Part - II
Party foundation and the years preceding it
(1917-25)
Communism in India arose on the high road of Indian people’s movements briefly discussed above. But to understand the historical conditions of its genesis, it will be necessary now to close in on the immediate socio-political backdrop.
Impact of World War I on the
Alignment of Class Forces
Comintern and the Colonial Question:
The Second Congress
Nationalism And Internationalism
Initiatives in the Soviet Union
The First Communist Groups in India
Towards a Left Bloc Within the Congress
The Peshawar And Kanpur
Conspiracy Cases
The First Communist Conference in India
Party Foundation Day: 26 December, 1925
Third to Fifth Comintern Congresses
Comintern Debates And the Indian Reality
The National Scene And
Early Communist Propaganda
Impact of World War I on the Alignment of Class Forces
The first world war, arising out of inter-imperialist conflict for redivision of world resources and territories, sharply exacerbated all the contradictions of Indian society. The principal contradiction — that between the emerging Indian nation and British imperialism — intensified as a result of a much greater drain of material wealth (a three-times increase in defence expenditure was secured by floating war loans and increasing rates of taxes) and of human resources (tens of thousands of Indians were drawn into the Army, often under coercion as in Punjab, and despatched to die in alien lands). Galloping inflation (the all-India price index, with 1873 as 100, rose from 147 in 1914 to 225 in 1918 and to 276 in 1919)[1] and acute shortage in food and other necessities of life were the two most glaring expressions of the sharpening of this contradiction, which provided an objective basis for the remarkable growth in the nationalist movement just after the war.
But the war affected different classes of Indian society in different ways and also sharpened the contradictions among them. Thus the land-owning class had to shoulder the least of the burden, for except in a few cases the land tax was not raised much, and the landlords reciprocated by assisting in the British war efforts : purchasing war bonds, helping recruit soldiers and so on. So the war further cemented the alliance between feudalism and imperialism. Diametrically opposite was the impact on the peasantry. They had to suffer from much slower rise in prices of agricultural commodities like raw jute, indigo etc. compared to manufactured items like salt, kerosene, cloth etc.; moreover, in soldier’s uniform it was mostly the poor peasant who died for an unknown cause. Landless peasants who had to buy foodgrains were worst hit, because prices of the latter — particularly of coarse grains like Bajra — rose tremendously whereas their earnings stagnated. No wonder, therefore, that the immediate post-war years saw a veritable spurt in peasant struggle both in radical forms (as exemplified by the Moplah rebellion in Malabar and the Rampa struggle led by Alluri Sitarama Raju) and in Gandhian channels as in UP.
As for the bourgeoisie, the war gave them cause for dissension as well as elation. They were aggrieved because of higher rates of income tax and the rule of filing individual returns (which brought large number of individual merchants within the scope of the tax), a super-tax imposed on companies and Hindu undivided family businesses, a temporary excess profits tax and certain other measures taken by the government during or just after the war. But the benefits far outweighed these difficulties. In the first place, the industrialists made exceptional profits owing to huge war orders, decline in foreign competition in many cases, more favourable terms of trade vis-a-vis agricultural products and some other factors. Thus the cotton textile industry based in Ahmedabad and Bombay benefited immensely from (i) slackening of competition from Lancashire products caused by a 7 percent import duty imposed in 1917 to meet the government's financial needs (ii) massive orders for cloth needed for uniforms (iii) favourable price differential between cloth and raw cotton (export of the latter was hit by dislocation in world commerce, so prices did not rise as much as it otherwise should have) and (iv) further decline of handlooms due to prohibitive price of imported cotton yarn. Marwari merchants in and around Calcutta, who like their counterparts belonging to other areas and communities made fabulous profits out of hoarding, black-marketing etc., moved into the jute industry just after the war. The Tata Iron and Steel Company, floated in the days of swadeshi fervour (August 1907) and operative since 1911, got a boost during the war, and the Bhadrabati Iron Works came up in Mysore. The Indian advance into heavy industries was significant in that coupled with the high profits and the brief post-war boom, it installed a sense of strength and hope; and this was matched by a sense of class solidarity born of enhanced mobility of capital, the all India connections that developed amongst the bourgeoisie and common demands like reduction of tax rates. On the other hand, the British-Indian government came to recognise the strategic import of allowing a limited degree of industrialisation in India. Having crossed over from childhood to adolescence, the Indian bourgeoisie started dreaming of achieving self-rule step-by-step through pressures and bargains combined with help and understanding. Thus Gandhi and Tilak urged the Indian peasants to join the army in the hope that this loyalty will be rewarded by swaraj after the war was over. Said Tilak in 1918 : “Purchase war debentures, but look to them as title deeds of Home Rule.” (Both the leaders, like many others such as Muslim League's Jinnah, had offered unconditional and total support to British war efforts as soon as it broke out in 1914). This was in perfect consonance with the maturing of British policy into a combination of accommodation of moderates (as symbolised by Montague-Chelmsford reforms of 1919[2]) and suppression of militants (the notorious Rowlatt Acts and the Jalianwalla Bagh massacre in the same year, for example).
The long-term symbiosis of the British and the Indian bourgeoisie had thus begun, and this was clearly directed against the working class. The latter grew enormously in number : from a little over 21 lakhs organised workers (including those in plantations) in 1911 the figure reached near 27 lakhs a decade later, but real wages declined in most cases. In 1925 a delegation of the Dandee Jute Trade Unions calculated that over the ten years from 1915 to 1924, the Indian jute industry reaped a profit of “£300 million sterling, or 90 per cent of the wage bill. ... A profit of £300 million taken from 3,00,000 workers in ten years means £1,000 per head. That means £100 a year from each worker. And as the average wage is about £12 10s. per head (per annum — Ed.), it means that the average annual profit is eight tunes the wage bill.”[3] To take another example, wages in Bombay textile mills rose only by some 15% or so as against an 80 to 100% rise in foodgrains prices between 1914-18, whereas the mill-owners made amazing profits (e.g., in 1918 the Century Mills made a profit of Rs. 22.5 lakhs on a capital investment of Rs. 20 lakhs and yet declined to concede a demand for 25% rise in wages plus a month's salary as bonus). In the circumstances, the post-war years naturally saw both a quantitative and qualitative development in working class movement.
Such was the impact of the first world war on the major class forces and class relations in India. As for various sections of the petty bourgeoisie, they were hard hit by rising prices and other maladies. For instance, weavers were being routed by factories: production of cotton piece-goods in the handloom sector, which was slightly below that in the mill sector around 1913-14, came down to a third or a half of mill production around 1918-19. The educated urbanites saw the ravages of the war and developed greater affinities with poorer toilers. The more advanced among them, after a brief stint with patriotic terrorist activities which grew appreciably during the war but achieved little concrete results, were on the lookout for a new path of advance.
Upsurge in working class movement
The class that took most quickly to the path of struggle after the war was the industrial proletariat. Political leadership, however still belonged to the nationalists. Thus in March 1918 while the textile workers of Ahmedabad were agitating for the continuation of a plague bonus on the ground of heightened cost of living, Gandhi intervened on the request of the district collector who wished to avoid a showdown. Through a skilful combination of negotiation, strike and individual fast, Gandhi led the workers to victory : 35% rise in wages was achieved. From the last day of the same year, workers of the Century Mills in Bombay began a strike on the demand noted above. They actively mobilised more than a lakh of textile workers belonging to 83 nearby mills, who struck work from January 9, 1919 and held rallies. Next the strike spread to dock labourers, clerks of mercantile houses and Parel railway engineering workers. Tilak’s Home Rule League was then at the height of popularity, and some of his colleagues came forward to guide the workers along conciliatory lines. Ravindra Kumar in his “Bombay Textiles strike 1919” (see Indian Economic and Social History Review, 1971) has given an interesting account of how the struggling workers repeatedly ignored these gentlemen’s advice for moderation and how the strike was withdrawn on January 21 only after the Mill-owners’ Association was persuaded by the Bombay Police Commissioner to accept a 20% increase in wages as well as a special bonus.
As this struggle showed, the organised workers had started coming out of, if only partially, bourgeois and petty bourgeois domination. This process continued through the 1919-21 waves of strike. Here we may mention some of these just as specimens: the four-week strike by 17,000 odd workers of the Kanpur Woolen Mills in November-December 1919; the month-long textile strike in Bombay in early 1920 which quickly spread to almost all industries in the zone and at its height involved some 2 lakh workers; the month-long strike by approximately 40,000 workers of the Tata Iron and Steel Works in February-March 1920. Also there were strikes in Rangoon, Calcutta, Sholapur, Madras etc. In 1921 there were as many as 396 strikes in India, involving more than 6 lakh workers and leading to a loss of almost 70 lakh man-days. The sectoral reach of the strike wave was really extensive : apart from cotton textile, jute and railway workers, those in the Jharia coal-fields, Assam plantations, Calcutta tramways, Bombay Port and P & T and many others joined the battle. In most cases the strikes were on economic demands, but solidarity struggles and political strikes were not rare. Thus in the spring of 1919 the working class responded very positively to the call of hartal against the Rowlatt Acts. Then in May 1921 the East Bengal Railway workers of Chandpur struck work and in many ways supported the large group of Assam plantation workers who, while on an exodus back to their respective provinces as a protest against police reprisals at the plantations, were detained at Chandpur station and mercilessly tortured by the police. The most important political strike of the period took place on the occasion of the visit of the Prince of the Wales to India. The Prince set foot on Bombay on November 17, 1921 and the workers of Bombay, Calcutta, Madras staged a general strike in response to a Congress call of hartal. In Bombay the strike continued for six days and was accompanied by militant demonstrations which clashed repeatedly with the police and the army. Some 30 people were killed, 200 arrested and many more suffered serious injuries. Apart from strikes and street battles, workers instinctively adopted other forms too : for instance, during the anti-British upsurge following repressions in Punjab and the arrest of Gandhi, the textile city of Ahmedabad was practically “captured” by workers who wrought havoc with government properties for two days (April 11 and 12,1919) and the British troops could take the city back only after killing about 30 people and injuring hundreds.
Just as the struggles of this period were incomparably more stubborn, broad-based and long-drawn than any time in the past, so the workers’ primary class organisation — the trade unions — came into their own with more or less regular subscriptions, membership rolls etc., which were absent in the earlier welfare type liberal labour organisations. Notable pioneers in the field included BP Wadia, TV Kalyanasundaram Mudalier and EL Iyer who organised the Buckingham and Carnatic Mill Workers’ Union in 1918-19; J Baptista, NM Joshi, SA Dange, RS Nimbkar, SS Mirajkar and KN Joglekar who were organising the textile and municipal workers in Bombay; Dewan Chaman Lall and MA Khan — active among railway workers in Lahore; Swami Viswananda who were organising the coal miners in Jharia and so on. The number of TUs rose quickly to more than 120 by the end of October 1920, when the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) was born. Let us discuss here the major features of its formation.
First, at the grassroots real TU organisers were mostly left-leaning democrats, many of whom later became members or sympathisers of the CPI, but the political leadership from above came from the militant nationalists. Tilak was scheduled to be a vice-president but died before the inaugural conference and Lala Lajpat Rai was duly elected as the first president. Gandhi, of course, kept himself aloof. On the other hand, Mr. Shapurji Shaklatvala, a British communist leader, assisted in the work of organising the AITUC. Secondly, its base was fairly broad — representing some 5 lakh workers including 2 lakh miners. Thirdly, its inaugural session was held in Bombay — then the most advanced centre of organised working class militancy (its second conference also was held at a very important centre — Jharia of Bihar — when it was seething with strike action in November 1921). Fourthly, within the limits set by bourgeois nationalism, the leaders called upon the workers, most forcefully though not in clear-cut class terms, to fight for their rights and to organise themselves more effectively. This becomes evident from the speech made by Lajpat Rai as president and from the “Manifesto to the Workers of India” issued from the first conference and signed by Dewan Chaman Lall as general secretary — documents which contained much to enthral the worker audience and definitely marked an advance in working class movement[4].
In sum, the birth of the premier centre of trade unions in India symbolised the forceful entry of the Indian proletariat as a distinct class movement into the mainstream of broad anti-imperialist struggle; and the contradiction between its initial bourgeois-nationalist leadership and its militant proletarian base accurately reflected the objective balance of class and political forces in India in the immediate post-war period. How and to what extent this contradiction was resolved and the working class movement was integrated with scientific socialism — this we shall discuss in Part VI of the present volume.
Newwave of peasant struggles
Anti-feudal peasant struggles gained a notable momentum from the end of 1920 in different regions of India. In many cases they were more or less influenced by the non-cooperation and Khilafat movement (e.g., in the Oudh region of the United Provinces). Let us briefly mentior a few of these struggles.
The Oudh region of the United Provinces was the most important base of the Congress-sponsored Kisan Sabha movement. However, unbearable exploitation and oppression by the talukdars led the peasants to militant, often violent struggles under the leadership of Baba Ramchandra. During the first three months of 1921 houses and go-downs of talukdars and merchants were looted; there were also cases of people in their thousands fixing by force price-ceilings on essential items and other instances of popular outbursts. The authorities took fright and after arresting the Baba (who later complained of betrayal by Congress leaders), rushed through the Oudh Rent (Amendment) Act in March 1921. There was a decline in the struggle but towards the end of the year it resurfaced in certain other districts of the same region. Now it came to be known as Eka (Ekta or unity) movement. It started on the basis of tenant demands relating to rent, stoppage of eviction and forced labour, free use of tanks etc. The initial thrust came from the Congress and Khilafat leaders, but soon peasant militancy went beyond the confines of non-violence. Madari Pasi and other low caste leaders emerged, calling upon the peasants to kill British officials and drive the foreign rulers out of the land. Severe repression and finally the arrest of Madari Pasi in June 1922 brought the movement to a halt.
The famous Moplah rebellion in Malabar district of Kerala erupted in August 1921 as a sequel to a long series of earlier outbursts. Essentially it was a struggle of peasant-tenants against jenmis or landlords based on such grievances as high rent, no security of tenure, tenure renewal fees and other feudal exactions, but since the former were predominantly Muslims and the latter mostly Hindus, the struggle gradually took on clear communal colours. As in the UP experience just discussed, here also the beginnings were made (in mid-1920) as part of Congress-Khilafat movement, and national leaders like Gandhi and Maulana Azad had visited the region upto early 1921. But with the arrest of these and such other leaders in February, the struggle passed into the hands of local leaders who guided it along more militant lines. Some of them, like Kunhammed Hazi, who would punish any follower that unnecessarily attacked a Hindu, took care not to let the movement degenerate into anti-Hindu riots. The targets of attack were the jenmis, moneylenders, British planters, courts, police stations etc. “Khilafat Republics” were set up and existed for several months in a number of place in South Malabar. The British authorities declared martial law and intensified state terrorism, murdering more than 3000. At the same time, they instigated and coerced Hindus to act against the movement. This fanned the dormant anti-Hindu trend : forced conversions and communal killings started and grew quickly. By the end of the year 1921, the movement was crushed in a most savage manner.
The gumdwara reform movement, better known as the Akali movement, passed through various phases during the first half of the twenties, and it is difficult to describe it in a few sentences. Starting as a campaign led by the Shiromoni Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee (SGPC, set up in late 1920) to take over control of Sikh shrines from corrupt, British-propped mohants who usually controlled large tracts of land, it developed into a tremendous mass upsurge of the Sikh peasantry against the feudal-imperialist alliance. More than 400 laid down their lives (some 200 of them in a single incident — the massacre at the Nankana gumdwara) and an estimated 30,000 were imprisoned for various terms. In July 1925 a legislation was passed handing over the management of all the Punjab gurudwaras to a newly elected SGPC.
Anti-British mass upsurge
Apart from the class and sectional struggles with more specific targets as discussed above, the immediate post-war years also a saw a new height of the general anti-imperialist movement. The gathering storm of 1918 burst out in March-April 1919 against that notorious license to savage repression — the Rowlatt Acts. In response to Gandhi’s call for hartal (general suspension of business) on April 16, “a mighty wave of mass demonstrations, strikes, unrest, in some cases rioting, and courageous resistance to violent repression in the face of heavy casualties, spread over many parts of India” — writes RP Dutt in India Today. Dutt then quotes from an official report to show the government’s worried amazement at what it called “the unprecedented fraternisation between the Hindus and the Moslems ... even the lower classes agreed for once to forget the differences ... Hindus publicly accepted water from the hands of Moslems and vice versa. Hindu-Moslem unity was the watchword of processions indicated both by cries and by banners. Hindu leaders had actually been allowed to preach from the pulpit of a Mosque.”
Dutt continues; “Extraordinary measure of repression followed. It was at this time that the atrocity of Amritsar occurred [the reference is to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of April 13, where 379 peaceful people were murdered and 1,200 injured by the British armed forces with a view to terrorising the people — Ed.]. ... Gandhi took alarm at the situation that was developing. In view of sporadic cases of violence of the masses against their rulers which had appeared in Calcutta, Bombay, Ahmedabad and elsewhere[5], he declared that he had committed a blunder of Himalayan dimensions [in calling for a passive mass resistance against the Rowlatt Bills — Ed.]. ... Accordingly, he suspended resistance in-the middle of April, within a week of the hartal, and thus called off the movement at the moment it was beginning to reach its height. ...”[6]
This characteristic Gandhian response to mass militancy, which would be repeated over and over again in the coming years, could not fully stem the tide of popular anger. In particular, workers and peasants continued their struggles, as we have seen before. Lajpat Rai, speaking in the special Calcutta session of Congress (September 1920), recognised the mood of the masses when he said: although “we are by instinct and tradition averse to revolutions”, a revolution has now become inescapable. It was under pressure of these circumstances that the Congress in its Nagpur session (December 1920) adopted a full-fledged programme of non-violent non-cooperation. The Congress organisation also was suitably strengthened for leading a mass movement. Throughout 1921 the non-cooperation movement, organically blended with the Khilafat movement[7] led by the Ali brothers, spread to the four corners of the country in a rich variety of forms. Students in their tens of thousands boycotted schools and colleges to join the “national” ones; lawyers including Congress leaders like CR Das, Motilal Nehru, Asaf Ali and others boycotted courts, bonfires were made everywhere of foreign cloth, picketing of shops selling foreign goods went on for days — in short, the swadeshi fervour was back at a more massive scale. Kfiadi and Charkha was taken up as a popular symbol of patriotism, self-reliance and national honour; Gandhi donned the famous loin-cloth and chadar to emerge as the saintly ‘Mahatma’ (meaning “great soul”). As narrated earlier, workers’, peasants’ and other popular movements grew apace largely under the impact of the non-cooperation-Khilafat movement.
The zenith was reached on the occasion of the visit of Prince of Wales, which had been arranged with an eye to reviving what the British fondly believed to be an inherent Indian ‘respect and love for the master’ and thus cooling the popular anger. But what happened was exactly the opposite. The Congress and Khilafat leaders called for boycotting the visit, and the whole country was up in arms. But this, especially the heroic struggle of the people of Bombay with workers in the frontlines, once again made Gandhi worried. Under his restraining influence, the Ahmedabad session of the Congress (December 1921) dropped the earlier reference to non-payment of taxes and dissolved without a specific plan of action, conferring all power of decision-making to Gandhi who was now declared the “dictator of Congress”. Next month Gandhi, under tremendous pressure from the Congress ranks and a number of leaders like Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose, threatened the unrelenting authorities with a mass civil disobedience campaign. The whole country was in full battle gear. But the “dictator” ruled otherwise. On the pretext of the Chauri-Chaura incident of February 5,1922, where struggling peasants burnt to death an atrocious police party, he suddenly called off the movement. Almost all Congress leaders were then in jail, from where they expressed their shock and dissent and urged reconsideration of the diktat, but in vain. The government which so far hesitated to arrest Gandhi, now felt confident to do that on March 10. The great movement slowly grounded to a halt, but not before opening up a great new era in India's struggle for freedom. If the movement's success lay in rousing the broadest sections of the Indian people into active politics, its failure, too, was highly significant in that it led the thinking sections to search for an alternative path. And an alternative path actually lay before them and beckoned to them — the crimson path of Bolshevik revolution, heralding a new dawn on earth.
Notes:
1. See Gandhi's Rise to Power : Indian Politics, 1915-22 by Judith Brown, p125
2. A reform in the system of governance, whereby the electorate was enlarged and some small powers (e.g., departments of health, eduction, local bodies etc.) were given to ministries responsible to provincial legislatures while retaining effective control with the British Officialdom.
3. Cited in India Today by R Palme Dutt, Manisha Granthalaya (Calcutta, 1970) pp 393-94
4. For details, see AITUC — Fifty Years, Documents, PPH, (New Delhi, 1973).
5. The Ahmedabad incident has already been mentioned on p 33; other incidents included - the derailing of a troops train at Nadiad and workers on strike setting fire to railway and police stations at Beeramgaon (both in Gujarat). Throughout Punjab, telegraph wires were snapped, railway lines were removed, stations and government buildings were set on fire and banks raided in an angry outburst against the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
6. India Today, op. cit, pp 337-39
7. This was a campaign of Indian Muslims for restoration of the full glory and authority of the Khalifa or Sultan of Turkey who was divested of his authority by the British after the war. For a communist analysis of this movement mads in early 1924, see Text VI16.
Comintern and the Colonial Question:
The Second Congress
Already on the eve of the first world war, Lenin in his “Right of Nations to Self-Determination” had laid down the essence of proletarian approach to the national question very clearly. While the bourgeoisie “naturally assumes the leadership at the start of every national movement”, and “always places its national demands in the forefront”, for the proletariat “these demands are subordinated to the interests of the class struggle”. Lenin further explained that “bourgeois nationalism of any oppressed nation has a general democratic content that is directed against oppression, and it is this content that we unconditionally support.”[1]
VI Lenin’s contribution to the theory of national liberation movement is too vast a subject to be dealt with here; the above reference is meant to serve only as a pointer. In any case, it is necessary to state that Lenin's role on this question was based not simply on theoretical studies but also on direct experience of communist work in the extremely backward countries on the eastern flank of Soviet Russia. This will be evident from the materials of the Second All-Russia Congress of the Communist Organisations of the Peoples of the East (November 1919), the First Congress of the Peoples of the East in Baku (Sept ember 1920) etc. Take for instance two short quotes. Addressing the delegates to the November 1919 Congress, Lenin said :
“... You are confronted with a task which has not previously confronted the Communists of the world: relying upon the general theory and practice of communism, you must adapt yourselves to specific conditions such as do not exist in the European countries; you must be able to apply that theory and practice to conditions in which the bulk of the population are peasants, and in which the task is to wage a struggle against medieval survivals and not against capitalism. ... You will have to base yourselves on the bourgeois nationalism which is awakening, and must awaken, among those peoples, and which has its historical justification. At the same time, you must find your way to the working and exploited masses of every country and tell them in a language they understand that their only hope of emancipation lies in the victory of the international revolution, and that the international proletariat is the only ally of all the hundreds of millions of the working and exploited peoples of the East.”[2]
In the main resolution adopted at the same Congress, we find a highly illuminating paragraph:
“The Communist Party’s revolutionary work in the East must proceed in two directions : the one stems from the Party’s basic class-revolutionary programme, which enjoins it gradually to create communist parties — sections of the Third Communist International — in the Eastern countries; the other is determined by the political and, of course, historical, social and economic situation of the present moment in the East, which makes it necessary for it to give support for a certain length of time to local national movements aiming at the overthrow of the power of Western-European imperialism, always provided that these movements do not conflict with the world proletariat’s class revolutionary aspiration to overthrow world imperialism ...”[3]
Continuing and developing this basic approach into a comprehensive general line, Lenin formulated the celebrated Theses on the National and Colonial Questions.
A preliminary draft of the theses[4], circulated one-and-a-half months before the Second Comintern Congress met from July 19, was taken up for discussion in the Commission on National and Colonial Questions (better known as the Colonial Commission) constituted by the Congress. Headed by Lenin, this Commission included representatives of advanced countries like England and France as well as colonial and semi-colonial countries like China, Korea and India (MN Roy). The Commission discussed Lenin’s preliminary draft as well as a set of Supplementary Theses drafted by Roy on Lenin’s request. It accepted the former with a few editorial changes and two minor political changes (see below); whereas Roy’s draft was finalised after major political corrections. In the Congress itself, on Lenin's recommendation both Lenin’s Theses and Roy's Supplementary Theses were adopted after a thorough discussion. In Chapter II of our Documents section, (i.e., Text II) we reproduce extracts from (1) Lenin’s Theses and (2) Roy’s Supplementary Theses, both in their final versions adopted by the Congress, along with references to the changes made by the Commission in Roy’s original draft; (3) Roy’s speech in the Colonial Commission and the discussion on it, (4) Report of the Commission placed by Lenin at the Congress, and (5) Roy’s Speech in the Congress defending his Supplementary Thesis and the Italian delegate Serrati’s rejoinder.
A careful, unbiased and composite study of these materials will give us a clear picture of the Leninist theoretical foundation for the initiation of the communist movement in colonial and semi-colonial countries as well as of the much discussed and often sensationalised Lenin-Roy controversy. Before we go over to that, however, we have to address ourselves to a pertinent question : why did Lenin recommend—and the Colonial Commission as well as the Congress accept—the very extraordinary step of having a set of supplementary theses over and above the main theses ? Did this mean some sort of patchup?
In the first place, the great organiser and apostle of inner-party democracy and collectivism that he was, Lenin was glad to accept and internationally project the positive contributions of an Indian revolutionary — the more so at a time when the Comintern was attaching utmost importance to the national liberation movements. This could not be achieved by merging Lenin's and Roy’s theses into one, because the former provided an overall general guideline while the latter dealt specifically with India and other big Asian nations, thus becoming a supplement to the former in the true sense of the term. This point was made by Lenin himself in his Report of the Colonial Commission (see Text II4) and further clarified several years later by Stalin, who wrote that Roy’s theses were needed
“In order to single out from the backward colonial countries which have no industrial proletariat such countries as China and India, of which it cannot be said that they have ‘practically no industrial proletariat’. Read the Supplementary Theses, and you will realise that they refer chiefly to China and India. ... The fact is that Lenin’s theses had been written and published long before the Second Congress opened, long before and prior to the discussion in the special commission of the Second Congress. And since the discussion in the Congress Commission revealed the necessity for singling out from the backward colonies of the East such countries as China and India, the necessity for the ‘Supplementary’ Theses arose.”[5]
Though eager to let the Comintern benefit from his young comrade’s first-hand knowledge about India, Lenin could not, of course, afford to be liberal where basic theoretical questions were involved. He therefore saw to it that the Colonial Commission made major cuts and alterations in Roy’s original draft so as to bring the “supplementary thesis” into broad conformity with the basic theses. At the same time, he deleted from his own preliminary draft a correct Marxist proposition, viz., “... the more backward the country, the stronger is the hold of small-scale agricultural production, patriarchalism and isolation, which inevitably lend particular strength and tenacity to the deepest of petty-bourgeois prejudices, i.e., to national egoism and national narrow-mindedness.” (Compare Para 12 of the preliminary draft, p 150, CW, Vol. 31, with Para 12 of the adopted theses as given in Text II1 of the present volume). This deletion was in keeping with Lenin’s own advice, given a few lines further on, that communists in advanced countries should be particularly tactful not to hurt the “survivals of national sentiment” in the oppressed countries. Impressed by Roy’s argument, he also replaced the term “bourgeois-democratic” movement by “national-revolutionary” movement. The two sets of theses thus stand as official Comintern documents to be read together and not separately or in contraposition to one another.
Now for the political essence of Lenin-Roy debate, which revolved round four main points.
First, the relation between and relative importance of revolutions in advanced and backward countries. While Roy said that the fate of the former depended solely on the latter, Lenin opined that this was “going too far” and took a more balanced view. The same point emerges from Text II2 — see notes 1 and 2 appended there. Roy’s “Asiocentric” view of world revolution had its polar opposite in the “Eurocentric” view of the Italian delegate Serrati and some others, but this is not the place to go into details on this question.
Second, the degree of industrial development and class polarisation attained by less backward countries like India, China etc. According to Roy, 80% of the Indians had become “agricultural labourers” under the impact of British Indian industry[6] which saw a twenty-fold rise in capital investment “during recent times” with a consequent 15% increase in the number of industrial proletariat in India.[7] Today we know that these were gross exaggerations, but Lenin did not have the required figures to question these. In any case, from Lenin's theses and speeches it does not appear that he attached any importance to these sweeping statements; rather his references to the predominantly peasant population and “pre-capitalist relations” in colonies seem to indicate the very opposite. It was only later, when Roy’s views developed further into the “decolonisation theory”, that a polemic started on this question.
Third, the relation between national liberation movement led by the bourgeoisie and the spontaneously developing workers’ and peasants’ struggles; and the correct communist approach to them. It is here that Roy made the most valuable contribution — which was, however, carried to the extreme and thus became his weakest and most harmful proposition. Let us explain.
In Text II4, we hear Lenin report that some comrade or comrades in the Colonial Commission “irrefutably proved” the “rapprochement between the bourgeoisie of the exploiting countries and that of the colonies ... [directed] against all revolutionary movements and revolutionary classes”. On this basis, reported Lenin, it was decided that the distinction between the reformist and revolutionary bourgeoisie must be grasped, that communists should “combat” the former and support the latter only, and that in order to express the whole thing more scientifically, the generally correct term “bourgeois-democratic” in Lenin’s draft theses should be substituted by the more specific “national revolutionary” (who were to be supported by communists). Now from all accounts it appears that the most forceful voice behind these important changes was that of MN Roy. Also he correctly drew attention, in his draft theses and before the Commission as well as at the Congress itself, to the utmost revolutionary significance of the rising class struggle of workers and peasants. But he stretched his ideas too far — just as he did while emphasising the importance of revolutions in colonies and other backward countries. As we have seen earlier, the upsurge in workers’ and peasants’ struggles in the immediate post-war years was often based on economic or class demands but at the same time they were greatly under the impact of the general anti-British nationalist mood championed most prominently by the Congress. At that juncture it was correct and necessary to expose the betrayal-prone class character of the Congress leadership and to grasp the rudimentary class independence or class assertion of workers and peasants as the main field of communist activity, but certainly it was going against reality to fancy that “the revolutionary movement [of workers and peasants — Ed.] has nothing in common with the national liberation movement”, as Roy said in the Colonial Commission. He had put forward the same concept in his draft theses which was crossed out in the final version (see notes 3, 4 and 6 to Text II2), and presented it, though in a modified form, in his speech before the Congress itself (“This mass movement is not controlled by the revolutionary nationalists but is developing independently” — whereas in reality nationalist leaders very often controlled the political- reins of not only general anti-British mass movements but the new workers’ and peasants’ movements too). For Roy the national liberation movement and revolutionary workers’ and peasants’ movements were opposites that excluded each other and, being a new convert to Marxism[8], he zealously supported the latter against the former, taking pride in the fact (according to his Memoirs, p 353) that “The Polish communists of the Luxemburg school used to remark in joke that I was a true communist while Lenin was a nationalist”.
Lenin on the other hand was perfectly clear, consistent and precise in his formulations. The stage of revolution in colonies, semi-colonies and dependencies had to be bourgeois democratic, with imperialism and feudalism (or feudal survivals) as targets, the peasantry as the motive force and the national bourgeoisie both as a conditional ally (to the extent the latter, or a section of it, fought against imperialism) and a potential though secondary target (to the extent this bourgeoisie, or a section of it, compromised with imperialism). The whole experience of the bourgeois democratic revolution in Russia upto February 1917 and his long preoccupation with revolutions in oppressed and backward nations (see our small quotes on p 39) provided the foundation for this line. His emphasis on the need to extend special support to the peasant movement, lend it the most revolutionary character and organise peasants’ and other toilers’ Soviets was badly misinterpreted by many and he had to explain it again and again. Thus in reply to his colleague Chicherin’s criticism against what the latter regarded as Lenin’s undue emphasis on alliance with the national bourgeoisie, Lenin clarified: “I lay greater stress on the alliance with the peasantry (which does not quite mean the bourgeoisie)”[9]. Anyway, we believe no such clarification will be needed for the reader who goes through documents 1 and 4 in Text II and notes Lenin's stress on the “provisional” nature of communists’ alliance with national liberation movement and on the need to “unconditionally maintain the independence of the proletarian movement even if it is only in an embryonic stage”. Fighting against Roy’s ‘left’ isolationism, Lenin highlighted the enormous potential of liberation movements in colonies, which were objectively situated within the framework of bourgeois democracy, for “rallying the constituent elements of the future proletarian parties” ranged “against the bourgeois democratic trend in their own nation”. For us in India, the profound significance of this proposition becomes all the more evident when we remember that (i) practically all the early leaders and cadres of the communist movement in India came from within the ambit of anti-British struggle, while many of them had a Congress background; and (ii) that the movemental mainstay of communism, the class struggle of workers and peasants, developed in most cases as a part – though a very distinct and foremost part often beyond the control of the Congress organisation — of the freedom movement. Fourth, the actual level of development of the proletariat and of the communist movement and the relative importance of communist work among the peasantry. Roy over-estimated the political development of the proletariat and wrote in his draft theses: “In most of the colonies there already exist organised socialist or communist parties, in close relation with the mass movement.” Colonial Commission changed this into “... organised revolutionary parties which strive to be in close connection with the working masses.” (emphasis added). This change was in accordance with what Lenin had called in his draft theses, “the need for a determined struggle against attempts to give a communist colouring to bourgeois-democratic liberation trends in the backward countries.”[10] Whereas Roy wrote generally about workers’ and peasants’ struggles with emphasis on the former, Lenin's characteristic assertion was: “it would be Utopian to believe that proletarian, parties in these backward countries, if indeed they can emerge in them, can pursue communist tactics and a communist policy, without establishing definite relations with the peasant movement and without giving it effective support.” (See Text II4). As his remark made in about the same period on a different occasion shows, from a study of the features of backwardness in the colonies and semi-colonies Lenin arrived at a very significant “deduction” :
“adjust both Soviet Institutions and the Communist Party (its membership, special tasks) to the level of the peasant countries of the colonial East. This is the crux of the matter. This needs thinking about and seeking concrete answers.” [11]
As we are painfully aware, it was not MN Roy and his successors in India but Mao Zedong and his colleagues in China who picked up the cue from Lenin, grasping “the crux” and finding out detailed, practical “concrete answers” to the whole gamut of special problems facing revolutions in backward countries. That, however, is a different story.
Notes:
1. See Lenin, CW, Vol. 20, pp 409-412
2. See Lenin, CW, Vol. 30, pp 161-162
3. Cited from a Russian Source in Marxism and Asia by Helene Carrere d'-Encausse and Stuart R Schram, op. cit, pp 169-70
4. See Lenin, CW; Vol. 31, pp 144-151
5. See “Concerning Questions of the Chinese Revolution” by JV Stalin, Works, Vol. 9, p 238
6. See Text II3
7. See Text II5
8. Roy started studying Marxism in New York in 1917, but became some sort of Marxist or socialist only in 1919. His book on India in Spanish published in 1918 while he was in Mexico, did not contain an iota of Marxism.
9. See Lenin, CW, Vol. 31, p 555
10. See Lenin, CW, Vol. 31, p 149.
11. See Lenin, “Remarks on the Report of A-Sultan-Zade concerning the prospects of a Social Revolution in the East”; CW, Vol. 42, p 202.
Nationalism And Internationalism
From the late nineteenth century onwards, Indian national struggle had been quite receptive and responsive to international political currents. There are many evidences to show that enlightened Indians were aware, though rather vaguely, of the Fabian and other streams of socialism (remember, for example, Vivekananda’s remark : “I’m a socialist”). Again, from the minutes of a meeting of the General Council of Marx’s First International held on August 15,1871, we learn that some radical elements from Calcutta had written a letter to the International asking for powers to start a section in India. Unfortunately we know no more of details, except that in the said meeting the secretary was instructed to give a positive answer to the letter[1]. Decades later, when Japan defeated Tsarist Russia in 1905, this victory of a tiny Asian country over what was considered a major European power greatly encouraged the Indian struggle. Also the Russian revolution of 1905 inspired leaders like Tilak and a few revolutionary patriots like Hemchandra Kanungo (the latter was among the first in India to get attracted to Marxism). In March 1912 Hardayal, then in USA, became the first Indian to write a biography of Karl Marx in the Modem Review, though he clarified that he was no Marxist; towards the end of the year S Ramkrishna Pillai published the first biography of Marx in an Indian language, i.e., Malayalam, probably on the basis of the Hardayal article. In October 1916, Ambalal Patel wrote an article on Karl Marx in a Gujarati magazine.
The progressive international impact, however, rose to a new plane after 1914. The first world war, arising out of intensified inter-imperialist contradiction for redistribution of limited world resources, markets and territories, snapped the global chain of imperialism at its weakest link and the new Soviet state was born. Across the earth there was a tremendous upsurge in struggles against imperialism and its lackeys, and these struggles proved to be more persistent in Asia than in Europe and America. It was only natural that these intrinsically inter-connected struggles, including the Indian national struggle, should draw inspiration from the most advanced fortress against imperialism — the Union pf Soviet Socialist Republics. The emergence of the Communist International (Comintern) in March 1919 provided further impetus to the spread of communist ideals across national and continental frontiers and a number of communist parties came up in the early 1920s — among them those of China, Indonesia and India.
Bolshevik Revolution and the Indian response
“The downfall of Tsardom has ushered in the age of destruction of alien bureaucracy in India too” — commented the Dainik Basumati, then a leading nationalist daily of Calcutta, just ten days after the Bolshevik power was established in Russia.
“Our hour is approaching, India too shall be free. But sons of India must stand up for right and justice, as the Russians did” — spoke out the Home Rule Leaguers in South India, as soon as they got the news of the great emancipation, in a pamphlet entitled Lessons from Russia (Madras, 1917).
And so on and so forth, exclaimed the exuberant Indian patriots, and this on the basis of the droplets of news that trickled hi through the British censorship net.[2] The very first decrees and treaties of the Soviet Union (e.g., the unilateral renouncing of the imperial rights in China and other parts of Asia acquired under the Tsar; proclamation of the rights of nations to self-determination and its immediate implementation in Finland; and so on) electrified the educated people of India. The Soviet government on its part was also stretching out its hand of friendship, as we shall see, to the radical nationalists fighting against imperialism, the common enemy.
The Government of India correctly identified the basic source of the Bolshevik menace in the internal conditions
of India. In a very revealing note (reproduced in Text X1)
it warned : “If India is not to share the fate of Russia, there must be a deliberate effort ... to improve the conditions of the masses and to make them less discontented.” In some other notes it drew attention of the Secretary of State in London to the inspiration the national movement in India was already drawing from the Russian revolution.
It was in this atmosphere surcharged with a new hope, a new passion for liberation that the most dynamic revolutionists of India got attracted first towards the new “Red” heroes and then towards Marxism or communism because that was — they were told — the great secret behind the Bolshevik miracle. They came basically from three backgrounds:
(a) revolutionary patriots working from Germany (e.g., the Berlin group led by Virendranath Chattopadhyaya), Afghanistan (e.g., M Barkatullah of the “Provisional Government of Independent India” established in Kabul), USA (most notably Ghadrites like Rattan Singh and Santokh Singh who revived the movement in early 1920s) etc. and roving revolutionaries like MN Roy and Abani Mukherjee;
b) national revolurionaries from the Pan-Islamic Khilafat movement and the Hirjat movement[3] who went to Afghanistan and Turkey during and after the First World War (e.g., Shaukat Usmani, Mohammad Ali Sepassi etc.); and
(c) radical patriots working from within the Congress movement or without who, disillusioned and shocked at the sudden withdrawal of the non-cooperating movement in 1921, turned to socialism and the working class movement in search of a new path (e.g., associates of Dange in Bombay, of Muzaffar Ahmad in Calcutta and of Singaravelu in Madras; the Inquilab group of Lahore; the Babbar Akali faction of the Akali movement etc.).
The common urge that propelled these diverse forces was the liberation of the motherland. Herein lay the original impulse of communism in India. Of these three streams the first two joined together in the Soviet Union to form a self-styled ‘CPI’, but being cut off from the internal dynamics of Indian society this combination never developed beyond an emigre communist group. It was the third stream that arose out of the evolution of the Indian society itself and therefore became the real Communist Party of India. Before we take up a detailed study of that vital process, let us, for the sake of historicity, record the abortive attempt at party formation in a foreign country.
Notes:
1. Source: Documents of the First International, Institute of Marxism-Leninism, (Moscow), p 258.
2. Here mention should be made of the fact that months before the October revolution, the Indian Independence Committee of Berlin set up a branch office at Stockholm to make contacts with the Bolsheviks. It was from this office that the first Indian request to “the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Soviets to put up a dauntless fight against the shameless and cruel imperialism of England” was wired to Petrograd, the centre of what the telegram called “Revolutionary Russia”, in September 1917. This took place on the initiative of Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, the principal leader of the Berlin Committee.
3. The Hirjat (also known as the Muhajir or emigrant movement) grew out of the Khilafat movement when the Emir of Afghanistan welcomed all Muslims who, disgruntled with the British for its unjust dealings with the Khalifa of Turkey, wanted to leave India and settle in a Muslim country. More than 30,000 Muslims, including a number of intellectuals who were moved not only by this religious sentiment but also an urge for attaining swaraj by means other than non-violent non-cooperation, went over to Afghanistan, the bordering Muslim country.
Initiatives in the Soviet Union
The chronology of events relating to the emergence of an Indian communist group in the Soviet Union is as follows.
1. Mahendra Pratap[1], arrived in Tashkent in February 1918, followed by Barkatullah in March 1919 who came as a special envoy of Emir Amanullah of Afghanistan though personally more interested in the freedom of India. These left-wing nationalists became and remained good friends — though not members — of the “CPI” when it was formed. On May 7, 1919, they along with a few others including MPBT Acharya and Abdul Rub met Lenin. Acharya — earlier a follower of Savarkar and colleague of Chattopadhyaya — became one of the founder members of the Tashkent CPI.
2. In January-April 1920, nine radical nationalists arrived in Tashkent and seven of them including Mohammad Ali, Mohammad Shafiq (these two were on a mission of the “Provisional Government”), Abdul Majid and Abdul Fazil were constituted into an “Indian Communists Section” of the Sovinter-prop[2] on April 17, 1920. This Section produced propaganda materials like “What Soviet Power Is Like” (pamphlet), “Bolshevism and the Islamic Nations” (a pamphlet by Barkatullah), “To the Indian Brothers” (appeal), and the Urdu magazine Zamindar, the first and only issue of which appeared in May 1920 on the initiative of Mohammad Shafiq.
3. MN Roy arrived in Moscow in May or June 1920 as one of the two delegates of the Mexican Communist Party to the Second Congress of the Comintern (July-August, 1920), though everybody knew and accepted that he actually represented India. In this Congress, apart from MN Roy and his wife Evelyn Trent-Roy, the following Indians also participated : Abani Mukherjee, MPBT Acharya (they had consultative voice but no vote; the former was mentioned as a left socialist and the latter as a delegate from the Indian Revolutionary Association in Tashkent) and Mohammad Shafiq (an observer delegate). Roy was the only one with a decisive vote.
4. Before the Second Congress closed, a “General Plan and Programme of Work for the Indian Revolution” was drawn up by Roy and few others. As MA Persits[3] shows, “the General Plan posed three major tasks: first, the convocation of an all-India Congress of revolutionaries and the establishment of an all-India Revolutionary centre capable of preparing and holding, in particular, this congress, second, the immediate formation of a Communist Party of India and, third, the immediate launching of the military and political training[4] of revolutionary forces.”
5. The “CPI” in exile was formed on October 17,1920 in Tashkent. The names of the seven members and of the three others who were co-opted on December 15 the same year are given in Text III2 and III3 respectively. In the meeting of December 15, as Text III3 tells us, a three-member Executive was elected with Roy, Shafiq and Acharya. Shafiq and Acharya were elected secretary and chairman of the Executive Committee respectively. From a letter dated 30.12.20 from Mukherjee to SP Gupta, an Indian nationalist leader[5], it appears that between 15 and 20 December three more persons joined the party, taking the number to 13 (7 + 3+3). The new-born party worked “under the political guidance of the Turkestan Bureau of the Comintern”, as Text III1 informs us.
6. Formation of a communist party or group remains incomplete without at least a programme, and Abani Mukherjee prepared one towards the end of 1920. This was, however, rejected on the insistence of Roy[6]. As for “international recognition” of the CPI formed in Tashkent, that remains a disputed question, with some like SA Dange saying it was not recognised and other like Muzaffar Ahmad declaring it was. The facts are (a) an official letter of its formation was despatched to the CC, Communist Party of Turkestan and the Turkestan Bureau of Comintern, (b) the Turkestan Bureau and the Executive Committee of the Comintern did take certain measures to solve certain political and organisational problems of Indian Communists and other revolutionaries[7] and (c) the list of the parties and organisations invited to the Third Congress of the Comintern (endorsed by the Small Bureau of the ECCI late in April or early in May 1921) mentioned “India : The Communist Groups (consultative vote)”[8]. From these facts — and no less importantly, from the Leninist understanding of the essential requirements of a communist party — the truth emerges that the Comintern did accept the formation of CPI at Tashkent as a fait accompli and therefore as a starting point, but refused to recognise it as a communist party in the complete sense of the term.
7. Since the Tashkent formation side-tracked some other revolutionaries who were gradually coming over to Marxism, an All-India Revolutionary Conference was sought to be organised. The Comintern took special interest in this, and between January to May 1921 two important groups arrived in Moscow: from Tashkent the members of “Indian Revolutionary Association” led by Abdur Rabb Barq (also known as Abdul Rab) and from Berlin — Virendranath Chattopa-dhyaya, GAK Luhani, Dr. Bhupendra Nath Dutta, Khankojee, Agnes Smedly and others. The latter group presented their theses on India and world revolution, authored by Chattopadhyaya, Luhani and Khankojee, to Lenin and the Executive Committee of Communist International (ECCI). Abdur Rabb also presented a few policy statements. For more than a year the Comintern, through its Eastern Commission and India Commission, tried to forge unity among the Roy, Chattopadhyaya and Rabb groups, but in vain. All of them suffered more or less from individualistic sectarianism and were engaged in a race for exclusive recognition and patronage of the Comintern; the political differences were not insignificant either. The minutes of several meetings between Roy, Acharya and Rabb, held under Soviet auspices, show that the main political conflict arose “on the ground of differences over the methods of work among Indian immigrants”. Acharya accused that Roy used to coerce Indian immigrants to join the Party organisation, while Rabb criticised Roy for following, “the erroneous policy of communist propaganda which is pointless at the present time”. In his (Rubb’s) opinion, “nationalism had to be used, too, in considerable manner.”[9] Given these acute personal and political disagreements, the proposed conference of communist and pro-communist national revolutionaries never took place. But the prolonged discussions in Moscow, in which Lenin also sometimes took part, were not entirely fruitless. While some like Luhani joined the communist party shortly afterwards, others like Chattopadhyaya did the same later on.
From this record of events it is not difficult to see why the group formed in Tashkent-Moscow during 1920-21 was still-born. Hastily formed without any ground-work, it had no constitution or programme. In fact it was a handiwork of Roy to secure himself a berth in the Communist International (CI). What is most important, the Emigre revolutionaries had no roots in the masses of India and their subjective creation was never internalised in the society it sought to transform. So in no sense can the Tashkent formation be regarded as the formation of CPI.
MN Roy, however, lost no time to try and build political bridges to India through journals, manifestoes, letters etc. and by sending emissaries[10] and funds. In these efforts he was fully financed and politically assisted by the CI, on whose behalf he was acting (he was inducted into its leadership in 1921 itself). The emissaries and the funds were not of much help, but the Comintern reports and guidelines contained in magazines[11] edited by Roy certainly was, notwithstanding the fact that many if not most copies of these magazines used to be intercepted by the police. Besides, Roy made the first attempts at a Marxist interpretation of the various facets of the Indian political scene.
Notes:
1. Mahendra Pratap and Barkatullah – “President” and “Prime Minister” of the “Provisional Government of Independent India” established in Kabul in 1915 with German help. This government- in-exile had earlier sounded the Tsar and even the Kerensky government for help in anti-British struggle.
2. Soviet Council for International Propaganda based in Turkestan, which carried on propaganda work among Oriental nationals.
3. Revolutionaries of India in Soviet Russia by MA Persits; Progress Publishers (Moscow, 1973) p 169
4. Between October 1920 to May, 21, the Indian Military School run by Roy, Mukherjee and others in Tashkent imparted military training to a few small batches of muhajirs. The aim was to build a liberation army. But the plan failed and the school was closed down because of (a) less than expected influx of muhajirs (b) difficulties in imparting a minimum political consciousness to these intensely religious men and (c) constant British pressure on the Soviet government, which became difficult to ignore in view of the just-concluded trade-treaty and on-going trade negotiations between UK and RSFSR. But a better successor to this military school was immediately available in the “Communist University for the Toilers of the East” which operated in Moscow from May 1921. The “University” had a good syllabus and arranged a wide range of extra-curricular activities to promote a scientific communist attitude to life. Some 23 muhajirs from India were trained here besides many others from other countries.
5. Cited by MA Persits, op. cit., p.197
6. This piece of information transpires from the minutes of a meeting of the party on 2.1.21 cited in Ibid., p.198
7. For details, see the next point
8. See MA Persist, op. cit., p 198
9. For details, see MA Persits, op. cit., pp 205-06
10. Nalini Gupta arrived in India in late 1921 and later became a British spy. Charles Ashleigh, a well-known communist writer from Britain whose services were made available by the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) on Roy’s request, came in September 1922.
11. See for details the chapter on The National Scene And Early Communist Propaganda.
The First Communist Groups in India
Almost simultaneously with but quite independently of the formation of a communist centre in Soviet Russia, the first communist elements and groups sprang up in India during 1921-22. These were:
(1) The Bombay group around Sripad Amrit Dange, who published his Gandhi Vs. Lenin in mid-1921. Dange was then one among a group of student leaders just rusticated from Bombay’s Wilson College, which they had earlier boycotted as part of the non-cooperation movement. Based on very scanty information about Lenin and Russia available at the time and penned by a 21-year old who was then just transforming himself, in his own words, from “Tilak’s chela” (meaning disciple) to “Lenin’s chela”[1], it is full of errors both in theory and in facts. This will be evident even from the short excerpt we have reproduced in Text VI1, which presents the central theme of the book. But to students of communist history the value of the book rests not so much in its content as in its background and, therefore, in the follow-up. It appeared in the course of a debate, among politicised student circles in Bombay and for that matter elsewhere too, as to what should be the correct path for India’s emancipation; and it remains the best available historical documentation of the very first phase in a generation’s ideological transformation. This is proved also by the fact that after the publication of Gandhi Vs. Lenin, Dange and his friends engaged themselves in trade union activities and evolved into one of the earliest communist circles in India and began publishing the Socialist, the first communist journal in India, from August 1922.
(2) The Calcutta group around Muzaffar Ahmad, a young man who did not participate in the non-cooperation movement but published, for a few months in late 1920, a Uterary-cum-militant nationalist journal in Bengali named Navyug (New Age) together with the firebrand Bengali poet Nazrul Islam. Towards the end of 1921 Ahmad bought a few books by Lenin and on Marx from the first secret consignment of such books to Calcutta and from the next year started organising the workers in Metiabruz and other industrial centres near Calcutta.
(3) The Madras group around Singaravelu M Chettiar, a middle-aged Congressman already active on the working class front when he embraced Marxism. He played a very active role at the Gaya session of the Congress (end of December 1922) and founded the Labour Kishan Party of Hindustan in 1923.
(4) The Lahore group around Ghulam Hussain, who used to teach economics at a Peshawar college and was brought towards Marxism by his friend Mohammad Ali, one of the founder members of “CPI” at Tashkent, in 1922. After this he left the job, went to Lahore, started work in the Railway Workers’ Union there and edited the Urdu paper Inquilab, only a few issues of which were published.
How was it that all these groups came up in literally the four comers of India just within one year, as if by some grand design ? The fact is that they were totally ignorant of each other and, barring Ghulam Hussain, of the activities of MN Roy or Comintern. Their development was conditioned by a peculiar combination of historical circumstances — of two internal factors and one external impulse: (i) the contradiction between Gandhian ideology and politics on the one hand and the revolutionary sweep of class struggle and national liberation movement on the other; (ii) the new stage in Indian working class movement both in quantitative and qualitative terms; and (iii) the international appeal of the October Revolution.
Of these three, the first was the most fundamental. The compromising character of the Congress and the fact that it was basically a party of the rich unconcerned with everyday problems of the working people was already known, but it was during the non-cooperation-Khilafat movement and thereafter that the said contradiction manifested itself most sharply. Numerous incidents — e.g., Gandhi’s clear verdict in early 1921 that strikes “do not fall within the plan of non-violent non-cooperation”[2], his urgent directive to stop the no-tax campaign started by Congressmen in Guntur (now in Andhra Pradesh) (under pressure form below and also due to a misinformation that the leadership had already signalled such a campaign) and so on — led to the emergence of three parallel critiques of Gandhism. One was from within the bourgeois camp — this concerned the question of expediency, tactics and timing. CR Das and the senior Nehru felt, for instance, that the Congress should have accepted the British peace gestures during the visit of Prince of Wales in return for some constitutional gains and they were angry because Gandhi, after refusing all compromise at that opportune moment, later beat a retreat suddenly and empty-handed. Another was by the petty-bourgeois terrorist-patriots, who either supported the non-cooperation-Khilafat movement or at least suspended their activities during this period but strove to return to the ‘bomb polities’ after the movement collapsed. The third critique was fundamental, striving to be consistent and informed by socialist ideals. Whereas the first critique forever remained within the bounds of Congress ideology and politics and the second never involved the masses, the third — best represented by communists who emerged from among the Congress activists such as Dange and Singaravelu — strove to develop a total alternative. From the very outset this critique based itself on the growing clash between the conservative bourgeois leadership and the popular forces it had activised, but its beginnings bore the inevitable birth-marks: both the first communist pamphlet in India (Gandhi Vs. Lenin) and the first communist speech at a Congress session (Gaya, 1922 — by Singaravelu) accepted non-violence as an effective method in Indian conditions[3]. In time the socialist critique came into its own, but this could be achieved not simply by subjective theoretical exercises — an objective social force capable of completing this transformation was crucially needed.
And this was available in the second factor. The working class in India had, by 1921-22, already established itself both as a front-ranking detachment of the national movement (though without a programme of its own) and as a formidable fighter against the exploitation and injustice meted out to it as a class. Naturally the new Marxists everywhere turned to work among this class and found there the social vehicle for communism. By this act they took the crucial next step in their ideological remoulding, differentiating themselves substantially and effectively from all shades of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois critiques of Gandhism and thus started laying the real foundation of a communist movement. But for a certain minimum development of the working class in India, all this would have been hardly possible. This necessary proletarian dimension, however, suffered from a basic weakness : the lack of serious work among the struggling peasantry. This weakness lingered on into the 1930s and deprived the working class of its crucial mass ally — the toiling peasantry — and thereby permanently disabled it to snatch the leadership of the national liberation movement from the bourgeoisie. We shall elaborate on this most crucial lacuna of the communist movement in Part VI.
About the third factor, the important thing to note is this. The anti-imperialist appeal of the Bolshevik Revolution was welcomed by all working people and even by sections of the propertied classes, but its social content was grasped only by the Marxists — the ideologues of the working class. While the responses of all others were emotional and superficial, only the working class acquired and assimilated from the land of Soviets its philosophy of life and proceeded to build the political party of its own in that light.
So these are the three sources of the communist movement in India. It is definitely wrong to ignore any of these, as the Preamble to the Constitution of CPI (1958)[4] does by failing to mention the second, i.e., the proletarian class element.
Notes:
1. As if to symbolise this, the cover page highlights a militant quote of Tilak from the swadeshi period - not one of Marx or Lenin !
2. Young India, 16 February 1921. In the same magazine Gandhi wrote on 15 June, 1921: “In India we want no political strikes ... we must gain control over all the unruly and disturbing elements ...”
3. At an earlier date the birth-marks were even more conspicuous. As Sumit Sarkar informs us, Singaravelu wrote an open letter to Gandhi on 5 May, 1921, where he condemned the brakes Gandhi was imposing on Kishan movements, urged the use of non-violent non-cooperation against “capitalistic autocracy” and suggested a rather eclectic “Communism” which would include the Charkha, through which “each and every household in the land could become independent of an employer. ..., (Modern India, op. cit., P 214)
4. “The Communist Party of India arose in the course of our liberation struggle as a result of the efforts of Indian revolutionaries, who under the inspiration of the Great October Revolution were seeking new paths for achieving national independence.”
Towards a Left Bloc Within the Congress
From the Second Congress onwards, the Comintern was repeatedly advising communists in colonial countries to support and influence the national liberation movements. The communists in India, particularly those with a Congress background, also realised this necessity from their own direct experience. Dange, for instance, used to distribute his magazine Socialist among AICC members and other Congressmen from the very start, i.e., from August 1922. MN Roy, too, wrote a “Manifesto to the 36th Indian National Congress, Ahmedabad, 1921”, which was smuggled into India and distributed at the session (end of December 1921). But since there was no organised initiative in the Congress session itself, the appeal did not produce much of a practical result.
The Indian communists were thus facing a crucial political problem : what should be the practical medium for successfully influencing Congress policies and decisions ? And, at a more fundamental level, how to carry on communist work among workers and peasants, given the British government's refusal to allow any and every activity carried on in the name of communists? Both problems were sought to be solved by organising an open mass party or a kind of revolutionary bloc within the Congress. Let us briefly note the chronology of ideas and attempts relating to this interesting experiment.
In the 16 September, 1922-issue of Socialist, Dange appealed “to the radical men of the Congress” to unite in a “Indian Socialist Labour Party of Indian National Congress.” The Party, he wrote, “should be organised on the basis of the socialist movement and should have for its object the establishment of the people’s state in which land and capital are owned communally and the process of production, distribution and exchange is a social function democratically controlled”.[1]
MN Roy put forward his idea of a people’s party in the 1 October, 1922 issue of Advanced Guard in the following words : “A mass party consciously representing the interests, immediate as well as ultimate, of the workers and peasants — a political party of the masses based on the principle of class interest and with a programme advocating mass action for carrying forward the struggle for national liberation”.[2] When he came to know of Dange’s idea, he welcomed it in a letter dated 2 November, 1922. However, he preferred a more widely acceptable name : “The People’s Party”. Explaining his position, Roy wrote :
“Of course the social basis of this party will be workers and peasants and the political direction of the party should be in the hands of the communists and socialists who alone can be the custodians of the interests of the toiling masses. But in order that the communists and socialists are not isolated in small sects, and can take active and leading part in the mass struggle, determining its course and destinies by the revolutionary and courageous leadership, a legal apparatus for our activities is needed. The people’s party will provide the legal apparatus.”[3]
In the same letter Roy suggests that he would draft a programme (see below) which he expects Dange and Singaravelu to present at the forthcoming Gaya session of the Congress. Roy is aware that the proposed programme will not be accepted by the Congress, but hopes that the refusal will expose the true character of the Congress leadership, while the attempt to popularise it will place the communists “on the high road towards the organisation of a communist or socialist party, which will not be a small sect – but a great political force because it will have at its disposal the legal apparatus of a mass party preparing to capture the leadership of the Congress”. Roy also asks Dange to contact Singaravelu and Ghulam Hussain for jointly organising “the new revolutionary mass party.”[4] Roy further wrote to Dange on 19 December clarifying the distinction as well as connection between the organisation of the CPI and of the open mass party.[5]
Roy’s “Programme for the Indian National Congress”, which we reproduce in Text VI11, called for complete national independence and a set of consistent democratic demands. It was widely reported by the semi-official news agency Reuters, with a view to scaring men like CR Das away from the “Bolshevism” of Roy. This “programme” was not accepted by any section of the Congress but its wide propagation had its own value in popularising the communist viewpoint.
During end ’22 and early ’23, Roy wrote repeatedly to Dange. Singaravelu, Ahmad and Shaukat Usmani (Kanpur) about the need to have a “small”, “preliminary conference” at Berlin to be held under Comintern guidance. Knowing that various shades of broadly similar ideas. as well as some important differences prevailed among the scattered communist groups, Roy wrote that the Berlin conference was necessary “before the organisation of the Party[6] is started. We must come to an understanding among ourselves first.”
Both Dange and Singaravelu rejected Roy’s plan. They wrote to each other, the former stating that it was “a mad venture to go hunting for communism in European conferences. Whatever has to be done must be done in India” and the latter echoing the same sentiment : “There is good deal to be done here before one thinks of a congress.”[7] Ahmad was not opposed to the idea, but regretted that, being a whole-timer, he did not have the required money and that Roy did not send him any. The proposed conference, therefore, never took place.
In early to mid-1923, Dange and Singaravelu continued to exchange ideas on the same subject. While Dange called for “the first session of an all-India socialist labour congress”, the latter proposed “an independent Labour Kishan Party, forming a section of the Congress”. Singaravelu actually organised a conference in Madras in late April, 1923 and announced the formation of the “Labour Kishan Party of Hindustan” (LKPH) on the first of May. Madras became the great historical place to host the first May Day Celebration in India, with the Red Flag unfurled for the first time at a public meeting. The same day was also published the Manifesto of the new party. Dange and Roy welcomed the initiative[8], but criticised (separately) what they considered the weaknesses of the Manifesto. We reproduce a part of the manifesto which contains the “Action Programme” and a news item in Vanguard, June 1923, covering the other aspects of the new party, in Texts V1 and V2 respectively.
Roy continued, with the help particularly of Ghulam Hussain, his efforts to organise a conference in India that will give birth to a legal party guided by communists but incorporating all the progressive nationalists available at the time. This party, he hoped, will be free from the political confusions of Singaravelu’s party and will have an all-India character. But the police struck swiftly and decisively. In May-June they arrested Hussain, Usmani, Ahmad and others; the conference was no longer possible. These arrests were later linked up with the well-known Kanpur conspiracy case, one of the charges being that the accused were trying to organise a workers’ and peasants’ party.
Thus it was that the project of a communist-sponsored democratic organisation aimed at combining united front work (from within the Congress, which was obviously the best method at the time) with class struggle of workers and peasants, came to a grinding halt just before take-off. The whole thing suffered from many political and organisational weaknesses, but often though not always they resulted from a commendable effort to provide a broader base and a specifically Indian dimension to the theory and practice of communism in India. This is best illustrated by the cover page of the “Manifesto” of LKPH. The combination of the communist symbol of hammer and sickle with the Gandhian symbol of Charkha and the blend of a popular democratic slogan (“For Food, Cloth and House”) and the specifically Marxist slogan (“Workers’ of the world, unite”) is definitely illuminating. And precisely because this creative effort had its roots in the real, living political milieu of the country, it resurfaced — and more forcefully at that — as soon as opportunities were available in the second half of the 1920s.
Notes:
1. For details, see G Adhikari, Vol. I
2. Cited by G Adhikari, Vol. II, p 98.
3. Ibid., p 98
4. Ibid., p 99
5. For details on these correspondence, see G Adhikari, Vol. I, pp 593-96 and Vol. II, pp 103-05
6. The reference is to the open mass party, but in this letter Roy also calls for setting up communist party branches all over the country.
7. See G Adhikari, Vol. II, pp 103-05.
8. Dange also declared in his Socialist, May 1923 number, that "Provincial councils of the Labour Kishan Party of Hindustan have been formed in Madras and Punjab". These, however, remained paper organisations only.
Peshawar And Kanpur Conspiracy Cases
Treason, treachery and conspiracy have always been the catchwords of the British imperialist rulers and their successors — the modern Indian ruling classes, against the Indian communists. Thus the conspiracy cases are nothing but notable episodes in the continuing class struggle. From early ’20s to mid-’30s more than a dozen of conspiracy cases were hatched by the imperialist rulers against the communist movement in India, the Peshawar, Kanpur and Meerut episodes being the most important ones.[1]
The Peshawar Conspiracy Cases (1921-27)
In our earlier section on Party formation, we have stated that an abortive attempt was made to form a CPI in Tashkent with muhajirs in 1920 by MN Roy and other Indian communists abroad. Out of the 200 muhajirs who crossed over to Russia around the year 1920, some 40 to 50 joined the political and military school at Tashkent and later the Communist University for the Toilers of the East in Moscow. From their foreign office, the British intelligence got the information that batches of trained personnel were being sent to India by the CPI in Tashkent. The first batch reached Peshawar on 3 June, 1921. The British police arrested them as “Bolshevik agents” and started the conspiracy cases. From 1921 to 1927 five conspiracy cases were launched against those early communists and national revolutionaries. The distant town of Peshawar was chosen as the venue of the sham trials, so that it would be easy to fabricate news about Russian or Bolshevik ‘destabilisation polities’ and also the accused would not get the benefit of the Jury System.
The first trial under section 121-A of the Indian Penal Code was started with the arrest of Mohammad Akbar, the principal accused and Bahadur, the Tibetan servant of Md. Akbar on 25 September, 1921. Hafizullah Khan, father of Md. Akbar, was also made co-accused in the first Communist Conspiracy case, “The Crown Vs. Md. Akbar and others”. The mockery of a trial took place in the sessions court of JHR Fraser (ICS) who pronounced his judgement on 31 May, 1922, giving 3 years’ rigorous imprisonment (RI) for Md. Akbar and one year’s RI for Bahadur. Hafizullah Khan, who acted as a British agent, was acquitted and released. No documentary evidence or exhibit was necessary to prove the guilt of the accused — to prove that a conspiracy to “overthrow the king-emperor from his sovereign right” existed and to claim that the accused was a member of it was considered enough for punishment under section 121-A, IPC for punishment.
The second conspiracy case was nothing but a continuation of the first one. Mohammad Akbar was again convicted for smuggling out letters from jail and breaking jail discipline. Two other co-accused were Mohammad Hassan of Baluchistan and Ghulam Mehboob of Peshawar for illegal possession of duplicate copies of the said letter. A travesty of trial took place to prove that Md. Akbar was trying to make “contact with his revolutionary colleagues in Chamarkand for the same purpose”. The judgement was passed on 27 April, 1923 : seven years' RI for Md. Akbar and five years’ RI for the other two co-accused, with three months solitary confinement to each of them.
The third Peshawar conspiracy case, otherwise known as Moscow-Tashkent conspiracy case began on 4 April, 1923 (“The Crown Vs. Akbar Shah and seven others” under section 121-A, IPC) in the sessions court of JHR Fraser. Summarising his judgement, Fraser said that the accused “are not being convicted because they have adopted pure communism, but because they are emissaries of the communism adopted by the Bolsheviks and Roy”. Out of the eight convicts, Akbar Shah and Gauhar Rahaman (Afjal) were given two years’ RI; Feroz-uddin, Abdul Majid, Habib Ahmad, Sultan Mohammad and Rafiq Ahmad one year's RI. Fida Ali, who became the government approver and Abdul Qadar, the British spy, were acquitted and released.
The next Peshawar conspiracy case was “The Crown Vs. Mohammad Shafiq”, who surrendered to the British police on 10 December, 1923. The verdict was given on 4 April, 1924 : three years’ RI. No further ‘proof’ was necessary to convict Shafiq because he was an ‘active member’ of the ‘conspiracy’ that was already ‘proved’. The sessions judge G Conner summed up his verdict as follows, “Unlike other Indians at the time with the accused, the latter was an active agent of revolutionary party and unlike his companions who left the country, the accused elected to remain behind and continued his revolutionary work. ... Before his surrender he visited India as a Bolshevik agent. ... He was sent by Roy on a mission to India”. And so he ‘should be sentenced’.
The Fifth Peshawar conspiracy case Began in 1927 against Fazl Illahi Qurban on the same charge of “receiving training in Moscow and Tashkent for the same purpose”. He was sentenced to five years’ RI which was later reduced to three years’ RI on an appeal to higher court.
The fear psychosis about the spread of Bolshevism and class hatred against the communist ideology were the principal reasons for the fabricated conspiracy cases of Peshawar.
Unfortunately, the series of conspiracy cases failed to evoke any response from the nationalists. Only MN Roy wrote an article — “Manufacturing Evidence” — accusing the British government, which was published in the Comintern journal Inprecor.
The Kanpur Communist (Bolshevik) Conspiracy Case
The Peshawar Conspiracy cases failed, to check the spread of communism in India. Communist activities again started in the metropolitan cities of Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and other cities like Kanpur and Lahore. The communist groups in these city areas were involved in organising the workers and educating them with communist ideology and politics. Particularly after the withdrawal of the first non-cooperation movement, the radical sections of the Congress were gradually attracted towards the communist ideology. Sensing the situation, the governor-general of India sent a message on 28 February, 1923 to the Home Secretary in London to the effect that if mass movements started again, a section of non-cooperators and ex-terrorists will join hands with the communists to launch a fresh offensive. So a new conspiracy case was master-minded to smash the budding communist organisation.
It started with the arrests of Shaukat Usmani on 8 May and of Muzaffar Ahmad on 19 May, 1923. Ghulam Hussain was also arrested about the same time. They were arrested under regulation III of State Prisoners Act, 1818 and immediately sent to Peshawar, Lahore and Dacca jails respectively. Muzaffar made a statement to the police about his connections with Nalini Gupta, the linkman of Comintern and Roy with the Indian communist organisers of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. But this information added nothing new to what the government already knew about correspondence between MN Roy and the Indian communists. Nalini Gupta was arrested on 20 December, 1923 and he made a series of statements hi late December, 1923 and early January, 1924. These informations only helped the British Government to corroborate the informations received earlier which would be used in the case proper. After going through all the available materials, a list of 13[2] persons were prepared for magisterial inquiry. But later it was reduced to 8 persons.[3] A complaint under section 121-A, IPC against these eight accused was made before the District Magistrate on 3 March, 1924. Dange was arrested three days before and an warrant was issued on 6 March against Singaravelu Chettiar, who was arrested the same day at Madras. So Usmani, Muzaffar Ahmad, Ghulam Hussain, Nalini Gupta, Dange and Singaravelu were prosecuted. But Ghulam Hussain made a confessional statement and appealed for mercy and wanted to help as an approver in the Peshawar case against Md. Shafiq and he was never produced before the sessions judge for trial. As MN Roy who was then in Germany and RL Sharma who was in Pondichery could not be produced before the court, their names did not figure in the sessions trial. Singaravelu appealed for bail on health ground, and was also not produced in the sessions court. Thus ultimately the case “The Crown Vs. Bolsheviks” under section 121-A IPC was put up against Usmani, Muzaffar Ahmad, SA Dange and Nalini Gupta at the sessions court of that notorious HE Holme (who had given death sentences to 172 peasants in the Chauri-Chaura case) on 22 April, 1924. The appeal by the accused to transfer the case to any metropolitan city was summarily rejected. After four weeks of sham trial, the sessions court gave its verdict: 4 years' RI to the four accused. Unlike in the Peshawar cases, this time a “Indian Communist Defence Committee” was formed, which organised fund collections and set up the defence lawyers. A defence committee was also formed in London with Charles Ashleigh as its secretary. The Communist Party of France also donated 500 francs for defence of the accused. The appeal to the higher court for reduction of prison term was turned down which was duly criticised in the local newspapers. As Vartaman, published from Kanpur put it, “The charge of conspiracy appeared to be quite baseless.” Aaj (Bena-ras) reported, “The decision of the sessions judge is nothing but an example of miscarriage of justice.” The moderate nationalist leader Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya also criticised the High Court decision of turning down the appeal for reduction. A militant strike by Kanpur mill workers which faced police firing during the trial was also reported. MN Roy wrote an open letter accusing'the Labour Government of Britain. But in an overall sense the Kanpur Case also failed to evoke a mass protest against this travesty of justice.
Confessions and betrayals
A shameful episode related to the Kanpur Conspiracy Case was the betrayals and confessions by communists accused in this case. While in police custody, SA Dange and Nalini Gupta allegedly wrote a number of letters/statements to the British authorities (both singly and jointly). That Nalini Gupta actually became a police agent is generally agreed, but Dange’s role remains controversial. The infamous “Dange letters” were first flashed by the anti-communist paper Current on 7 March, 1964 and immediately became an occassion for mud-sludging between the Party’s two fractions which, within a few months, would become the CPI and the CPI(M). Big shots from both sides visited the Government of India’s national archives in New Delhi to examine the letters. The former fraction led by Dange claimed that these letters had been forged and implanted in the archives by “the splitters” at the behest of Anglo-American imperialists or of the Chinese Communist Party. Their main logic was that the letters filed in the archives bore the signature as Shripat (mark the t) Amrit Dange whereas the correct spelling used by Dange had always been Sripad (mark the d) Amrit Dange. The main counter-argument was that a forger takes double care as regards spelling etc. and moreover, if indeed it was a case of forgery, why did not the British Government or the Indian Government after 1947 ever use the forged letters for denigrating the communist movement and its leader ?
In those hot days of 1964 while Muzaffar Ahmad, as a veteran leader of the anti-Dange fraction and one of Dange’s contemporaries, were issuing statements on Dange’s “betrayals” he uttered not a word on his own statements to the police. This was brought to light by others and later Ahmad owned it up in his book Myself And the CPI (published in 1969 by N B A, Calcutta, see p 333). Ahmad wrote that he supplied to the police only those informations which were already known to the latter from other sources. According to him he made the statement on 23 May, 1923, i.e., four days after his arrest, only when a bunch of genuine letters between communists including himself and MN Roy were shown to him by the police and he knew that much was already revealed. This version is, naturally, not beyond controversy but since the revelation came well after the 1964 split, there was much less hue and cry about it compared to the “Dange letters”.
We are not in a position to give the final verdict on the controversies with the help of handwriting-experts and all that. Perhaps that is not so much necessary, too, hi a volume on the political history of the communist movement in our country. No doubt Nalini Gupta betrayed the Party, while Ahmad made confessional statements and Dange at least begged for mercy (see his letter written jointly with Gupta in Text X2), even if his alleged offer to serve as a police spy[4] (see Text X3) is taken as a case of forgery. But these black spots certainly do not erase the entire history of their lifelong work as veteran communist leaders, and this despite their other shortcomings and mistakes including Dange’s extreme political deviation hi later years.
Legal or illegal Party ?
An important debate on this question took place during 1924-25. The point was best expressed in the title of an article by MN Roy : “Should the Commuist Party Be a Secret Society ?” This was a reply to an “Open Letter to MN Roy” from Janaki Prasad Bagerhatta, published in the Socialist, 24 September, 1924. In this open letter, Bagerhatta, an AICC member from Ajmer in Rajasthan, proposed that a communist party should be organised openly, which should publish Hindi and Urdu newspapers and issue leaflets to popularise communism and that “a strong party be formed in the Congress ... to capture the organization”. The communist party must, he insisted, seek the “help of the Third International”. This Janaki Prasad later turned out to be a police agent, but his letter is of interest to us in so far as it provoked the Socialist and MN Roy to clarify their respective views on these important questions. The response of the Socialist, then under the editorship of KN Joglekar after the arrest of Dange, was rather timid on the first question and confused on the second. Expressing itself categorically and one-sidedly (i.e., without any reference to demands of objective situation or to reprisals by the government) against “any secret and illegal organizations”, the editorial “Reflections” commented :
“All help could be accepted only on our conditions. ... On these terms even if the government themselves were to come forth with an offer we shall not feel the least hesitation to accept it.
As regards the Third International ... there is no special point in looking to it for help. We do not authentically and authoritatively know anything about it and therefore there is no reason to be specially particular about it.”[5]
These words to please the authorities are sometimes sought to be passed off as ‘tactical’ measures, but actually they illustrate a trend towards surrender of principles to avoid official surveillance and repression (the Kanpur convictions hi this case). It was this political trend that manifested itself, during the early as well as later periods of the communist movement, in many cases of personal betrayals in lock-ups and prisons. Anyway, compared to the response of the Socialist, that of Roy was far more consistent and instructive. So we reproduce extracts from his above-mentioned article of Text III4. On the question of “open or secret” he correctly spells out the general communist guideline : (i) work underground when compelled, (ii) keep up at the same time the fight for legality, (iii) but don't fall prey to legalism, i.e., legality at any cost. In his attack against legalism, however Roy criticises Singaravelu on a wrong point. The latter’s LKPH did not “call itself communist” (as Roy wrongly asserts); by common consent it had purported to be an open mass party working, inside the Congress and it registered negligible progress not because of any “inordinate zeal for legal existence” but owing to other weaknesses and hindrances. In this article (“Should the Commuist Party Be a Secret Society ?”) Roy does not write anything on the question of relations with the Third International, presumably because for him the choice is an obvious affirmative. The question would, however, come up soon enough in the shape of a debate over the name (actually over the outlook — nationalist or inter nationalist) of the party.
Notes:
1. See for details, The Story Behind Moscow-Tashkent Conspiracy Case by SM Mehdi; The Communist Party of India and Its Formation Abroad by Muzaffar Ahmad, and Peshawar to Meerut (Bengali) by Goutam Chattopa-dhyay.
2. The list of 13 person originally accused in the Kanpur case : (1) MN Roy, (2) Muzaffar Ahmad, (3) Shaukat Usmani, (4) Ghulam Hussain, (5) SA Dange, (6) Singaravelu, (7) RL Sharma, (8) Nalini Gupta, (9) Shamuddin Hassan, (10) MRS Velayndhun, (11) Doctor Manilal, (12) Sampurnananda, (13) Satyabhakta.
3. The list of 8 persons in the sessions court: (1) MN Roy, (2) Muzaffar Ahmad, (3) SA Dange, (4) Nalini Gupta, (5)Ghulam Hussain, (6) Singaravelu, (7) Shaukat Usmani, (8) RL Sharma.
4. Here it must be mentioned that nobody has produced any evidences or even hints that Dange ever served actually as a police agent.
5. Cited by G Adhikari, Vol. II, pp 381-82.
The First Communist Conference in India
One of the many curious events hi the history of communism in India was that the credit for organising the historic conference which united the scattered communist groups into one party goes to a person named Satyabhakta who deserted this very party — the CPI — within days after foundation. This Satyabhakta was a former member of a patriotic-terrorist group in UP, and a disillusioned disciple of Gandhi who after the withdrawal of the non-cooperation movement got interested in Soviet Russia and communism. He set up an open “Indian Communist Party” in mid-1924 with a membership, according to his own claim, of 78 persons which grew to 150 by 1925. He felt emboldened to form the party openly when in May 1924 the Public Prosecutor (PP) in the Kanpur Conspiracy Case made a statement to the effect that the accused was being prosecuted not because they held or propagated communist views, but because they conspired to overthrow the government. From this Satyabhakta inferred that a communist party which is open and above board and fully and manifestly Indian, i.e., having no connection with Bolshevism or the Comintern, would not perhaps incur the wrath of the authorities.
The existing communist groups did not take this party seriously (nor did Cecil Kaye, the British intelligence chief, though Satyabhakta was closely watched), but when he announced the decision to organise what he called the “First Indian Communist Conference” in Kanpur late in 1925, they took notice and sat up. Already in jail there was a discussion among them on the propriety or otherwise of holding an open conference to set up the Communist Party on an all-India basis utilising the above-mentioned statement of the PP in the Kanpur case. The idea was Dange’s, so the Bombay group (Dange himself was in jail) co-operated with Satyabhakta and participated wholeheartedly in the Kanpur Conference (25-28 December 1925). Ahmad was against the idea but, released from jail just three months before the conference on the ground of severe tuberculosis, he also attended. Delegates from other places were also present.
The conference was attended by 300 delegates according to the February 1926 number of Kirti (a communist-sponsored Punjabi magazine), though intelligence sources put the figure at 500. The British communist MP Shapurji Saklatvala had sent a short message to the “Congress which I hope will be the beginning of a large and stable Communist movement in India”; this was read out at the first session, followed by the speech of the reception committee chairman Hasrat Mohani (who had raised the famous “Independence Resolution” at the Ahmedabad session of Congress in December 1921). Next came the presidential address by M Singaravelu (see Text VII1 for extracts).
The second session met in the evening of 26 December and adopted the resolutions placed before it by a resolutions committee comprising S V Ghate, Satyabhakta, KN Joglekar (Bombay), JP Bager-hatta, S Hassan (Lahore) and Krishnaswamy (Madras).[1] There was no debate in the conference, but earlier, in the commitee itself, there was a sharp controversy. While all others,[2] following the Comintern norm, were for naming the party as “Communist Party of India”, Satyabhakta smelt a Bolshevik flavour in it and stuck to the name of his own party. He was alone and therefore defeated, but within a few days he founded a new party and to stress his point more conspicucusly, he named it as the “National Communist Party”!
To come back to the conference, the third session on 27th adopted the Constitution (Text III5) and elected the Central Executive Committee. The CEC was to consist of 30 persons, but only 16 were elected, leaving the rest for cooption from different provinces. The next day the CEC met in the President's, i.e., Singaravelu’s camp and elected the office bearers (see Text III6 for names of CEC member and office bearers).
The other documents which we quote in full are : “Resolutions” of the conference (which shows, inter alia, that Singaravelu’s LKPH was dissolved and its organ became the organ of the CPI — see Text III7); the “Declaration Form” to be signed by party members which also contains, on the reverse side, a short summary of the objectives, methods of work, rules etc. of the new party (Text III8) and a Press Communique (Text III9).
These very first set of documents pf the CPI naturally carry many imperfections both on political and organisational questions. For instance, the Party’s “ultimate aim” is defined as “a republican Swaraj of workers and peasants” (according to the Declaration Form) or, in the words of the Constitution, as “... a workers’ and peasants’ republic based on the socialisation of the means of production and distribution by the liberation of India from British imperialist domination.” Here we would rather expect “establishment of classless communist society” or something like that. Similarly, in place of “the immediate object” of “securing a living wage to the workers and peasants by means of nationalisation and municipalisation” of land, factories, houses, railways etc., we would rather expect complete independence, a people’s republic based on universal adult suffrage etc. Such political weaknesses are easy to locate in the president’s speech too; but it gives a better expression to “Our Communist Ideal”, i.e., the ultimate goal and “Our Immediate Aims.” And the document's great merit lies in the attempt to present a popular, living and manifestly Indian explanation of communist ideals, aims and methods. Also noteworthy is its non-dogmatic, broad approach: on many questions of policy and tactics we hear the president give his introductory ideas and then leave the matter for discussion and decisions by the house. The house, however, did not have proper discussion on these questions and hurriedly adopted the resolutions, the Constitution etc. Practically it was only a few leaders and activists who took an active role; the majority were only listeners or even less than that.
Coming to organisational principles and rules, the constitution betrays a very poor understanding of these and fail to learn from the constitution of the communist parties in other countries. Thus it makes “any bonafide worker or peasant” eligible for being a delegate to the highest organ, i.e., the annual conference (Art. 6); allows provincial or even district committees “to frame rules laying down conditions of membership” (Art. 5(a)) and regards affiliated “working class unions” as one of the “component parts of the CPI” (Art. 3(d)).
Yet another weakness of the conference was that even in the days of severe repression and utter lack of democratic rights, it was held openly and elected a totally open leadership vulnerable to enemy attacks. Even if this is attributed to Satyabhakt’s amateurish ideas, the other leaders also cannot be absolved of the same blame in so far as they did not try subsequently to make good the gap and build an underground organisation of professional revolutionaries.
What was the Comintern’s view about the Kanpur conference? At the outset those in the know about the communist movement in India — such as Roy and the leaders of CPGB — were unclear and hesitant about the Kanpur conference organised by a man like Satyabhakta. However, after receiving a report sent by Bagerhatta, Roy accepted the CEC elected at Kanpur as a basis for further work and put forward the following main suggestions or directives on behalf of the Comintern : (a) “the Communist Party of India in the process of formation” should immediately and formally affiliate itself with the CI and repudiate the statements of Satyabhakta, Singaravelu and Hasrat Mohani which gave an opposite impression; (b) “the CPI shall make a UF with the nationalist movement” on the basis of Roy’s “Programme” placed before the Gaya Congress session; (c) “the foreign bureau” (meaning Roy and other Indian communists working abroad under CI auspices — Ed.) to act as “the ideological centre” and “the organ through which the party’s foreign relations will be maintained”; (d) a book shop should be opened and arrangements made for the receipt and distribution of the Masses (brought out by Roy from abroad — Ed.) via Pondicherry and Madras, and (e) there must be no “illusions” about “a legal communist party” — “We must be prepared for attack any moment and organise the party in such a way that an attack on legality will not destroy the party.” Of these suggestions, the fourth was completely implemented and the first and fifth completely ignored. The second and third were partly carried out, i.e. a “united front with the national movement” was attempted, but not on the basis of Roy’s “Programme” and Roy’s group in Moscow was accepted as the “foreign bureau” and “ideological centre”, but on condition that “it will not in any way work inconsistent with the party’s programme and resolutions.” (vide resolution of the Central Executive of the CPI held on 31 May 1927 - see Text III12).
Now we should proceed to examine the historical significance of this conference and its outcome. But before we do that, we ought to utter a word on Satyabhakta. He used to maintain contact with the revolutionary patriotic group HRA, worked among the working class in Kanpur and imported and sold communist literature. In his own way, he sincerely sympathised with communism, but he never grasped the science of Marxism and was too narrowly nationalist (and perhaps too afraid of the repression that even a presumed link with the Comintern would invite) to tolerate international connections and directives. He was one of those transient fellow-travelers of the communist party who are found in every country, particularly during periods of national turmoil. His post-conference “National Communist Party” remained confined to UP and become defunct by 1927. And Satyabhakta the journalist returned to his good old profession.
Notes:
1. Cited by G Adhikari, Vol. II, p 606 from an article by SV Ghate published in New Age weekly dated 6 February, 1966.
2. Including Muzaffar Ahmad, according to his article in New Age monthly of April 1958. This shows that he too was involved in drafting or discussing the resolutions before the conference, though Ghate does not mention him as a member of the resolutions committee. Ghate’s article mentioned above was written, it may be noted here, a little more than a year after the CPI-CPI(M) split.
Party Foundation Day: 26 December, 1925
Despite all these major weaknesses, it was this conference that adopted the first Party Constitution and elected the nucleus of an all-India leadership where all the erstwhile communist circles were represented. This leadership or CEC (minus Satyabhakta who resigned in February 1926 and Bagerhatta who became aware of other comrades’ suspicions about him and resigned hi mid-1927) met irregularly from tune to time till the Meerut arrests (March 1929) and played a commendable role on the working class front and in organising the Workers’ and Peasants’ Parties during this period. If the subjective intentions of AO Hume did not determine the nature of the Congress, this was all the more true in the case of Satyabhakta and the CPI. Satyabhakta’s nationalist attitude was defeated, and the CPI started its journey as a part of the international communist movement. It was, therefore, quite natural that the foundation of the party should be counted form the Kanpur conference, as indeed was decided by the Central Secretariat of the CPI on 19 August, 1959. There was no debate about this, at least in public.
After the CPI-CPI(M) split, however, a peculiar position was taken by Muzaffar Ahmad who sided with the CPI(M). In his Myself and the CPI published in 1969, he describes the Kanpur conference as a “tamasha” and declares the Tashkent formation as “the real date of the foundation of the CPI”. His main logic is that the CPI formed in Tashkent was affiliated to the Comintern and the CPI established in Kanpur was not. Muzaffar thus makes international recognition the sole criterion in determining when and whether a communist party comes into existence, and disregards all other factors like organic links with the mass movements in the country concerned. And on this point also his argument is far from perfect, for as we have seen before, the CPI at Tashkent was indeed registered with the Comintern (with its Turkestan Bureau to be more precise), but the Comintern was not so stupid as to recognise the motley group as a full-fledged party.
However, the question remains as to why did the CPI formed in Kanpur not appeal for affiliation with the Comintern ? Muzaffar Ahmad, who was elected to the CEC in the Kanpur conference, explains this before the CPI-CPI(M) split in this way: “... as the party members did not consider the membership sufficient so they did not apply for the party being affiliated to the CI. All the same, the CI considered the CPI as a part of itself.”[1] Ahmad thus, did not consider non-affiliation as a great crime at that time, as he did after the split. In fact just like his other comrades he took the Kanpur decisions in all seriousness and made a fervent appeal to all “Communists in Bengal” to “come together and build the party” in a statement published in Langal on 21 January,1926.[2]
Without wasting time in explaining Ahmad’s self-contradiction, let us record here our own views on the relevant questions. First, the absence of formal recognition did not prevent the CPI, either during the 1920s or later, from making reports to and seeking advice from the Comintern, which on its part guided and issued directives to the CPI just as it did in relation to other affiliated parties. For all practical purposes, therefore, the CPI acted very much as a part of the international communist movement led by the Comintern. Perhaps there was a subtle tendency, even after the desertion of Satyabhakta, of avoiding an organic relationship with the Comintern, but that falls within the purview of inner-party debates and cannot render the party itself illegitimate.
Second, we regard the entire historical period between the Bolshevik revolution and the second world war as the formative years of the CPI, in the sense that a more or less full-fledged communist party actually developed only in the second half of 1930s after overcoming a prolonged setback by means of rectification of certain political mistakes and reorganisation of the leadership. It is in this total historical context that we take 26 December 1925, when representatives of all the active communist circles of the country met together and adopted the resolutions founding the all-India party, as the foundation of the CPI. If the October Revolution ushered in a brand new stage in national liberation struggles worldwide, for India this general advance was concretely realised — for the first time and therefore in an embryonic form — through this conference. Ideologically this meant a revolutionary leap from petty bourgeois revolutionism to Marxism-Leninism and once this was achieved, the political transition from individual terrorism to mass struggle could not be far behind, as we shall see in Part III.
Notes:
1. Cited by G Adhikari, Vol. II, p 608, from Sama Kaler Katha written by M Ahmad (August 1963)
2. For details, see Ibid., pp 622-23
Third to Fifth Comintern Congresses
The Third Congress
The Third Congress met from June 22 to July 12, 1921 – only three month after the famine-stricken Soviet Land had concluded a peace treaty with Poland and a trade pact with the UK. Under the latter pact, the two countries had undertaken to curb all mutually hostile propaganda, and Soviet Russia in particular agreed to abstain from all propaganda that might provoke the Asian peoples to act against British interests. Either because of this, or because the question had been sufficiently dealt with just a year ago – or for both the reason – the national-colonial question was not placed on the agenda of this Congress. However, it was indirectly discussed in the thesis on the world situation and overall strategy and tactics. In Text II6, we reproduce a paragraph from the said thesis which briefly but ably reaffirms and clarifies the Second Congress class line on national liberation movements. On the last day of the Congress a very short discussion of the “eastern question” was allowed, and this immediately drew a vigorous protest from colonial countries’ delegates and a few others like Andre Julien of the French delegation. Leading them was MN Roy, who said that “The method by which the eastern question is being discussed in this Congress [is] purely opportunistic and more worthy of the Second International.” Pointing out the way the issue was side-tracked (as he felt), he ended his protest with the words:
“... I call upon the Congress to entrust the eastern question once again to a properly constituted commission and consider it with all the seriousness it merits.”[1]
As was to be expected, the last-day, last-minute call did not have at least any practical effect on the Congress.
The Fourth Congress
Whereas the Third Congress was preceded by the crushing of the armed insurrection by German Communists (known as the “March Action”), the immediate backdrop to the Fourth (5 November – 5 December, 1922) was provided by Mussolini’s fascist regime coming to power in Italy just a month ago. With these setbacks in the West, importance of revolutionary East naturally came to be highlighted more and more. Meanwhile, UK-Soviet relations had already deteriorated considerably on account of Soviet involvement in the Turkish problem and there was little reason to take the stipulations of the trade pact too seriously. All this was reflected in the Fourth Congress: two full sessions were allotted to the eastern question and detailed theses on it were discussed and adopted. The main tactical slogans that emanated from this Congress were : (i) for advanced capitalist countries — united working class front against capitalist and fascist offensive, with workers’ government as the most appropriate form of this united front; and (ii) for colonial and semi-colonial countries — united anti-imperialist front to carry forward national liberation movements. In Documents section we reproduce extracts from the Theses on the Eastern Question and from Roy’s report on them (Text II7 and II8 respectively). These two documents have received less than adequate attention from historians and analysts, may be because there was no sensational “debate” as such in this Congress. But together they contribute the following insights into the class configuration in colonies and semi-colonies and the consequent tasks of the proletariat (this despite certain characteristic flaws and exaggerations of Roy) :
1. The theses take note of “the development of native capitalism in the colonies and semi-colonial countries which are outgrowing the narrow framework of imperialist domination thanks to weakened "imperialist pressure” and increased inter-imperialist rivalries. Roy carries the theme further. According to him, there has been a veritable shift in imperialist policy, viz., allowing “sufficient industrial development” in “countries like India and China” so as to solve the problem of market. This represents another step toward Roy’s “decolonisation theory” which we shall have occasion to discuss in the chapter “The Sixth Congress of Comintern” in Part III of this volume.
2. The alliance between the native bourgeoisie, feudal forces and imperialism is pointed out more clearly than in the past, and the economic basis as well as political reasons for the bourgeoisie’s departure form the scene of struggle explained. In the light of recent experience it is analysed why between the native bourgeoisie and the imperialist power there are both compromise and conflict, and why this compromise often turn into conflict and vice versa.
3. As Roy explains, both the compromising “upper layer” and the weak “lower layer” of the native bourgeoisie are incapable of leading national revolutionary movements beyond a certain point. So it cannot be left to the bourgeois parties to organise the united anti-imperialist front and “we have to develop our parties ... in Order to take the lead in the organisation of this front.”
4. In addition to reiterating the cardinal importance of agrarian revolution, the theses provide a very precise and concrete definition of proletarian hegemony in backward countries — “The struggle to secure influence over the peasantry should prepare the proletariat for the role of political leadership”. Only after “this preparatory work” is accomplished, the theses point out, “will it be possible to advance against bourgeois democracy. ...”
In the Fourth Congress deliberations we find the following reference. Whereas Zinoviev, the chairman of the Comintern was all praise for the work done in India, Karl Radek, the General Secretary, gave a more balanced assessment:
“In India we have already an ideological centre; I must say that comrade Roy has succeeded in achieving a big piece of work during the last year in the Marxist interpretation of Indian conditons given in his admirable book and also in his organ.[2] In no other Eastern communist party has this kind of work been done. ... However, it must be admitted that as yet we have not done much in connnection with the great trade union movement in India and the large number of strikes which convulsed the country...[3]
The Fifth Congress
Meeting between 17 June and 8 July, 1924, the Fifth Congress of the Comintern discussed — and adopted a lengthy resolution on — Zinoviev’s report, placed on behalf of the ECCI, on the activities and tactics during the period following the last Congress. In Text II9 we reproduce two paragraphs from this resolution dealing with the national colonial question. Para 18 declared that the ECCI should maintain direct contact with national liberation movements as a whole, but Roy insisted that while supporting such movements, the ECCI’s direct contact should be with the revolutionary elements of the same (see Text II10).
A “Report on the National Colonial Question” was also placed before the Congress by Dmitri Manuilsky, who headed the Colonial Commission constituted by the Fifth Congress. Roy was one of the members of the commission, and a debate which took place there was brought before the delegates both by Roy and Manilsky (see items 10, 11 and 12 of Text II).
Fifth Extended Plenum of ECCI
This plenum, held between 21 March and 6 April, 1925, was for India no less important than a regular congress. Among other things, the plenum sought to concretise the Fourth Congress guidelines on the colonial question. In a Colonial Commission constituted for the purpose, detailed reports were heard from countries like India, China, Egypt etc., and specific resolutions adopted on these countries, which were then endorsed by the Political Commission and adopted at the plenum. We reproduce in Text II13 that part of the plenum resolution which deals with India. We also reproduce a section of a speech delivered by Stalin on 18 May, 1925, at the University of the Peoples of the East (Moscow), for it seeks to explain and extend the Fifth Plenum decisions on colonial countries, with special reference to India (Text II14). The plenum resolution refers to the differentiation of the indigenous bourgeoisie and its political groupings, but does not say that a section of it “has already rallied to the side of imperialism”, as Stalin opines. The resolution, therefore, calls upon the Indian communists specifically to work within the Congress and the Swaraj Party and recommends that “All Nationalist organisations should be formed into a mass revolutionary party and an all-India anti-imperialist bloc.” On the other hand, Stalin’s analysis of a clear division in the Indian bourgeoisie leads him naturally to advocate “concentrated attack upon the reformist section” and the formation of a “revolutionary, anti-imperialist coalition” led by the proletariat in cooperation with the “revolutionary section of the native bourgeoisie”. Both the Plenum and Stalin, of course, stressed the consolidation of the communist party and ‘accepted’ the idea of a workers’ and peasants’ party.
How are we to assess the Comintern debates on national colonial question and which of the conflicting positions are we to support? Let us judge this question in the light of actual Indian experience during the period covered by Second to Fifth Congresses, i.e., 1920 to 1924.
Notes:
1. Cited by G Adhikari, Vol. I, pp 266-67 from Third Congress of the Communist International, Stenographic Report (Rusian, p 472.)
2. The book refers to India In Transition and the organ is The Vanguard of Indian Independence.
3. See Fourth Congress of the Communist International, Abridged Report -Communist Party of Great Britain, London, p 224
Comintern Debates And The Indian Reality
We have already surveyed the Indian scene upto February 1922, i.e., upto the withdrawal of the non-cooperation movement on the pretext of Chauri-Chaura. To the enthused fighters this came as a rude shock, but actually there was nothing sudden about it. As RP Dutt[1] showed, the retreat was being contemplated since the days of the Ahmedabad session itself (December 1921). Clearly the Congress leadership, representing first and foremost the interests of Indian landlords and capitalists, was finding it increasingly difficult to digest the broad sweep of people’s movements. That was why the Bardoli resolution calling off the movement resented not only Chauri-Chaura but also the “hooliganism” of working class in Bombay and elsewhere, emphatically and repeatedly forbade non-payment of taxes and sought to allay the fears of zamindars. After the tragic withdrawal, utter confusion and demoralisation set in within and without the Congress organisation, its membership nose-dived and the great communal amity achieved during the non-cooperation-Khilafat movement yielded place to large scale riots (Delhi, Calcutta, Dacca, Rawalpindi and many places in UP). Without a doubt, this classic case of class betrayal proved a point Roy was repeatedly emphasising, viz., the utterly compromising character of the national leadership and the great harm it had done to the movement.
But there was another side to it which Roy recognised abstractly, yet failed to draw political conclusions from. This was the aspect of continuation of struggle, though at a lower pitch, in changed forms and often at the instance of other sections of the leadership. Thus after the collapse of non-cooperation and imprisonment of Gandhi the very next month, there arose within the Congress the Swaraj Party which opted for a new form of struggle: entering the legislative assemblies to expose their limitations, block their functioning and thus wreck them from within. Since this envisaged a change of the tactic of boycotting elections and the councils so far pursued by the Congress, this new pressure-group of old Congressmen like CR Das and Motilal Nehru came to be known as “pro-changers”. Orthodox Gandhians who opposed this move — such as Vallabbhai Patel and Rajendra Prasad — began to be called “no-changers”; they advocated devoting all energy to Gandhian “constructive work”. The Swarajists quickly gained prominence within the Congress despite an initial opposition from Gandhi, who then made a compromise and in 1925 handed over the organisational reins of Congress to the former, himself setting up an “All India Spinners' Association” to concentrate on constructive work.
Both these wings of Congress carried on work in their respective fields. The Swarajists scored resounding successes in the elections, held in November 1923, to the Central Legislative Assembly (winning 42 out of 101 elected seats) and the Provincial Assemblies in Bengal, Central Provinces, UP and Bombay. Now the legislatures had, after the reforms introduced under the Government of India Act, 1919, a majority of elected members in them, but no control on the executives, which were responsible only to London. Besides, the Governors (in the provinces) and the Viceroy (at the Centre) had full power to certify and pass any bill, including a budgetary grant, even if it was rejected in the legislature. The Swarajists formed blocs with like-minded groups and individuals in the legislatures and embarrassed the government by compelling it to resort to this supposedly exceptional measure as a rule. Government proposals, particularly the demands for budgetary grant, were repeatedly voted out, and Vithalbhai Patel, the leader of the Central Assembly, curtly told the government on one such occasion : “We want you to carry on the administration of this country by veto and by certification. We want you to treat the Government of India Act as a scrap of paper which I am sure it has proved to be”.[2] Apart from this scathing exposure of dyarchy, the Swarajist legislators used their oratorial powers to propagate the causes of (i) constitutional reform towards self-government, (ii) civil liberties including release of political prisoners and (iii) development of indigenous industries.[3] Regularly reported in newspapers, these obstructionist activities and speeches kept the political atmosphere alive, at least for the educated. Before long, however, deviations like hankering after official patronage and status were to be noticed, and there emerged a “Responsivist” trend which opted for a policy shift from the original aim of obstructing government work to acceptance of executive posts. The prestige and appeal of Swarajists declined, and they fared not so well in the 1926 elections.
The “no-changers” were in the mean time either conducting localised satyagrahas or carrying on rural constructive work. Of the former, the more important ones were : at Nagpur, against a local order banning the use of Congress flag (mid-’23); at Borsad in Gujrat, against a poll-tax imposed ostensibly to support the cost of special police measures against dacoities (1923-24); at Travancore, for allowing low-caste Ezhavas and untouchables to approach the Vaikom temple (1924-25). Of these, the Borsad satyagraha, led by Vallabbhai Patel, was the most successful. As regards constructive work, the main items were promotion of khadi and other cottage crafts, relief work during floods and famines, setting up national schools, anti-liquor campaigns, primary education and other social work among Harijans and low castes and so on. To be sure, these were ineffective in providing real solutions to the burning economic and social problems, but they greatly extended and solidified the social base of the nationalist bourgeoisie — as bourgeois reforms always and everywhere do — and this was proved later when the areas of intensive constructive work (Kheda and Borsad areas in Gujrat, for example) came up as solid Congress bases during the next wave of pitched battles (1930-34).
In this way, shortly after crying halt to the militant mass movements, the Congress through its two mutually complimentary streams of activities were preparing the ground for the next round of fight. This point Roy missed miserably. He correctly stated that the compromise between imperialism and the national bourgeoisie might turn into struggle in future (see Text II8), but failed to realise that often struggle resided within compromise in a changed form, and hence it was necessary to render positive, albeit critical, support to the nationalist movement even during its phase of compromise and decline. Therefore, the Fifth Congress directive that the ECCI should maintain direct relations with national liberation movements as a whole appears to be quite correct in the light of Indian experience; the same is true also regarding the general thrust of the Second to Fifth Congress decisions. The Indian case was particularly prospectful because the National Congress was more a movement than a party, and in the various phases of development it had to accommodate more to less conspicuous left trend and personalities that were more amenable to radicalism or communist influence. The Bolshevik revolution had been immediately hailed in no uncertain terms by Tilak (January 1918 — in Kieyari), Bipin Chandra Pal (in a speech in 1919 where he firmly supported the policies and measures of the Soviet State) and Lajpat Rai (in the President’s speech to the first AITUC conference in October 1920). This pro-Soviet left wing within the Indian national movement would later be taken over and developed by Jawaharlal Nehru, and this would remain a long-term challenge as well as invitation to communists for united front work.
We shall return to the theme later; we shall also take up an assessment of Roy's theory on industrialisation in colonial India at an appropriate place. For the present, let it be noted that the last of the Comintern deliberations so far discussed i.e., those of the Fifth Extended Plenum, (Text II13) gave a fairly correct appraisal of the Indian political scene in 1925. The “big bourgeois parties” refer mainly to the “Indian Liberal Federation” set up in 1918 by breakaway “moderates” from the Congress and also to the loyalist “Independents” and those who, from within and without the Swaraj Party, advocated “responsive cooperation” with the British government by accepting offices in legislatures. As against this right extreme, the left pole of “revolutionary mass movements” was represented by communists. In between, there were the “small centre groups” into which the Swaraj Party was then “tending to decompose” after more than a year of empty speeches at legislatures — a process that was more or less completed in June 1925 with the death of CR Das. The differentiation of political forces of the bourgeoisie was, however, hi a very fluid state and therefore extremely confusing. There was no consistent group comparable to Sun Yat-Sen’s in China, and Stalin’s clear-cut division of “a revolutionary fraction and a compromising or reformist fraction” never showed up in the shape of distinct political parties or groupings. In fact, the comparatively left elements that emerged from the small and middle bourgeoisie were, for all their occasional outbursts against Gandhian compromises, successfully kept within Congress confines. This was true not only for the period upto 1925 but for the entire history of colonial India. The correct Comintern slogan of broad anti-imperialist united front, therefore, remained a particularly complicated task for the Indian communists. All the same, they addressed themselves quite seriously to this task.
Notes:
1. See India Today, op. cit., pp 346-53
2. Cited in Role of Central Legislature in the Freedom Struggle by Monoranjan Jha, (New Delhi, 1972); p 82
3. This effort succeeded in securing discriminating protection for Tata Steel in 1924 and helped to further develop the links between Indian capitalists and the Congress.
The National Scene And Early Communist Propaganda
Any account of communist literary work in India has to start with SA Dange’s Gandhi Vs. Lenin, written in April 1921 and published openly from Bombay in the middle of the same year. We already have had occasion to discuss this book. Shortly after the formation of “CPI” in Tashkent-Moscow, communist pamphlets (e.g., India in Transition, What Do We Want and a few others by MN Roy) and journals (e.g., International Press Correspondence or Inprecor for short, a biweekly in English, German and French published by the Comintern from Berlin since October 1921; the Vanguard of Indian Independence, later renamed as Vanguard, published by Roy under Comintern auspices from May 1922) started being smuggled into India. Since many of them were confiscated or proscribed by the police, they had only limited effect on the emerging movement in India. So we are dealing only briefly with them.
One of the earliest Marxist analyses on India penned by an Indian communist was published in the Communist International (monthly organ of the Comintern) No. 3,1921 (December 1,1921). Written most probably by MN Roy, (signed ‘N’) the article “Present Events in India” is manifestly an attempt to implement the guideline of Lenin's Colonial Theses on supporting national liberation movements. Calling attention to the tremendous upsurge in mass movements during August-November 1921, the very first paragraph declares: “The agrarian movement, the proletarian movement and the nationalist movement are moving concertedly towards one object, national Independence, under the guidance of the All India National Congress, which is the acknowledged head today of the Indian struggle against British rule.” The author writes quite approvingly about Gandhi and his programme: “At first sight, Gandhi appears a mad prophet of peace and nonresistance. But closer examination of his utterances and tactics convinces one that he has deliberately chosen the only road open to Indian patriots under the present regime of force — the preaching of non-violent non-cooperation with the present government.”[1] And so on with practically no criticism, save a complaint about the “lack of scientific understanding of the various social forces” and neglect of trade union movement and agrarian struggles.
A much more critical, yet by no means sectarian, analysis of the same theme appeared in the form of a “Manifesto to the 36th Indian National Congress Ahmedabad, 1921”.[2] (see text VI2). Later it became the first chapter of the book — One Year of Non-Cooperation — From Ahmedabad to Gaya, authored by MN Roy and Evelyn Roy and published abroad in 1923. Despite certain extreme statements characteristic of Roy (e.g., that the exploited masses do not ask for “political autonomy” or that “it does not make any difference to them to which nationality the exploiter belongs”), the manifesto remains the best early model for united front effort. It analyses why the old “moderate” Congress had “landed in political bankruptcy”, welcomes the advent of the “new congress” or “non-cooperation party” with the slogan of “Swaraj within a year”, and forcefully points out how to rouse the toiling masses on their economic demands for realisation of this slogan. As noted earlier, the appeal was sent to India and distributed among the delegates to the Congress session.
The “Manifesto” was followed by a series of articles in Inprecor. such as:
Revolutionary India — Shramendra Karsan (probably MN Roy); 20 December, 1921. It reiterates the ideas put forward in the “Manifesto”.
The Indian Trade Union Congress – MN Roy; 3 January 1922. It reports on the second session of AITUC held in Jharia (Bihar) at the end of 1921. We reproduce brief extracts from this and the following article, for they represent pioneering attempts to analyse and link up with the Indian labour movement. (Texts Via and VI3 and VI4).
The Revolt of Labour in India — Shrarnendra Karsan; 14 February, 1922.
The Political Crisis in India — Shramendra Karsan; 17 March 1922. It gives an overall account of the Indian scene after the arrest of Gandhi.
The Awakening of India — Evelyn Roy, 5 May, 1922. It is a sort of continuation of the article just mentioned, and we reproduce a portion which seeks to make a positive critique of Gandhism without hurting the people's sentiments for the arrested leader (Text VI5).
Before we go over to Vanguard articles, mention must be made of Roy’s theoretical treatise India in Transition written in 1921 and published the next year. This book provides an able theoretical elaboration of Roy's conviction that the post-war industrialisation of India, made possible bjf a shift in imperialist policy, has led the Indian bourgeoisie away from the freedom movement into the arms of its imperialist mentor. We will take up the discussion of this theory elsewhere; suffice it to note here that in those days the book was internationally recognised as an advanced Marxist work dealing with a very pertinent question: how to explain, and what political conclusions to be derived from, the indisputable fact of remarkably accelerated pace of industrialisation in India? The Comintern took care to publish the book almost simultaneously in three languages – English (original), German and Russian; and this despite everybody’s knowledge that Roy’s views on the “colonial question” ran counter to Lenin’s on many points (Roy himself commented later in his Memoirs that his purpose in writing this book was “to convince Lenin of the correctness of my view.”). As EMS Namboodiripad correctly observes, Roy’s conclusions were wrong, but he “had made a detailed study of the Indian situation. And he set a new tradition of using the methodology of Marxism-Leninism to analyse and assess the Indian situation.”[3] In many ways it was a forerunner of RP Dutt's Modern India published 4 years later (not of Dutt's India Today (1940), as comrade EMS states mistakenly.[4])
Now for the early Vanguard articles, which included:
- Editorial of Vol I, No. 1: Our Object, 15 May, 1922 (Text VI6)
- Economic Basis of Politics (A note on the Bardoli resolution which cried halt to the non-cooperation movement and asked ryots to pay rent to Zamindars) : Ibid.
- Mr. Gandhi – An Analysis, Part I arid Part II – Santi Devi[5]; 15 May and 15 June, 1922 issues respectively. Text VI7 reproduces excerpts from both Parts of this very interesting article by a woman communist who in the mid-twenties complained about the internal bickerings of Indian comrades and left politics for good.
- How Revolution Spreads (Lenin’s article on the tenth anniversary of Pravda. 1912-22); 1 July 1922
- Participation in the Councils – Editorial, 5 July 1922
- Notes and Comments — “A clever Enemy” (Concession to plantation workers promised by authorities); “Noble Sentiments” (J Nehru’s statement in court on his second arrest) : “Bewildered Leadership” (on C Rajagopalachari's article in Young India) - 15 July, 1922
- Irish Tragedy – Editorial, 1 August 1922
- Labour Organisation — Editorial, 15 August 1922
- Civil Disobedience - Editorial, 1 September 1922
From this sample survey it is evident that the coverage of the magazine was quite broad. It also included regular columns like Press Review and Books to Read apart from articles and Notes and comments. The print quality, get-up etc. were of a high standard. It appeared as The Advance Guard from October 1922 to February 1923 to avoid persecution by the police, after which it reappeared with its original name. According to Cecil Kaye, the magazine influenced a good number of left-wing magazines in Indian languages, such as Dhumketu (Bengali), Vartaman (Hindi), Navayugam (Telugu) as well as the English Weekly Socialist of SA Dange.
The Socialist appeared as a weekly from early August to December end of 1922 and then as a monthly upto February 1924, when Dange was arrested and the magazine became irregular and then stopped. Being the “first Magazine of International Socialism” to be published in India, it attracted the attention of friends and foes alike. SS Mirajkar and SV Ghate of Bombay actively joined Dange, while Muzaffar Ahmad of Calcutta, Singaravelu Chettiar from Madras and MN Roy from Berlin wrote letters congratulating the Socialist. The limited but important role played by the paper was later narrated by Dange in the following words:
“At this stage, whatever problems of political line or ideology confronted the Indian communists, they had hardly any organ or organisation in which they could discuss them. The Socialist, which was the only paper we published in India and was edited by me from 1922 to 1924, was not in a position to handle such question for various reasons. It depended on literature sent by the representative of the ECCI [i.e., MN Roy] or the Inprecor for its ‘line’ and the material for it. But that did not help much as most of the material that was sent fell into the hands of British intelligence. We, however, found means to publish the Communist Manifesto of 1848 and Wage Labour and Capital and some ten other books and pamphlets in Bombay in 1922-23”[6].
The theoretical standard of the Socialist was visibly much lower than the Vanguard. But it bore evidence of a more intimate connection with the working class movement in and around Bombay (see Text VI8). We also reproduce a commentary on the Akali movement (Text VI9).
A little more than a year after the launching of the Socialist, the Labour Kisan Gazette was started by Singaravelu in Madras towards the end of December 1923. The fortnightly continued only for four months. We reproduce in Text VI14 a specimen of its contents : a homage to Lenin on his death in early 1924. The Gazette used to contain good articles and notes on the major issues of national politics and also good analyses on working class movement at local and all-India levels. It declared itself to be “A Fprtnightly Journal of Indian Communism”, though practically it acted as the organ of the LKPH founded on 1 May, 1923. Singaravelu also published a Tamil weekly Thozhilali (Labourer) during 1923-24.
Among Indian language communist magazines, mention must be made of the Urdu Inquilab (Revolution) which was published from Lahore only for a few months during 1922; the Bengali Langal (Plough) and the Punjabi Kirti (Worker) – about these two highly successful magazines started in late 1925 and early 1926 respectively, we will discuss in the next part of this volume.
The Vanguard continued upto 15 December and then from 1 January 1925 it was replaced by the Masses of India (Masses for short). In Texts VI12 to VI16 we reproduce extracts from a selection of articles and notes on important political events during 1923-25, published in various magazines mentioned above.
Notes:
1. See G Adhikari, Vol. I, pp 323-37.
2. The Ahmedabad session of INC was held at the fag end of December 1921.
3. See A History of Indian Freedom Struggle, Social Scientist Press, (Trivandrum, 1986); p 313.
4. Ibid., p 312
5. Pseudonym of Evelyn Roy, wife of MN Roy until they separated in the mid twenties.
6. When Communists Differ by SA Dange, PPH (Bombay, 1970) pp 38-39.