FOR the Congress, Quit India was the last exercise in mass struggle. As the war came to a victorious end against fascism, British imperialism found itself considerably weakened. To prevent any repetition of a mass upsurge on the Quit India scale and best preserve their long-term interests in India, Britain quickly initiated the process of negotiations for the eventual transfer of power. Indian capitalists were also in great hurry to have an early transfer primarily because they were afraid that delay would only raise the profile of the working class and the communists in the future alignment of forces in free India. The fear of a revolution was quite real both for British imperialists and their would-be Indian successors.

But with the Congress having long got isolated from the broad Muslim masses in Bengal and Punjab and the Muslim League having consolidated its position through successive rounds of negotiations – of course, with generous encouragement from the British pastmasters of the divide-and-rule strategy – the logic of the negotiations led inexorably to the carving out of a Muslim-majority Pakistan. Every Congress leader could see this happening and it was ironic that Gandhi, the man who was known all along as the “dictator of the Congress” and whose greatest forte was his magical ability to arouse and control the masses, found himself cast away as a lonely dissenter by the cruel turn of history.

Perhaps the only way Partition could have been avoided was by changing the very terms of discourse and the balance of forces. Such an alternative was not historically impossible and the series of communist-led mass upsurges did brilliantly hold out such a promise. After the ill-conceived isolation of 1942, communists were soon back in mass action in a big way. With exemplary zeal and dedication, the Communist Party organised massive relief operations in the wake of the severe 1943 famine. Mention must be made here of the excellent role played in this relief work as well as in all subsequent mass upsurges by the communist-led progressive cultural activists of the Indian People's Theatre Association.

In an increasingly communally surcharged situation when almost all established leaders were busy angling for their own loaves of power, the working people marching and fighting under the great red banner were the only force to uphold the ideals of communal harmony and secularism, selfless sacrifice and progressive anti-imperialist nationalism.