed towards the monopolisation of the raw material resources of its colonies and towards preserving its monopolist hold of the colonial markets. Similarly the agrarian demands of the nationalist movement can never go beyond the circle of the class interests of its friends and financiers, the capitalists and the zamindars.

When we say that the agrarian problem is not merely one of improving agricultural technique, we do not in any way deny the importance of these improvements; on the other hand, we maintain that if the improvements of agricultural technique are to be universal — and they cannot be of any use to the broad masses of the peasantry without being universal — they will immediately come up against the barriers set up by the given distribution of private property in land. This would immediately bring up the question of vested interests, of landlordism and of class struggle. Class struggle therefore, is the fulcrum of the whole issue. ...

Agrarian Revolution — The Only Solution

We have seen that Imperialism in spite of its past administrative reforms as well as its proposed technical improvements will not be able to solve the agrarian problem. The administrative reforms have not been anything more than weak palliatives, which did not, and cannot, go to the root of the question — the rights and powers of intermediate parasitic classes. Imperialism \S no doubt interested in granting stability to the actual cultivators, in order to secure a stable agrarian production. But it must at the same time not displease the zamindars, moneylenders and intermediaries, whose support it must enlist as bulwarks of reaction and counter-revolution. Thus these administrative changes cannot touch the property rights of the zamindars and intermediaries. It cannot touch the capitalist relations obtaining in the countryside. If occupancy rights are granted to a section of the raiyats, these again tend to become non-cultivating sub-landlords, and a class of under-raiyats with the same difficulties of insecurity grows up under them. ...

The misery and poverty of the poor peasantry who form the overwhelming bulk of the entire population of India remains untouched. Any scheme of agricultural development which keeps the existing social order with its peculiar inter-mixture of feudal-capitalist relations, must, as we have pointed out, necessarily lead to the aggravation of the problem, through mass evictions and mass increase in the number of landless labourers. ...

 

The Peasant Programme Of The Workers’ And Peasants’ Party

A Programme of Agrarian Revolution

This revolutionary demand — land to the peasant: abolition of the entire parasitic landlord class — is the kernel of a programme of agrarian revolution. Before we deal with the other implications of the agrarian revolution, before we deal with the classes that will carry it out, and with its future perspectives, we shall first answer the question how the overthrow of the parasitic landlordism is the essential and inevitable precondition of any real development of agriculture — of any substantial bettering of the economic condition of the broad masses of the peasantry.

The cancellation of all zamindari rights in land as well as of all unproductive intermediary tenures, will remove the greatest obstacle in the way of satisfying the land-hunger of the millions of poor peasants. A rational redistribution of holdings will then be possible. ...

This is the guiding thought in the clear and concrete formulation of the programme of Agrarian Revolution which was made by the CPI recently in its “Draft Platform of Action”. The peasant demands formulated by the CPI are as follows :

• (1) The confiscation without compensation of all lands and estates, forests and pastures of the native princes, landlords, moneylenders and the British Government and its transference to peasant Committees for use by the toiling masses of the peasantry. The complete wiping out of the medieval system of landholding.
• (2) The immediate confiscation of all plantations and their transference to revolutionary Committees elected by the plantation workers. The formulation of the demand in the case of plantations is twofold. With reference to plantations which are parcelled out in small allotments, worked by contract workers with more or less primitive methods, the demand is that these allotments and the land belonging to the plantation and not in cultivation, should be handed over to the labourers and poor peasants as their property. In the case of large scale mechanically equipped plantations and workshops connected there with, the demand put forward is the nationalisation of the plantation in the interests of the whole Indian people.
• (3) The immediate nationalisation of the whole system of irrigation, complete cancellation of indebtedness and taxes, and the transference of the control and supervision of the work of irrigation to revolutionary peasant  Committees,   elected   by   the working peasantry. ...

Agrarian Revolution, The Axis of The National Revolution

... The national revolution is often described in our literature as a bourgeois-democratic revolution. The reason for this is that the democratic tasks ... have still to be achieved in India. These tasks are: (1) abolition of landlordism; (2) elimination of all pre-capitalist forms of exploitation (serfdom, feudal cesses and services etc.); (3) end of the autocratic rule of the Princes; (4) substitution for the imperialist-feudal state by a republic based on adult suffrage. ...

... What we wish to emphasise is this, that until this class struggle assumes a conscious form, becomes nationwide, until it rises to the pitch of an agrarian revolution, and until it is linked up with the political struggle for national liberation led by the proletariat, until then the success of the national-democratic revolution will not be guaranteed. It is in this sense that we say that the agrarian revolution has been and remains the axis of the national revolution. ...

The Proletariat The National Ally of The Peasantry In India

... The fighting alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry has a further basis in India. The Indian proletariat is to a considerable extent a floating population. A substantial section of it oscillates between the city and the countryside. Many poor peasants wander into the city in search of a short-time employment to earn a little cash, and then return to their villages. This floating section of the working class forms the living link between the stable, permanently settled proletariat of the cities, and the poor peasants and land labourers of the countryside. The stable proletarian too is the poor peasant of yesterday, and he knows the plight and misery of the poor peasantry full well. Thus the proletariat alone is the truest and best ally of the peasantry in its fight against its oppressors.

The Organisation And Tactics Of The Agrarian Revolution

... The party of the proletariat cannot discharge its task as the ally of the peasantry merely by issuing paper programmes of agrarian revolution. The proletariat must come forward and show the peasantry the way to form their own class organisation, to fight for their immediate economic demands, organisations somewhat similar to those which the proletariat has built for itself in the cities viz. Trade Unions. The Peasant Unions will include only peasants who cultivate the land with the labour of their own family, as well as, in the initial stages, the land labourers. The peasant unions must on no account contain the village exploiters, the rich peasants, landlords, money-lenders or traders. It is only when this condition is fulfilled that the peasant unions will be a suitable basic organisation for the peasant struggle for partial demands. The preliminary unit of organisation will naturally be the village. But in the event of a struggle for partial demands, such as opposition to an enhancement of tax or rent, or against illegal cesses, official oppression, etc., the union will undoubtedly grow and embrace a number of surrounding villages, or even a taluka. During such a partial struggle the peasants will learn to form an elected executive body of the union, which will make a centralised and proper conduct of the struggle possible. The formation and functioning of such a body, the peasant committee, makes the next step in the organisational training of the peasantry. The peasant thus learns to get his business done through a properly elected representative body of his own class. The peasant will learn the art of self-government through his peasant committees. In fact the peasant committee, as a class organisation, is the nuclear unit of self government on which the future republic of the workers and peasants of India will be based. ...

 

The Trade Union Movement

The evidence and accusations in connection with our work in the Trade Union Movement form a large part of the subject matter of this case. The principal immediate reasons for the institution of this case was our Trade Union activity, and among the effects which the case has had and will have upon public life in India, those in connection with the Trade Union Movement are the most direct and perhaps the most important. ...

The Communist Party is not at all an outside influence in the working class, or even in the Trade Union Movement. It has of course a clearer idea and a more consistent revolutionary consciousness than the Trade Unions, even at their best. But that is its function. It is the leader of the working class and the Trade Union Movement, and aims at drawing into its ranks all the most progressive and conscious men in the Trade Union so that the relations between the two organisations are as close and as natural as possible. Such a body is not ir. any sense an external force, it is an integral part of the movement. ...

Revolutionary Trade Union Movement, As Opposed To Reformist

Social Theory

... The reformist theory that the conditions of the workers will gradually improve under capitalism that the present, or past economic crises of the capitalist system are things that we should assist in patching up, has been utterly smashed by the march of events. The present crisis has exposed the fact that capitalism has become a hindrance to the development of the productive forces of society, that even a partial improvement within the frame-work of capitalism is only possible at the expense of a still further worsening of the conditions of the workers. We look upon these periodical crises of the capitalist system as denoting the approach of its collapse. Our policy is not therefore to assist it to recover and bring it back to health again, but to take advantage of the crisis and assist it out of its misery quickly by ending the present state of society, thus assisting the workers out of their state of misery. ...

Functions And Aims

... The Communist leadership in the Trade Unions does support the policy of fighting for the immediate demands for improvement of the conditions of Labour, of the workers, for social and political reforms. But while this is so, while we support the policy of rallying the workers into the Trade Unions on the basis of their immediate demands for improved conditions, we mention that the most important function is for the overthrow of the capitalist system, it being a fact that there cannot be any real or lasting gains under capitalism. ...

 

Tactics “Making Use Of The Nationalist Bourgeoisie”

... Our relation with the national bourgeoisie is plain and is openly stated. We can maintain a united front with them if they are pursuing a genuinely revolutionary policy, and are willing to allow us freedom of agitation and organisation. If they do not fulfill both of these conditions there is no question of our “using” them.

In India the former of these conditions has never been fulfilled. The bourgeoise have never pursued a revolutionary struggle. And we have never “used” them. We have always tried to win their followers away from them by openly denouncing and exposing them as reformists and putting forward our own revolutionary programme in contrast to theirs. We cannot see any form of “making use” of the nationalist bourgeoisie in this. ...

Revolutionary Mass Action

The method which we propose for the achievement of the revolution is the mass action of the people as a whole. It is a method which arises naturally from the immediate needs of the struggle of the masses. The spontaneous struggle of the masses for demands principally and originally of an economic character, which is doomed to defeat if confined to its elementary and anarchic form, is brought by education and organisation to a higher level, and eventually to the logically inevitable attack upon the state power of Imperialism, the great obstacle in the way of all the struggles of the masses. As we have explained, the organisations which the masses spontaneously form in the course of the struggle, the strike committees, village committees etc., will through the experience of the struggle and the necessities of the position which will confront them, be forced to expand and develop into the organs of the new state power, the Soviets. There is nothing artificial or impossible about this proposal. All popular revolutions in history have followed a path of this kind, only differing in the greater or less distance to which they have been allowed to pursue it. Events have already shown that this is the course which will be followed in India also. ...

The Use of Violence

... We openly declare that we shall have to use violence, the violence of the mass revolutionary movement. But in contrast to Imperialist violence, an ocean which has engulfed the whole world for generations, our violence can be but a drop. As opposed to Imperialist violence, which, while Imperialism lasts, is permanent, our violence is temporary. As opposed to Imperialist violence, which is used to maintain an obsolete, barbarous, exploiting system, our violence is progressive and will be used to attain the next great step forward in the march of the human race. This is our justification of violence.

 

26

Independence or Surrender?

... British Imperialism smites the Independence Movement most mercilessly; it shoots down workers and peasants; it throws into dungeons thousands of young revolutionaries; it closes down popular papers, it punishes with barbarous sentences every speech for Independence. And the Indian National Congress — Messrs Gandhi, Vallabhbhai & co reply with constructive Programme of the Parliamentary Board and the sacred cause of the Harijan campaign. A whole nation of toiling millions is in agony, is groaning, is crushed under the heel of repression and the Indian National Congress replies with a shake-hand of surrender and fawning friendship.

This surrender is neither sudden nor accidental. For the last two years the Congress leaders headed by Gandhi were waiting for a favourable opportunity to repudiate mass-struggle. But they hoped to masquerade their surrender as a compromise or a treaty with British Imperialism as in 1931. The Poona Conference was one of such attempts at looking heroic while surrendering and substituting individual CD for mass CD. But Imperialism refused to tolerate any left gesture and dictated an open surrender and that unconditional surrender was obtained by the Patna Resolution.

... The Indian National Congress meeting in Bombay will endorse this betrayal, this repudiation of the struggle done by the Patna meeting. All leaders are unanimous in blessing Parliamentary activity, the constructive politics of Bhulabhai and his lawyer friends. ...

The open repudiation of mass-struggle is the preliminary step towards an acceptance of the White Paper proposal. Across the bridge of this repudiation the Congress leader want to pass over to the acceptance of the White Paper. ...

Are the Congress leaders in the least purturbed over this betrayal prepared by themselves? Is there any difference of opinion amongst themselves over this question of the betrayal of the Independence struggle? NOT IN THE LEAST. Every leader from Gandhi down-words is blessing this betrayal of the masses as wise and constructive politics.

Gandhi threatens to retire from the Congress, not on the question of opposing the surrender but on the question of the spinning franchise. Vallabhbhai and others support his retirement on the plea that the majority is against the spinning franchise.

And what is this new stunt of Gandhi? How is it that his most faithful lieutenants support the retirement of this Dictator who dominated Congress politics all these years? The stunt of retirement is a studied and calculated manoeuvre of Gandhi to side-track the attention from the question of surrender and to retain his anti-imperialist prestige in the eyes of his rank & file. By seeming to retire from the Congress on the question of spinning franchise and corruption, Gandhi wants to obviate the necessity of openly standing for Parliamentary activity, and thus maintain his Pose of an unbeaten satyagrahi. He wants to make the rank and file believe that he is against Parliamentary activity and that he concedes to it only because the majority wants it.

... In whose interests is this surrender move? ... The Congress leaders are never tired of saying that the mass struggle has been withdrawn because the masses are tired of the struggle. This is the most shameless slander indulged in by these representative of the propertied classes. Is their a lull in activity of the peasants in the rural area? What does the strike-wave sweeping over India demonstrate? What does the last Textile Strike of the Bombay workers show when thousands of workers came out on the street raised political demands, heroically fought for two months, and when police revolvers flashed more often in these two months in Bombay than in the whole CD campaign ? ... Is it not a most shameless lie to say that the masses have given up the fight with the Imperialist Government and the Indian exploiters?

What is then the meaning of this lying propaganda on the part of the Congress? The meaning is clear. Through their own experience of the treacherous Congress leadership in 1930 the masses have become disillusioned of the treacherous CD programme, of meek submission to imperialist terror in the name of non-violence, of class-collaboration with reactionary landlords in the name of unity, and since 1932 they are fighting their anti-imperialist battles out side the Congress fold. The radical masses have thus repudiated the Congress leadership in action.

And this has made the Congress leader panicky. For this drift of the masses towards Militant action, this independent action on the part of the toiling millions, though scattered and unorganised, spells disaster to the interests of the Indian bourgeoisie and landlords whose interests the Congress represents. And that is why Gandhi, Nehru & Co., have since 1932 all the while been planning to come to a compromise with Imperialism to be able to hold this tide of the mass movement in check. ...

So in the end what is the rank & file expected to do in the coming session? To vote for the surrender, to repudiate the masses and to bless the Parliamentary Board and the White Paper? What is going to be the reply of the rank & file?

The immediate task before the anti-imperialist elements is to repudiate the surrender and the betrayal of the mass-struggle, the betrayal of the revolutionaries and to help in building up and consolidating the united front of the workers, peasants and the petti-bourgeois anti-imperialist elements. ...

To mobilise all the anti-imperialist forces on our side of the barricades, to mobilise all the revolutionary forces in India to paralyse British Imperialism, to strike at the very roots of exploitation, at the very nerve-centres of imperialist domination, the only effective programme of action is to organise a country-wide political general strike of all the key-industries — railways-docks-textiles-mines etc. calling on the workers to fight in the name of the workers’ and peasants’, Soviet Republic. This will strike at the very centres of power of British Imperialism, paralysing its trade and commerce. Coupled with this, to organise a movement for a no-tax, no-rent and no-debts campaign of the starving peasants millions. This will complete the paralysis of the enemy. The minimum basic demands of this struggle are:

• (1)   Complete Independence of India and establishment of a Workers’ and Peasants’ Soviet Republic.
• (2)  Confiscation without compensation of all industries, plantations, land etc. at present owned by British Imperialism, and nationalisation of the same.
• (3)  Total repudiation of all debts due to British Imperialism.
• (4)  Confiscation without compensation of all land owned by zamindars and its distribution among the toiling peasantry.
• (5)  Total repudiation of all debts due to the money-lenders.
• (6)   Radical improvement in the conditions of the working-class, e.g., eight hours day, unemployment relief, social insurance at state cost, good housing, etc.
• (7)   Removal of all the Imperialist armed forces in India.
• (8)  Freedom of speech, press, organisation, assembly, strike, etc.
• (9)  Abolition of all racial, sex and communal discrimination.
• (10)  Abolition of Native States.

... Anyone ... who hopes to convert the Congress to the anti-imperialist programme not only commits a political blunder but a party in maintaining the treacherous Congress leadership over the struggle of the anti-imperialist masses. And this is what is being done by the “Congress Socialist Party” now forming within the Congress.

... Those sincere, anti-imperialist revolutionary fighters must refuse any longer to be dragged into counter-revolutionary paths by the Congress. They must boldly accept the revolutionary socialist lead of the working-class and immediately set to work to build up the new organ of struggle, the anti-imperialist united front.

Long Live The Anti-imperialist United Front of Workers, Peasants And Revolutionary Youths.
Down With The Congress With Its Capitulation And Surrender.
Support The Anti-imperialist, Anti-congress Demonstration of The Workers.
Down With Imperialism.
Long Live The Complete Independence of India.
Long Live The Workers’ And Peasants’ Soviet Republic of India.
Long Live The Communist Party of India.
Long Live The Communist International.

CPI of lndia.
Section of CI

27

To All Anti-Imperialist Fighters

Gathering Storm

THE world is on the eve of mighty clashes. Two mighty forces are coming to grips — perhaps — in a final deadly conflict. On the outcome of this conflict hangs the fate of the entire humanity — of all its cultural and social achievements of the past. On the one side stand the forces of Imperialism and fascist reaction, out to crush the revolutionary movement of the working class and its first victory in the Soviet Union, to destroy the democratic liberties of the peoples, to perpetuate the slavery pf the subject races and nations of Asia and Africa. On the other side are ranged the forces of the revolutionary working class and peasantry, fighting for Socialism, of the exploited peoples of the enslaved nations fighting for national emancipation.

WILL, the forces of the proletariat and the toiling peasantry, all the world over, find the path of Unity? WILL they succeed in a forging a mighty United Peoples’ Front with the consistent revolutionary leadership — on a national and international scale? ... Or will they sustain another set-back due to disunity in the ranks and a faltering in the leadership ? That is the question.

ALREADY in the gathering storm of the impending clashes, there are unmistakable signs of hope. Already the proletarian and peoples’ forces are drawing themselves in battle array. ... But speed, and more speed in building up the peoples’ fighting fronts is the crying need of the hour. The situation is tense.

Terror Intensified

THE situation in India is none the less so. British Imperialism weakened by the great crisis, is now menaced by rival imperialism — by the rise of the forces of rebellion at home, and in its colonies. It is preparing to strengthen itself for the coming conflict, by striking at the weakest forces ranged against it — the force of national revolt in the colonies. It is intensifying its brutal terror against the millions of our toiling peasants and workers struggling against starvation unemployment and famine. ...

WILL British Imperialism succeed in its new move? Will it succeed in smothering our national struggle — in disrupting it once-again? ... Or will the national emancipatory struggle of the Indian people rise to the height of a Powerful And-Imperialist Peoples’ Front, uniting the toiling and the exploited masses of our population under a consistent revolutionary-leadership, and inflict a defeat on British Imperialism in India — and foil its designs against the workers of the World ? That is the question and it is more urgent and pressing than over it was. British imperialism, weakened by crisis, and menaced by war and revolution in Europe would be more vulnerable than it ever was. We must prepare to strike and prepare fast.

Lessons of ’30—’32.

... THE struggles of 1930-32, which took place in the shadow of the great world crisis, and which were immediately preceded by the class battles of the Indian working class — making its debt [dealt] in the political arena, brought this conflict once again and more sharply to the fore. The struggle which proceeded with gigantic strides from Dandi, was brought to an ignominous halt at Delhi when the Delhi of its destination was still far off. ...

The criticism of the methods of national struggle which the Communist Party of India and the working class leadership was making for some years past, began now to appear justified to a broader mass of the Congress rank and file. The significance of the class battles of the industrial workers which preceded the national struggle of 1930-32 became clear to them. ... The search for a new path and new leadership resulted in a powerful leftward swing among the Congress rank and file. Determined sections turned their back on Gandhism and class-collaboration. They realised that the new path involved class-struggle-which instead of being antagonistic and destructive of national struggle was a powerful and indispensable ferment, broadening and raising it to higher level. ... This leftward trend found its reflection in the formation of the Congress Socialist Party.

THREE was a searching of hearts in the ranks of the class-conscious workers oft he Communist Party. The reverses in the working class movement (1929-36) its isolation from the national struggle, and the consequent failure to free it from the fetters of the bourgeois leadership — all that called for self-criticism and re-orientation. It was realised that the working class movement could not remain aloof from the National Struggle. I had to proceed from abstract criticism to the building up of a united front of the entire working class against capitalist offensive, to the building up the Joint Anti-Imperialist front of the masses of Indian people for land, bread and Independence. ...

Masses Move Left

THE preconditions for the building up of the Anti-Imperialist Peoples’ Front, for turning a new leaf in the history of our national struggle have been fast maturing in the past four years. Firstly we have the new resurgence in the working class movement. ... Secondly, there is the rise of a new trend in the present movement, represented in the formation of the organisation of the peasantry based on class struggle (Punjab, Bengal, Madras, Maharashtra) and of their growing unification in the all India Kisan Congress (AIKC). Finally we have the growing leftward trend inside the congress ranks which is spreading not only horizontally but seems to spread vertically as well. Large sections of the congress ranks and file are moving away from Gandhism and towards class struggle and towards the class organisations of the workers and peasants as the only effective means of developing the National Struggle. At the same time we are witnessing the unwanted spectacle of a man standing at the head of the Congress high command — who is today perhaps the best exponent of the whole leftward trend inside the Congress. The stage is set for bursting the fetters of the reactionary leadership — for freeing the forces of national struggle for the next advance — for the building up of the Anti-Imperialist Peoples’ Front.

... The United Front is not a vague lining up of allied groups and organisation for passing pious resolutions. The Anti-Imperialist united front is the spearhead formation of all our fighting forces. At the apex of this formation stands a consistently revolutionary leadership while its broad base is made of all the Anti-Imperialist forces in the country. ...

SUCH a united front ... can only be built in the process of the struggle and class struggle at that. It presupposes a broad and a militant organisation of the working classes including its backward sections. ... It means a more rapid class organisation of the peasants throughout the country, ... In short the building of united front does not means the mere bringing together of all the existing left forces. It means more. It means bringing into its orbit, wider masses of the unorganised moving newer sections and sarta of our people — awakening them to political consciousness.

Rally Round The Platform of Action !

..... The Communist Party of India (CPI) has already placed before you such a programme, which should be acceptable to the entire INC and to the organised workers' and peasants’ movements. We want complete national independence - whole and unadulterated — without “buts” and “it’s.^[1] ...

THIS is a moderate programme, and just because it is moderate should it be possible for us to unite the greatest majority of our people IN STRUGGLE to attain it. But what is the attitude of the Congress leadership of this programme ? Has it accepted it? It is no doubt substantially there is cold print in the Karachi resolution, and in the recent election manifesto. But how it undertook and how is it applied in struggle? ... When the workers rise in strike struggle in deference of their existing low standard of life, the pious resolutions are forgotten and the Congress leaders suddenly remember that their organisation consists of all classes and hence it cannot take sides, but they very often end in siding with their capitalists. ... The Congress election propaganda in the villages today, is an usual, restricted to the praise of the ‘constructive propaganda’ of Gandhism, to vague nationalist propaganda. The moderate demands about rent and debt are seldom mentioned let alone the question of struggle to attain them. They are afraid of upsetting their upper class supporters in the rural areas of spoiling their election chances. In short, their purpose is to create an illusion in the minds of the vocal left forces in the cities and in the Congress Sessions, that the Congress has accepted the minimum anti-imperialist programme while the leadership goes on consolidating its present class basis and working against a broader mobilization of the exploited masses so essential for the development of Anti-imperialist struggle.

Down With Compromisers

THIS is exactly where the conscious anti-imperialist rank and file in the Congress and its advance guard the CSP must step in ... The rallying of the toiling masses on the basis of their class demands is the only method of awakening them to political consciousness — of drawing them into the national struggle. The very first step in the building up of the anti-imperialist peoples’ front, means class struggle — means a sharp break with the “constructive programme” of Gandhism class collaboration. That is why, we will meet with a determined opposition from the orthodox Congress leadership at every forward step we take. It is all the more necessary, therefore, for all the left forces to combine to defeat this opposition, ...

DOES this mean that we are out to split the Congress, to split off its left wing and build up a separate organisation by joining it with workers’ and peasants’ organisations? This is not what we propose. The INC as it stands today does not represent an anti-imperialist united front. But it could be used as the basis for the building up one. Its structure and its constitution, as it is today, is quite unsuited even for this latter object. It can at times be effectively used to defeat it. We are therefore proposing the democratisation of its constitution — the widening of its mass basis by the collective affiliation of the workers’ and peasants’ organisations.

... The Congress attitude towards the question of elections as a whole is determined by the class-basis of its present leadership, by their usual reformist attitude towards the question of mass struggle. ... It relies on safe seats, on pacts with elements of reactionary vested interests, on the socio-economic pressure its candidates can bring to bear upon the voters. It is more worried over achieving “joint national front” with reactionary national groups, than over reaching agreement with the CSP or the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) (rejection of Com. Nimbkar and CSP candidates in Bombay and elsewhere) ... The elections manifesto, viewed in the light of all this, appears more as move, as a manoeuvre to-pacify the clamour of the vocal left forces in the cities rather than an effective lead to convert the election campaign into a struggle against the constitution, on the other hand it leaves enough loopholes for the reactionary leadership to pursue their reformist tactics unperturbed.

Advance on The Election Front!

THANKS to the weakness of our forces, to the vacillation in our ranks, the manoeuvre of the Congress leadership has for the most part succeeded. But we can still make amends for the lost time and opportunities. Firstly, all the left forces must formulate a resolution on the “tactics of the election struggle and the struggle against the constitution” — in which we must supplement what is missing in the election manifesto, viz, the presentation of the minimum programme as a programme of anti-imperialist struggle. As a practical measure we must insist on every candidate taking a solemn pledge before his voters that he would loyally support all the items of the same and fight for the attainment of demands of the workers and the peasants laid down therein. We must lay down that the election campaign develops as a series of united front demonstrations and processions in collaboration with the Labour and Peasant organisation — in which all the items of our minimum programme must be aggressively brought forward. All the anti-imperialist groups must unite at Faizpur to exert maximum pressure on the Congress leadership to press the resolution. The CSP should take the initiative in pushing it forward in collaboration with the labour and peasant representatives. Even if we do not succeed in getting the resolution passed, the CSP, and the Labour and Kisan groups should arrive at an agreement to push the policy in action in every localities where the left forces are strong enough to influence the Congress leadership. ...

The Right Prepares For Surrender

The move to accept the ministries on the part of some leaders is the logical outcome of that attitude of the Congress leadership to the whole question of elections which we outlined above. ... It would be the game of the rightists, to pose the issue of the ministries by itself to use it as valve for steam-letting for the left forces and thus sidetrack the main issue of the struggle against the constitution. ...

Democraties The Congress!

There will be two more issues before the Session, which are intimately linked up with the task of building up united front. Firstly, we have the question of the democratisation of the Congress. We have already, placed our concrete proposals about this before you (see the “Communist”). The purpose of these proposals is on the one hand, to activise the primary local committees of the Congress to raise the political consciousness local leading cadres to draw them towards the constructive work of organising the peasants and the toiling masses in their area, on the basis of their class demands. On the other hand, by effecting the collective affiliation of Labour and Peasant organisations, we are seeking to give a definite organisational form to the united front between the INC and the existing class organisations of the toilers. ...

These proposals, although they have the backing of the Congress President, will not have smooth sailing as seen at Lucknow; since Lucknow, however, the support for them in the Congress rank and file is growing ... this pressure must be kept up and increased, by striving to create local united fronts between the INC and the local labour and peasant organisations, ...

Support The Demands of The Peasants !

Secondly, the question of the formulation of the peasant programme will be coming up before the session. ... It is not possible to-day to formulate a genuine programme of peasants’ demands and at the same time gloss over the conflict between the majority of the downtrodden, rack-rented peasant population and the handful of rural exploiters. In fact, it is not possible to take even the first steps of organisation without posing the question of this conflict. We must bring mass pressure on the Congress to take sides in the conflict to come unequivocally in support of abolishing Khoti, Malguzari and Zamindari of the total redemption of debt and of the class organisation of the peasants. Faizpur session has been much advertised as a Present session and it is all more necessary for all the anti-imperialist forces in the Congress to join hands with the All Indian Kisan Congress and convert the Faizpur session into a powerful demonstration in support of their class programme. ...

THE menace of world war is hourly approaching. The Faizpur session will pass the resolution not to participate in the war of British Imperialism — and to utilise the opportunity to win Indian freedom. ... British Imperialism will, of course, use openly the princes and the big Indian vested interest in capital and land, to put forward its war designs. But in the nick of war crisis, it will try to win over that section of the Indian capitalists and merchants, who have influence over the Congress and use them to pacify the mass-unrest in India which is bound to follow on the wheels of war. If by then, we have not succeeded in building up a powerful base of the anti-imperialist front, and in creating a consistently revolutionary leadership for the national struggle we would be powerless to prevent the betrayal of our struggle, and another opportunity would have gone by.

Forge The United Front!

... This Front can only be built on the Solid foundations of the class organisations of Labour and Peasantry. ... This work is secretly foowned upon the Congress leadership and sometimes openly belittled (cf. Sardar Patel’s recent remarks re. Kisan organisations). The cause of this opposition is quite clear. It is an issue between the two paths — the path of class —  collaboration of reformism, which leads to surrender to imperialism and the path of class struggle and of anti-imperialist front which leads to the overthrow of imperialism. You, who are already turning away from the former, must now firmly tread upon the latter. ...

THE work of the organisation of the workers and peasants and of the building up of the anti-imperialist front has to be done under conditions of severe repression. ... As our anti-imperialist movement broadens sharpens, the task of building up its secret sector becomes more and more urgent, the task of supplementing open and legal work with secret work becomes more complex. The leadership of an experienced revolutionary party is required to tackle this problem.

THE working class, who has borne the brunt of this repression, who has learned to build up organisations and conduct strike struggles in the face of police and Government terrorism is the class eminently fitted to be the leader of the rest of the toilers and the initiator of the anti-imperialist peoples’ front. It is the revolutionary political party of the working class the COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA which must step forward as the leader and organiser of the anti-imperialist peoples’ front. It is also the CPI which must act as the guiding centre of all the secret and illegal activities of the AIPF. It must coordinate the legal and secret activities and thus create an invulnerable basis for the continued organisation of the workers and peasants in the face of imperialist repression. ... We call upon the anti-imperialist members of the Congress to develop class [close?] relation with our party, and to march shoulder to shoulder with us in the task of building up the anti-imperialist peoples’ front, for the defeat of imperialism and for the victory of the national struggle.

Forward To The Anti-imperialist Peoples Front!
Convene The Constituent Assembly !
Down With Imperialism !
Long Live The Revolution !

CENTRAL COMMITTEE
COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA
(SECTION OF COMINTERN)
DEC ’36

Note:

1.   Here follows such demands as Constituent Assembly release of political prisoners, various workers' and peasants’ demands and so on. -Ed.

 

28

Draft Election Platform^[1]

We are suggesting below drafts of the three election platforms. We hope they will become the basis of wide discussion.

We have not duplicated the demands unnecessarily. The distinctive demands of Communists are not likely to be adopted by candidates who are contesting the elections on the platform of Socialism and revolutionary Anti-Imperialism, nor are the demands of the latter likely to be accepted by the Indian National Congress (INC) as it is today. The concrete demands suggested in the platform for the INC must however be adopted by the Left candidates. The Left inside the INC should struggle to see that the Platform for the INC is not modified in the direction of Right compromise nor the concrete demands made vague, they should not let any of these demands be deleted but should add on to them other concrete demands embodying the immediate grievances of the toiling people.

Draft Election Platform for Communist Candidates.

• 1.  For Workers and Peasants Soviet Republic.
• 2.  Repeal of all Anti-National, Anti-Peasant and
• Anti-Working class laws.
• 3.  Unconditional release of all political prisoners, State prisoners, Internees and Detenues.
• 4.  Freedom of Speech, Press and Association.
• 5.  Withdrawal of army of occupation from India, existing army and police to be replaced by arming the workers, peasants and all toilers
• 6.  Abolition of Native States, property of the Princess to be confiscated.
• 7.  Repudiation of working-class and peasant indebtedness.
• 8.   Confiscation of large estates. Land to the Tillers of the Soil.
• 9.   Repudiation of Imperialist Debts.
• 10. Confiscation of British Capital in India.
• 11. Confiscation and Nationalisation of all key and large Industries, plantations and Banks.
• 12. Revolutionary fraternal support to the British working-class in its struggle against British Capitalism.
• 13. Active opposition to Imperialist Wars.
• 14.  Active support at all costs to the SOVIET UNION, the hope of the toilers of the World.

Draft Election Platform for Socialist and Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Candidates.

• 1.  For Workers and Peasants Republic.
• 2.  Repeal of all anti-national, anti-peasant and anti-working- class laws.
• 3.  Unconditional release of all political prisoners, State prisoners, Detenues and Internees.
• 4.  Freedom of Speech, Press and Association.
• 5.  Withdrawal of the army of occupation from India, existing army and police to be replaced by arming the people.
• 6.   Abolition of Native States, properties of the Princes to be confiscated.
• 7.  Repudiation of working class and peasant indebtedness.
• 8.  Confiscation of large estates. Land to the Tillers of the soil.
• 9.  Repudiation of all Imperialist Debts.
• 10. Confiscation of British capital of India.
• 11. Confiscation and Nationalisation of key and large Industries, plantations and Banks.
• 12. Revolutionary fraternal support to the British Working-Class in its struggle against British Capitalism.
• 13.  Active opposition to Imperialist Wars.
• 14.  Active support to the SOVIET UNION, the hope of the toilers of the world.

Draft Election Platform for INC.

• 1.    For Complete National Independence. No compromise with British Imperialism, Wrecking the Slave Constitution.
• 2.     Repeal of all anti-national, anti-peasant and anti-working- class laws.
• 3. Unconditional release of all political prisoners, Detenues, State prisoners and Internees.
• 4.     Freedom of Speech, Press and Association.
• 5.     50% reduction in military and police budget.
• 6. Democratic righls for State subjects, their representatives to be elected by the people.
• 7.     Repeal of the Arms Act.
• 8.     Immediate moratorium on all working class and peasant debts. Cancellation of 50 pc of their debts.
• 9.     Compulsory legal rate of interest not to exceed 6 pc.
• 10. No rent and revenue from uneconomic holdings. 50 pc reduction in rent and revenue on all holdings yielding net incomes of 500/- of less. Steeply graduated income-tax on agricultural incomes exceeding Rs. 500/- a year.
• 11.     Irrigation through Elected Peasant Committees.
• 12.    Free grazing ground from Government and landlords, to be managed by Elected Peasant Committees.
• 13. Abolition and Penalisation of all illegal levies, exactions and forced labour.
• 14.     Guaranteed minimum wages of Rs. 30/- a month.
• 15.     Eight hour day.
• 16.    Maternity Benefit, Unemployment and Health Insurance at the cost of Employers and Government.
• 17. Unrestricted Right of workers of strike and picket.
• 18.     No Reduction of wages. No fines. No retrenchment.
• 19. No forced leave. No ejectment of workers from tenements during strikes.

From two small items on National Front, 13 March and 10th April 1938 respectively.

Note:

1. This item, pertaining to the elections to the provincial legislatures held in February 1937, was published in The Communist, July 1936

 

29 A

Towards Left Unity

... In other parts of India, in Behar, in Andhra, in Malabar, for instance, where the Congress Socialist Party has been in close contact with mass struggles and has had the experience the distinction for actually leading them, the Party has felt the need of unity of the entire Left, and has worked shoulder to shoulder with the communists and all genuine anti-imperialists to achieve it. But in Bombay the Congress Socialist Party has kept aloof from the peoples’ struggles and the great waves of the peasant discontent, of the working class struggles have passed, for the most part, over its head, beyond its folded hands. And precisely in Bombay there has been the greatest opposition of Left unity — not towards unity or united front in theory - but hostility towards every concrete expression of unity or united front in action. But the pressure of events, the irresistible pressure of the mass movements in the country has driven the Congress Socialist Party as a whole, and now even the Bombay section, towards Left Unity. This is a heartening sign of the times. ...

 

29 B

Strengthen Socialist Unity

We heartily greet Congress Socialists assembled in their Annual Conference of Lahore.  ...

The Congress Socialists and the Communists represent two trends inside the Socialist movement, the former has arisen from within the national movement as a result of the experience of the mass struggles against imperialism. The latter mainly from within the proletarian movement as a result of the daily experience of the struggle in the class-battles of the proletariat. These two are not mutually antagonistic but really complementary to each other, they together are the socialist movement in India. The problem of socialist unity is to achieve the conscious unification of these two trends, and get them to coalesce. The Congress Socialists, for historical reasons, continue to be isolated from the working-class and therefore from the creative class energy of the proletariat. The Communists are embedded in the working-class and despite their recent successes have not yet succeeded in battering down the walls that isolate them from the general national movement. It is the role of the Socialists to be the living core of Left unity which is the real driving force of our national front; the proletariat in the final analysis is the most consistent builder of the united national front. The unity of the Congress Socialists and Communists takes us forward in these directions — nearer the goal to be reached.

Further, between the Congress Socialists and Communists ideological and practical agreement over immediate issue, i.e., over the policy of the United National Front already exists. We need Socialist Unity to carry out the Policy. The CSP is the party under whose banner this immediate unity must be achieved and all obstacles removed. ...

Our Congress Socialist comrades are meting at a time when the fate of the world, and of the Indian people together with it, hangs in the balance, would we, Indian Socialists, play our part worthily and intelligently? It depends to a considerable extent upon the decisions of the CSP — the practical steps it takes to cement and forge Socialist Unity.

All Socialists Inside The CSP.
Long Live The CSP.

 

30

Congress Ministers And Recognition of Unions

By Deven Sen

Some confusion and alarm has arisen in the ranks of trade unionists and Left forces generally, as a result of the recommendations of the Conference of Congress Labour Ministries regarding Government recognition to Labour Unions.

The following article on this subject has been sent to us by Comrade Deven Sen, Secretary of the Bengal Labour Association and a leading CSP member. The comrade makes the following points :

• 1. The recognition of trade unions is a pivotal demand in the workers’ struggle and this has been acceded to by the Karachi resolution and the more recent resolutions of the Congress.
• 2.  The attaching of conditions for recognition of trade unions by the government is a departure from the Congress position, and is motivated by the fear of the capitalist interests inside the Congress. These interests are afraid of the militancy of the workers and the growing influence of communist and socialist doctrines amongst them.
• 3. The Congress has already given concessions to violences in self-defence by its acceptance of the existence of a police force and armies. It is, therefore, not inconsistent with the Congress creed to extend the concessions to Labour Unions, which are organisations of the workers in self-defence.
• 4.  The Congress by its present policy is in danger of losing the support of the working class and the younger generation of the petty bourgeoisie. This will hamper, if not make impossible, the United Front in the struggle against Imperialism.

While not agreeing entirely with the formulations of Comrade Sen, we put his thesis forward as a welcome contribution to the discussion on the building up of the United Anti-Imperialist Front, which he himself recognizes as the prime necessity today.

We have not joined the congress as a matter of grace but as a part of our policy to develop it into the United National Front of the Indian people. We demand Unity of Congress and labour organisations and we know that we have to struggle for it. We realise that this conditional recognition of Trade Unions is anti-democratic and evidence of the owners’ greater pressure on the Congress Ministers. ... We would win

unconditional recognition of Trade Unions from the Congress Ministers themselves by mobilising the working class masses to assert this demand and by forging unity with the Congress masses themselves to actively support it. ... Ed.^[1]

Source:  New Age, January 1938.

Note:

1.   This refers to the editor of New Age; after this editorial note follows Deven Sen's article.

 

31

Tripuri Must Sound The War Drum

The re-election of Subhas Chandra Bose as the President of the National Congress has created a grave and critical situation. Never before in the history of the National Congress was the presidential election fought round burning political issues. ... Immediately after Subhas’s victory came the sensational news of the resignation of the seven leading members of the Working Committee, who had issued a statement opposing Bose’s re-election. This was promptly contradicted. But on the heels of this denial came Gandhiji’s articles which interpreted Bose’s election as a defeat for this principles and policy and foreshadowed the resignation of the present Working Committee members by asking Bose to chose a “homogeneous Cabinet.” Political speculation is rife in the daily press. How will this conflict between the Right and Left develop? Who will win at Tripuri ? Will there be a split ?...

All this is happening against the background of a serious and menacing international situation. If the rapid advance of Franco leads to the collapse of Republican Spain, Europe would be in the throes of an acute war crisis in the two months’ time .... To-day more than ever British Imperialism is vulnerable. If we hit out now, we win. An all round people’s offensive is the need of the hour. But this demands unity, unity of National leadership, unity of the Congress, unity of the entire people for a decisive struggle. To achieve this unity at Tripuri is the supreme task before us. Our enemies expect battle royal at Tripuri. ... They want the Congress to crack through the pressure of inner conflict. ... We have to foil this game. We have to evolve unity out of this very conflict which has arisen. This necessitates an analysis of the issues around which the controversy raged ...

Vote For Bose — A Vote For Struggle

Thus there were two issues before the delegates when they went to the polls on the 29th January: (1) A militant plan of action to fight the Federation and (2) the bureaucratic manipulation of certain members of the Working Committees who wanted to prevent the election of leftist President. The majority vote for Subhash was a vote on both these points. Personal as well as provincial considerations might have swayed a certain section of the voters; but on the whole it was a political vote. It was a vote for a militant policy in fighting the Federation. It was a rank and file vote against bureaucratic manipulation of certain Working Committee members. It was a vote for a democratic functioning of the Congress. The majority vote cast in favour of Subhash gets added significance because of the following factors

(1) seven leading members of the Working Committee had deprecated Subhash’s candidature and the raising of political issues in the presidential election
(2) Rajendra Babu had criticised Subhash’s views on Federation stating that they were “not crystallised enough.” (3) Jawaharlal Nehru had, in a sense supported the contention of the Right wingers that the issue of the Federation was irrelevant as there was no difference among Congressemen on that score.
(4) Gandhiji had not spoken, but the fact that he had not prevailed upon Dr. Pattabhi to withdraw in favour of Subhash and thus avoid a contest was a pointer in itself. That the delegates voted for Subhash in spite of these factors shows clearly that the vote is a definite indication of a swing towards the left. ...

Gandhiji’s Warning Finger

Can we therefore say that it was 100% left vote? Can be celebrate it as a left victory? We cannot and must not. It is not a vote against the present leadership; nor can it be interpreted as a vote for an alternative leadership. They have voted for militant action and a democratic functioning. They want the present leadership to implement their verdict. Gandhiji knows the weakness of this majority. A considerable section of it Kas implicit faith in Gandhiji. His sensational statement after Subhash’s victory is aimed at them :

“Since I was instrumental in inducing Dr Pattabhi not to withdraw his name as a candidate when Maulana Sahib had retired, the defeat is more mine than his. I am nothing if i do not represent definite principles and policy. Therefore it is plain to me that the delegates do not approve of the principles and policy for which I stand.”

Gandhiji points his warning finger to the rank and file delegates who has voted for Subhash and says — In voting for Subhash you have voted against me. To Subhash he says, you have won. From your own “homogeneous Cabinet” and carry out your programme. You think yours is “the most forward and boldest policy and programme.” Carry it out. You have my blessings. But I am afraid “the minority if it cannot keep pace with it must come out of the Congress” and the ministries too may have to resign if you make “changes in the parliamentary programme as fixed by the erstwhile majority.”

Subhash’s Plea For Unity

Gandhiji’s statement open’s up a disastrous perspective. It is a challenge to unity as well as democracy within the Congress. ... Sri Subhash Bose in his reply to Gandhiji has taken the correct line : — “Assuming for argument’s sake that the result implies a victory of the left, we should stop to consider what the Leftist’s programme is. For the immediate future the leftists stand for National unity and on unrelenting opposition to the Federal Scheme. In addition to this, they stand for democratic principles. The Leftists will not take the responsibility of creating a split within the Congress; if a split does come it will come about not because of them but in spite of them.” (Times of India 4-2-39).

Our Reply — Ultimatum

... the time is ripe for grasping the initiate for an offensive for giving an ultimatum of 6 months to the British Government demanding complete independence, all power to the people, through the Constituent Assembly. ...

Six Month’s Preparation

This draft resolution must also include the following points which lay down the policy and programme of action to be followed during the intervening 6 months.

• (1)  Agitation for the dissolution of the present Central Assembly.
• (2)  A uniform programme for the states. ... All India demonstrations, organisation of relief etc. organised by the National Congress in solidarity with the States people’s cause.
• (3)  A 6 months programme of preparation for struggle.
• A unified All-India Volunteer Corps, as nucleus of the national Army. ...
• (4)  An essential condition for the preparation of the struggle is the liquidation of all conflict between the ministries and the labour and Kisan organizations ...
• (5)  Similarly the state of tension between the Congress Committees and the Trade Unions and the Kisan Sabhas must be replaced by fraternal relations.
• (6)  Unity with communal minorities especially the Muslims and the untouchables, through appeal for joint struggle against the Federation. Coalition Ministries wherever necessary and possible on the basis of the congress programme of struggles, ...

Tripuri’s Battle Call

We have outlined the main points of a draft omnibus resolution on the basis of which we want Subhash Bose and Jawaharlal Nehru to achieve unity between the Right and the Left. ... The Left will ever be willing to make sacrifices in the interest of national unity and for joint national struggle. If such an agreement results in an agreed resolution of the Working Committee in the next few. days, then Tripuri would be an unprecedented demonstration of nation’s unity and militant Strength. ...

Source:  The New Age, February, 1939.

 

32

In Aid of China

China, who has been fighting her own battles with such heroic determination does not beg for alms. But she appeals for the solidarity and support of all who stand for freedom, for democracy, for bread and for peace. ...

It was last year that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, then President of the Congress, received a touching letter from General Chu Deh, the Commander of the Red Armies fighting against Japanese invaders in North China. That letter sent a thrill through the youth of India. Everywhere, it was felt that it behove our national honour to do something, in reply to that letter.

The students took up the cry. In Bombay, in Calcutta and elsewhere they began holding meetings. In the city, the students forfeited their annual College dinner and sent the proceeds to China. The working class and peasant organisations too, passed resolutions supporting China. But everyone wailed for the Congress to give a lead.

At the last Session of the Congress, at Haripura, a resolution supporting the Chinese people and asking Indians to refrain from buying Japanese goods, was passed. But nothing further was done.

Now, at last, the Working Committee has come out with a practical proposal to send an Ambulance Unit to China, which will appeal to all.

The President of the Congress has called for funds. He has said that Rs 30,000 must be raised immediately to purchase and despatch the Unit. It is then, clearly our duty, in our individual capacity and through all the organisations that we work in, to raise this money in the shortest possible time. But it is also clear that this is by no means all. This sum will not suffice to maintain the Unit, and that more money will be required.

Again, the sending of this Ambulance Unit, admirable as a very concrete expression of our solidarity with China, is but a drop in the ocean. Around it and around the campaign for China must grown a new consciousness amongst the people, a living vivid consciousness of the fellowship between these two peoples, between all people, of the dastardly character of imperialist aggression and war; of the common foes that we all have to fight.

The thousands of pice collected from the people at mass meetings; from people made aware of Japanese imperialism and Chinese national unity, will be immeasurably more valuable to China and to us, than the hundred rupee notes donated by a few philanthropic wealthy gentlemen.

Source: National Front, 5 June, 1938

 

33

Communist Resolution for Tripuri

Unity and Struggle

RD Bharadwaj, Bankim Mukerji, Somnath Lahiri, N Dutt Mazumdar. SC Sardesai, YD Chitule and other Communist members of the AICC have sent the following draft resolution:

The Congress reiterates the inalienable right of the Indian people to complete national independence. The Congress declares that no constitution except one framed by the freely elected Constituent Assembly shall be accepted by the nation.

... because of the rapidly developing crisis in the international arena and because of the growing power of the Congress, British Imperialism fears to precipitate conflict with the united national forces. Its present policy is therefore of
(1) consolidating its international position by alliance with Fascist Powers

(2) making conciliatory gestures in order to win over a section of the national forces, split the Congress and weaken it

(3) extending the life of the present Central Legislature indefinitely

(4) encouraging communal and other disruptive forces, ...

National resentment against the sham constitution which transfers no real power to the Indian people is increasing. The Congress has grown more powerful than ever, workers and peasants, even the most backward sections of them, have entered the political arena, have developed powerful organisations and have rallied in ever increasing numbers round the Congress.

In the States the tremendous awakening of the people has evoked the wrath of the Princes and their ally imperialism, and the popular movement for Responsible Government is being sought to be drowned in blood. Imperialist intervention against the States’ people and in favour of the Princess is increasing. ...

IN VIEW OF THE TREMENDOUS STRENGTH THAT THE POPULAR FORCES HAVE ATTAINED, IN VIEW OF THE PRESENT INTERNATIONAL SITUATION AND IN VIEW OF THE CONTINUED DEFIANCE OF THE POPULAR WILL BY BRITISH IMPERIALISM, THE CONGRESS FEELS THAT THE TIME IS RIPE FOR PASSING ON TO THE OFFENSIVE. ...

The Congress, therefore, reiterates the national demands for complete independence, immediate withdrawal of the Army of Occupation, complete control over Defence, Foreign Affairs and Finance by the Indian people. The Congress calls upon the British Government to concede these demands immediately and in their entirety.

In case of non-acceptance of these demands within six months the Working Committee shall review the situation as it exists then and shall take whatever steps are necessary to enforce the people’s will.

With the object of preparing the country for mass struggle on a national scale and for mobilising the entire people for active participation in the battle for independence the Congress adopts the following Plan of Action.

• (a) Intensive campaign throughout the country against the Federal Scheme, against the existing autocratic Central Government against the limitations imposed on Provincial Governments under the Government of India Act, against the entire slave Constitution.
• (b)    Extensive popularisation of the demand for the Constituent Assembly as expressing the sovereign right of the Indian people to self-determination.
• (c) Incorporation of the basic demands of the toiling masses the concrete and specific form in the Congress programme.
• (d) Elimination of corruption from Congress ranks by strict supervision of membership rolls, by vigorous functioning of Congress Committees and by ensuring active participation of the rank and file in the work-of the Congress.
• (e) Creation of an All-India Volunteer Corps of at least a million members as the nucleus of the national militia; arrangement for political and technical training of the Congress workers.
• (f) Rapid implementing of the Election Programme by the Congress Ministries with regard to social legislation and establishment of democratic liberties.
• (g) Establishment of close United Front relations between the Congress and the workers and peasants organisations; active support by the Congress to workers and peasants in their struggle for economic and democratic demands,
• (h) Unity with communal minorities especially Muslims and untouchables through appeal for joint struggles, through negotiations with their organisations and through direct work among the masses of the minority communities, granting of all minority demands consistent with basic principles of national unity,
• (i) Formation of Coalition Ministries wherever possible of the basis of the Congress Election programme,
• (j)  Coordination of the States’ people’s struggles and developing them as an integral part of the national liberation movement, through a Committee appointed by the Congress. Formation of Congress Committees, in the States to conduct the States people’s movement for Responsible Government and Civil Liberties. Adoption of a Charter of Demands of the States’ people defining Responsible Government and mobilisation of mass support throughout the country in its favour. Solidarity demonstrations and organisation of relief for the States’ people in British India.

Source:  National Front, 12 March 1939

34

A Peace Policy for India

P Sundarayya

In a previous article we published a profit and loss account relating to the Great War. In it we showed that at a total cost of more than a hundred and twenty thousand crores of rupees the world purchased the deaths of twenty six million people and had to its credit about fifty million more whose health, homes and happiness were shattered. Then we made an estimate showing some of the possible results had this expenditure been put to more constructive use. Finally we showed by references to the League of Nations Year Book that the world's military expenditure on preparations for the next war had reached by 1937 almost double the amount spent in 1914 in preparations for the last.

In India our National Debt today amounts to more then four times as much as it was before the Great War (Rs 1236 crore).

While we spend annually Rs 65 crore on maintaining the instruments of our own exploitation ( Army, Navy, Police and Jails) we are only able to spend one third of this sum on Public Health, Education, and Scientific Research all combined. ...

... it is not only true to say that at the present time there is no foreign menace to India other than the British menace, but also there could scarcely be any combination of circumstances more favourable to the building up of India's status and prestige in the international arena then the world situation at the present time.

Japan is fully occupied in China and is likely to remain preoccupied with her own internal and external affairs for some time to come. Similarly Germany and Italy will be kept equally occupied in Europe and Africa. Strategically India is more favourably situated for purposes of defence against modern methods of attack than almost any other country in the world, protected as she is on the North East, North and North West by deserts and well-nigh insuperable mountain barriers and to the South by thousands of miles of sea from all the likely centres of conflict in the war that lies ahead.

Under these circumstances a foreign policy for India which would reflect her true interests would be concerned here and now in building up trade agreements, cultural relations and non-aggression pacts with her immediate or near neighbours, with Turkey and Iran, with Russia, Afghanistan, Tibet and China. Thus she would be a party to the Near Eastern Little Entente and with regard to the border tribes on her North-West Frontier she would seek not to deliberately antagonise them but in agreement with Afghanistan, to win their friendship and provide for their economic improvement.

Until, however, we have successfully countered the proposed Federation and assumed responsibility for our own foreign relations we cannot pursue any such policy of peace and friendship with our neighbours but must inevitably be dragged into the European arena to strengthen the hands of British Imperialism’s reactionary policy in Europe, and in so doing strengthen the bonds which secure our own condition of servitude.

It must be obvious, then, to every Indian who was the welfare of his country and his people at heart that so far from Britain affording protection to India (blackouts or no blackouts) she is in fact dragging Indian along with herself to the edge of the European abyss. ...

The immediate issue before us in India is not the fight against fascism nor yet the preservation of European and American democracy through the agency of British Imperialism, but the fight for a true democracy in our own country. The only way we can serve the cause of freedom in the world is by securing the right ourselves to conclude pacts of non-aggression or even mutual assistance with our neighbours in their defence against aggressor States.

In the same way National Defence for us must not mean merely footing the bill for the privilege of being “protected” by British Imperialism but self-defence through the agency of our own Peoples’ Militias against British Imperialism itself.

To sum up then, India’s part in the coming international struggle for power is the struggle for her own freedom.

Only in so far as she consistently pursues this will she be able to weaken the forces of reaction in the world.

If it is true that a country which exploits another cannot itself be free, it is equally true that a country which is itself exploited cannot secure the freedom of another at the expense of its own. ...

... Only as a free agent herself can she give effective expression to her solidarity with the freedom loving peoples of the world. And, therefore, the best way that India can help the progressive democratic forces in Britain and elsewhere in the world at this critical hour is by the overthrow of imperialism, and the winning of her own independence. ...

Source:  National Front, 3 April, 1938.

 

35

News from China

Strengthen United Front in India

— Says Mao Tse Tung

(From our Correspondent with the Indian Medical Unit) On arrival at Yenan in the middle of last month we were informed that the people over here used to get “National Front” regularly but they don't know why it has stopped coming for the last seven months. All who know English showed great interest in reading this Indian paper. ...

Just prior to departure to our respective places of duty, Comrade Mao Tse Tung invited us for an exclusive interview. We met him together with Wang Ming and other leaders in several “Wang ways” or evening meetings in “Soirees”. This time besides other conversation he asked us to minute detail about the trend of Indian politics and its leaders. He was very glad to hear that the Communists of India were now working in Indian National Congress. He hoped that the National United Anti-Imperialist Front in India would become as strong as the united front of Communists and Komintang Parties in China in then-war of resistances and national liberation.

Source: National Front, 14 May, 1939

APPENDIX TO TEXT  VI

(Samles of mazazines, cover pages etc.)