HISTORY OF THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN

INDIA

VOLUME I
 This is the first in a series of volumes on the History of the

Communist Movement in India.

This series has been prepared by the History Commission of the

Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

th
The History Commission was set up by the 17 Congress of the CPI

(M) held at Hyderabad from March 19 to 24, 2002.

Members of the History Commission:

HARKISHAN SINGH SURJEET

JYOTI BASU

E. K. N AY A N A R

P. RAMACHANDRAN

K O R ATA L A S A T Y A N A R AY A N A

ANIL B I S WA S
 HISTORY

OF THE

COMMUNIST

MOVEMENT

IN INDIA

The Formative Years

1920–1933

CPI (M) Publications

in association with
Print edition first published in April 2005

E-book published in March 2017

LeftWord Books in association with CPI(M) Publications

LeftWord Books

2254/2A Shadi Khampur

New Ranjit Nagar

New Delhi 110008

INDIA

LeftWord Books is the publishing division of

Naya Rasta Publishers Pvt. Ltd.

leftword.com

© 2005, Communist Party of India (Marxist)

ISBN 000-00-00000-00-0 (e-book)

 CONTENTS

Preface

1 Introduction

2 Formation of the Communist Party

3 Spread of Communist Activities

4 Kanpur Communist Conference

5 Workers’ and Peasants’ Parties

6 Sixth Congress of the Comintern

7 New Upsurge

8 The Meerut Trial

9 Towards an All-India Centre

10 Summing Up

Notes

Biographical Notes
HARKISHAN SINGH SURJEET

PREFACE
THE INDIAN COMMUNIST MOVEMENT HAS a long and rich

history, and it continues to grow steadily, intervening in the day-to-

day developments of the country. The communist movement focuses

on sharpening the class struggle against the dictatorship of the

bourgeois-landlord class led by the big bourgeoisie. It seeks to

mobilize the people against the imperialist onslaught of neo-liberal

globalization and in defence of India’s secular social fabric. The

resilience of the Indian communist movement can be seen from the

fact that it was able to withstand the crisis resulting from the collapse

of the Soviet Union, when imperialism was triumphantly declaring

‘the end of history’ and many communist parties around the world

responded by repudiating their pasts and even changing their names.

The communist movement in India not only stood its ground, but has

also made important gains. Today, it has emerged as a significant force

in the politics of the country.

In the present complicated situation prevailing in our country,

communist ideology has influenced, directly and indirectly, the

struggles of various sections of the toiling masses, including the

working class, peasantry, middle class employees, etc. The Left Front

headed by the CPI (M) in West Bengal has been in government

uninterruptedly for the last 27 years. The measures undertaken by the

Left Front governments in the realm of land reforms and

decentralizing power through the Panchayati Raj institutions are

unique. In Tripura also, people of the state have reposed their faith in

the Left Front for the third successive term in the 2003 elections, while

in Kerala we have been in and out of government, but always a

significant force. The mass organizations in which our members are

working and are in leading positions have increased their membership

and influence tremendously. Though the growth of the party

organization is uneven in the country, its prestige, both nationally and

internationally, has grown.

The communist movement in India has grown out of and along with

the spontaneous and organized struggles of the people of India against

exploitation and imperialist domination. The growth of the

communist movement is recorded in documents which can broadly be

classed into four types: (i) academic research; (ii) reminiscences of

veteran communist leaders; (iii) works which are avowedly anti-

communist; and (iv) compilation of select documents of the

communist and left movement. We have taken note of all such

available materials.

In the life of every Communist Party, writing its own history is at

the same time a necessary and difficult task. It not only educates the

comrades but also presents an opportunity for the entire Party to look

back over a long stretch of time and see in retrospect the highs and

lows of the movement. It helps us in preparing for the future which we

believe belongs to the proletariat. The study of the history of our

movement enriches us with the experiences of the relentless struggle

for national liberation and revolutionary transformation of society

which helps to sharpen our political understanding. The discourse on

history is an effective tool in our ideological struggle. It is for this

reason that the Programme of the CPI (M), updated in October 2000,

begins by outlining the main landmarks of the history of the

communist movement in India.

It is our experience that all over the world, the study of Party

history becomes a kind of political-organizational task during the time

of sharp ideological struggles. It’s interesting that as early as in 1938

the then Bengal Provincial Committee of the undivided CPI took a

decision to write the history of the communist movement in India.

Though the decision couldn’t be implemented, it reveals the long

history of our Party initiative of writing the history of communist

movement.

We found an increased interest of the party ranks in the history of

our movement at the time of our historic inner-party struggle against

the revisionist and ‘left’ adventurist tendencies during the 1960s and

70s.Though not drafted by any Party Commission, the writings of

comrades Muzaffar Ahmad, P. Sundaryya, E.M.S. Namboodiripad,

Saroj Mukherjee, and others are undoubtedly important contributions

to the communist literature on the history of class struggle in the sub-

continent. We owe much to such publications in writing this volume.

 However, none of these publications can be compared to this

compre-hensive work undertaken by the History Commission of the

Party. There has been a long-felt need and demand for a work to

enable the younger generations to acquaint themselves with the

history and heritage of the movement. It is primarily to fulfill this need

th
that a resolution was adopted at the 17 Congress of CPI (M) held at

Hyderabad (Andhra Pradesh) from March 19 to 24, 2002 and the

Party set up a Commission, headquartered in Kolkata, to write the

history of the communist movement in India.

It should be mentioned that the West Bengal State Committee of the

CPI (M) has already brought out a multi-volume collection of

documents relating to the communist movement in the country which

has helped us a lot. Some of the materials were also supplied by

various State Committees of the Party in the form of notes and

documents which have also been consulted with due care.

The publication of the history of the communist movement in India,

drafted by a Party Commission, at this juncture is also important for

another reason. Communism, all over the world, is under attack not

only from capitalism but also from fundamentalists of all hues. In our

own country, communalism, which draws its ideological sustenance

from the rotten remnants of feudalism and material sustenance from

its alliance with capitalism, has launched an all out effort of distorting

the basic facts of Indian history. In an era when international

capitalism sponsors fundamentalist terrorism to destroy mass

movements, it is not surprising that in our own country the most

vociferous proponents of Fund-Bank globalization are the same people

who are trying to give Indian history a definite obscurantist look.

The Commission looked back on the path of development of the

communist movement in the country and decided to publish the

history in five volumes. Starting with the early days of development of

popular resistance movements in British India, each volume will

record an important epoch in the development of the Party. The first

volume thus starts with a brief sketch of the major resistance

 th
movements from the mid-19 century and traces how ideas of

Marxism started penetrating the Indian mind.

This volume shows how the anti-feudal struggles of the colonial

period provided inspiration to the first anti-imperialist struggles in the

country, how these struggles gradually took the form of organized

movements, and how the communists absorbed the finest qualities and

elements of these anti-imperialist struggles. The pioneering

communists made great sacrifices in those early days of the movement.

The evolution of the correct line for the communist movement and its

relationship to the freedom struggle was not easy, and was achieved

through a long struggle. This volume records how the communists

came to occupy a special position in the freedom movement, by

foregrounding not only the struggle against foreign domination, but

also against class exploitation. The volume ends with the year 1933

when, after the Meerut Conspiracy Case, definite and unified steps

were taken for the formation of a central committee of the Party on

the basis of a programmatic understanding.

Were it not for the tremendous efforts made by the West Bengal State

Committee of the Party and the comrades assisting the Commission in

Kolkata, undertaking this gigantic task would not have been possible.

As mentioned above, the West Bengal State Committee has already

published in many volumes the documents of the Party since its

formation in Tashkent in 1920. For this project of writing the history

of the communist movement, they provided a team of academicians

and research assistants, who through their painstaking work have

made this volume possible. This team consisted of Anjan Bera,

Susnata Das, Debasish Chakraborty, Shyamal Sengupta and Subhasish

Ghosh. In Delhi, Indira Chandrasekhar, Kitty Menon and Anubhuti

Maurya assisted in copy-editing the book, Moloyashree Hashmi

prepared the Index, and Sudhanva Deshpande of LeftWord Books

oversaw its production.

In addition to the comrades who worked and continue to work on

the project, a number of people, many of them outside the fold of the
Party, also helped in numerous ways to make this endeavour a success.

The Commission, on behalf of the CPI (M), wishes to place on record

its gratefulness and appreciation of all such assistance received.

April 2005 Harkishan Singh Surjeet

New Delhi General Secretary

Communist Party of India (Marxist)

 ONE

INTRODUCTION
THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN INDIA emerged out of and

developed in close connection with the anti-imperialist and democratic

struggles of the Indian people, dating back to almost a century. Over

these years, the revolutionary urge of the Indian people has manifested

itself in anti-imperialist resistance, working-class struggles, peasant

revolts, general democratic struggles, and movements for social

reform. The finest elements from among these joined the communist

movement. Thus, the communist movement arose in India in the

course of the struggle for national liberation, which in turn was part

of the anti-imperialist upsurge across the globe, especially after the

end of the First World War.

The October Revolution of 1917 opened a new chapter in the

history of humankind. It led to a great awakening among working

people all across the world, which culminated in the founding of the

Communist International in 1919. It also cleared the ground for the

formation of communist parties in a number of colonized countries,

like India, China and Persia. Peoples of the colonies readily responded

to the emancipatory appeal of communism.

The emancipatory appeal of communism

The October Revolution was an event of great historic importance,

which ushered in a new era in the transition from capitalism to

socialism. Lenin’s declaration of support to the national liberation

struggles drew the attention of the people fighting for national

liberation all over the world. The formation of the Communist

International in 1919 and the adoption of Lenin’s Colonial Theses in

its Second Congress gave a new direction and strength to the national

liberation movement. The Colonial Theses exposed the miserable and

inhuman conditions of the people of the colonial countries under

imperialist rule and called upon them to fight for complete

independence by uniting all the patriotic forces, with the working class

and peasants playing an important role in this. It called for the unity

of the working class in imperialist countries with the people fighting

for liberation in the interests of both. The Colonial Theses became a

new charter in the struggle of colonial and semi-colonial countries

giving a new fillip to the struggle against imperialism as well as linking

it up with the struggle for socialism.

Lenin had pointed to the global nature of imperialism by likening it

to a chain. It was assumed before Lenin that socialist revolutions

would occur in the advanced capitalist countries, where the

contradiction between the means of production and the relations of

production had sharpened. Lenin argued that since imperialism was

like a chain, it would snap at the weakest link – the relatively

backward imperialist nations. The October Revolution in Tsarist

Russia vindicated Lenin’s understanding. Moreover, in many colonies

and semi-colonies as well, the working class and the peasantry were

able to wrest the leadership of the national liberation struggle, taking

it from the stage of bourgeois democratic revolution to socialist

revolution – China, Vietnam, Korea, and later Cuba are examples of

this. The process of colonies and semi-colonies achieving

independence, and in some instances socialism, was also aided by the

victory over fascism, which would have been impossible without the

Soviet Union’s heroic role.

To understand the emergence and growth of the communist

movement in India, we need to look at the social and economic

conditions of India in the colonial period.

Caste and class divisions

Historians and archaeologists now accept the fact of a developed

Indian civilization in ancient times. Agriculture was the mainstay of

the ancient Indian economy. However, trade and commerce, both

inland and overseas, also flourished, as did village industries, science

and astronomy, mining and metallurgy, arts and crafts, literature and

culture. The main articles of export through the major ports were

indigo, perfumes, spices, pepper, pearls, precious stones, ivory,

sandalwood, gold and gems from the south, silk and muslins from

Bengal and Banaras, saffron and musk from the hills, while the items

of import were metals, gold, silver, coral and horses. The fabled
wealth of the subcontinent attracted a number of invaders over the

centuries. Overall, until 1813 India had been chiefly an exporting

country, while British rule made it an importing one.

The village community system prevailed for centuries with the

exploitation of the lower strata of peasantry and a large number of

rural labourers through the institution of caste. The feudal system

took roots in the sixth-seventh centuries though it kept evolving over a

much longer period, and the institution of caste consolidated in that

period. Caste is, without doubt, one of the most complex social

institutions in the world, as well as one of the most resilient. There is a

great deal of debate among scholars on the caste system, its essential

features, its historical trajectory, etc. Without getting into that debate,

one could describe caste as a system that places each jati in a

hierarchical relationship with other jatis, and where the members of

each jati are bound together by varying degrees of occupational

identity, common rites and customs, and taboos on marriage or eating

outside the group. The old assumption of a rigid and unchanging

hierarchy of castes today stands rejected by nearly all scholars. Over

the centuries, the caste system has evolved, changed, mutated, and

individual jatis have often moved up or down the hierarchy, but one

feature has remained constant: the ruling classes have found the caste

system a useful tool in perpetuating their rule.

The nineteenth century witnessed a number of caste-based reform

movements as well as revolts. E.M.S. Namboodiripad states that caste

associations and movements at that time were ‘the first form in which

1
the peasant masses rose in struggle against imperialism’. As a

historian puts it:

On the whole . . . the more effective caste movements in [this]

period tended to be connected with intermediate ranks, below the

twice-born and above the untouchables, and usually included

considerable landed or rich peasant elements with the capacity to

produce urban educated groups. In Maharashtra and Madras, clear-

cut brahman domination over the services and general cultural life
 was already leading to anti-brahmanical movements by the end of

the century. The anti-brahman tocsin was first sounded in

Maharashtra in the 1870s by Jotiba Phule with his book, Gulamgiri

(1872) and his organization, the Satyashodhak Samaj (1873), which

proclaimed the need to save the ‘lower castes from the hypocritical

brahmans and their opportunistic scriptures’. Started by an urban-

educated member of the lowly mali (gardening) caste, this

movement later struck some roots among the predominantly

2
peasant Maratha caste-cluster.

Similarly the ‘untouchable’ Ezhavas of Kerala were inspired by

Nanu Asan (Sri Narayan Guru, 1854–1928) to attack brahman

domination, demand entry into temples, and also to ‘Sanskritize’ some

3
of their customs. Incidentally, a large number of Ezhavas became

firm supporters of communists in Kerala later. These are of course

only two of the numerous examples of caste-based assertion in the

colonial period.

Peasant and tribal revolts

Virtually from the beginning of the British conquest of India,

peasant struggles occurred in different parts of the country. Some

struggles posed a serious challenge to the British. For instance, in the

eighteenth century, the rebellions of Sanyasis and Fakirs (1776), and

the Chuar Rebellion (1799) by a section of the adivasis broke out in

eastern India. These were sparked off by the 1770 famine and the

death and devastation it caused. Inhuman methods were employed by

the British to collect revenue despite the death of more than one-third

of the population, in the years immediately following the famine.

Many such struggles were spontaneous in character, and were fought

locally. In several cases, these began with limited immediate demands,

but soon trans-formed into battles against landlordism and British

authority.
 The peasants fought with courage. Irrespective of the issues which

provoked the struggles initially, they became struggles against

feudalism and imperialism. However, these spontaneous, militant

upsurges lacked direction and organization, and in many cases,

remained localized or bound within a given community. In the end,

they could not match the might of the colonial state despite their

courage. Yet, it should not be forgotten that many of the struggles

won important demands. For instance, the Indigo Revolt of Bengal

(1859–60) and the Deccan riots of Bombay (1875) forced the colonial

state to take some steps to improve the condition of the peasant

masses.

The first half of the nineteenth century witnessed virtually

uninterrupted anti-colonial struggles by the peasantry, tribals, and

feudal chiefs who had lost their rights and privileges. In 1807, the

whole of the Delhi region took up arms. In 1814, Rajput peasants

secured an abolition of the sale, by public auction to a stranger, of the

land belonging to a large village community near Varanasi. In 1817,

peasants of Orissa, led by local feudal lords, rose up in protest against

the introduction of taxation on their rent-free-service lands. Pune

district witnessed uprisings by the peasantry from 1826 because of

which the authorities were obliged to concede to them holdings, for

low revenue charges. In 1830–31, British troops were sent to suppress

the peasants uprising, which was a protest against tax increase in

Bednore district of Mysore State. In 1833–37, there was an uprising in

Gumser in Madras presidency. In 1844, the Kolhapur and Santavadi

States bordering Bombay Presidency witnessed a large-scale revolt

provoked by the British decision to increase land revenue in order to

pay tributes to the princes. In 1846–47, the peasants of Karnal rose up

in revolt, in 1848, the Rohillas of Nagpur took up arms. The peasants

of Khandesh in Bombay Presidency rose up in protest against the land

settlement that resulted in the increase of land tax. Under the shadow

of the Revolt of 1857, the Namdhari or Kooka movement led by Guru

Ram Singh of Ludhiana district of Punjab should also be mentioned in

this regard.
 Due to the policies of the colonial state, famines became a routine

occurrence, and took the lives of four lakh people between 1825 and

1850. Six famines took five million lives between 1850 and 1865, and

eighteen famines took twenty-six million lives between 1875 and

1900. In the 1850s, Bengal witnessed the mighty struggle of the

indigo-cultivators popularly known as Nil Bidroha against the

oppressive British planters. The revolt was mainly against the coercive

methods employed by the British planters to force the peasants to

produce and sell indigo to them at throwaway prices. In the case of

the Deccan and Pabna riots (1873), food and oppressive landlordism

became the issues. The Moplahs of Malabar had been in incessant

revolt throughout the nineteenth century at regular intervals. The

resistance by the Moplahs and the Wahabis against the state took on a

religious colour. E.M.S. Namboodiripad says of peasant revolts of

southern India:

The revolt of 1800 in South India was as inspiring as the 1857–59

struggle in North India. The planners, organizers, leaders and other

heroic patriots belonging to various sections of the people had left

the imprints of their personality on the history of struggle of not

only South India, but also on the India-wide struggles for

independence. And the names of at least some of the patriots –

Kattabomman of Tirunelveli, Pazhassi Raja of Malabar and others –

4
and their glorious deeds are, to some extent, known to us.

There were numerous uprisings of tribals during this period. British

rule ushered in commercialization of agriculture, and this led to the

penetration of tribal areas by outsiders – moneylenders, traders, land-

5
grabbers and contractors, the dikus, so hated by the Santhals. Some

of the major tribal revolts of the period include the revolt of the Bhils

in 1818–31, of Kolis in 1824 in Bombay Presidency, of Mewars in

1820 in Rajputana, of the Ho tribe in Chhota Nagpur in 1831–32, of

the Cutchgis in 1815 and 1832. In 1846 the Khonds rose up in Orissa

and 1856 witnessed the Santhal revolt. These revolts fed into the

rising anti-colonial sentiments of the people.

 Unusually, there was also unrest in the towns, which generally took

the form of hartals, because of the introduction of new taxes in the

last quarter of the nineteenth century.

Marx on India

Meanwhile, the sweeping bourgeois revolutions of the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries in Europe destroyed the age-old feudal

system. Britain was the first to go through a bourgeois revolution in

the mid-seventeenth century. While capitalism was on the rise in the

West, a large part of the world came under colonial subjugation and

ruthless exploitation by the newly emergent capitalist states. Britain

used its supremacy among them to grab the biggest colonial empire,

India.

From the mid-nineteenth century itself, India had become a focal

point of attention in the writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

Marx’s ‘Chronological Notes on Indian History’ shows evidence of his

keen interest in Indian affairs. In two celebrated articles – ‘The British

Rule in India’ and ‘The Future Results of British Rule in India’ –

published in 1853 in the New York Daily Tribune, he laid bare the

exploitative character of British rule in India. Marx and Engels were

the first to describe the Revolt of 1857 as India’s ‘First War of

Independence’. Marx also suggested a line of action for Indians to

follow, by which they would grow strong enough to throw off the

English yoke altogether. In a letter to Karl Kautsky dated September

12, 1882, Engels wrote:

India will perhaps, indeed very probably, make a revolution, and as

a proletariat in the process of self-emancipation cannot conduct any

colonial wars, it would have to be allowed to run its course; it

would not pass off without all sorts of destruction, of course, but

6
that sort of thing is inseparable from all revolutions.
 In the closing chapters of Capital, Marx said: ‘Capital comes into

the world soiled with mire from top to toe, and oozing blood from

every pore.’ In smashing the feudal order, capitalism played a

progressive role in the western countries, but it did not perform this

role in the colonies. In 1853, Marx pointed out that

. . . the misery inflicted by the British on Hindustan is of an

essentially different and infinitely more intensive kind than all

Hindustan had to suffer before. . . . All the civil wars, invasions,

revolutions, conquests, famines, strangely complex, rapid and

destructive as the successive action in Hindustan may appear, did

not go deeper than its surface. England has broken down the entire

framework of Indian society, without any symptoms of

reconstitution yet appearing. The loss of his old world, with no gain

of a new one, imparts a particular kind of melancholy to the present

misery of the Hindu, and separates Hindustan, ruled by Britain,

from all its ancient traditions, and from the whole of its past history.

The East India Company, representing the interests of British traders

and capitalists, treated India as a commodity market. In this, it made

use of and intensified feudal methods of exploitation of the peasantry

to draw raw materials without any capital investment, and without

paying for the materials. Revenues from commerce and land were

extracted as profits. The British enforced the Permanent Settlement in

1793, which led to an unbearable pressure for revenue on the

peasants. Increasing rural destitution led to starvation and famines.

The famine of 1770 which engulfed Bengal took millions of lives.

Over the colonial period, India, from being an exporter of finished

goods, became an exporter of raw material and an importer of

finished goods, and this had a disastrous impact on the Indian textile

industry in particular and manufactures in general.

While sharply criticizing the British rule in India Karl Marx did not

lament for the dismantling of the stagnant, caste-ridden ancient Indian

society. He criticized the British imperialists’ policy, which failed to

usher in a new society. Marx was emphatic in his critique of the old

society:

. . . we must not forget that these idyllic village communities,

inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid

foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human

mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting

tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving

it of all grandeur and historical energies. . . . We must not forget

that these little communities were contaminated by distinctions of

caste and by slavery, that they subjugated man to external

circumstances instead of elevating man to be the sovereign of

circumstances, that they transformed a self-developing social state

8
into never changing natural destiny. . . .

Guided by what Marx called the ‘vilest interests’, the British

bourgeoisie needed the colonial state to develop modern means of

communication and transport in order to further their exploitation of

India as a source of raw materials and as a commodity market. The

British built railways, developed a modern education and library

system, a modern communication system, plantations, industry, and a

modern press. However, this process of modernization in India was

partial and incomplete, geared to colonial exploitation rather than for

its own sake. As Marx put it,

All the English bourgeoisie may be forced to do will neither

emancipate nor materially mend the social condition of the mass of

the people, depending not on the development of the productive

powers, but on their appropriation by the people. However, what

they will not fail to do is to lay down the material premises for

both. Has the bourgeoisie ever done more? Has it ever affected a

progress without dragging individuals and people through blood

9
and dirt, through misery and degradation?
 The Revolt of 1857

The imperialist view of the Revolt of 1857, which the British termed

‘Sepoy Mutiny’, was that a section of the Indian soldiers of the British

army revolted over a matter that had no more than religious

importance, and that the events of 1857 did not have the support of

the people of India in any significant manner. Marx, on the other

hand, was quick to see the true significance of the Revolt of 1857:

Before this there had been mutinies in the Indian Army, but the

present revolt is distinguished by characteristic and fatal features. It

is the first time that Sepoy regiments have murdered their European

officers; that Mussalmans and Hindus, renouncing their mutual

antipathies, have combined against their common masters; that

‘disturbances beginning with the Hindus, have actually ended in

placing on the throne of Delhi a Mohammedan Emperor;’ that the

mutiny has not been confined to a few localities; and lastly, that the

revolt in the Anglo-Indian army has coincided with a general

disaffection exhibited against English supremacy on the part of the

great Asian nations, the revolt of the Bengal army being, beyond

10
doubt, intimately connected with the Persian and Chinese wars.

During the uprising, which was mainly confined to northern and

central India, peasants, after driving out local representatives of the

colonial administration, set up armed detachments and defended the

lands of the village communities that had been expropriated by British

conquerors. The population in the towns played an active part in the

uprising, helping to liberate a number of large cities like Aligarh,

Bareily, Lucknow, Kanpur and Allahabad and to set up a government

in each of those cities. This was possible only because vast sections of

the people were impoverished and discontented. Marx analysed the

effects of the British rule in India thus:

[The] colonial plunder of India – one of the principal sources of

enrichment for the ruling oligarchy in Britain – caused the collapse

 of the entire branches of the Indian economy and the extreme

impoverishment of the vast, wealthy and ancient country . . . The

British doomed millions of Indians to starvation by breaking the

local industries, notably the hand-weaving and the hand-spinning,

which could not compete with the British cotton fabrics flooding the

11
Indian markets.

This popular uprising of 1857–59 was defeated because of a variety

of reasons; the most important among them was that, although the

fighting forces had consisted of peasants and artisans, the rebellion

was led by the feudal nobility, a backward-looking class, which was

bound to prove incapable of leading the national liberation struggle.

They could not evolve a united strategy and command. Various

centres of uprising emerged spontaneously, acting independently of

one another. Moreover, after taking over the administration, these

feudal lords did not take any measures to alleviate the lot of the

peasantry. On receiving concessions from the British government, they

dissociated themselves from the uprising. The Sepoy commanders,

who took their place, were not able to cope with the needs of this

large-scale and complex war.

The defeat of the uprising was followed by intensified colonial

exploitation of India as a source of raw materials and a commodity

market. This hastened the development of commodity-money relations

in towns and villages. The growth of simple commodity production

helped in the penetration of trading and usury capital further in the

sphere of agricultural production and handicrafts. Pauperized

peasants, ‘free’ of the means of production, appeared on the scene.

Conditions for the development of the capitalist mode of production

were slowly being fulfilled.

Capitalism in India

Capitalist development, however restricted, led to the emergence of

a modern working class drawn from the masses of ruined craftsmen

and impoverished peasants. Other social forces also emerged – the

new intelli-gentsia and the middle class. Also, the national bourgeoisie

got strengthened with the cooperation of British rulers.

A number of social reformers drawn from the ranks of the new

intelligentsia, bourgeoisie and the landlords, made their mark in the

the nineteenth century. Liberal and moderate political trends, highly

critical of popular unrest and agitation, confined themselves to putting

forward some of the popular demands of the upper echelons, through

timid protests in the press, petitions to colonial authorities, etc.

The first important social reformer was Rammohun Roy in Bengal.

He strongly opposed the denial of property rights to women in the

family, prohibition of widow re-marriage, the system of sati,

polygamy, restrictions imposed on the schooling of girls, the purdah

system confining women within the home, and so on. He demanded

that polygamy and sati be banned and that widows be given the right

to re-marry. Rammohun was convinced that the institution of caste

has to be destroyed if Indians are to unite as a nation. He was also

interested in international issues, and expressed his support for the

revolution in France and the movement of the Latin American people

12
against Spanish colonial rule.

Radical trends of nationalism also gradually arose. Workers began

to get organized. The first textile workers’ strike took place in 1877 in

Nagpur with some immediate economic demands. Apart from railway

workers, workers of other industries, public utility services and

unorganized sectors participated in struggles. The new industrial cities

became centres of various movements. The widespread participation

of the working class and the peasantry added a new direction to the

national liberation movement. Alarmed by these developments the

British rulers resorted to tightening of the laws to stem the

consolidation of future movements.

The Indian National Congress, the first all-India political forum,

was formed in Bombay in 1885. This was a party mainly representing

the national bourgeoisie, professionals, and landlords. Although in its

formative phase the INC was formed to subdue the growing anti-
British feelings, with the approval of the colonial authority, gradually

it became the largest anti-colonial platform in India.

However, being fearful of the emerging unity, the British took

recourse to injecting Hindu-Muslim conflict in the national movement

to serve its divide-and-rule policy. With the interplay of class interests,

the conflicts among various groups in the Congress got intensified.

Following the Revolt of 1857, objective reality made it imperative

for the British rulers to change their course for the consolidation of

their colonial rule, and they initiated the setting up of modern

industries in the middle of the nineteenth century. After the

introduction of the railways in 1853, built for the sake of their

military domination and to facilitate increasing trade and commerce,

the first textile mill was set up in Bombay in 1854. Soon, Ahmedabad

also became an important centre of the textile industry. From 1886 to

1905, the number of textile mills shot up to 197, while the number of

workers increased from 74,000 to 1,95,000. In and around Calcutta,

on both sides of the river Hoogly, 64 jute mills were set up by the

beginning of 1914. Most of the large-scale industries or majority

shares of these enterprises were owned by British monopolists.

Emergent Indian capitalists also started investing in modern industries.

Plantations for the cultivation of rubber, tea and coffee increased;

investments were also made for the building of factories and

extraction of minerals. Railways and steamships operated after the

opening of Suez Canal provided a new impetus for the transportation

of these products. Locomotives needed coal and railways metal.

Maintenance of railway lines needed workshops, iron foundries and

spare parts projects. The new method of colonial exploitation was

explained by Marx in a letter to N.F. Danielson in 1881:

What the English take from them annually in the form of rent,

dividends for railways useless to Hindus; pensions for military and

civil servicemen, for Afghanistan and other wars, etc., etc. – what

they take from them without any equivalent and quite apart from

what they appropriate to themselves annually within India, –

 speaking only of the value of the commodities the Indians have

gratuitously and annually to send over to England – it amounts to

more than the total sum of income of the 60 millions of agricultural

and industrial labourers of India! This is a bleeding process with a

vengeance! The famine years are pressing each other and in

13
dimensions till now not yet suspected in Europe!

The British bourgeoisie started dispatching more agricultural

produce from India from the 1860s, the chief items being cotton,

wool, jute, coconut fibre, rice, wheat, oilseed, spices, indigo, opium,

etc. The bulk of Indian exports went to Britain. Imports from Britain

to India pushed up five-fold in the last four decades of the nineteenth

cen-tury. The bulk of the imports were textiles, metal, utensils and

other types of consumer goods. Modernization and industrialization

were indispensable in order to ensure intensified exploitation of India

by the British, causing further pauperization of the peasants and

working masses.

The extremist challenge

In the early twentieth century, discontent among the masses,

especially the peasantry, was growing. The defeat of Czarist Russia at

Japanese hands and the Russian Revolution of 1905 encouraged

nationalists. This coincided with the Partition of Bengal, which led to

the first major modern nationalist upsurge which lasted six years

(1905–11). The call for boycott of foreign goods in August 7, 1905,

was the high point of the movement. The Swadeshi movement drew

sympathy from the leading section of the Indian bourgeoisie who

stood to benefit from the boycott of foreign goods. For instance, the

prices of Indian textiles went up by eight per cent while prices of

British fabrics fell by 25 per cent. The spread of ‘national education’

was another important process of the period.

The nationalist upsurge was not limited to Bengal – in Punjab, a

powerful movement developed against the Colonization Act, led by

Lala Lajpat Rai, Ajit Singh and Banke Dayal. These movements, in
which the peasantry participated in fairly large numbers, were taking

place simultaneously with the mighty trade union struggles in Bombay,

Calcutta and other centres. The revolutionaries who took the path of

armed struggle against imperialism also helped to radicalize the

politics of the time. British rulers resorted to repressive measures, such

as banning of meetings, detention without trial, imposition of heavy

sentences, deportation, and so on. The movement was not to be

cowed down, though, and eventually the government had to announce

the review of the Partition of Bengal and the withdrawal of the Punjab

Colonization Act, thus conceding significant victories to Indian

nationalists.

The new spirit of Indian nationalism was represented by the

‘extremist’ leadership of the Congress, the best known among whom

were Bipin Chandra Pal, Lala Lajpat Rai and Bal Gangadhar Tilak.

The ‘moderate’ leadership, represented by Surendranath Banerjee,

Pheroze Shah Mehta and Gopal Krishna Gokhale, did not favour

direct agitation against the colonial state. There was a clash between

the two factions in the Surat session of the Congress in 1907, leading

to a split. The ‘extremist’ faction kept out of the Congress for nine

years after this. In the meanwhile, a new political force also came into

being – the Muslim League was formed in Dacca in 1906, and many

Muslim leaders gravitated towards it.

What distinguished these movements from the previous peasant and

tribal revolts was that these were led by a new class asserting itself on

the national stage, the bourgeoisie, represented in the main by the

urban, middle class intelligentsia.

Early responses to socialist ideas

On its part, India responded spontaneously and favourably to the

ideas of socialism that were spreading across the world. For instance,

from the very beginning the Chartist movement in Britain evoked

sympathy in a section of the Bengali press. The Bengal Spectator,

mouthpiece of the Young Bengal movement, in its issue dated

November 1, 1842, observed that the Chartist movement was fighting

not only for a wage rise but also for a people’s charter. In the Indian

context, the daily argued that ‘land should belong to the ryots’, and it

issued a famous questionnaire to investigate the living conditions of

the peasantry. One of the stalwarts of Young Bengal, Radhanath

Sikdar (who surveyed the highest peak of the Himalayas), championed

the cause of workers and urged them to unionize. An article that

appeared in the pages of the Hindu Patriot (editor, Harish Chandra

Mukherjee) on July 13, 1858, under the title ‘English Strikes and

Bengali Dharmaghat’, while commenting on the Chartist movement,

drew attention to the new ideologies that were emerging among

workers in France in the form of the ‘socialist doctrine’, ‘communist

theories’, etc. The article also drew a comparison between the weapon

of strike used by the working class in England and that of

dharmaghat, used by the peasantry in Bengal. Thus, as far back as the

middle of the nineteenth century, radical elements in Bengal had

started taking an explicit stand on the side of the toiling masses of the

country, and giving voice to socialist ideals.

The founding of the First International in 1864 was a turning point

in the history of the working class movement. In its meetings, the

International not only dealt with problems related to further

development of the working class movement, but also regularly

discussed the question of national liberation, with special reference to

Ireland and Poland. India and China too figured in these deliberations.

In 1871, the General Council of the First International received a

letter from Calcutta, appealing for a branch of the International to be

opened in India. It could not be a coincidence that the letter was sent

at the time of the Paris Commune of 1870–71, though the identity of

the writer is not known. The General Council in its meeting of August

15, 1871, discussed the matter in presence of Marx and Engels. The

British socialist journal Eastern Post (August 19, 1871) reported:

An application was made in a letter from Calcutta for leave to start

a section in India. The writer said: Great discontent exists among

the people and the British Government is thoroughly disliked. The

 taxation is excessive and the revenues are swallowed up in

maintaining a costly system of officials. As in other places, the

extravagances of the ruling class contrast in a painful manner with

the wretched condition of the workers, whose labours create the

wealth thus squandered. The principles of the International would

bring the mass of the people into its organization if a section was

started.

In its issue dated September 2, 1871, the journal further reported:

It was felt in the meeting that the setting up of the International in

that country [India] would usher in a new era. The revolution,

which will take place there, as its sequel, will surpass all the

revolutions that have taken place so far. This International is rightly

in consonance with the aims and aspirations of the working class of

India.

The publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 had long-

term repercussions on the entire world. Reports of the activities of the

First International and of the Paris Commune were frequently

published in Indian journals. The journal Somprakash, edited by the

radical-minded Dwarakanath Vidyabhusan (and with Iswar Chandra

Vidyasagar as its guiding spirit), noted: ‘The influence of the

communist movement is spreading and the basic reason is that it

appeals to the mind of the downtrodden masses all over the world. Its

demands are too radical to be accepted. We cannot, for example,

subscribe to the demand for social transformation through

14
revolution’. At the same time, the journal appreciated the fact that

the International stood for certain high principles, such as

internationalism and abolition of private property. It continuously

exposed the oppression of tea and indigo planters, and supported the

demand for an eight-hour working day.

In 1872 Sashipada Banerjee, a Brahmo reformer with a

philanthropic outlook, formed an organization called ‘Bharat

Sramajibi Sangha’ (Indian Working Men’s Association) and started a

monthly, Bharat Sramajibi, with the motto: ‘The Greatness of Man

Lies in Labour’. In its very first issue, the Brahmo radical, Shibnath

Shastri, published a poem entitled Sramajibi (Working Men), calling

upon Indian workers to follow the trail set by the workers of Europe.

Dwarakanath Ganguly, another Brahmo radical, together with

Shibnath Shastri, paid a secret visit to the tea gardens in Assam and

wrote a series of factual, moving articles in the Bengali daily Sanjivani,

exposing the virtual slave trade carried on there by the white tea

planters.

In 1879 Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay wrote a significant article

titled ‘Samya’ (Equality), in which he declared: ‘The downtrodden

have as much right to happiness on earth, as you have. Do not try to

take away their happiness – remember, they too are your brothers,

15
your equals’. Bankimchandra went a step further when he opposed

private ownership of means of production and broadly supported the

ideas of socialism. He was the first in this country to use the words

socialist, communist and international (in the internationalist sense) in

their proper context.

Other Indian writers who were influenced by the philosophy of

socialism included Adhar Chandra Das, who wrote a book pleading

the case for abolition of landlordism and distribution of land to the

tillers, and Abhaycharan Mitra, whose famous treatise on agrarian

issues, The Indian Ryot (published in 1881), was to influence Indian

revolutionaries of later years. Muzaffar Ahmad, one of the founders of

the Indian communist movement, introduced this treatise to the

eighteen detenus of the Meerut Conspiracy Case (1929–33), and they

extensively used materials from it in preparing their joint statement.

It is also noteworthy that in 1892, Rabindranath Tagore wrote in

his essay entitled ‘Socialism’:

The Socialists want the commodity production and distribution to

remain in the hands of the society at large instead of any powerful

individual. According to them the production and distribution of

 wealth is the task of the entire society. Presently the common people

are prevented from uplifting their social position due to their

dependence on the will and interests of the wealthy people. . . . To

many, freedom is inextricably linked to wealth. One who does not

possess wealth naturally has to accept subordination in several

matters and therefore the pledge adopted by the Socialists to give

freedom to those without wealth goes against the law of nature. In

response the present author agrees that the non-feasibility of the

existence of freedom without wealth is a truth. Therefore it is

specifically required to distribute wealth among the common people

since without this, freedom cannot spread among the masses. . . . By

the equidistribution of wealth Socialism tries to coalesce them all

further into a uniform system and by doing so wants to provide

them with the maximum rights of freedom, for its aim is to unite the

human community and establish the equity of the rights of freedom

16
for all.

Influential thinkers like Aurobindo Ghosh and Swami Vivekananda

too were influenced by the new wave of thinking. Aurobindo wrote in

an article on November 13, 1893 that ‘The future of the entire Nation

will depend on the propensity to lean towards human democracy and

socialism, based on the power and civilization of lower classes.’ He

17
was perhaps the first Indian to use the word proletariat. In a

statement made in 1896, Vivekananda said that a new era will emerge

out of an uprising that will take place in Russia or China: ‘Although I

cannot clearly envision the place, but in any one of the two countries

happen it must. . . . The world is amidst the third epoch under the

hegemony of the vaishyas (traders). The fourth epoch will evolve

under the direction of the shudras (proletariat).’ According to

Vivekananda, the first and second epochs had been under the

brahmans and kshatriyas, respectively. He was confident that the

toiling millions would give rise to a new India: ‘The first glow of the

dawn of this new power has already begun slowly to break upon the

western world. Socialism and other sects are the vanguards of the

18
social revolution that is to follow.’
 Vivekananda combined passionate evocation of the glories of the

Aryan tradition and Hinduism (particularly before Western audiences)

with bitter attacks on present-day degeneration: ‘Our religion is in the

19
kitchen. Our God is the cooking pot.’ His comment on the Age of

Consent controversy was: ‘As if religion consisted in making a girl a

mother at the age of twelve or thirteen’. Sumit Sarkar points out that

Vivekananda’s radical-sounding rhetoric – ‘forget not that the lower

classes, the ignorant, the poor, the illiterate, the cobbler, the sweeper,

are thy flesh and blood, thy brothers’ – however, was combined with a

near-total lack of clarity about concrete socio-economic programmes,

methods of mass contact, or even political objectives. Yet in

eclecticism precisely lay the strength of Vivekananda’s appeal, and his

mixture of patriotism with the cult of manly virtues, vague populism,

and evocation of Hindu glory was to prove heady wine indeed for

20
young men in the coming Swadeshi period.

It must, however, be remembered that all these concepts and

interpretations of social transformation and socialism differed

substantially from the theory of scientific socialism. As a historian

puts it:

There is no definite evidence to suggest when Marx’s ideas of

scientific socialism reached India . . . . [In] the late 1850s, Vishnu

Bhikaji Gokhale, better known as Vishnubuwa Brahmachari (1825–

1871) wrote in 1867, ‘Sukhadayaka Rajya Prakarani Nibandha’

(An Essay on Beneficent Government) which contained ideas that

21
are termed as ‘utopian socialism’.

P.C. Joshi and K. Damodaran, in their book Marx Comes to India

(1975) have tried to trace the first mention of Karl Marx in India, and

they quote an article (‘Rise of Foreign Socialists: Their Remarkable

Growth in the Continent in Recent Years’) that appeared in Amrita

Bazar Patrika in 1903 in this connection. However, J.V. Naik

establishes that the first known reference to Marx was made as early

as 1881 by Bal Gangadhar Tilak.

 [Tilak wrote:] ‘what is it that makes upper and lower classes in

modern society? Is it not wealth? What is wealth, scientifically

defined, is concentrated accumulated, crystallized as Marx has it –

Labour’ (The Mahratta, May 1, 1881). . . . There are a number of

articles in the Kesari in which Tilak took up the cause of

agricultural labourers as well as industrial workers. Tilak’s marked

inclination towards socialist thought and his admiration for Lenin

for bringing about a revolution in Russia and also for Karl Marx

whom he described as ‘Samaj Sattecha Puraskarta’ (‘The

propounder of socialist rule’) can be clearly seen from his article

22
‘Russiyacha Pudhari Lenin’ in the Kesari of January 29, 1918.

Meanwhile, the first full-fledged article on Karl Marx to be written

by an Indian, entitled ‘Karl Marx: A Modern Rishi’, was published in

March 1912 in the monthly of the nationalist journalist Ramananda

Chattopadhyay’s, Modern Review. The author was Lala Hardayal,

later one of the founders of the Gadar Party in America.

In August of the same year, more than twenty-seven years before the

birth of the communist organization in Kerala, a radical-minded

Congress leader, K. Ramakrishna Pillai, wrote a biographical booklet

on Marx in Malayalam.

Lenin on India

Lenin attached great importance to India’s struggle for national

liberation, as is borne out by his discussion of the similarities between

the agricultural economies of Russia and India in his Development of

Capitalism in Russia (1899). In an article entitled ‘Inflammable

Material in World Politics’ in the Bolshevik journal Proletary on

August 5, 1908, taking note of the six-day strike of the Bombay

working class protesting against the imprisonment of nationalist

stalwart Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lenin wrote:

 But India of the people is beginning to stand up in defence of her

writers and political leaders. The infamous sentence pronounced by

the British Jackals against the Indian democrat Tilak – this reprisal

against a democrat by the lackeys of the moneybags – evoked street

demonstrations and a strike in Bombay. In India, too, the proletariat

has already developed to conscious political mass struggle and, that

being the case, the Russian-style British regime is doomed! . . . The

class-conscious European Worker already has comrades in Asia, and

23
their number will grow with every passing day and hour.

In another article titled ‘The Historical Destiny of the Doctrine of

Karl Marx’, published in Pravda in March 1913 Lenin said: ‘The fact

that Asia, with its population of eight hundred million, has been

drawn into the struggle for these same European ideals should inspire

us with courage and not despair’. A few months later, he wrote again

in Pravda:

Everywhere in Asia, a mighty democratic movement is growing,

spreading and gaining in strength. There the bourgeoisie is still

siding with the people against reaction. Hundreds of millions of

people are awakening to life, light and liberty. What delight this

world movement is arousing in the heart of all class-conscious

workers . . . all young Asia, that is the hundreds of millions of

toilers in Asia, have a reliable ally in the shape of the proletariat of

all the civilized countries. No force on earth can prevent its victory.

Thus, Lenin regarded the nationalist movements in Asia as a sign of

the awakening of the proletariat across the world and of the emerging

international proletarian revolution.

Lenin’s unequivocal sympathy for the poor and the exploited of

India is also evident in the article titled ‘The International Socialist

Congress at Stuttgart’, which he wrote on the occasion of the Seventh

Congress of the Second International, in August 1907. At this

Congress, Lenin, along with Rosa Luxemburg and others, frustrated

the attempts of a reformist section to pass a resolution in support of

European colonization. Three observer delegates attended the

Stuttgart Congress from India – Madam Cama, Sardar Singh Raoji

Rana and Virendranath Chattopadhyay (popularly known as Chatto).

They were well-known revolutionaries based in Paris and London.

Madam Cama, on behalf of the Indian delegation delivered a fiery

speech and moved a resolution that read as follows:

That the continuance of British rule in India is positively disastrous

and extremely injurious to the best interests of India, and lovers of

freedom all over the world ought to cooperate in freeing from

slavery, the fifth of the whole human race inhabiting that oppressed

country, since the perfect social state demands that no people should

24
be subject to any despotic or tyrannical form of government.

Leaders like Jaures, Liebknecht, Hyndman and Rosa Luxemburg came

out boldly in her support.

First World War and after

The First World War, which was an imperialist war, had a great

impact on the political life of India. The British ruling class fought the

war at the cost of Indian interests, and Indians had to pay heavily to

contribute to the war budget. During the war, émigré Indian

revolutionaries formed the ‘Committee for Indian Freedom’ in Berlin

under the leadership of Virendranath Chattopadhyay, Taraknath Das,

Lala Hardayal, Dr Bhupendranath Dutta (younger brother of

Vivekananda), Madam Cama, C.R. Pillai, Mahendra Pratap, Maulana

Barkatullah and others. This became known as the Berlin Committee,

and it reached an agreement in 1915 with the imperial Kaiser for

achieving Indian independence. Article 10 of this agreement read as

follows:
 After the liberation of India, India shall be proclaimed a

communistic republic and the Austro-German Empire shall have no

25
authority to oppose such a move.

The Berlin Committee maintained regular contact with the Gadar

Party in America, which was also formed with the same goal, i.e., the

freedom of India. The main objective of the Berlin Committee was to

organize a revolutionary army outside India, and it sent revolutionary

missions to Baghdad, the Suez, Persia and Afghanistan towards this

end. Mahendra Pratap, who headed the mission to Afghanistan,

formed a Provisional Government in Kabul on December 1, 1915,

with the help of the Indian revolutionary, Mohd. Obeidullah.

Mahendra Pratap became President of the government while Maulana

Barkatullah assumed the charge of Prime Minister.

Simultaneously, efforts were afoot in India to procure arms and

ammunition from sources within and outside the country. Attempts

were also being made to dislodge the allegiance of Indian soldiers

within the British army, and to win them over to the cause of

overthrowing British rule. As many as 1,200 revolutionaries were

arrested, but the spirit of revolt could not be dampened. Leaders like

Rashbehari Bose, Sachindranath Sanyal, Prithvi Singh Azad, Joal

Singh, Bishnu Ganesh Pingley, Mohan Singh and others travelled the

length and breadth of the country, to win the support of native

soldiers and to establish contact with various army regiments. The call

of freedom created an unprecedented stir in the minds of the soldiers.

They decided to launch a sudden attack on the British army and after

defeating them, proclaim a National Government.

During the period, the Pan-Islamic Brotherhood (Wahabis) was

another organization of freedom fighters based outside India that

played an important role in the struggle for national independence. A

large number of Muslim youth who had travelled to West Asia for

higher studies changed their minds and joined this organization – the

task of driving out the British occupiers was considered as a sacred

duty, a jihad. Under the leadership of Obeidullah Sindhi, the

Brotherhood set up revolutionary centres throughout West Asia, in

Iraq and Iran, and in Malaya, Singapore, Java and Shanghai –

wherever British cantonments were in existence. However, some black

sheep of the organization betrayed the revolutionary effort leading to

long-term imprison-ment of hundreds of revolutionaries.

A unit of Indian soldiers stationed in Singapore revolted against

British rule in February 1915, and proclaimed independence. The

mutineers placed British army personnel under arrest, captured the

city and held out for a week. The rebellion was put down with the

help of allied Japanese warships, and the leaders of the revolt, Majur

and Mohanlal, were executed along with others. Soldiers in Malaya

revolted at the same time. The British government crushed this

uprising, and several cases such as the Silk Conspiracy Case and

Lahore Conspiracy Case, were brought against the mutineers. Most of

the leaders were either hanged to death or sentenced to transportation

for life.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the

twentieth century, a large number of Punjabis migrated to the USA

and Canada in search of a livelihood. Many of them were patriots,

and it was their effort that led to the formation of the Gadar Party in

San Francisco in 1913 with Baba Sohan Singh Bhakna as President

and Lala Hardayal as Secretary. The Gadar Party brought out

publications such as Gadar and Gadar ki Goonj, which were widely

circulated among overseas Indians, exposing the injustices of British

rule and propagating the idea of revolutionary overthrow of foreign

rule. In keeping with its objective of mobilizing overseas Indians in an

anti-imperialist struggle, the Gardar Party succeeded in gathering arms

to be smuggled to India, to wage armed struggles against the British.

The Gadar Party’s activities were not confined to the US and Canada;

branches were also established in various parts of Latin America, Fiji,

the West Indies, Mauritius, East Asia and even Africa.

In 1914 a small ship named Kamagata Maru, which had been

chartered by Punjabi emigrants to journey from Singapore to Canada,

was prevented from docking in that country. The Gadar Party took up
the cause of their countrymen. Eventually, the ship was forced to

return home and at Budge Budge, near Calcutta, a clash took place

between the passengers and the police who were waiting to arrest

them. Some of the passengers died on the spot as a result of police

firing. Many of the remaining were arrested and tried for treason in

the Lahore Conspiracy Case, which awarded severe punishments to

the revolutionaries. The sacrifices of the Gadarists were lauded

throughout the country and their example stood out as an inspiration

26
to the entire freedom movement.

Towards the end of the First World War, two important leaders of

the Gadar Party in the USA, Bhai Santok Singh and Bhai Ratan Singh,

were jailed. While in jail, they exchanged views with leaders of the

Communist Party of USA, who too were prisoners. This interaction

convinced the Gadar leaders of the necessity to intensify class struggle

in order to attain the objective of social emancipation, which alone

could result in political and economic freedom. Propelled by an

intense desire to meet Lenin, Santok Singh and Ratan Singh set out on

an arduous journey to Russia after their release, travelling through

country after country until they reached their final desti-nation. They

were able to meet Lenin and participated in the Second Congress of

the Communist International. Influenced by communist ideology, the

over-whelming majority of the Gadar Party became communists

thereafter, in the mid-1920s. A large number of them also joined the

Kisan Sabha when it was organized.

None of the endeavours to bring about a revolutionary upsurge

with the help of Indian soldiers during the First World War succeeded.

This was mainly due to the lack of proper political direction and the

failure to project before the people an ideal of their future society.

However, these efforts are in contrast to the attitude of the Indian

National Congress, which supported the imperialist war, even

congratulating the King on the successful conclusion of the war at its

Delhi session in 1918.

 TWO

FORMATION

OF THE

COMMUNIST

PARTY
THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION OF 1917 made the Soviet Union a

land of hope for Indian revolutionaries. The revolution awakened the

hope for a new social order and gave immense impetus to the fighting

people in India. However, it took time to reach a correct

understanding of the political and ideological significance of the

revolution and its unique contribution to weakening the foundation of

the imperialist-colonial system after the end of the First World War.

The October Revolution inspired oppressed peoples all over the

world to rise to a determined anti-imperialist struggle for

independence, for radical social transformation, and marked the

beginning of the communist movement in the countries of Asia and

Africa. The foundation of the Third Communist International

(Comintern) in March 1919 was instrumental in organizing the

communist parties in the colonies. Thus, as in other colonies, in India

too, the communist movement was a post-October Revolution

phenomenon. Within three years of the revolution, and with the active

support of the Comintern led by Lenin, the émigré Indian

revolutionaries, who from the very beginning made their presence felt

in the highest body of the world communist movement, formed the

Communist Party of India in Tashkent in October 1920.

Threshold of a new era

The First World War was the culmination of inter-imperialist

rivalries for the redivision of world markets and territories. As such, it

brought about a sharpening of political and social contradictions in

India and other colonies. With the October Revolution, world social

contradictions entered a qualitatively new stage, where a new

contradiction – the contradiction between socialism and world

capitalism – came to the fore as the central social contradiction,

influencing all other social contradictions. The correlation of class

forces within India was also directly affected. Consequently, the post-

1917 era saw the unfolding of an unprecedented mass upsurge,

leading to a qualitatively new turn in the national liberation

movement.
 This sharpening of the contradictions between the Indian people

and British colonial rule manifested itself, on the one hand, through

increasing govern-mental repression and manoeuvrings, and on the

other, through the rising popular resistance against these acts.

The latter half of 1917 and through 1918 saw a deterioration in the

economy and a worsening of the economic and social conditions of

the Indian people. Between 1917 and 1920 the wave of national

liberation struggles continued to rise throughout the colonial world –

India was in the grip of mass anti-imperialist struggles; in Egypt, an

anti-imperial uprising broke out in 1919; Syria and Lebanon

witnessed armed revolts against the French hegemony; Iraq was

shaken by anti-British actions; in China the anti-imperialist May 4

Movement sparked off the revolutionary upsurge in which the Chinese

proletariat played an active role; in Korea, Indonesia and Afghanistan

also popular movements unfolded a new chapter in the history of

mass actions. In Turkey, the mass upsurge against the colonial rule

1
and feudal hegemony, made its impact felt worldwide. These anti-

imperialist struggles shaped the rise and organizational development

of the communist movement in what was then called ‘the East’.

The British colonial regime in India responded bluntly to the

revolutionary upsurges. As early as mid-1917 Viceroy Chelmsford was

pointing out to the British government the pressing need for bringing

about changes in British policy towards India. In the same year, E.S.

Montagu was appointed Secretary of State for India and on August

20, he announced a new policy towards India to prepare the ground

for the establishment of a so-called Responsible Government. The

main points of the report were incorporated in the Government of

India Act, 1919, which came to be known popularly as the Montagu-

Chelmsford Reforms. In the last week of December 1918, the Indian

2
Reform Bill came into effect.

The new ‘reforms’ provided for a limited extension of the electorate;

elected majorities for the central and provincial legislative bodies;

Indian representatives in the Viceroy’s and Provincial Governor’s

Executive Councils, and appointment to some ministerial posts, albeit

of less importance.

The administrative reforms were no doubt concessions to the Indian

propertied classes that were aimed at creating a wedge among the

anti-British forces, even by creating a communal division of the

electorate. But this policy achieved little success in containing the tide

of popular unrest.

Thus even as the announcement of the administrative reforms was

being made, a committee was appointed in December 1917 with

British Justice Rowlatt as chairman ‘to investigate and report on the

nature and extent of criminal conspiracies connected with the

revolutionary movement in India’ and to advise the government on

3
how to quell the revolutionary movement. The Rowlatt

recommendations provided the basis for a special law known as the

Rowlatt Bill. The bill was passed on March 18, 1919, despite

opposition from non-official members, and came into effect three days

later. The opposition to the Act was equally prompt which gave a new

impetus to the anti-imperialist movement. It was by taking the

initiative in starting the satyagraha movement against the Rowlatt Bill,

that Gandhi entered the political scene on an all-India scale. On

March 30, the whole of India observed Satyagraha Day, and hartal

was observed on April 6. On April 10, a nation-wide hartal was

observed in protest against Gandhi’s arrest. Then on April 13 the

Jallianwala Bagh massacre shocked the nation. Over a thousand

peaceful protestors were gunned down in Amritsar’s Jallianwala Bagh

without warning. Rabindranath Tagore was so outraged that he

renounced his knighthood in protest against the brutal mass killing.

The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was a turning point in the national

liberation struggle, which brought new forces to the fore. In 1918 a

series of strikes had taken place in various parts of India. As the strike

campaign gathered momentum, trade unions began to emerge, initially

nurtured by bourgeois nationalists and philanthropists. On April 17,

1918, B.P. Wadia, an associate of Mrs Annie Besant, formed the

Madras Labour Union. It was ‘the first systematic attempt at forming

modern trade union organization in India’ which, incidentally, was the

first major attempt to form a non-sectional industrial union.

Subsequently, a number of local or industry-based trade union

4
organizations were organized in 1918–1920. The impact was

instant. In 1918 first great strike of Bombay cotton mill workers was

organized covering almost the entire 1,25,000 work force. In 1919,

the Anti- Rowlett Act hartal showed the political activism of the

working people coming to the forefront of the national struggle. The

strike wave reached its climax in the 1920. The remarkable success

achieved gave a profound impetus to the initiative to form an all India

5
trade union body.

The impact of the working class struggle was such that the Amritsar

Congress session in December 1919, called upon Congress members

to organize trade unions. The session also resolved to boycott

elections to the legislatures which were to be held in accordance with

the 1919 Government of India Act. The government was forced to

postpone the elections.

Soon after the Congress session, an all India Khilafat conference

was also held in Amritsar. By this time the Khilafat movement had

become a major political issue in India. It was organized to express the

protests of Indian Muslims against the imposition of restrictions on

the powers of the Turkish Caliph who was seen as the religious leader

of all the Sunni Muslims. The Sultan of Turkey had sided with

Germany in the First World War, and was therefore among the

vanquished powers.

However, the Khilafat movement immediately assumed an anti-

imperialist character since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and

overthrow of the Caliph was seen as directly linked to the policy of

the Western powers, particularly Britain, in the East. Gandhi

established close contacts with the Khilafat Committee led by the Ali

brothers, Mohammad and Shaukat, and this in turn helped create the

ambience of Hindu-Muslim unity against the common foe.

 The Khilafat movement helped strengthen the anti-imperialist mass

upsurge during 1919–20, and brought the common Muslim masses

into the mainstream of national politics. In fact, some of the early

communist organizers in India began their political lives as either

Khilafatis or muhajirs who left India with a pledge to fight enemies of

the Caliph till their last breath.

An important development in 1920 was the Hijrat movement which

was an offshoot of the Khilafat movement. When the Indian Khilafat

movement made common cause with the National Congress to fight

the British, it gave the call to the Indian Muslim youth to leave the

country to join Kamal Pasha’s army in Turkey. About 18,000 muhajirs

left India in 1920 to accelerate the struggle against British imperialism.

The muhajir movement was one of the streams out of which the early

6
communist movement arose.

It is clear from the account of Shaukat Usmani, who joined the CPI

in Tashkent in early 1921 and was later convicted in the Kanpur and

Meerut Conspiracy cases, that it was the religious aspect of the

Khilafat movement that moved the muhajirs as a whole. The idea was

to leave the country whose rulers (British) were attacking an Islamic

state and acting against the Muslim faith, and to settle down in a

country which was under an Islamic regime.

The emigration of Indian revolutionaries into the Soviet Union

between 1918–22 (mostly in 1920), is a striking indication of the

effect of the October Revolution on Indians. Scores and even hundreds

of Indians crossed over, primarily into Soviet Central Asia, in search of

ways and means of ending British colonial rule and gaining national

liberation. They were heterogeneous in character. Some of them

dreamed of expelling not only the foreigners but also the enslavers.

Some were members of the Khilafat movement, many were

representatives of the radical left-wing of the national liberation

movement and some were revolutionaries who had already adopted

the Marxist principles or were in the process of doing so.

However, the Special Calcutta session of the Congress in September

1920, and the annual session in Nagpur in December of the same year,
were held in a situation unprecedented in post-war India.

Welcoming the October Revolution

During the October Revolution and immediately afterwards, the

Indian press carried reports from Reuters and other European agencies

– all brief, fragmentary, vague and confused. A leading nationalist

daily, Dainik Basumati, published from Calcutta, wrote on November

17, 1917: ‘The downfall of Tsardom has ushered in the age of

destruction of alien bureaucracy in India too.’ A nationalist English

daily from Calcutta, the Amrita Bazar Patrika, while carrying all such

reports, failed to make any editorial comment on the revolution until

the middle of December 1917. For the first time, on 14 December

1917, Amrita Bazar Patrika in its editorial titled ‘Repudiation of

National Debt’ commented: Russia has not only treated the treaties of

its previous Governments with foreign states as ‘mere scraps of paper’,

but repudiated its national debt. By the end of 1918, however, Amrita

Bazar Patrika had formed a firm opinion about the Russian

Revolution, and whatever may have been its basis, it was a favourable

one, characterizing the revolution as the ‘Russian Volcano’. On

January 8, 1919, it came out with a long editorial titled ‘Bolshevism

and Bolsheviks’ which not only tried to put the Russian Revolution in

a historical perspective, but also sought to give a somewhat

sympathetic account of what it considered was the programme of the

Bolshevik government. By 1919, news about the Russian Revolution,

the Bolsheviks and Lenin had become more easily available in India.

Bengali as well as other Indian newspapers started giving far greater

prominence to revolutionary Russia. It is interesting to note that

towards the end of the year the radical nationalist leader Bipin

Chandra Pal was praising Bolshevism. In a speech at College Square in

Calcutta, he said: ‘There has grown up all over the world a new power

– the power of the people, determined to rescue their legitimate rights

– the rights of the people to live freely and happily without being

exploited and victimized by the wealthier and so-called higher classes.

7
This is Bolshevism.’
 In Bengal, the October Revolution inspired the imprisoned

revolutionaries. Kazi Nazrul Islam, the poet, was influenced by the

October Revolution since the time of his service in the army at

Karachi in 1918. During 1919, Nazrul wrote a short story ‘Byathar

Dan’ in which one of the main characters crosses the border into

Soviet Russia. He says, ‘. . . I have joined the Red Army. The Red

Army is sure that their great and noble ideal is gaining ground in the

minds of men all over the globe and I too am one of the great

8
organization.’ Premchand, the Hindi novelist, also felt the impact of

the Russian revolution. In a letter to a friend sometime during 1918–

19, Premchand declared: ‘I am now almost convinced of Bolshevik

9
principles’. In Maharashtra, Kesari, published by Bal Gangadhar

Tilak, sympathized with the Russian Revolution and published many

articles on it during 1919–20. Lala Lajpat Rai, at a dinner held by the

Home Rule League in America on January 31, 1919, said:

I have had no time to study socialism and I have not the courage to

become a Bolshevik. Whether Bolshevism is right or wrong whether

it is intellectually correct or false, it seems to me the only course by

which the common people can gain their ends.

Later, in an article ‘Bolshevism and Anti-Bolshevism’ Lalaji expressed

10
his conviction that Bolshevism was sure to succeed.

Regarding what the rulers were saying about the Bolsheviks, Indians

remained very sceptical. A Punjabi daily Akali of Lahore, on

November 22, 1920, expressed the sentiments shared by many Indians

in the following words:

In spite of the efforts of the censor’s department, news has reached

India and other countries which shows that Bolshevism is the best

form of government; that the Bolshevik principles are clean and

excellent is evident from the fact that wherever the Bolsheviks go,

the representative people in the place become their admirers. We are

told that this is ascribable to their promises, which are, however,

 never fulfilled. But whether their promises are true or false, it

cannot be gainsaid and that the Bolsheviks know well how to

disseminate their views and that they possess the power to fascinate

11
the larger majority of the people in a very short time.

The Hindi nationalist daily Aaj of Benaras, only a few days after its

inauguration, took notice of the Russian Revolution on October 1,

1920. It reproduced a leading article from Bande Mataram, a

revolutionary Bengali weekly founded by Aurobindo Ghosh (1871–

1950), under the heading ‘One View of Russia’s Independence’. The

article gave a highly favourable account of the events of the Russian

Revolution and declared that the will of the people could not be

suppressed for ever and a similar revolution might even take place in

12
India if official repression and police methods went on indefinitely.

The Modern Review, edited by radical nationalist Ramananda

Chatterjee of Calcutta, did not make any editorial comment on the

Russian situation during this period, but often published excerpts

from articles appearing in the western press. The initial impact of the

Russian Revolution on the nationalist press in India was thus on the

whole favourable, though there is no evidence to indicate that they

13
approved of the communist ideology.

It is interesting to find in Sohan Singh Josh’s History of the Gadar

Party that the police in America recovered from Gadar leader

Taraknath Das’s home, a copy of a letter dated December 12, 1918,

addressed to the Workers’ and Soldiers’ Council of Petrograd, Russia.

The letter was sent from the Tagore Castle, Calcutta. It is a document

of great historical value, which reads as follows:

Comrades, revolutionary India rejoices at the rise of free Russia,

with the true ideal of government of the people, by the people and

for the people. We appreciate the fact that this is the first time in the

history of an organized state, that a government of this kind has

been established for the benefit of the people, and revolutionary

Russia’s contribution to the cause of civilization and humanity is so

great that it staggers the autocracies and imperialisms of the world,

which are in league against the success of the principles advocated

by revolutionary Russia. . . . We gladly extend to you, champions of

liberty and the rights of the people, our recognition – the

recognition of the millions of revolutionary India. The position of

revolutionary India today is such as was the case of revolutionary

Russia in 1905 – thousands of young men are now thrown into

prison, others hanged, and others deported to servitude to the

Andaman Islands. . . . The hand of British imperialism is long

enough to have several scores of Indian revolutionists arrested in the

United States on the pretext of violation of neutrality of the United

States of America, by starting a military enterprise from the USA to

overthrow British rule in India. These Indian revolutionists are

threatened with deportation from the USA so that British

imperialism will have a fair chance of taking vengeance on its

enemies by sending them to the gallows. . . . But this will not kill the

spirit of revolution in India. This will not kill the spirit of revolution

in India. This will enhance the spirit of revolution because the

success of the Russian revolution has become a source of constant

inspiration for the Indian people who are under the bondage of

British rule, supported by Indian sycophants and exploiters and all

the imperialistic governments of the world. . . . We beg you to

demonstrate your goodwill by championing the cause of the Indian

revolutionists who are facing a trial in the US district court at San

Francisco because of their working for the liberation of the people

of India from the yoke of the existing autocratic rule. May we

emphasize the facts again that, internationally speaking, the Indian

revolutionists have no voice and these Indian revolutionists may be

deported to India to be shot. Who will raise a voice in their favour if

Russian democracy keeps silent? We beg aid from free Russia for

the cause of freedom. [At the end, the letter urged Russia not to

forget the people of India.] Free India would stand by free Russia to

14
destroy imperialistic tendencies . . . in other lands.
 The colonial authorities were aware and vigilant against

‘infiltration’ of communist ideas into India, and showed much

enthusiasm in taking so-called preventive measures. Intelligence

reports show that even as early as in April 1919, the British

authorities were busy keeping watch on M.N. Roy’s movement in

15
Mexico. By November 1919, the colonial Home Department in

India began to take ‘defensive measure’ against ‘Bolshevik

propaganda’. On November 13, 1919, a book, Bolshevism and the

Islamic Body Politic, was proscribed in India. On November 25 then

Home Secretary Sir William Morris issued a note to this effect:

‘Though the actual proof of Bolshevik activities in India itself is small,

the Government of India thinks that a serious situation may develop

16
unless systematic protective measures are adopted.’ The

government took special care to foil any effort to circulate ‘Bolshevik’

literature. It may be recalled that in November 1919, M.N. Roy

reached Berlin on his way to Moscow, to attend the much talked of

Second Congress of the Comintern.

Within India, the government was determined to prevent the

circulation of communist literature, but any trace of a ‘Bolshevik’

activist is not to be seen in their records. It was only in April 1920

that the names of some ‘pro-Bolshevik’ Indians were referred to in a

confidential intelligence report. Among them were Durgadas Chatterji

(a college student in Calcutta), M.C. Rajagopal Achari (a Madras

High Court lawyer), and Sukhini Narayan Iyer (his assistant), Jethmal

Parasanam and Dr Choitram Gidwani in Sind province, S.P. Dave and

Chamanlal from Gujarat, Darani Pathan of Amritsar and Moulavi

17
Muhammad Fakir of Allahabad.

Interestingly, regarding Bipin Chandra Pal’s Sylhet speech of March

6, 1920 the same report commented: ‘His speech throughout can only

be described as thinly veiled Bolshevism.’ The British intelligence

department was scared of the ‘pro-Bolshevik’ stand of some influential

Indian newspapers, as a report of March 1920 stated: ‘At this moment

the chief exponents of Bolshevism are the Hindu of Sind province,

18
Pratap and Prabhu of Kanpur.’
 The colonial authorities were desperate to trace out anything related

to communist ideas, which was premature at that early stage,

although a radical transformation was taking place at the political

level. Just three days before the commencement of the Second World

Congress of the Comintern in Moscow on July 19, 1920, a workers’

meeting held in Bombay resolved on the formation of an all India

trade union organization. The All India Trade Union Congress

(AITUC) was formally launched under the chairmanship of Lala

Lajpat Rai on October 31, 1920, two weeks after the formation of the

CPI in Tashkent, though there is no direct connection between the two

events.

In the same year on July 12, an important development took place

in Calcutta with the appearance of an evening daily in Bengali, the

Navayug. Noted Khilafati and Congress leader Fazlul Haque, who

later became Prime Minister of Bengal Province after the 1937

elections, brought out the paper and entrusted the editing to Muzaffar

Ahmad and Kazi Nazrul Islam. Navayug was the first Bengali

newspaper which published articles on the problems of workers and

peasants.

The Navyug was not a Communist newspaper. Both Muzaffar

Ahmad and Nazrul Islam were not aware of communism at such an

early phase of their life. However, they began to move closer to radical

ideas, to addressing the problems of the working people with

sympathy. During his Navyug days Ahmad, it is said, wanted to

subscribe to the George Lansbury-edited British Labour Party organ

Daily Herald. Lansbury also sent a message to the AITUC inaugural

19
session in 1920.

At this time S.A. Dange, later an important communist leader, was

still under the influence of nationalist leader Tilak, and was in no way

interested in socialist thought. Singaravelu Chettiar, a pioneer of the

communist movement in south India, joined trade union activities as a

provincial Congress leader.

By September 1920, an intelligence report notes the entry of

Workers’ Dreadnought from Britain. Sylvia Pankhurst, who joined the

Comintern Second Congress in which M.N. Roy also took part, edited

20
the Workers’ Dread-naught. The CPGB journal Labour Monthly

(launched in June 1921 under the editorship of R.P. Dutt) too played a

significant role in disseminating communist ideas in India. The CPGB

was formed in July–August 1920.

Indian revolutionaries abroad

There were broadly three groups of revolutionaries who played a

role in the emergence of the émigré Communist Party of India:

(a) revolutionary patriots working abroad, such as the Berlin group

led by Virendranath Chattopadhyay and the Provisional

Government of Independent India led by Mahendra Pratap, M.

Barkatullah, Mohammad Safiq among others. In 1915, the Berlin

group selected Mahendra Pratap for the Indo-German mission in

Kabul and they formed the Provisional Government of India in exile

on December 1, 1915;

(b) revolutionaries of the Khilafat movement and the Hijrat

movement who went abroad during and after the First World War;

and

(c) Gadar Party activists too joined the communist activists by late

1920, when its leaders came out of prison after the conviction in the

San Francisco case.

Prominent leaders of the Gadar Party and other Indian émigré orga-

niz-ations had converged in Berlin in 1914. Indian revolutionaries

relied very much on German help to counter British forces in India.

Among the Berlin-based Indian revolutionaries were Virendranath

Chattopadhyay, Bhupen-dranath Dutt (younger brother of

Vivekananda), Mohammad Barakatullah, Mahendra Pratap, M.P.B.T.

Acharya, Abdur Rab Barq (also known as Abdul Rab), P. Khankoje,

Champakraman Pillai, Taraknath Das, Bhagwan Singh and Hardayal.

Formed in 1914, the Indian Revolutionary Committee in Berlin

(known as the Berlin Committee) involved representatives of almost

all Indian revolutionary groups working outside India, and continued

functioning until December 1918.

Virendranath, who along with M.P.B.T. Acharya joined the

Anarchist Communist Party, reached Stockholm on May 17, 1917, to

form a branch of the Berlin Committee. He had hoped to meet Lenin

but he had already left. At that time, they had no clear idea about the

importance of socialist revolution, and later contacted the rightist

leaders of the Second International, only to be disillusioned. Then in

September 1917, Virendranath made contact with the Soviet

Communist Party.

Prior to the October Revolution, the Indian National Committee of

Stockholm had sent a congratulatory message to the Petrograd Soviet,

demonstrating the interest which the Indian revolutionaries already

had in new Russia’s policy on the right to self-determination. The

message read: ‘Revolutionary Russia is striving for a lasting peace on

the basis of the right of self-determination being guaranteed to all

nations.’ On November 1, 1917, Virendranath sent a letter to the

Berlin Committee calling for Indian revolutionary activity to be

21
organized in Russia.

In mid-1915, the Berlin Committee had nominated Mahendra

Pratap and Barakatullah for the Indo-German mission to Afghanistan,

to impress upon the Amir of Afghanistan to form an alliance with

Germany for joint action against the British rulers of India. Though

they did not succeed, Mahendra Pratap and Barakatullah managed to

form a centre there and on December 1, 1915, formed a Provisional

Government of India in Kabul, with Mahendra Pratap as President

and Barakatullah as Prime Minister. Some spirited revolutionaries

such as Obiedullah Sindhi (recognized by the Afghan prominent as a

representative of the All India Muslim League) who became Interior

Minister, joined them. Mohammad Ali was appointed Assistant

Minister for Interior, Mohammad Shafiq (who later became secretary

of the CPI formed in Tashkent in October 1920), Secretary of the

Interior Ministry, Mohammad Wali Khan, Finance Minister,

Mohammad Basher, War Minister and M. Pillai, Foreign Minister.

The Provisional Government tried its best to mobilize all resources

to organize an anti-British uprising in India, primarily with the help of

the Afghan government. In 1916, they even sought help from Czarist

Russia. Rather than support, the Czarist authority arrested the

Provisional Government’s representatives and handed them over to the

British government. After the February 1917 revolution in Russia, the

Provisional Government once again unsuccessfully tried to contact the

new Russian government through the Turkistan Committee of the

22
Russian provisional government.

The Kabul-based Provisional Government was the first of the

political groups of Indian national revolutionaries to encounter

Socialist Russia. As early as on November 29, 1917, Mahendra Pratap

again asked the Turkistan authorities for negotiations with the new

Russian government. In his message Mahendra Pratap referred to his

earlier failures to get any help for the Indian struggle, but opined that

with the October Revolution ‘the final obstacle has been removed . . .

the Russian government is now led by the noble sons of Russia.’ He

went on: ‘we are confident that nothing but a partnership of Russia

and India will make possible India’s true liberation and bring about an

equilibrium in the universe . . .’. Mahendra Pratap was given a hearty

welcome when he visited Tashkent in February 1918, at the invitation

23
of the Turkistan authorities.

On November 23, 1918, the first Indians to meet Lenin after the

October Revolution were two brothers, Abdul Jabbar Khairi and

Abdul Sattar Khairi of Delhi. Probably to hide their identity they

travelled under the assumed names, ‘Prof. Ahmad Harris and Prof.

Mohammad Hadi’. On November 25, they addressed a meeting of the

All Russia Central Executive Committee, and on December 5, an

international gathering in the Hall of Columns of the Trade Union

House in Moscow. In their address to the Central Executive

Committee, they stated: ‘We have the honour to send our

congratulations in the name of 70,000,000 Musalmans. The Russian

Revolution gives us hope of our liberation’. They criticized the British

government’s ploy of granting so-called ‘responsible government’ to

the Indians. ‘We pray Russia to hold out to us a helping hand, that we

may gain freedom. It is the duty of Russia to help to the utmost, the

whole world in winning freedom and right.’ However, there is no

24
record of their discussion with Lenin.

Meanwhile, Barakatullah, Prime Minister in the Provisional

Government, reached Tashkent from Kabul in early 1919. He went

there as representative of the Afghan government to negotiate forming

an anti-imperialist Soviet-Afghan alliance. On February 21, 1919, the

Afghan Amir, Habibullah was murdered and on March 1, Amanullah

Khan succeeded him. Amanullah Khan initially took a firm stand

against the British and thereby was favourable to the Indian

revolutionaries. During his visit, Barakatullah met Lenin in Petrograd

on May 7, 1919, nearly three weeks after the Jallianwala Bagh

massacre. Soviet scholar M.A. Persits records that soon after his

meeting with Lenin; Barakatullah issued a special note informing the

People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs that Afghanistan was ready

25
to conclude an alliance with the Russian Republic.

Though Barakatullah was not a communist and continued to hold

to his religious beliefs, his understanding of the political significance

of the October Revolution was clear and his commitment to the cause

of India’s emancipation was unquestionable. An article titled ‘Oriental

Policy’ (November 1919), quoted by Persits, testifies to Barakatullah’s

clarity of thought. ‘The question of the liberation of the East has

brought before us a major and independent one, by the great

Revolution in Russia and even if that Revolution had given nothing

more to the peoples of Asia, this new way of posing that problem

26
would alone have tremendous importance for the oppressed East.’

In this context, the role played by the Indian Section of the Council

for International Propaganda (Sovinterprop) should also be put on

record. The Turkestan commission of the All Russia Central Executive

Committee formed the Council on December 23, 1919, in Tashkent to

carry on propaganda work among the eastern peoples. The leader of

the Turkish communists, Mustafa Subhi, was elected chairman of the

Sovinterprop.

A similar body, the Council for Propaganda and Action, was also

opened in Baku in September 1920, at the First Congress of the

Peoples of the East. On April 5, 1920, the executive bureau of the

Sovinterprop decided to organize an Indian Section. As Persits notes,

the Section never became a communist organization, but it did take

certain steps in this direction. Mohammad Ali was the de facto head

of the Section, and among his associates were Mohammad Shafiq,

Abdul Majid and Abdul Fazil Khan. Persits also records that a special

mission of the Provisional Government comprising Mohammad Ali

and Mohammad Shafiq went to Tashkent on March 31, 1920. Abdul

Majid and Ibrahim later joined them. With Barakatullah as their head,

27
this group was known as a Provisional Government group. This

group actively pursued their effort to contact and activate various

Soviet bodies in their favour, including the Turkistan commission of

the All Russia Central Executive Committee. Ali and Shafiq issued a

document dated April 20, 1920, in which they announced that all

members of the Indian Section ‘adopted the principles of communism’.

They pointed to three major objectives of the ‘Revolution’:

(a) abolition of foreign rule;

(b) overthrow of ‘certain’ Indian autocrats, big landowners and

factory owners oppressing the people; and

(c) establishment of the Soviet Republic.

Significantly, in May 1920, just two months before the Second

Congress of the Comintern, Md. Shafiq published a bilingual (Urdu

and Persian) weekly, the Zamindar, from Tashkent, the declared

objective of which, among other things, was to ‘train Indian workers

in revolutionary zeal and educate them in the methods of the Russian

Revolution’. Mir Abdul Majid was the editor of the paper. Shafiq later

became the first secretary of the CPI formed in Tashkent. Ali was also

one of the founder-members of the CPI in Tashkent and later, in 1925,

became a member of the CPI Foreign Bureau, along with Roy and

Clemens Dutt.

Meanwhile, Abdul Rab and M.P.B.T. Acharya in Kabul formed the

Indian Revolutionary Association (IRA) towards the end of December

1919, or in January 1920. Rab was chairman of the IRA and Acharya

was his deputy. Amir Farukh and Fazil Al Qadir were secretaries.

The Indian Revolutionary Association of Kabul adopted a

resolution on February 17, 1920, addressed to Lenin saying:

The Indian revolutionaries express their deep gratitude and their

admiration of the great struggle carried on by Soviet Russia for the

liberation of all oppressed classes and peoples, and especially for the

liberation of India. Great thanks to Soviet Russia for her having

heard the cries of agony from the 315,000,000 people suffering

under the yoke of imperialism. This mass meeting accepts with joy

28
the hand of friendship and help extended to oppressed India.

In reply to this resolution Lenin sent the following message on May

10, 1920:

I am glad to hear that the principles of self-determination and

liberation of oppressed nations from exploitation by foreign and

native capitalists proclaimed by the Workers’ and Peasants’

Republic have met with such a ready response among progressive

Indians who are waging a heroic fight for freedom. The working

masses of Russia are following with unflagging attention, the

awakening of the Indian workers and peasants. The organization

and discipline of the working people and their perseverance and

solidarity with the working people of the world are an earnest of

ultimate success. We welcome the close alliance of Muslim and non-

Muslim elements.

We sincerely want to see this alliance extended to all the toilers of

the East. Only when the Indians, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese,

 Persian and Turkish workers and peasants join hands and march

together in the common cause of liberation – only then will decisive

29
victory over the exploiters be ensured. Long live a free Asia.

Soon after, Rab and Acharya of the IRA and Mahendra Pratap

arrived in the Afghan capital from Moscow. Abdul Rab was a talented

orator and an eminent scholar. Rab met Lenin for the second time in

February 1921 (the first meeting being in July 1919 with Mahendra

Pratap) and at his request, prepared a list of books on the Indian

national liberation movement. The delegates of the IRA led by Rab

and Acharya went to Tashkent on July 2, 1920, from Kabul, and

contacted the Council for International Propaganda. Tashkent became

the main centre of the muhajirs’ activities and a branch of the Indian

Revolutionary Association (IRA) was formed there. The IRA was

asked to send delegates to the Second Congress of the Communist

International, which was to open in Leningrad (Petrograd) on July 19,

1920. All three of the aforementioned members of the IRA attended

the Congress.

During their stay in Tashkent, Rab published the Political

Programme of IRA on August 13, 1920. The IRA sent seven delegates

30
to attend the Baku Congress in the first week of September 1920.

Evidently, three district groups emerged from among the Indian

revolutionaries before the Second Comintern Congress: the group of

the Provisional Government of India; the Indian Section of the

Council for International Propaganda; and the Indian Revolutionary

Association.

Formation of the Comintern

The International Communist Conference opened in Moscow on

March 2, 1919 and on March 4 the conference converted itself into

the First Congress of the Communist International (Comintern). The

birth of the Comintern, under Lenin’s leadership, was of great

significance for the national liberation struggles in the colonies and

semi-colonial countries. The October Revolution, as Lenin pointed

out, constituted the first stage of the world revolution. It laid the base

for the world revolutionary movement and created a centre around

which the oppressed people of all countries could organize a united

revolutionary front against imperialism.

Fifty-two delegates attended the inaugural Congress of the

Comintern from 35 organizations representing 21 countries including

Britain. However, no one from India was present.

The supreme objective of proletarian internationalism was

embodied in the statute of the Communist International which

declared that the international association of workers was established

to organize joint action by the proletariat of different countries to

overthrow capitalism and to establish an international Soviet

Republic. This would completely abolish all classes and realize

socialism, the first stage of a communist society.

The task of the Communist International is to liberate the working

people of the entire world . . . [it] supports to the full the conquests

of the great proletarian revolution in Russia, the first victorious

socialist revolution in world history, and calls on the proletariat of

the entire world to take the same path . . . [it] undertakes to support

every Soviet Republic, wherever it may be formed . . . [it] must, in

fact and deed, be a single Communist Party of the entire world. The

parties working in different countries are but its separate sections.

The Congress issued a manifesto declaring that the emancipation of

the colonies was possible only in conjunction with the emancipation

of the metropolitan working class. The workers and peasants not only

in Aman, Algiers and Bengal, but also in Persia and Armenia would

gain their opportunity of independent existence only when the

workers of England and France had overthrown Lloyd George and

Clemenceau and captured state power into their own hands. The

manifesto further added that the ‘small peoples’ could be assured the

opportunity of free existence only by the proletarian revolution which

would liberate the productive forces of all countries, from the

constraint of the national state, and unite the peoples in closest

economic collaboration on the basis of a common economic plan.

Thus, the Comintern laid down the strategy and tactics of the world

communist movement. While the First Congress did not adopt any

specific resolution on the colonial question, it denounced the colonial

plunder of the subjugated nations in unequivocal terms. It also drew

attention to the upsurge of liberation struggles in the colonies with a

31
specific reference to India.

In June–July of 1920, just prior to the Second Congress of the

Comintern, M.N. Roy (original name Narendranath Bhattacharya)

published ‘An Indian Communist Manifesto’ in the Glasgow Socialist.

Born in 1889, in District 24 Parganas of Bengal, Roy left India in

1915 at the age of 26 to secure arms from German sources for a

revolutionary terrorist group of which he had become a member.

Reaching New York via San Francisco in 1916, he met Lala Lajpat

Rai, the veteran Indian nationalist leader. It was in New York that

Roy first came across Marxist literature. Convinced of the

impossibility of obtaining arms from German sources, Roy then

travelled to Mexico in November 1917, where he met Mexican

socialists. His meeting with Lenin’s emissary in Mexico, Mikhail

Borodin, was to mark a turning point in Roy’s life. Within a year, in

December 1918, he was elected General Secretary of the Mexican

Socialist Party. In April 1919, for the first time in a country outside

Russia, the Mexican Socialist Party decided to convert itself into the

Communist Party of Mexico with Roy as General Secretary. Roy

represented the Mexican party in Comintern’s Second Congress, but

raised the cause of India’s liberation at this highest forum of the world

communist movement.

Roy drafted his Glasgow Socialist article in Berlin on his way to

Moscow from Mexico, his first attempt at analyzing the prevailing

Indian situation. ‘An Indian Communist Manifesto’ bears the mark of

a first tentative attempt to point out the role of the different classes in

India and the stage of revolution under the given conditions. Like his
first draft of the Supplementary Theses on the National and Colonial

Question presented to the Second Comintern Congress, the

‘Manifesto’ too, was witness to his sectarian approach concerning the

role of the proletariat in building a united anti-imperialist front. Roy

declared in the ‘Manifesto’: ‘The idea of a proletarian revolution,

32
distinct from nationalism, has come to India . . .’.

Second Comintern Congress

The Indian situation featured prominently at the Second Congress

of the Comintern (July 19–August 7, 1920) in Moscow developing for

Indian revolutionaries a programme of action by applying the

principles of Marxist understanding. This Marxist-Leninist

intervention in Indian affairs came at a historic juncture of the

country’s national liberation movement. The Second Congress

adopted Lenin’s Theses on the National and Colonial Question, as

well as the Supplementary Theses on the same, the original draft of

which was prepared by M.N. Roy. The adoption of these two

documents was preceded by the Lenin-Roy debate on defining a

correct stand on the role of the national bourgeoisie in the freedom

struggle, and the strategy communists should adopt for forming an

alliance with the national bourgeoisie in the struggle for national

independence.

A large group of Indians attended the Congress. Besides Roy (under

the assumed name of Robert Allen Roy) who was a delegate with

voting rights, Abani Mukherji (whom Roy first met in Berlin on his

way to Moscow) and Acharya attended the Congress in an advisory

capacity and Mohammed Shafiq was an observer. Evelyn Trent-Roy

was present as an advisor representing the Mexican Communist Party.

33

The revolution in the colonies and its possible links with the

revolution in advanced western societies were of central importance in

Marxist theory. The analysis of the colonial question provided Lenin

with a basis to develop the Marxist theory of revolution. He argued

that, owing to uneven economic development, the liberation forces in

different countries confront different political realities and are likely to

have different political priorities. In the backward colonies and semi-

colonies, the demand for self-determination gets precedence over the

interests of class struggle of the proletariat. The ‘awakening of

national movements’ and the ‘drawing of the peasantry’ into these

movements characterize this stage. The second historical stage obtains

under the conditions of maturing capitalism characterized by the

rapprochement and intermingling of nations drawn into an intimate

international intercourse. This tendency brings to the fore the

antagonism between internationally united capital, and the

international working class movement. According to Lenin the two

periods are not walled off from each; they are connected by numerous

34
transitional links.

Accordingly, Lenin’s theoretical formulations became the framework

for guiding the revolutionary activities in the colonies and semi-

colonies. In the world revolutionary process there existed several

streams: the emergence of a socialist stage in Europe, encouraging and

helping the revolutionary process in the colonial world; the national

liberation movements in the colonies and semi-colonies against the

imperialist countries; and the struggle of the working class in the

developed countries, furthering the process of world revolution. By

applying Marxist ideas to the new, monopoly stage of capitalism and

to the conditions of the nationalist struggle in the colonies, his analysis

helped the colonial peoples understand the social forces which could

help them overthrow imperialism, and link their struggles to the world

revolutionary process.

Lenin had drafted the resolution of the Congress on the National

and Colonial Questions as early as in June 1920, prior to the opening

of the Congress, as Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and the

Colonial Questions. Published in the middle of June, at Lenin’s request

it was thoroughly discussed, in June and July, by communists familiar

with the developments in the East. A copy of the Draft Theses was

also sent to M.N. Roy who had by that time arrived in Moscow.
 Lenin-Roy debate

In his conversations with Lenin, Roy set forth his largely left-

sectarian views on these problems. Roy’s supplementary theses were

exhaustively amended and corrected by Lenin himself and the

Commission on the National-Colonial Question.

One of the major points of Lenin’s theses was to appeal to the

communists to support the bourgeois-democratic liberation movement

in the eastern countries. In making this point, Lenin proceeded from

the assumption that it was a feudal patriarchal-tribal type of

relationship that predominated in the colonial and dependant

countries of Asia. Feudal landlords and tribal chiefs served, as a rule,

to prop up foreign imperialist domination, whereas the rising national

bourgeoisie acted against imperialism.

Lenin reckoned with the concrete, objective situation where the

sweeping liberation movement, led by the national bourgeoisie, was

the most important factor of public life in eastern countries and

particularly in India, after the First World War and the October

Revolution. All other actions, including class-inspired action by the

peasantry, and the early contingents of the proletariat were, in effect,

part of the national liberation movement.

During a long period of struggle for the creation of independent

nation-states, the communist parties of backward countries, while

preserving and safeguarding their ideological and organizational

independence, ought to support the liberation movement and

cooperate with the anti-imperialist bourgeoisie, pushing it into taking

more firm positions against the forces of foreign imperialism and local

feudalism.

What is particularly important is that the peasantry, making up the

overwhelming mass of the population in the backward countries, was

the major force and mainstay of the national movement. Lenin’s

insistence on support for the national liberation struggle in the East

meant, primarily, backing up the peasant movement and establishing a

close alliance with it. This course of action is expressed in the slogans
calling for the establishment of a united front of all anti-imperialist

forces and the right of subject nations to self-determination.

Roy’s Supplementary Theses

During a meeting of the Congress Commission, there was a heated

debate over Lenin’s ‘Preliminary Draft’ and Roy’s ‘Supplementary

Theses’. Roy defended the original version of his theses, while Lenin

criticized the ‘Left’ positions, and was supported by the Commission.

The result was to delete the ultra-leftist points in Roy’s document,

which failed to value the national liberation movements and the need

for communists to support them. The stage of the class struggle of the

proletariat and peasantry in the East was overestimated by Roy, as

well as the East’s role in bringing about a victorious proletarian

revolution in the West. Roy contended that the socialist revolution in

the colonies was an indispensable precondition for the abolition of

capitalism in the metropolitan countries, and sought to prove that a

bourgeois-democratic stage in the revolutionary struggle in the East

was unnecessary. Lenin’s proposal prevailed to create a militant anti-

imperialist alliance of the revolutionary proletariat and the national

liberation movement.

Originally, the ‘Supplementary Theses’ had maintained that only by

a socialist revolution would the East be well prepared for

overthrowing foreign domination along with native capitalism. The

Tenth Thesis, completely deleted by Lenin, said that the Communists

should not support the bourgeois-democratic movements in the

colonies; as such, support would be conducive to ‘fostering a national

spirit which, would, of course, hinder the awakening class

consciousness of the masses’. Instead it was suggested that

encouraging and ‘supporting revolutionary mass action through a

Communist Party of the proletarians’ would induce the ‘real

revolutionary forces to action that would overthrow not only foreign

imperialism but also forestall the growth of local capitalism’.

In the course of the discussion in the National and Colonial

Commission of the Second Congress, Lenin posed and articulated the

actual prospect of a victorious conclusion of the national liberation

movements and the impossibility of a socialist revolution in Eastern

countries at that time.

The corrected version of Roy’s Theses stated twice (Seventh and

Ninth Theses) that ‘the Revolution in the colonies is not going to be a

communist revolution in its first stages’. Proceeding from this

assumption the Seventh Thesis said that ‘the cooperation of the

bourgeois nationalist revolutionary elements is useful’ for the

overthrow of foreign capitalism.

The final version of the ‘Supplementary Theses’ (Seventh Thesis)

proclaimed Lenin’s idea that the primary and indispensable task

before the communists of Eastern countries was ‘to organize the

peasants and workers and lead them to revolution, and to the

establishment of Soviet Republics’. What was implied, of course, was

not a republic of proletarian dictatorship, but the establishment of a

people’s democratic state that, with the victorious proletariat of

advanced nations in the lead, could take the masses on their way to

socialism. ‘Thus’, the document says, ‘the masses in the backward

countries may reach Communism, not through capitalistic

development, but led by the class-conscious proletariat of the

advanced capitalist countries’.

Thus the changes made in the ‘Supplementary Theses’ were

substantial. However, Roy asserts in his Memoirs that Lenin had

accepted his draft theses with just a few verbal alterations and that it

was approved by the Congress as it then stood. But as we have seen,

Lenin and the Commission deleted the essence of Roy’s ultra-leftist,

sectarian views. Once this was done, Lenin could tell the Congress

that both resolutions proceeded from a number of common guidelines,

and that ‘we have thus reached complete unanimity on all major

issues’.

On July 25, the Eastern Commission, following intense deliberation,

endorsed Lenin’s ‘Preliminary Draft’ with insignificant changes and

Roy’s ‘Supplementary theses’ with some corrections. On July 28, a

plenary session of the Second Congress decided, as the Commission

recommended, passing the two resolutions on the National and

Colonial Questions.

With the adoption of these theses in the Second Congress, the

indispensability of organized communist activities in India came up as

an immediate issue. The guidelines were charted out, but there was no

communist group or individuals in India to implement those

guidelines. By the end of 1920, the Comintern leadership took the

initiative to bring émigré Indian revolutionaries onto a common

platform for organizing a communist party.

Central Revolutionary Committee

The Russian scholar Persits records that on Roy’s initiative the

Indian participants to the Second Comintern Congress formed a

Provisional All India Central Revolutionary Committee (August–

September 1920) consisting of communists still in Moscow or on their

35
way to Tashkent. Roy became chairman of the committee.

However, the committee ignored the IRA of Rab Acharya as well as

Indian revolutionaries active in other countries. The committee also

prepared a report on their activities in Turkistan during the three

months of October 1920–January 1921, that is, before the Third

Congress of the Comintern. But it is found that even before the end of

Second Congress, they drew up a ‘General Plan and Programme of

Work [in preparation] for the Indian Revolution’. This plan posed

three major tasks: (i) the convocation of an all India Congress of

revolutionaries and the establishment of an all India centre; (ii)

immediate formation of a Communist Party of India; and (iii) the

immediate launching of the military and political training of

revolutionary forces. These were the follow up measures of the Second

Congress decisions.

Roy and his associates called for convening an All India

Revolutionary Congress in their General Plan, in line with the decision

of the Second Congress regarding unity of all anti-imperialist forces.

Roy also said that the Indian communists must aspire to bring
together the multifarious elements of Indian society to achieve the

liberation of the country. In his statement before a general meeting of

Indian immigrants in Tashkent in late October 1920, Roy argued that

The Indian revolution, as far as the overthrow of British rule is

concerned, has to be done by a heterogeneous body. We

[communists] want also to overthrow British rule. For this purpose,

we must work in conjunction with all the revolutionary elements of

India. . . . As far as the overthrow of British rule we all agree, and

36
let us advance hand in hand.

This was somewhat different from his earlier stand that the Indian

bourgeoisie is a reactionary class. For instance, in August 1920, Roy’s

associates, who had attended the Second Congress, had written to

British communists asking for help, arguing that ‘We communists

must believe that a social revolution, and not only a bourgeois one, is

just as possible for India as for any other country’. Later, in

September, in an article on the Indian social revolution, Roy sought to

37
prove that India was ripe for a proletarian revolution. Clearly, Roy

and his associates had failed to learn from the Second Congress.

Lack of ideological clarity led to organizational confusion. Initially

Roy’s committee accommodated only Abani Mukherji and

Mohammad Shafiq, but later, in October 1920, Rab was co-opted,

only to be expelled a month later. Acharya too distanced himself from

Roy’s committee. Even the Comintern’s intervention did not succeed in

reconciling the two factions.

Towards formation of the CPI

Just after the conclusion of the Second World Congress, the

Comintern leadership took initiative to mobilize available communist

elements and like-minded groups to organize the émigré Communist

Party of India. With this in mind, the Comintern executive committee

(ECCI) set up a sub-committee of five that came to be known as the

‘Small Bureau’. Roy was a co-opted member in this powerful body,

which served as the supreme policy-making as well as executive organ

of the Comintern.

Meeting shortly after the Second Congress, the Bureau passed two

resolutions:

(i) to hold the first Congress of the Oppressed Peoples of the East at

Baku; and

(ii) to set up a Central Asiatic Bureau of the Communist

International (also known as Turk Bureau or Turkistan Bureau) at

Tashkent.

Three members of this Bureau were Roy, M. Sokolnikov and Georgi

Safarov. Sokolnikov, a central committee member of the Bolshevik

Party, was appointed chairman of the Turkistan Bureau.

Baku Congress

The First Congress of the Peoples of the East held in Baku, the

capital of Azerbaijan, met from September 1–8, 1920 under the

presidentship of Zinoviev. Those who attended the Congress included

Comintern leaders Karl Radek and Bela Kun, John Reed, the

American journalist and author of Ten Days That Shook the World,

and the Turkish nationalist Enver Pasha. The Congress was attended

by 1,891 representatives of 32 nationalities from Turkey, Persia,

China, Georgia, Armenia, some Arab countries, and India. Not all

participants were communists; some were even unfamiliar with the

basic Marxist notions. This was the first such conclave held under the

auspices of the Comintern. Seven delegates from India attended. Roy

was against the very idea of the Baku Congress, which he derisively

38
called the ‘Zinoviev circus’ in his memoirs. He did not attend, and

sent Abani Mukherji instead.

 At that time, Roy was considered being sent to Kabul as the Soviet

ambassador, with the idea of using Afghanistan under King

Amanullah as a base for Indian revolutionary activities against the

British regime. Amanullah, however, did not agree to Roy’s

appointment.

The Tashkent meeting

The meeting held in Tashkent on October 7, 1920, formed the

Communist Party of India with seven members: M.N. Roy, Evelyn

Trent-Roy, Abani Mukherji, Rosa Fitingov, Mohammad Ali,

Mohammad Shafiq and Acharya. Roy and Evelyn were husband and

wife, as were Mukherji and Rosa Fitingov. Shafiq was elected

secretary of the party, Roy as secretary of the Turk Bureau and

Acharya as chairman signed the minutes. The inaugural meeting also

adopted the principles proclaimed by the Comintern, and decided to

work out a programme of the CPI ‘suited to the conditions of India’.

Little is recorded about the activities of the party, but the minutes of

the CPI of December 15, 1920, reveal that three persons were

inducted into the party as candidate members: Abdul Qadir Sehrai,

39
Masood Ali Shah and Akbar Shah (Salim). A candidate member

was to complete a probation period of three months for full

membership of the party. The same meeting also elected a three-

member Executive Committee with Roy, Shafiq and Acharya. They

also decided to register the party in Turkistan. Many of the muhajirs

who went to Tashkent in September 1920, joined the party in early

1921 when they went to Moscow to join the newly founded

University of the Toilers of the East.

Thus it is clear that in 1920, when the communist movement was

yet to take shape on Indian soil, it was primarily Roy, with the

political and organizational help of the Comintern, who was the

moving force behind the Comintern’s recognition of the importance of

India as a key element in the strategy of revolutionary struggle in the

colonies. Nevertheless, in his Memoirs, Roy belittles the formation of

the party in Tashkent:

. . . the minority, which proposed the formation of an Indian

Communist Party, was reinforced by the Abdur Rab-Acharya group

and, on the latter’s instigation, sent a delegation to the Turk Bureau

of the Communist International to plead their case. I tried to argue

with them that there was no hurry. They should wait until they

returned to India. There was no sense in a few emigrant individuals

calling themselves the Communist Party. They were evidently

disappointed, and I apprehended that the experience might

dishearten them. I needed their help to manage the refractory

majority of the emigrants. The idea of turning them out with the

offer of employment was not practical. So I agreed with the

proposal for the formation of a Communist Party, knowing fully

well that it would be a nominal thing, although it could function as

40
the nucleus of a real Communist Party to be organized eventually.

The same Roy, in the Report of the Indian Revolutionary

Committee in January 1921 wrote a little differently: ‘The Communist

elements present in Tashkent, numbering seven in all, in pursuance of

their principles and the plan previously formed in conjunction with

European Communists, constituted themselves into a duly organized

41
Communist Party of India on October 17, 1920.’

The formation of the CPI was followed by the foundation of the

Indian Military School in Tashkent with equipment and trainers

brought by Roy in early October 1920 which continued from October

1920 to end of May 1921. The first batch of muhajirs came from

India. Then in Moscow, the Communist University of the Toilers of

the East was founded on April 21, 1921. Shaukat Usmani and Rafiq

Ahmad who were among the muhajirs who joined the Tashkent

Military School later shifted to the University of the Toilers of the

East. At least twenty-one names can be identified from the Peshawar

Conspiracy Case records, who joined the Tashkent Military School,

some of whom later went to Moscow University: Fida Ali (Peshawar),

Abdul Qadar Sehrai (Haripur), Sultan Mohammad (Lahore), Mir

Abdul Majid, Habib Ahmed (Shahjahanpur, UP), Feroze-ud-din

Mansur (Sheikupura), Rafiq Ahmed (Bhopal), Mian Akbar Shah

(Nowshera Derveshi, Haripur), Gour (Ghaus?) Rahaman, Aziz

Ahmed, Fazl Ilahi Qurban Abdulla, Mohammad Shafiq, Shaukat

Usmani, Masood Ali Shah, Master Abdur Hamid, Abdul Rahim

(Meerut, Hazara), Ghulam Mohammad, Mohammad Akbar, Nissar

42
Raz and Hafiz Abdul Majid. Of them, police arrested ten persons

on their return to India. They were tried in the Peshawar Conspiracy

Case and convicted to various terms of rigorous imprisonment. Mir

Abdul Majid and Shaukat Usmani were convicted in the Meerut

Conspiracy Case in 1929. Muzaffar Ahmad, one of the pioneers of the

communist movement in the subcontinent, dedicated his

autobiographical work, Myself and the Communist Party of India,

published in 1970, to two of the great muhajirs, M.A. Majid and

Feroze-ud-din Mansur.

The Comintern received no immediate formal notification of the

creation of the Communist Party of India either. Moreover, the fifth

paragraph of the English copy of the minutes of the first meeting of

the Indian communists on October 17, 1920, stated that it was agreed

that ‘information, as to the formation of the ICP, would be sent to the

Third International, as soon as the Programme of the Party is ready’.

Yet it proved impossible to draw it up at that time. It was as late as on

January 2, 1921, that the draft, prepared by Mukherji, was discussed

at a meeting of the Indian communists, but was rejected on Roy’s

insistence.

At that time, the Comintern recognized the CPI only as a group.

The list of the parties and organizations invited to the Third Congress

of the Comintern (endorsed by the Small Bureau of the ECCI in late

April, early May 1921) mentioned ‘India: The Communist Groups

(consultative vote)’.

However, no organized communist activity, even on a very small

scale, seems to have existed in India in the period 1917–21. The

formation of the Communist Party of India in Tashkent in October

1920, by the émigré Indian revolutionaries, under the guidance of the

Communist International, precedes the emergence and spread of the

communist movement in India. But from this one should not draw the

simplistic conclusion that the Tashkent-based CPI had no impact on

developments within India. The formation of the CPI in Tashkent was

gradually followed by the emergence of communist groups, initially

small and scattered, in different parts of India, mainly in Bombay,

Calcutta, Madras, Lahore and Kanpur.

 THREE

SPREAD OF

COMMUNIST

ACTIVITIES
THOUGH THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF India was organized in

Tashkent in October 1920 there was no concrete communist activity

during the period in any part of the subcontinent. However, the

colonial authorities were alerted and wary of the ‘infiltration’ of

communist ideas into India and took prompt preventive measures.

Efforts were made by the government to prevent the entry of

communist journals and other literature from Britain into India.

The veritable British panic in face of the emergence of a few tiny

Communist groups in India – the Home Political files of the 1920s

are at times obsessed with the ‘Bolshevik menace’ – far exceeded the

real immediate significance of such activities, and can be explained

only by the worldwide ruling class fear inspired by 1917, so

1
reminiscent of the panic after the French Revolution.

Perhaps they were taking a little too seriously Bipin Chandra Pal’s

comment of September 1920 that ‘Just as the Vaishnab goes to Sri

2
Brindaban, so the Bolsheviks are also coming to India’.

The message of revolutionary transformation could not be barred

from India. In October 1921, Comintern launched its special

fortnightly organ, the International Press Correspondence or Inprecor

in three languages – English, German and French. For over two

decades, the Inprecor played an effective role in linking the communist

parties worldwide under the guidance of the Comintern. Prior to the

launching of the Inprecor, the Comintern published a monthly

theoretical journal, the Communist International from June 1919,

whereas Inprecor, being a fortnightly, contained mostly day-to-day

events. The impact of the Inprecor was soon felt, as copies of its

English edition found their way to various Indian centres despite the

strict vigilance of the colonial authorities.

Simultaneously the political situation in India was undergoing

significant changes. In September 1920, a special session of the

Congress in Calcutta adopted the Non-Cooperation Programme of

Gandhi. The special session was followed by the Nagpur session in

December 1920, which formally ratified the programme, and Swaraj

was proclaimed as the ultimate aim of the Congress. R.P. Dutt’s

seminal book, India Today, published in 1926, succinctly summed up

the significance of the Nagpur resolution:

The new programme and policy inaugurated by Gandhiji marked a

giant advance for the National Congress. The Congress now stood

out as a political party leading the masses in struggle against the

3
government for the realization of national freedom.

In April 1921, during the non-cooperation and boycott movement,

a book entitled Gandhi vs Lenin was brought out by Liberty

Literature Company of Bombay. It was authored by a little known

journalist, S.A. Dange, later to become one of the prominent

communist leaders of India. Though Dange quoted extensively from

the Theses on the National and Colonial Question of the Second

Comintern Congress, his writing showed he had lacked a clear idea

then about communism. The book reflects his rather greater faith in

the Congress. Following Dange’s book, in August 1921, Phani Bhusan

Ghosh published a biography of Lenin in Bengali. How communist

ideas were spreading among nationalist circles can be seen from a

letter published in The Hindu, Madras, on May 24, 1921. It was ‘An

Open Letter to Mahatma Gandhi’ by M. Singaravelu Chettiar, a

lawyer and pro-Congress trade union leader, who was to preside over

the Kanpur Communist Conference four years later.

I do not wish to trouble you much with my views on the present

situation. I am your humble follower in the fight for Swaraj. . . . I

believe that our unfortunate people will never be free and happy

until we succeed not merely against the present foreign bureaucracy,

but also against the future bureaucracy of our own people.

Therefore I believe that only communism, that is to say, holding

land and vital industries in common use and for the benefit of all
 the workers in the country, can bring a real measure of contentment

4
and independence of our people.

The letter came just a month before the opening of the Third Congress

of the Comintern at Moscow. Chettiar later became one of the earliest

communist organizers in south India.

The year 1921 also witnessed a new wave in India’s struggle for

independence with the breaking out of mass political struggle during

Congress’s non-cooperation movement. A series of militant struggles

of peasants and workers in various parts of the country sounded a

radical turn in the situation, epitomized by the participation of Sikh

peasant masses in the Gurdwara Reform Movement in Punjab, under

the leadership of the Gurdwara Prabhandhak Committee, culminating

in the massacre of nearly two hundred people in Nankana in February

5
1921. The year was also marked by the spread of the Eka Movement

of the tenant peasants in the United Provinces. Demanding an end to

the extortion and appropriation by feudal landlords, it helped deepen

6
the anti-colonial feelings among the peasant masses.

Third Comintern Congress

Although no communist groups existed in India, the Indian

situation figured prominently in the discussions of the Third

Comintern Congress (June 22–July 12, 1921). There were actually

four representatives from India present, but except Roy, the identity of

the other three delegates is not definitely known. At the time, some 20

muhajirs were studying in the University of the Toilers of the East,

some of whom had already joined the CPI. Besides them, some 14

Indian revolutionaries, including Virendranath Chattopadhyay and

Bhupendranath Dutta were present in Moscow to discuss with the

Comintern leaders about assistance to India’s struggle to overthrow

the British colonial regime.

It is not clear if the Comintern officially recognized the CPI formed

in Tashkent. Comintern records say that the four Indian delegates

belonged to the Communist Party. On the other hand, however, the

circular convening the Third Congress, issued after the formation of

the party in Tashkent, speaks only of ‘Indian communist groups to be

invited without vote’. Roy had signed his manifesto to the Ahmedabad

Congress in the name of ‘Communist Party of India’. Dange says, ‘The

Communist Party of India was first founded in Tashkent by a group of

émigré revolutionaries in the year 1920. . . . [The] Communist Party

was immediately given affiliation to the International. It published a

journal in English [The Vanguard], which was described as the organ

of the Communist Party of India, section of the Communist

7
International.’

Unable to sort out the differences within the émigré Indian

communists, the Comintern Small Bureau, on June 13, 1921 formed

an Indian Commission under the chairmanship of a Dutch communist

S.J. Rutgers. A decision was taken on April 5, 1921, to invite the

group led by Virendranath Chattopadhyay, and accordingly a group

of seven revolutionaries (Virendranath, Luhani, Khankoje,

Bupendranath Dutt, Nalini Gupta, Abdul Hasan and pro-Gadar Party

American writer, Agnes Smedley) went to Moscow in late April-early

8
May 1921. According to some historians, fourteen revolutionaries

visited Moscow: Virendranath, Bhupendranath Dutta, P. Khankoje,

Birendranth Dasgupta, G.A.K. Luhani, Dr M.H. Mansoor, Dr Hafiz,

Herambal Gupta, Nalini Gupta, Barakatullah, Abdur Rab, M.P.B.T.

Acharya, Abdul Wahed, Pramathanath (Daud Ali). Roy in his

Memoirs also claims that fourteen of the Berlin Group went to

9
Moscow. Virendranath had first gone to Moscow in November

1920, but did not seem to have had important discussions with

Comintern leaders. Roy too was not in Moscow at that time. This

time discussions were organized under the auspices of the Indian

10
Commission of the Comintern.

During their stay in Moscow, a number of documents were

submitted to the Comintern. Virendranath, Luhani and Khankoje sent

a 14-page ‘Theses on India and the World Revolution’ to the ECCI

and Lenin, around July 1921. Lenin acknowledged the receipt of this
document and sent a reply (July 8, 1921). It highlighted three distinct

issues: (a) India was described basically as an agrarian country with a

feudal structure – a proposition that contested Roy’s understanding;

(b) Indian society was divided not only vertically along class lines, but

also horizontally along lines of religion and caste; and (c) without

mentioning Roy’s name it contested the argument advanced from

certain quarters that the Comintern’s assistance to bourgeois

democratic and national revolutionary movements would be

counterproductive, since once British imperialism was overthrown,

imperialism would be shattered and this would signal the total

collapse of the native bourgeoisie and the onward march of the

proletariat. The document submitted by Bhupendranth Dutta and

others was entitled ‘Memorandum and scheme of organization

regarding Indian work’, which while emphasizing the necessity of

organizing a communist nucleus under the Comintern’s leadership for

initiating the formation of a Communist Party in India, categorically

stressed that the Comintern should extend help to the nationalists and

11
other revolutionary forces. Virendranth and Luhani submitted a

Memorandum to the Indian Commission (ECCI), April 4, 1921.

Bhupendranth Dutta also submitted his Theses (August 23, 1921) –

‘Communist Revolution – Final Solution of the Problem’ to Lenin.

Lenin sent a letter (26 August 1921) to Dutta acknowledging receipt

and advised him to abide by the Theses adopted by the Second

12
Congress. It is evident from the records that the Berlin Group’s

political thesis was not acceptable to the Comintern leadership. Roy in

his Memoirs, written long after he had discarded communism,

mentioned that they also called on Lenin, but no such record is found.

By the end of 1921, all but two left Moscow; Luhani and Nalini

Gupta remained and joined the Roy group.

The Third Congress discussed Roy’s ‘Draft Theses on the Oriental

Question’; two other documents on India submitted on behalf of the

visiting Berlin Group leaders were not acceptable to the Comintern.

Roy was elected to the Presidium of the Third Congress. The Third

Congress also needs special mention for its resolution on party

organization. It was a time when communist parties were being

formed in various countries. The Comintern, as the leader of the

world communist movement, tried to place before the communist

elements in all parts of the world guidelines for an appropriate

organizational setup. However, the CPI formed in Tashkent had no

party constitution or party programme in a sense pointed out by the

Comintern.

In December 1921, Roy turned his attention to India, and his article

‘Present Events in India’ was published in the Comintern organ,

Communist International. The December 20 issue of Inprecor

contained Roy’s first article in the fortnightly, entitled ‘Revolutionary

India’.

Manifesto to Ahmedabad Congress

th
The 1921 session (36 ) of the Indian National Congress held at

Ahmedabad, constituted a turning point in the history of India’s

communist movement. For the first time the delegates received a

th
‘Manifesto to the 36 Indian National Congress’. Signed by M.N.

Roy and Abani Mukherjee, copies of the manifesto made its impact on

the Congress delegates, and it was further mailed to all parts of India.

13

The Manifesto was the first appeal of the Indian communists to the

Indian National Congress. Keeping in mind the Comintern line, the

Manifesto tried to place a new plan of action, hitherto untested by the

Congress. It called for a clear definition of the objectives of the

Congress – the complete severance of all connections with the British

Empire and full support to the struggles of the working class and

peasantry. The Manifesto declared:

If the Congress would lead the revolution, which is shaking India to

its very foundation, let it not put its faith in mere demonstrations

and temporary wild enthusiasm. Let it make the immediate

demands of the trade unions its own demands; let it make the

programme of the Kisan Sabhas (peasant unions) its own

 programme; and the time will soon come when the Congress will

not be stopped by any obstacle; it will be backed by the irresistible

strength of the entire population, consciously fighting for their

material interests.

Dubbing the non-cooperation movement as a ‘wastage of

revolutionary energy’, the Manifesto asserted:

The vast mass of humanity, which inhabits the great peninsula, has

begun to move towards a certain goal, it is awakening after

centuries of social stagnation resulting from economic and political

oppression. . . . The National Congress is no longer a holiday

gathering engaged in idle delegation and futile resolution-making, it

has become a political body – the leader of the movement.

At the same time it wanted to impress upon the Congress the need to

extend due importance to the cause of the toiling masses.

The Congress must have the workers and peasants behind it, and it

can win their lasting confidence only when it ceases to sacrifice

them, ostensibly for a higher cause, namely the so-called national

interest, but really for the material prosperity of the merchants and

manufacturers. . . . If the Congress wants to have the nation behind

it, let it not be blinded by the interests of a small class, let it not be

guided by the invisible hand of the ‘merchants and manufacturers’

who have replaced the ‘talented lawyers’ in the Congress whom

present tactics seek to install in the place of the ‘satanic’ British.

The influence the Manifesto exerted on Congressmen could be seen

from the fact that a radical Congressman, Maulana Hazrat Mohani,

moved a resolution in favour of complete independence. Although

rejected by a majority of the delegates, the very fact of such a

resolution being moved signified that communist ideas had started

affecting the anti-imperialist movement.

 From the very beginning of formation of the party, the CPI raised

the slogan of complete independence, before any other political party

or group in India. Nationalist leaders Maulana Hasrat Mohani (ex-

Khilafatist) and Swami Kumaranand moved a resolution at the

Ahmedabad Congress to define Swaraj as complete freedom from

14
foreign rule. But Gandhi opposed the demand.

Besides the Manifesto, Roy had also sent his emissary Nalini Gupta

(later arrested in the Kanpur Conspiracy Case in 1924) just before the

Ahmedabad Congress. Nalini is said to have reached Calcutta on

December 23, 1921. In the same month, he met Muzaffar Ahmad and

Nazrul Islam in their rented Calcutta residence at 3/4, Taltola Lane;

that was Muzaffar Ahmad’s first direct encounter with any of Roy’s

emissaries. Ahmad was not much impressed with Nalini; but credits

Nalini with connecting him with the Comintern at this early stage of

15
his political life.

Bharat Samyatantra Samiti

It appears that soon after Ahmad’s meeting with Nalini, the first

Communist-minded group in India was formed, calling itself the

Bharat Samyatantra Samiti (Indian Socialist Association), with

Muzaffar Ahmad as its Secretary, according to an unpublished letter

of Ahmad. The letter is dated March 22, 1922, ten days after Gandhi’s

arrest following his withdrawal of the non-cooperation movement.

The letter, in its assessment of the prevailing situation in India, shows

a person struggling to find a new revolutionary path for the

emancipation of the people of India.

Bharat Samyatantra Samiti,

March 22, 1922

Head Office

10/1, Bright Street,

Ballygunge, Calcutta
 Bengal

To

The Secretary,

Communist International,

Moscow,

Russia.

My dear Comrade,

On behalf of the Bharat Samyatantra Samiti, I am writing this

letter to you. The Bharat Samyatantra Samiti (Indian Socialist

Association) is formed with the object of spreading socialism in

Bharatbarsha or India, as it is called by the English. Our Society is

very poor. You can easily understand that no rich man here will be

ready to help us. Under the circumstances, if we could be helped by

your International with sufficient funds we would be able to do a

good deal of work. We cannot proceed with the work only for want

of funds. We are quite sure that India will more easily accept our

ideals than any other country only because the suffering of the

people is great and their living is simple.

Our Comrade Nalini Gupta came here and kindly paid a visit to

our office. We fully explained the matter to him. From him you will

learn every detail when he is with you. He gave us instructions on

your line, which we readily accepted as ours.

On behalf of the Bharat Samyatantra Samiti,

Muzaffar Ahmad

Secretary

This is perhaps the first letter to the Comintern by an Indian seeking

help to fund the communist movement in India. It is not clear whether

Ahmad knew anything about the formation of the CPI in Tashkent.

Ahmad’s correspondence with Roy began only in May 1922, as he

mentions. The exact date of the foundation of this Samiti is not

known nor who were Ahmad’s associates, only that the letter was

obviously written after Nalini’s departure from Calcutta. Muzaffar

Ahmad mentions nothing about the organization in his autobiography.

The suspension of the mass civil disobedience movement following

violence in Chauri Chaura in February sent shockwaves across the

country. The Ahmedabad Congress session’s (December 1921)

decision to continue the programme of civil disobedience had sparked

off extraordinary mass enthusiasm. On February 1, 1922, Gandhi sent

an ultimatum to Lord Reading, the Viceroy, that if political prisoners

were not freed, he would begin the last stage of non-cooperation

movement, that is, refusal to pay taxes. It was in these circumstances

that the Chauri Chaura incident took place. An extraordinary session

of the Congress working committee was called at Bardoli (Gujarat) on

February 11–12, where the decision was taken to suspend the civil

disobedience movement. This was a big blow to the militant mass

movement. In his book The Indian Struggle 1920–34 published in

London in 1935 Subhas Chandra Bose charged Gandhi with

‘strangling the movement all over the country’. Gandhi was arrested

on March 10, 1922, and this time put behind bars for nearly two

years. These developments gave rise to political frustration among a

section of the nationalists. At the same time, its withdrawal illustrated

that the Congress under bourgeoisie leadership was not in a position

to further the cause of the common masses.

In May 1922, Roy brought out his English fortnightly from Berlin –

The Vanguard of Indian Independence, the first declared organ of the

CPI. Launched on May 15, it played a tremendous role in spreading

the message of communism throughout India, linking up various

communist elements and groups, hitherto working in isolation, with a

reliable common approach and integrating them with the world

communist movement.
 Just before the appearance of the Vanguard, the Comintern

Executive Committee (ECCI) also took special initiatives to circulate

communist literatures in the colonies in particular. The extended

plenum of the ECCI held in March 1922 proposed ‘to all parties that

they utilize all possibilities for the publication of communist literature

in the languages of the colonies, and thus create close connection with

16
the suppressed masses there’. The resolution was published in the

May 2, 1922, issue of the Inprecor. The plenum also appealed to the

CPGB to implement an appropriate programme of action to help the

revolutionary movements in India and Egypt.

The publication of the Vanguard added momentum to communist

propaganda programme in India, as testified by Cecil Kaye, chief of

the British Intelligence Department:

From the beginning of 1922, Roy followed up the dispatch of these

agents by sending a flood of printed propaganda pamphlets to India

through the post. In May 1922 his fortnightly journal ‘Vanguard’

(prohibited entry into India under the Sea Customs Act) made its

appearance, since when some thousand copies have regularly been

sent fortnightly to India. As a result of this propaganda campaign,

Singaravelu Chettiar in Madras and S.A. Dange in Bombay became

interested in communism, opened up communications with Roy,

through the post, and have since taken a leading part in forming

17
communist groups in their respective cities.

In this ‘certain class of Indian newspapers’, Kaye includes, from

Calcutta, the Amrita Bazar Patrika, Atmashakti and Dhumketu

(edited by Nazrul Islam), the Independent from Allahabad, Navayug

edited by Krishna Rao and published from Guntur of Madras

Presidency, the Deshabani of Noakhali (now in Bangladesh),

Vartaman of Kanpur and Dange’s Socialist from Bombay.

The British Government was not slow in checking the entry of

Comintern journals. A Governor General Council’s order of April 22,

1922, proscribed any printed literature of the Comintern. A report

reveals that nearly 1,000 copies of each issue of Vanguard were

coming to India. In all, nine issues of the Vanguard were published.

The British authorities banned seven of them. Roy’s second venture in

publication was an English fortnightly, The Advance Guard, which

was launched from London on October 1, 1922. This time too, all the

issues were proscribed in India.

In the meantime, within India, some important developments were

taking place. In July 1922 Shamsuddin Hassan in association with

Ghulam Hussain, published an Urdu daily, the Inquilab from Lahore,

around which a communist group began to be formed.

Moreover, what is supposed to be the first Marxist journal

published in India, The Socialist, was brought out from Bombay by

S.A. Dange on August 5, 1922. Declared as the ‘Journal of

International Socialism’ it was the most significant publication of the

period. In the first editorial titled ‘Probing at the root’ Dange wrote:

With nothing to offer to the toiling masses we cannot move

forward. . . . The cause of our misery lies in two things: the foreign

domination and the indigenous vulture, the class that preys upon

the wealth of the nation and the bread of the toilers. We shall have

neither of them.

The Socialist attracted Roy’s attention. He sent a letter (September

26, 1922) to Dange from Berlin conveying unqualified congratulation.

In the first issue of the Advance Guard (October 1, 1922), Roy again

commented: ‘The appearance of the Socialist marks the beginning of a

new era in our movement. It is the harbinger of the coming

revolutionary leadership which alone is capable of guiding our

movement to the ultimate goal.’

Peshawar Conspiracy Cases

The British government, already perturbed over the activities of

Indian revolutionaries abroad, and their contact with communists and

the communist organization in Moscow, from mid-1922 onwards,

instituted a number of so-called conspiracy cases accusing them of

planning to overthrow the British government in India.

The first of these was launched against those of the muhajirs who

had not only crossed over from Kabul into Soviet Russia in their

search for military training and help for India’s independence

movement, but had gone ahead in order to become acquainted with

the communist ideology and politics, to join the school in Tashkent

and the Communist University in Moscow.

Acting on clues which they obtained from the statements of the

early muhajir-returnees – the first batch reached Peshawar on June 3,

1921, after refusal by Turkish authorities to enter the Turkish territory

from Russia – the British Indian police kept watch for the return of

those who had gone to Tashkent and Moscow, and began arresting

them from the middle of 1922. That is how the first of the

‘Communist Conspiracy Cases’ at Peshawar was started in which

some 12–13 revolutionaries received sentences of rigorous

imprisonment.

The judgment in the first case, in which Mohammad Akbar together

with his father Hafizullah Khan and servant Bahadur were involved,

was pronounced on May 31, 1922. The charge was involvement in a

conspiracy hatched in Tashkent, Kabul and Samarkand to overthrow

the British Government. Akbar and Bahadur were sentenced to three

years and one year rigorous imprisonment respectively, under section

121-A of IPC; while Hafizullah Khan was acquitted and released.

In the Second Peshawar Conspiracy Case, the Sessions Court

charged Mohammad Akbar along with Mohammad Hassan of

Baluchistan and Ghulam Mehbub of Peshawar on April 27, 1923.

Mohammand Akbar was sentenced to seven years’ rigorous

imprisonment and two others got five years rigorous imprisonment.

The Third Peshawar Conspiracy Case, involving Akbar Shah and

seven others, namely, Rafiq Ahmad, Feroze-ud-Din Mansur, Abdul

Majid, Habib Ahmad, Sultan Mohammad, Abdul Qadar and Fida Ali
(the latter later turned approver in the case), was otherwise known as

the Moscow-Tashkent Conspiracy case. The case began before the

inquiring magistrate of Peshawar on March 7, 1923.

In mid-1922 the Government of India’s Intelligence Department

obtained information that some 16 of the 26 muhajirs who were in

the Tashkent School, had gone to Moscow to receive training at the

University for the Toilers of the East. The confidential Home

Department political files of the Government of 1922–23, contain an

article on this University as well as a list of the 22 muhajirs trained in

18
Tashkent and Moscow. British intelligence had reconnoitered the

possible entry routes of Indian revolutionaries, crossing to and from

Soviet Russia, both on the Pamir-Chitral border and on the Persian

border. It was not surprising therefore that most of the ‘accused’ in

this case, who chose the Pamir-Chitral route, were apprehended as

soon as they reached the mountain outpost at Chitral.

The sessions judge said that the accused were convicted ‘not because

they adopted pure communism, but because they are emissaries of the

communism adopted by the Bolsheviks and Roy’. In the later Kanpur

Case, the session judge was to say the same thing in different words.

In the Peshawar case it was further said that ‘certain associates of the

present accused’ in Tashkent and Moscow ‘have reached other parts of

India secretly and have actively carried out revolutionary work’.

The Fourth Peshawar Conspiracy Case was against Mohammad

Shafiq, who was arrested by the police on December 10, 1923. On

April 4 of the next year he was sentenced to three years’ rigorous

imprisonment under section 121-A, for being an ‘active member’ of

the ‘conspiracy’ at Tashkent and Moscow. Mohammad Shafiq had

been elected Secretary of the CPI formed in Tashkent. However, no

overt act of conspiracy was proved against Md. Shafiq, or the other

accused convicted in the other Peshawar conspiracy cases, except that

they went to Soviet Russia and obtained revolutionary training in the

schools in Tashkent and Moscow.

There was a Fifth Peshawar Conspiracy Case in 1927, in which Fazl

Ilahi Qurban was tried and sentenced to three years’ rigorous

imprisonment exactly on the same charge. However, this series of so-

called conspiracy cases and the mockery of trials failed to attract the

attention of either the Muslim League or the National Congress

leaders. The protest came only from Roy and the Comintern. As Irfan

Habib points out: ‘These heavy punishments – as those of the

Peshawar cases drew no perceptible protest from the rest of the

nationalist camp – a curious attitude of indifference to civil liberties, if

19
not the cause of national freedom.’

Fourth Congress of the Comintern

The idea that the young communist parties and groups fighting in

the ranks of the national independence movements should come

forward as active builders of a broad united anti-imperialist front

received a clear and definitive formulation at the Fourth Congress of

20
the Comintern.

The congress met in Petrograd on November 5, 1922, but its

subsequent meetings were held in Moscow till December 5. The

decision to convene the Congress was probably taken in the second

extended plenum of the ECCI (June 7–11, 1922). In the Inprecor

dated July 17, 1922, a brief item appeared inviting the Indian

Communists to send delegates to the Fourth Congress. Roy’s

Vanguard of Indian Independence also published an article on the

Fourth Congress in its September 1, 1922, issue, and invited delegates

from India. Roy also sent a British communist, Charles Ashleigh, who

arrived in Bombay and despite police vigilance, managed to meet

21
Dange at the Bombay Chronicle office. But both Dange and

Singaravelu were reluctant to go to the Comintern Congress.

Roy had earlier informed Muzaffar Ahmad of Ashleigh’s arrival and

wanted Chiraranjan Das, brother of C.R. Das, and Subhas Chandra

Bose to come to attend the Fourth Congress. Ashleigh’s mission

however proved a failure; the police soon detected his presence and

forced him to leave India. He had arrived on September 19, 1922 and

had to leave three days later, on September 22.

 While Roy attended the Congress as a member of the ECCI and the

Eastern Section, and Rattan Singh of the Gadar Party as a delegate,

Santokh Singh (Gadar Party), Nalini Gupta and Masood Ali Shah

went as observers.

The participation of the Gadar Party representatives at the Fourth

Congress was to prove of significance for the Indian communist

22
movement. Santokh Singh was counted as one of those Indians who

were involved in Bolshevik and other analogous activities abroad. The

Indian authorities dubbed him as ‘a most dangerous man directly

concerned in attempting to import arms into India’. Santokh Singh

was the first amongst the Indian immigrants to become a communist

and persuaded others to learn Marxism in order to become

communists. An intelligence report prepared in November 1920 says

that Santokh Singh was advising the people to study Marxian theory

and learn Russian.

It was about this time that the Gadar Party realized that it should

maintain a direct contact with Moscow. ‘As a first step, therefore,

responsible comrades should be sent to Soviet Russia’, and

accordingly, Surendranath Karr, editor of Gadar Party’s monthly

organ in English, left at the beginning of 1921. Despite his early death

in 1922, he contributed in introducing Marxist ideas to the Gadar

party members and paved the way for his comrades-in-arms Santokh

Singh and Rattan Singh to come to Moscow.

It is not known how they reached Moscow. Both of them died

before leaving behind any record of their travel to Moscow. It appears

that L.C. Wheat, executive secretary, Communist Party of America,

gave them clearance saying that they ‘have been investigated by our

party and we find that they are trusted members of the Hindustani

Gadar Party. . . . We request that every assistance be given them in

passing through Russia and the neighboring countries on their way to

India.’ The same file records that Santokh Singh was reported to have

gone to Russia in January 1923; and ‘in February, reported by our

London agent, to have been definitely identified as one of the two

members of the Gadar Party (the other being Rattan Singh) who had
attended the fourth congress of the Third International and the report

23
added that these men saw Zinoviev’.

The exact date of their arrival in Moscow is not found in

government records. But Iqbal Shaidai says in his A Revolutionist’s

Self-Story that when his group reached Moscow by the end of

November 1922 and were lodged in the guest house of the Comintern

– a big hotel – two Sikhs were already lodged there. One was called

Santokh Singh and the other Ishar Singh (alias Rattan Singh). The

questionnaire form that they filled on entry into Moscow shows that

both ‘entered Russia from Latvia on September 23 and reached

Moscow on September 24’. Santokh Singh and Rattan Singh also

attended the Second Congress of the Red International of Labour

Unions, where the former delivered a speech on the 1914–15 Gadar

Rising. The government reports say that Santokh Singh and Rattan

Singh met the secretary-general of the Comintern, Zinoviev. It is

certain that they met M.N. Roy and discussed with him problems of

the Indian revolution. Santokh Singh subsequently returned to India

and was promptly arrested. He also attended the Kanpur communist

conference in December 1925 and founded the first communist

journal in Punjabi, the Kirti in February 1926.

Based on its analysis of the situation in the colonial and dependent

countries, the Fourth Congress adopted the ‘Theses on the Eastern

Question’:

The communist and working class parties in the colonies and semi-

colonial countries are confronted with a two-fold task: on the one

hand to fight for the most radical solutions to the problems of a

bourgeois democratic revolution, and on the other to organize the

workers and peasants to fight for their special class interests and to

take advantage of the antagonism existing in the nationalist

bourgeois democratic camp.

With regard to India, having followed contemporary developments,

the Congress sent messages to the Gaya session of the Indian National
Congress and the Lahore session of AITUC (November 1922). In a

telegram sent to the AITUC, the Fourth Congress said:

While assuring you of our sympathy and promising you our fullest

support for the victory of your cause, we must remind you that . . .

economic emancipation of the Indian workers and peasants depends

on national political freedom. . . . Prepare yourselves for this

historic part. . . . Beware of the false friendship and misleading

24
advice of those workers’ leaders who abet imperialism.

It was by no means an easy task for Roy and other communists

abroad to draw together these widely dispersed Indian communists,

with inadequate understanding of Marxism and communist strategy,

both organizationally and ideologically, and link them directly to the

Communist International. The problem of developing and perfecting

workable channels of communication with the Indian Communists

was indeed a big challenge. But in spite of many difficulties Roy

continued to maintain contact with comrades in India. These contacts

were well known to the Intelligence Bureau of the Government of

India and according to these reports, his correspondence with the

communists in India had been an unfailing source of information

about the revolutionary activities in India. Apart from strict police

vigilance, another problem was to find reliable persons in India.

Unfortunately for Roy, except for Dange and Muzaffar Ahmad, he

failed to find many more trusted friends in India. Some people like

R.C.L. Sharma, in the French territory Pondicherry, were later

exposed as unfaithful.

After the Fourth Congress

In this background, the question of forming a Communist Party on

Indian soil came up as an important political issue before the

communist elements, and divergent perceptions of the organizational

structure of the party also began to crop up. There were a number of

questions to be addressed. Firstly, though there was an émigré CPI, it

had no organizational shape, especially in the sense of the model

constitution of a communist party adopted by the Third Congress of

the Comintern. Many questions arose: whether a CPI based on an

appropriate party constitution should be formed or not; if formed,

how should the émigré party be linked with the party in India; should

such a party function openly or in secret; or even whether the

communists should form a separate party or forum for open political

activities?

Dange’s proposal

In the meantime, when the decision to hold the Fourth Comintern

Congress was announced in Moscow, Dange published his proposal in

The Socialist of September 16, 1922, where he suggested formation of

an ‘Indian Socialist Labour Party of the Indian National Congress’,

inside the Congress. The proposed party, ‘organized on the basis of the

Socialist Movement 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 and distribution and exchange is a social

25
function democratically controlled’. To know the details, Roy wrote

to Dange on November 2, 1922, congratulating him for forming the

party. In reality, Dange had done nothing except publish the

26
programme.

Roy’s proposal to form a party was published in the first issue of the

The Advance Guard (October 1, 1922). ‘A mass party’, Roy said,

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

27
liberation.

We also find the same proposal in Roy’s letter (November 12, 1922)

to Chettiar. Referring to the need for a new party, Roy said:

 Either the Congress must revolutionize its outlook and be a

revolutionary organization or a new party must be found with a

programme in accordance with the needs and desires of the majority

28
of the people with a revolutionary objective.

Roy wrote this at a time when he was attending the Fourth

Congress. In the same letter he could not restrain his hopelessness

about the Congress and said:

I am afraid that to revive the [Indian National] Congress is an

almost hopeless task. It appears to be politically dead. Therefore we

must prepare for the organization of a new party to assume the lost

leadership of the Congress.

In this context, Roy also informed Chettiar that those who

understood the necessity for a ‘new mass party’ must gather in a

preliminary conference in Europe in the beginning of the year 1923.

Roy sought Chettiar’s suggestions about the ‘ways and means’ of

29
holding such a conference. A similar proposal dated December 19,

1922 was sent to Dange:

. . . the time has come for the organization of our party in India. . . .

A revolutionary mass party has to be organized as a part of the

Congress, but this party must be under the control and direction of

30
our own party (communist party) which cannot but be illegal.

But what would be the programme of such a party Roy proposed? It

was to the Gaya Congress in December 1922, that the Comintern sent

a congratulatory message, which included a draft ‘Programme of

National Liberation and Reconstruction’. This was drafted by Roy

himself and was clearly the possible programme of the proposed mass

party.
 It is also interesting to note that Singaravelu in his letter to Roy

dated November 28, 1922 expressed his inability to go to Europe and

31
intimated his plan to organize ‘a small party in the Congress’.

Meanwhile, even after the Gaya Congress Roy continued to impress

upon Dange, Chettiar and Muzaffar Ahmad about the necessity of

forming a mass party and organizing the conference in Europe. But

except Ahmad none was ready to accept Roy’s proposal. To Dange,

Roy’s proposal was ‘a mad venture for Indians to go hunting

communism in a European conference’ as he expressed in a letter

(dated 29 February 1923) to Chettiar. The same letter also records a

critical note of Roy’s programmatic understanding:

There must be less talk of revolution than what Roy indulges in,

even when the preliminary rights of labour are not obtained; it is a

32
dream to talk of proletarian revolution.

The differences within the communists in India were clear even to the

intelligence department. Cecil Kaye commented in his confidential

note of February 7, 1923 regarding Dange’s role that

[he] seems to be losing heart as a conspirator – his paper Socialist

has been more moderate and I have seen correspondence showing

that the communists in Lahore and Calcutta are complaining that he

has failed them. Roy does not know him personally: only by

reputation, chiefly of Dange’s own making – my own information is

33
that Dange is not the stuff of which revolutionaries are made.

Gaya Congress December 1922

The Communists again raised their voice for the demand of

complete independence in the annual session of the Indian National

Congress at Gaya in December 1922. Both Chettiar and Dange were

present at the Gaya Congress. Chettiar delivered a remarkable speech

on this occasion.
 Comrades, the communists all over the world have a common faith

in the justness of your cause and in the justness of your demand.

Therefore you have to understand that they are here in spirit for

helping you to obtain these rights and attain Swaraj. Let us welcome

34
them.

Although the Communist International denounced non-violence as

the path of the freedom struggle in a colonial country like India, it

sent a warm message of solidarity to the Gaya Congress, on Lenin’s

advice, signed by Humbert Droz, secretary of the Comintern:

The Fourth Congress of the Communist International sends to you

its heartiest greetings. We are chiefly interested in the struggle of the

Indian people to free themselves from British domination. British

rule in India was established by force. Therefore it can and will be

overthrown only by a violent revolution. We are not in favour of

resorting to violence if it can be helped, but for their self-defence the

people of India must adopt violent means without which the foreign

35
domination based upon violence cannot be ended.

At the Congress, a programme for Indian liberation was also

distributed in the name of the Communist Party of India, with the

signatures of both M.N. Roy and Abani Mukherji. The full text was

published in Roy’s journal, The Advance Guard, December 1, 1922,

titled, ‘Programme of National Liberation and Reconstruction’. The

objectives of the national liberation movement were defined as:

1. Complete national independence, separated from all imperial

connection and free from all foreign supervision.

2. Election of a national assembly by universal suffrage. The

sovereignty of the people will be vested in the national assembly,

which will be the supreme authority.

3. Establishment of the Federated Republic of India. The principles

which will guide the economic and social life of the liberated nation

are as follows –

Social and Economic Programme

1. Abolition of landlordism. All large estates will be confiscated

without any compensation. Ultimate proprietorship of the land will

be vested in the National State. Only those actually engaged in

agricultural industry will be allowed to hold land. No tax farming

will be allowed.

2. Land rent will be reduced to a fixed minimum with the object of

improving the economic condition of the cultivator. State

Agricultural Co-operative Banks will be established to provide

credit to the peasant and to free him from the clutches of the

money-lender and speculating trader.

3. State aid will be given to introduce modern methods in

agriculture. Through the State Co-operative Banks agricultural

machineries will be sold or lent to the cultivator on easy terms.

4. All indirect taxes will be abolished, and progressive income tax

will be imposed exceeding 500 rupees a month.

5. Nationalization of Public Utilities, Mines, Railways, Telegrams

and Inland Waterways will be owned and operated by the State

under the control of Workers Committees not for profit, but for the

use and benefit of the nation.

6. Modern industries will be developed with the aid and under the

supervision of the State.

7. Minimum wages in all the industries will be fixed by legislation.

8. Eight hour day. Eight hours a day for five and a half days a week

will be fixed by law as the maximum duration of work for male

adults. Special conditions will be laid down for woman and child

labour.
 9. Employers will be obliged by law to provide for a certain

standard of comfort as regards housing, working conditions,

medical aid, etc., for the workers.

10. Protective legislation will be passed about Old Age, Sickness and

Unemployment Insurance in all the industries.

11. Labour organization will be given a legal status and the

workers’ right to strike to enforce their demands will be recognized.

12. Workers’ Councils will be formed in all the big industries to

defend the rights of labour. These councils will have the protection

of the State in exercising their function.

13. Profit sharing will be introduced in all big industries.

14. Free and compulsory education. Education for both boys and

girls will be free and compulsory in the primary grades and free as

far as the secondary. Technical and vocational schools will be

established with State aid.

15. The State will be separated from all religious creeds, and the

freedom of belief and worship will be guaranteed.

16. Full social, economic and political rights will be enjoyed by

women.

17. No Standing Army will be maintained, but the entire people will

be armed to defend National Freedom. A National Militia will be

organized and every citizen will be obliged to undergo a certain

36
period of military training.

The Gaya Congress was hardly going to adopt this programme as

its own. However, it bears a political significance. It was actually the

first such formal programme of the CPI placed before the national

liberation struggle of India. It served as the programmatic guideline

for the communist elements and groups in India for a considerable

period.
 For the first time at a Congress session, delegates were addressed as

‘comrades’ (as Chettiar did). Roy did not fail to pick up the point in

his article on Gaya Congress in the Vanguard (March 1, 1923).

Although Chettiar himself had no clear idea about the role of the

Comintern, he expressed his ‘greatest faith’ in ‘non-violent non-

cooperation’ for attaining ‘Swaraj’ and said that the Indian

communists had ‘differed from the Comintern in this fundamental

method’. In fact, both Chettiar and Dange at that stage had such an

understanding of Comintern’s role. Dange even criticized Roy’s

programme editorially in The Socialist, December 23, 1922 just before

37
the Gaya session commenced.

However, despite this difference in perception, the presence of the

communist intervention had the effect that C.R. Das, in his

presidential speech, had to counter communism. The Congress was a

divided house at Gaya. Differences over taking part in the Assembly

elections led to the formation of the Swaraj Party within the Congress,

led by C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru. Contrary to Gandhi’s ‘non-

cooperation’ policy, Das wanted to join the Assembly only to ‘wreck it

from within’, though it subsequently proved to be a futile exercise. In

the general elections held in late 1923, the Swaraj Party won a

majority in two provinces, Bengal and Central Provinces, and just less

then half the seats in the Central Assembly.

M.N. Roy’s attempt to radicalize the Indian National Congress with

a Left orientation through C.R. Das at Gaya ended in failure. Despite

Das’s hostility, Roy’s illusion about Das still lingered. In an open letter

to Das, Roy deplored the ‘defeat of the left-wing’ led by Das as the

result of its failure to attract under its banner the radical

revolutionaries from the ranks of the ‘no-changers’, because they

38
would be suspicious about the ‘left-wing’ led by Das. Owing to the

failure of the latter to ‘stand out separately’; a section of the pro-

changers who advocated responsive co-operation, identified

themselves with the views of the moderates. The result of the Gaya

Congress led Roy to realize that ‘the revolutionary voice of the

workers and peasants raised through Chittaranjan Das was drowned’.

Roy was quite upset at the outcome of the Gaya Congress.

With all its desire to enlist the support of the masses, and with all its

virtuous schemes of uplifting the downtrodden, the Congress as a

body will remain a bourgeois political organ. It will never be able to

lead the workers and peasants in the revolutionary struggle for

national freedom. . . . Therefore the organization of a party of the

39
workers and peasants has become an indispensable necessity.

Immediately after the Gaya session, Roy wrote a series of letters

from Berlin to Dange, Singaravelu and Ghulam Hussain in Bombay,

Madras and Lahore respectively. These letters never reached their

destination, being intercepted by British intelligence, to be produced in

the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case, 1924. The letter to Ghulam

Hussain of Lahore was reprinted in full in Pioneer of Allahabad

(March 21, 1924), in which Roy argued for the formation of an

‘illegal Communist Party’ in disguise:

The Communist International thinks that the time has come for the

organization of our party in India. . . . We have to work both in

legal and illegal ways. A revolutionary mass party must be

organized as part of the Congress, but this party must be under the

control and direction of our own party (Communist) which cannot

but be illegal.

Labour Kisan Party of Hindustan

Meanwhile, by the end of April 1923, Chettiar had organized a

conference in Madras and formed the Labour Kisan Party of

Hindustan. Chettiar and P.S. Velayudhan jointly released a manifesto

on May 1 – ‘The Manifesto to the Labour and Kisans of Hindustan

for the formation of a Political Party of their own’. This programme

had hardly any similarity with Roy’s Gaya programme. The ‘creed’ of
the party was declared as ‘Achieving Labour Swaraj by non-violent

means’. The programme did not even demand the abolition of the

zamindari system, but pledged ‘to act as the vanguard of Indian

labour and kisans in their struggle for existence’.

At the end of the manifesto, both Chettiar and Velayudhan

identified themselves as ‘Indian Communists’. The emphasis on the

word Indian is understandable, especially when the manifesto

criticized some men ‘not knowing what would be suitable to Indian

conditions’ were ‘attempting to transplant on Indian soil what they

have become familiar with in the west’. The manifesto was an attempt

40
to demarcate itself from ‘bolshevism’.

Abani Mukherji after his return to India in December 1922

following his break with Roy in Moscow also joined hands with

Chettiar and Velayudhan in drafting this manifesto. After the

publication of the Manifesto, Mukherji left India and spent his last

years in Moscow.

For some time Roy could not gather adequate information about

Chettiar’s Labour Kisan Party. He was also in the dark about Dange’s

attitude, evident from his letter from Berlin on May 7, 1923, in which

Roy again urged Dange to take the initiative in forming an open mass

party based on the Gaya programme. Perhaps for the first time Roy

used the term ‘Workers’ and Peasants’ Party’ in this letter. ‘We must

insist upon our minimum programme, as drafted for the Gaya

Congress, be adopted by the new party with the least possible

modifications. The idea is to have the political control of the legal

party in the hands of the Communist Party. As far as possible the

office-bearers and leaders of the legal party should be members of the

41
CP.’

However, Chettiar in his own way made a bold effort to publish

newspapers and journals to spread the ideals of ‘communism’. Thus,

in October 1923 he started a Tamil weekly Thozhilalan to give

publicity to workers’ struggles in India and abroad. In December of

the same year, he brought out in Madras an English fortnightly, The

Labour Kisan Gazette, subtitled as ‘A Fortnightly Journal of Indian

Communism’. The Gazette seems to have continued for seven or eight

issues until a warrant was issued against Chettiar in connection with

the Kanpur Bolshevik Conspiracy Case. Roy also welcomed the

Gazette in the Vanguard of Indian Independence: ‘It is a great mission.

We accord our hearty welcome to the new comrade-in-arms, hoping

that it will play an important role in the history of the Indian working

42
class struggle.’

Roy was soon disillusioned with Chettiar’s party. In a letter to the

editor of The Socialist, Bombay, in October 1924, he came down

heavily on its policy. Pointing out the danger of ‘economism’ Roy said:

‘The so-called Labour Kisan Party of Mr Singaravelu Chettiar of

Madras was born under this star and, consequently, was suffocated in

its own impotency. . . . It was simply ridiculous to talk of labour

43
swaraj while the burning question was still unsolved . . .’. In a letter

dated June 5, 1923, Roy, in a softer tone, had criticized the term

Labour Swaraj: ‘Whatever this may be it cannot be the programme of

our party. Such a slogan will inevitably lead us to elaborating schemes

of swaraj. . . . How can we talk of labour swaraj, which means

dictatorship of the proletariat if at all anything serious is meant by it,

when the very question of swaraj, that is, national independence,

44
remains unsolved?’

Initiative in Lahore

While Chettiar was organizing his Labour Kisan Party in Madras,

an attempt was simultaneously being made in Lahore to form a new

party. Ghulam Hussain and Samsuddin Hassan issued a circular on

April 27, 1923, declaring that a conference would be held in Lucknow

on June 30, the name and programme of the party to be provided

45
later. It seems that until then Lahore comrades knew nothing about

Chettiar’s initiative. Copies of the circular were sent to Chettiar in

Madras, Dange in Bombay, Sampurnananda in Benaras, Muzaffar

Ahmad, M.L. Sarkar, Hamidullah Khan in Calcutta, R.S. Nimbkar in

Pune, Dr Manilal in Gaya, S. Amar Singh (secretary, Gurdwara

Prabandhak Committee, Amritsar), Master Tara Singh, Bhai Piara

Singh and Sunder Singh Lyallpur of Akali Dal, among others.

Roy, on receipt of the circular, was enthusiastic about the formation

of ‘the political party of the working class in India,’ and sent at least

two documents to the organizers – ‘A Memorandum to the

Conference for organizing a working class party in India’ (June 5,

1923) and a message (June 14, 1923) of the Comintern Executive

Committee. The Comintern message contains on assessment of the

role of the Indian bourgeoisie as well as the fundamental points of the

programme prescribed for the workers’ and peasants’ party in India.

Indian bourgeoisie is a revolutionary factor because its interests are

objectively in conflict with imperialism. The struggle for national

liberation is a revolutionary movement. In leading this movement

the political party of the workers and peasants must act in

cooperation with, and give fullest support to the bourgeois parties,

so far as they promote the struggle against imperialism in some

46
form or other.

However, the Lucknow conference was a non-starter as the

government had retaliated to institute the Kanpur Conspiracy Case in

May 1923.

Kanpur Conspiracy Case (1923–24)

The Kanpur arrests were in fact a continuation of the anti-

communist measures started by the Peshawar cases, began at a time

when the main Peshawar conspiracy cases were concluding.

The strategy of the British imperialists in trying to destroy the rising

communist movement, was to discredit the patriotism of the

communists, to label them as agents of a foreign power and drive a

wedge between them and the left wing in the Congress and the
national movement. J. Crerar, secretary of the Governor General, in

his note dated June 2, 1923 drawn up for official discussion, reveals:

The immediate and potential dangers of the communist movement

in India even as an isolated factor are sufficiently obvious. But there

is evidence of what is a still more dangerous development in the

establishment of contacts between the Bolshevik and communist

agencies and other foci of disorder. On the one hand, there have

been communications with the representatives of the old Bengali

revolutionaries, many of whom are personal friends of M.N. Roy,

and who, since the failure of the non co-operation movement, have

47
been moving forward the resumption of their former activities.

The same note suggested immediate action against Usmani,

Muzaffar Ahmad and Ghulam Hussain and asked provincial

governments to take similar action against Dange and Singaravelu,

‘under their respective regulation’. The Order in Council to take

action against Shaukat Usmani, Ghulam Hussain and Muzaffar

Ahmad was issued on June 8, 1923, and was served on the first two in

Peshawar and Lahore jails respectively on June 12, 1923. The order

was served on Muzaffar Ahmad about the same time.

Cecil Kaye, director of central intelligence, in his confidential report

said that the papers submitted for instituting the conspiracy case

contained 13 names: M.N. Roy, Muzaffar Ahmad, Shaukat Usmani,

Ghulam Hussain, S.A. Dange, Singaravelu Chettiar, R.C. Sharma,

Nalini Gupta, Samsuddin Hassan, M.P.S. Velayudhan, Dr Manilal

Shah, Sampurnananda and Satyabhakta. But the cases against five of

them – Samsuddin Hassan, M.P.S. Velayudhan, Dr Manilal,

Sampurnananda and Satyabhakta – were withdrawn and the

government decided to proceed against the remaining eight persons

under Section 121A of the Indian Penal Code. Approved by the

Governor-General of India, the case was instituted on February 17,

1924. The petition of complaint was filed before the district

magistrate, Kanpur, on March 3, 1924, three days before the police

48
arrested Dange and Chettiar.

Of the eight accused, Roy was in Germany, and Sharma had been

residing in French-occupied Pondicherry, out of reach of the British

government. While Ghulam Hussain was never brought to Kanpur,

Singaravelu was arrested on March 6, 1924 but released on bail on

March 7 and allowed to remain in his Madras home. Thus, the

magisterial inquiry in the trial began on March 17, 1924, against four

of the accused, namely Ahmad, Usmani, Dange and Nalini Gupta

before the court of W. Christie, joint magistrate of Kanpur.

Reacting to the intensification of communist activities in India, the

British government arrested a number of communist and trade union

leaders in different parts of the country: Shaukat Usmani (May 8,

1923), Muzaffar Ahmad (May 17), Ghulam Hussain and Nalini

Gupta (December 20), and Dange and Chettiar (March 6, 1924).

The main points framed against the accused in the petition of

complaint were as follow:

A revolutionary organization exists in Europe known as the

Communist International and that a section thereof is determined to

establish a branch in this country to be placed under the control of

M.N. Roy, one of the objects of the same being to deprive the King

49
Emperor of his sovereignty in India.

This magisterial inquiry continued for two weeks and ended on April

1, 1924, and framed the charge against the four accused, committing

them to the Session Court to stand trial under section 121–A of the

Indian Penal Code.

By the time Nalini Gupta was arrested, that is, the end of December

1923, the Government of India and its intelligence department already

had quite a mass of material in their hand. From the confidential files

of the Home Department, now available in the National Archives, we

know that both Scotland Yard, London, and the Intelligence

Department of the Government of India were intercepting all the

correspondence that was passing between Roy and the Indian

revolutionaries abroad in touch with the Communist International,

and communists and revolutionaries in India.

With all this correspondence in hand, which it could use as evidence

against the communists accused in the Kanpur Conspiracy Case, the

government did not take the decision to launch the case till some two

months after Nalini Gupta’s arrest. Nalini Gupta’s statement to the

police covers twenty-three printed pages.

The decision to institute a conspiracy case against the four already

arrested, Shaukat Usmani, Ghulam Hussain, Muzaffar Ahmad and

Nalini Gupta, was taken on February 20, 1924. Dange and

Singaravelu, yet to be arrested, were included in the list of

‘conspirators’. But the case against Ghulam Hussain was withdrawn

when he turned approver, ready to bear witness to the facts he knew,

to help the government’s case against Shafiq, secretary of the CPI

formed in Tashkent in 1920, in the ongoing Peshawar Conspiracy

Case, where Shafiq was being tried under section 121A of the Indian

Penal Code.

Ghulam Hussain sent an application to the government from jail on

January 15, 1923, declaring his unconditional surrender and his

willingness to make further statements. Recording of Ghulam

Hussain’s statement took place from July 11 to 14 before a magistrate

50
in jail.

The Session trial in the Kanpur case was opened on April 22, 1924,

before the British judge H.E. Holme, ICS, whose claim to fame was

the death sentence issued to 172 peasants in the Chauri Chaura case a

year previously. This point was raised by the accused and they

petitioned the Governor-in-Council on April 26 for the transfer of the

case, for trial either in Bombay or in Calcutta. The requests were

summarily turned down. The trial in the Sessions court continued for

nearly a month, ending on May 24, with the sentence of four months

rigorous imprisonment for all four accused.

 The accused appealed to the Allahabad High Court where the

hearing was held from November 3 to 6, 1924. On November 10, the

Allahabad High Court dismissed the appeal. Thus, the curtain came

down upon the Kanpur case.

Unlike the Peshawar cases, the Kanpur case evoked solidarity

movements even in Britain. The Communist Party of Great Britain

took the initiative to form a Defence Committee to collect funds for

the undertrials. George Lansbury agreed to become the Chairman of

the Committee, Charles Ashleigh (who had called on Dange in

Bombay before the Fourth Comintern Congress) was secretary, and

Saklatvala, communist member of the British Parliament, took an

active part in the committee. This committee sent a protest telegram to

the Government of India on March 28, 1924. Dange’s secretary V.H.

Joshi in Bombay also formed a Defence Committee.

On March 21, 1924, Roy sent an open letter to the newly-elected

Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, subsequently published

in the Inprecor, March 24, 1924. In this letter Roy tried to expose the

hypocrisy of the Labour Party government:

Has socialist and communist propaganda – that is to say working

class propaganda – been declared illegal in Great Britain and the

dominions? Then why should it be illegal in British India? . . . The

toiling masses of India will record the verdict of the British Labour

government upon this chapter in the history of their struggle for

51
emancipation.

Just a month earlier, on February 21, Roy had sent a letter from

Zurich to Prime Minister MacDonald, with a copy to Secretary of

State for India, expressing his desire to return safely to India and

seeking ‘amnesty’ for ‘alleged charges’ made against him ‘in the past’.

52

Evidently, the Labour Party’s election victory in Britain had raised

hopes among a wide circle of the émigré communists. Did Roy expect
at that particular time to be able to build any ‘legal’ communist

organization in India under the Labour regime?

The Kanpur Conspiracy case had also produced a big blot on the

nascent communist movement in India. During the trial Dange

reneged and betrayed – not only did he openly denounce the

Comintern policy and tried to distance himself from the international

body and its aims, along with Nalini Gupta he also begged pardon

from the British government with the offer to turn approver. These

letters were discovered in 1964 and are lodged in the National

Archives of India. It is another matter that the government did not

oblige them.

Both Nalini Gupta and Muzaffar Ahmad were prematurely released

in July and September 1925 respectively because of ill health. Dange

was released in May 1927 and Usmani in August of the same year.

By 1923–24, the national movement in India was reaching a critical

stage with the Swarajists, under the leadership of C.R. Das and

Motilal Nehru, tending towards constitutional manoeuvres. The

British government’s efforts were concentrated on breaking up the

communist activities in the country by arresting the leadership of

working class and peasant movements in different parts in India.

Lenin died on January 21, 1924. The Fifth Congress of the

Comintern (June 17–July 8, 1924) took place soon after, in Moscow.

India was again represented by Roy and Mohammad Ali as delegates

with ‘decisive vote’. Roy was elected to the presidium. Clemens Dutt

also represented India, without decisive vote in the Commission for

the National and Colonial Question. The Congress elected Roy to the

53
ECCI. At the time of the Fifth Congress, Gopen Chakraborty, a

member of the Dhaka Anushilan Samiti, a revolutionary terrorist

organization, was present in Moscow. He was naturally not allowed

to attend the Comintern Congress. He returned to Bengal and joined

the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party and subsequently the CPI.

In the course of the debate at the Fifth Congress, Roy again put

forward his ultra-left perception, defying Lenin’s line of action.

Zinoviev, on behalf of the Comintern, rejected Roy’s stand on the role

of the national bourgeoisie in the Indian national movement.

Manuilsky, who placed the Theses on the National and Colonial

Question, remarked in his concluding speech, ‘In regard to the

54
colonial question Roy reflects the nihilism of Rosa Luxemburg.’

The basic difference between Roy and the Comintern leadership

centred on the relations with the bourgeoisie in the colonies. Among

the defenders of the official policy, Manuilsky maintained that the

alliance with the bourgeoisie was essential during the entire bourgeois

democratic stage of the revolution in the colonies, and this alliance

should continue until imperialism had been defeated and social

conflicts sharpened. But Roy contended that in India, where

capitalism was thriving rapidly, the national bourgeoisie had already

been won over to support the imperial power, that the exploiting class

in India was demanding ‘protection from the exploited’, and the

Indian capitalist ‘is running straight into the arms of British

imperialism’. The same tendency he contended would soon be found

in other countries. Although Roy was later partially vindicated in his

analysis so far as the compromising tendency of the exploiting classes

was concerned, he was unrealistic in his assessment of the

revolutionary fervour of the exploited classes. Whatever the economic

discontent of the masses, the dominating issue in the period was

united national struggle for independence.

The resolution ultimately adopted by the Fifth Comintern Congress

rejected Roy’s argument and declared the tactics of collaboration with

the bourgeoisie as the fundamental policy for all the colonial

countries.

Developments in India

In the meantime within India, in keeping with its tradition, the

Gadar Party group led by Bhai Udham Singh had sent a letter to the

Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic in July 1924, soon after

the close of the Fifth Congress on behalf of the Bharat Sangiwal

Association (BSA). The BSA embraced national-democratic demands

for the establishment of an independent rule of India, free from the

social and economic disabilities rooted in capitalism and imperialism,

and the socialist aim of conversion of the means of production into

common property in order to achieve the abolition of the exploitation

of man by man. The letter has been only recently discovered by the

Russian Indologist M.A. Siderov, in the former Central Party Archives

of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Moscow, and is

now with the Russian State Archives of Social and Political History

(RGASPI).

The letter demanded that the BSA be recognized by the Soviet

Union, that its representatives be taken into the ‘Third International

Communist Party in Moscow’; its students be admitted to the Soviet

military schools; and the Association be permitted to hold sufficient

land for the establishment of an agricultural commune which would

be used to train its soldiers. Notable is the portion of the letter which

requests financial and military succour from the Soviet regime for the

Indian revolution. Two lakh rupees were requested from Russia as

well as fifty thousand soldiers, including 500 engineers and military

experts to be given at the commencement of the revolution. Full

military equipment for arming of five lakh Akalis, to be stored in the

Pamirs from whence it could be transported to Kashmir through the

narrow strip of Afghanistan territory, was also demanded. This route

for intervention in India had long been eyed by revolutionaries both in

India and Russia. Udham Singh asserted that he had been ordered by

the BSA to proceed to the Pamirs, while others were to proceed from

Amritsar to the Kashmir frontier in order to pick up 10,000 pistols

from the Pamirs. The letter concludes with an inventory of the

military units in northern and central India where revolutionary

55
supporters were at work.

Roy-Dange debate

During the Kanpur case, an interesting development had been

Janaki Prasad Bagerhatta’s open letter to Roy. Bagerhatta, an AICC

member, was one of the associates of Dange in Bombay and his letter

was published in The Socialist (September 24, 1924). In it Bagerhatta

criticized Roy for being against the idea of an open Communist Party

(Bagerhatta was later expelled from the CPI for his connection with

the police) and placed his suggestions ‘on Communist propaganda in

India’: These were:

Firstly, Communist offices should be opened in every provincial

centre to organize all sorts of labour and peasantry.

Secondly, to distribute leaflets, etc., to spread communist ideas

among the masses.

Third, a strong party be formed in Congress and all efforts

exerted to capture the organization.

Fourth, all efforts should be made to abolish religious influence

on the people. Hindu-Muslim unity cannot be successful unless

56
every body is well fed and religious bigotry is removed.

Roy replied in The Vanguard (November 15, 1924). Before that he

had sent a letter (October 22, 1924) to Bagerhatta asserting:

The immediate task of the communists in India is not to preach

communism but to organize the national revolution; the role of the

Communist Party of India is to be the heart and soul of the

57
revolutionary nationalist party.

In the letter, Roy again mentioned the Gaya Programme and said

that ‘our programme’ would not be a communist but a ‘revolutionary

national-democratic’ programme. Based on such a programme a party

could be formed which could be called a People’s Party or Republic

Party.

But there was no one in India then to accept Roy’s proposal. The

Socialist again in its editorial of October 1, 1924, proposed to form an

‘All India Socialist Party’ in the Congress by convening a conference at

Belgaum, during the Congress session in December 1924. Nothing

58
actually happened.

Again in The Socialist (November 19, 1924) came a letter of V.M.

Joshi, Dange’s private secretary. In this letter, Joshi published the

Constitution and Programme of the party named ‘The Indian

Communist Party, Bombay’. As the self-proclaimed ‘Secretary’ of this

party Joshi claimed that an all India Communist Conference would be

held ‘as soon as possible’. The ‘object’ of the party was:

Establishment of complete Swarajya and a system of society based

upon the common ownership and communal control of the means

and instruments of production, and distribution of wealth by, in the

interests of the whole community of India.

In the letter, Joshi also stated that ‘some sixty people’ had agreed upon

this proposal. Among the associates named were Satyabhakta of

Kanpur, Moulana Hasrat Mohani, Ramshankar Avasthi, Manilal

Avasthi and from Calcutta, a pleader of the Calcutta High Court,

59
Shaileshnath Bisi.

The Belgaum Congress session was held in December 1924 in the

background of such developments.

Belgaum Congress (December 1924)

th
At the 37 session of the Congress held in Belgaum in the last week

of December 1924, two documents were circulated – the émigré CPI’s

manifesto (‘Appeal to the Nationalists’) drafted by Roy and published

in the Vanguard of December 15, 1924; and the leaflet ‘Appeal to the

Nationalists’ in the name of M.N. Roy. The leaflet was printed at the

Labour Press, Bombay, by K.N. Joglekar, and published by J.P.

60
Bagerhatta and Arjunlal Sethi (both members of the AICC).
 Originally, Roy issued the manifesto in the name of the CPI,

whereas what Joglekar, Bagerhatta and Sethi published and distributed

at the Congress camp was issued in Roy’s name, with a note at the

end.

Dear Readers, a mass party for the emancipation from the general

exploitation is now overdue and we expect that the suggestions

made above by M.N. Roy will offer sufficient food for thinking

minds – Publishers.

Roy in his original draft criticized the Congress leadership and

appealed to the ‘revolutionary nationalists’ to come out with a

revolutionary programme. Referring to ‘the programme of a

revolutionary nationalist party’, he prescribed some ten ‘cardinal

points’ for acceptance by the Congress:

(1) National independence: complete break from the empire;

establishment of a democratic republic based on universal suffrage;

(2) abolition of feudalism and landlordism;

(3) nationalization of land: none but the cultivator will have the

right of landholding;

(4) modernization of agriculture by state aid;

(5) nationalization of mines and public utilities;

(6) development of modern industries;

(7) protection for the workers; minimum wage; an eight-hour day;

abolition of child-labour; insurance; and other advanced social

legislation;

(8) free and compulsory primary education;

(9) freedom of religion and worship;

(10) rights of minorities.

 The similarity with the Gaya programme is obvious.

The portions of this manifesto deleted by Joglekar, Bagerhatta and

Sethi included the reference to the Comintern and the name of the

CPI. From the ‘cardinal points’, they deleted the words ‘complete

break from the empire’. In a letter (January 13, 1925) sent to Roy,

Bagerhatta tried to justify these changes ‘owing to some differences in

61
opinion and our angle of vision’. It could of course be said that the

deletions may have been to avoid the ban, however, the nature of the

deletions also reflects their compromising attitude on fundamental

issues.

Belgaum had been preceded by the promulgation on October 25,

1924 of the Bengal Ordinance, mass scale arrests of the swarajists,

including Subhas Chandra Bose and revolutionary terrorists. Gandhi

went to Calcutta and reached a compromise with C.R. Das. In early

November 1924, they issued a joint statement. The Belgaum Congress

withdrew the non-cooperation movement, and instead of ‘complete

independence’ Gandhi asked for ‘equal partnership within the British

empire’.

In the AICC meeting preceding the open session, the right

nationalists even refused to support a resolution condoling the death

of Lenin. As reported in the Bombay Chronicle (December 29, 1924),

the resolution had been placed by Jahangir Patel, and seconded by

Atul Sen. Dr Khare took the lead in opposing it, and in his own way,

Gandhi too disfavoured the proposal. With Patel and Sen standing

firm, the resolution was put to vote, and defeated, 54 to 63. Among

those who voted for the resolution were Vithalbhai Patel, Sardar

Mangal Singh, Shiva Prasad Gupta, Maulvi Zafar Ali Khan, while

62
those against included Motilal Nehru and C. Rajagopalachari.

Stalin on India

The Fifth Extended plenum of the Comintern was held in Moscow

from March 21 to April 6, 1925. Roy was elected to the presidium of

the plenum, and secretary of the Comintern’s Colonial Commission.

The meeting, seized of the situation in India, recommended that

communists should attempt to form a ‘mass national revolutionary

party’, work with the National Congress and in the left wing of the

Swaraj Party and try to form ‘an all India anti-imperialist bloc’. The

meeting stressed on organizing a strong party of the working class –

the Communist Party – by uniting various communist groups and

elements in India.

In the background of the Fifth Plenum recommendation, it is

th
interesting to note that in his report to the 14 conference of the

CPSU (May 9, 1925) and again in his address to the students of the

University of the Toilers of the East (May 18, 1925) Stalin talked

about what he considered should be the immediate tasks of

63
communists in the colonies and dependencies.

Referring to the situation of India and Egypt, he concluded that the

‘nationalist bourgeoisie’ had split into two sections – a revolutionary

section and an ‘anti-revolutionary section’. Then he observed that

‘certain conciliatory and reactionary elements’ were ‘now

consolidating themselves within the bourgeoisie’ and they ‘would

rather conclude a pact with foreign imperialism then fight for the

emancipation of their native land’. What should communists do at this

stage?

Hence the need for the communist elements in the colonies to

combine forces with the revolutionary elements of the bourgeoisie,

and above all with the peasantry, in a concerted attack upon

imperialism and the bourgeois compromises in their midst, in order,

under the leadership of the proletariat, to march forward to a

genuine revolutionary struggle for emancipation from the yoke of

imperialism.

In his May 18 speech, Stalin made a perceptible shift regarding the

role of the ‘compromising section’ of the national bourgeoisie in India.

In his May 9 speech this section is not described as having finally gone

over, but ‘would rather conclude a pact’ with imperialism. But the
May 18 speech says that of the two sections of the national

bourgeoisie, that is, a revolutionary section and a compromising

section, the latter ‘has already managed, in the main, to strike a deal

with imperialism, . . . is going over entirely to the camp of the

irreconcilable enemies of the revolution, it is forming a bloc with

imperialism against the workers and peasants of its own country’.

The May 18 speech also drew a comparison between the situation

in countries like Egypt and China and in countries like India. In case

of the former, Stalin said, the national bourgeoisie had already split

into a revolutionary party and a compromising party. But ‘where the

conforming section of the bourgeoisie is not yet able to join help with

imperialism, the communist . . . must pass from the policy of a united

national front to the policy of a revolutionary bloc of the workers and

petty bourgeoisie.’

In such countries that bloc can assume the form of a single party, a

workers’ and peasants’ party, provided, however, that this

distinctive party actually represents bloc of two forces – the

communist party and the party of the revolutionary petty

bourgeoisie. The tasks of this bloc are to expose the half heartedness

and inconsistency of the national bourgeoisie and to wage a

determined struggle against imperialism.

Stalin referred to such a party as a ‘dual party’ and again cautioned

that such a dual party was ‘necessary and expedient’ at that stage

‘provided it does not bind the Communist Party hand and foot,

provided it does not restrict the freedom of the Communist Party to

conduct agitation and propaganda work, . . . provided it facilitates the

actual leadership of the revolutionary movement by the Communist

Party’. Otherwise, the communist elements would be dissolved in the

ranks of the bourgeoisie and the Communist Party would lose the

proletarian army.

In countries like India, on the other hand, the task was to ‘create a

revolutionary anti-imperialist bloc’ and to ensure the ‘hegemony of the

proletariat’ in this bloc. Unlike in countries like Egypt and China,

according to Stalin’s May 18, 1925 speech, such a ‘revolutionary anti-

imperialist bloc’ need not ‘always necessarily do so, the form of a

single workers’ and peasants’ party, formally bound by a single

platform.’ In such countries, according to Stalin, the independence of

the Communist Party must be the chief slogan of the advanced

communist elements. But, the Communist Party can and must enter

into an open bloc with the revolutionary wing of the bourgeoisie after

isolating the compromising national bourgeoisie, in order to lead the

vast masses of the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie in the struggle

against imperialism.

In this background the Amsterdam meeting, July 11–12, 1925, held

under the auspices of the Comintern as a follow-up action to Fifth

Plenum, was of much significance. Roy and the CPGB leadership

attended this secret meeting, and discussed the Indian developments in

detail. A ‘Foreign Bureau’ comprising Roy, Mohammad Ali and

Clemens Dutt, brother of R.P. Dutt, was formed to monitor

communist activities in India. The Bureau was active until the Sixth

Congress of the Comintern in mid-1928.

 FOUR

KANPUR

COMMUNIST

CONFERENCE
THE KANPUR COMMUNIST CONFERENCE HELD in the last

week of December 1925 has a very special place in the history of the

communist movement in India. After the foundation of the

Communist Party of India in Tashkent under the guidance of the

Comintern and subsequent emergence of various communist groups

(with their varying degrees of understanding about the principles of

scientific socialism) in different parts of India, the Kanpur Conference

was the first conclave in British India where almost all the communist

groups and elements joined. However, the Comintern, which was in

contact with all active Marxist, socialist groups in India through Roy,

was completely in dark about the conference, and Satyabhakta, the

convenor of the conference, did not belong to any such group.

Satyabhakta’s name was included by the government in the list of

thirteen names originally short listed for the Kanpur Conspiracy Case

(1923–24), but was later dropped for lack of evidence. He was a

Congress activist in the United Provinces with some vague idea about

Communism and Comintern. Satyabhakta claimed that he took part

in the defence activities during the Kanpur Case:

It was in March 1924 that India witnessed its first Bolshevik

Conspiracy case at Kanpur. . . . I was in Kanpur when the hearing of

the case began in the court and helped to some extent in defence

arrangements. I attended the court regularly and two comrades, S.V.

Ghate and Abdul Halim, who had come to assist Dange and

Muzaffar stayed with me for several days. When the judgment of

the court was delivered in their case I saw an opportunity of doing

something. I resolved to form a society to popularize the tenets of

1
Communism openly.

Muzaffar Ahmad remembers Satyabhakta while recounting the

Kanpur trial days: ‘It was among the visitors in the Joint Magistrate’s

court [that] I first saw Satyabhakta. He wore European clothes, and a

2
turban perhaps to hide the holy tuff of hair on his head.’
 Satyabhakta (born 1896) belonged to Bharatpur in Rajasthan and

was a follower of extremist politics in his youth. He took part in the

first non-cooperation movement and after its suspension in 1922, got

attracted to socialism and communism. The British intelligence officer

Cecil Kaye reported (in 1924) that Satyabhakta was corresponding

3
with Workers’ Dreadnought’s editor Sylvia Pankhurst. In early 1923,

Satyabhakta and Radha Mohan Gokulji, later one of the participants

in 1925 Kanpur Conference and who authored a Hindi booklet in

1927, ‘Communism Kya Hai?’ (‘What is Communism?’), were

associated with the Nagpur-based left-wing weekly Pranvir.

‘Indian Communist Party’

Satyabhakta’s first announcement of his intention to set up the

‘Indian Communist Party’ (Bharatiya Samyavadi Dal) was published

in a Kanpur-based Hindi daily Aaj on July 12, 1924: ‘Communism is

the only path of uplifting the unhappy and exploited people of this

world’. The actual formation of this party was announced in his letter

published in Aaj on September 1, 1924, where he defined the main

aim of the party: ‘The right of peasants on land, of workers in

factories and mills to be recognized and that they should be recipients

of the product and profit obtained from land and factories; all

employees be ensured decent living conditions’. He signed the letter as

Secretary, Indian Communist Party. During that period he was

running a book shop in Kanpur, the Socialist Book Shop.

In September 1924, Satyabhakta, as party ‘secretary’, published two

leaflets, one in Hindi and another in English, both titled ‘The Indian

Communist Party’ (Bharatiya Samyavadi Dal) with a membership

form printed at the end. Both these leaflets were banned by the United

Provinces government.

On careful scrutiny of his letters and leaflets even prior to the

Kanpur Conference, it is found that though he tried to invent a notion

of ‘national communism’, Satyabhakta stood for ‘complete swaraj’,

abolishing of landlordism, ‘ending’ exploitation of the toiling masses.

 About the organizational progress of ICP, Satyabhakta’s letter in

Pranvir dated December 14, 1924 (one year before the Kanpur

Conference), reveals that 78 members had joined his party, who were

mainly from the United Provinces (UP), Rajasthan and Madhya

Pradesh. Some of the prominent names amongst them were Maulana

Hasrat Mohani (who demanded complete independence at the

Ahmedabad Congress session, 1921), Ram Shankar Avasthi (editor,

Vartaman), Radha Mohan Gokulji, and Sureshchandra Bhattacharya

(sub-editor, Vartaman). The membership of the ICP had risen to 215

by the end of March 1925, of whom 139 were residents of the United

Provinces. During the same period Satyabhakta established contact

4
with Saklatvala.

Preparation for Kanpur conference

The idea of holding a conference involving different groups in

December 1925 at Kanpur during the Congress session was first

announced by Satyabhakta in a leaflet, dated June 18, 1925. The

leaflet printed at the National Press, Kanpur, bearing the name of

Manilal Avasthi as printer, explained the reason to convene an all-

India conference and it contained a brief outline of the future

programme of the party.

On September 20, 1925 the ICP nominated Maulana Hasrat

Mohani as the chairman of the reception committee for the

conference. Saklatvala, then a Communist MP in British Parliament

and noted leader of the CPGB, was elected president of the

conference. Saklatvala could not attend the conference, though in a

message to Satyabhakta from London, he said, ‘Although owing to

pressure of business on this side I shall not be at your conference I

5
shall be with you in spirit’. In his absence Singaravelu Chettiar

presided over the session.

Satyabhakta as the Secretary, ICP, issued a leaflet dated October 12,

1925, before the Conference commenced. Regarding the name of the

party, he emphasized ‘Indianness’, which led him to the nomenclature

‘Indian Communist Party’. However, there was a difference on this

issue, as is evident from Satyabhakta’s statement in the same leaflet: ‘It

is desirable that due attention should be paid to the question of name

and to alter it if the majority of the members favour such a change’.

Regarding his party’s relation with the Comintern, Satyabhakta

took a negative stand. His point was that the government would

‘suppress’ the party activities in case of any connection with the

Comintern. Besides, he said: ‘It should be at once admitted that we are

not in a position to employ violent methods in the pursuit of our

propaganda as is the case with the Communist parties of other

countries. Moreover as we are a subject race our opinion can have no

effect in international politics at all’. Satyabhakta wanted to work

inside the National Congress with ‘the intention of changing it into an

instrument of service of our people’, since ‘after all the Congress is a

well-established and influential institution and the best interests of the

6
country require us to reform it and not to go against it’.

This was the background of the Conference held from December 26

to 28, 1925.

Satyabhakta invited leaders of all existing communist groups,

including Muzaffar Ahmad who, released prematurely from prison

owing to his ill health, was recuperating in Almora in UP. Ahmad

received Satyabhakta’s letter in September 1925. ‘He also sent Rs 30

7
by money order’, recollected Ahmad four decades later.

Leaders of the recognized communist groups did not want to let

Satyabhakta capture such an all-India platform. R.S. Nimbkar, J.P.

Bagerhatta, K.N. Joglekar, S.V. Ghate from Bombay, Ayodhya Prasad

from Jhansi, Santokh Singh from Punjab, S.D. Hassan, Ram Chandra

from Lahore, Kameswar Rao, Krisnaswamy Ayyangar and Chettiar

from Madras attended the conference. Radha Mohan Gokulji

attended as delegate from Calcutta. Arjunlal Sethi from Ajmer also

took part in the conference. Abdul Majid, who had been a member of

the émigré CPI, was elected in absentia a member of the executive

committee. Even those radical trade union leaders who went from
Calcutta to attend the Congress session visited the conference venue.

The Intelligence Bureau report of December 29 prepared by one S.

Bhattacharji, Inspector, mentions that Mani Bhusan Mukhejee, editor

of the Langal, organ of Calcutta Labour Swaraj Party, Mrs Santosh

Kumari Gupta (editor of Sramik), Jitendra Nath Mallick (Dum Dum)

and Baidyanath Biswas (Nadia) visited the communist conference.

Mani Bhusan Mukherjee also distributed the copies of Langal to the

delegates. Inspector Bhattacharji also mentions in an earlier report

(December 27) that he had also enrolled himself as a member of the

8
party. The Congress refused permission for holding the conference in

the pandal (tent) erected for their session. Another location was

found, and about 500 people attended, ‘most of them workers and

9
peasants who probably understood little of what was happening’.

On the first day, Maulana Hasrat Mohani welcomed the delegates

as the chairman of the Reception Committee. In an extempore speech,

Mohani described the aims and objects of the party to be ‘the

establishment of swaraj or complete independence by all fair means.

After the establishment of swaraj to see that it takes the form of the

soviet republic on which all principles of communism will come into

force’. Mohani, like Satyabhakta, stressed the ‘independence’ of the

party: ‘Our organization is purely Indian. It is necessary to mention

here that at least for the present the work of our party will be

restricted to India alone’. Nearly the same sentiment was echoed by

Singaravelu Chettiar, the president of the conference: ‘Indian

communism is not Bolshevism, for Bolshevism may not be needed in

India. Bolshevism literally means the doctrine of the majority. . . . We

10
are with the world communists but not with Bolshevism’.

Kanpur and after

Satyabhakta’s brand of ‘communism’ could not sweep the

conference. The conference changed the name of the party to

‘Communist Party of India’ instead of ‘Indian Communist Party’. The

constitution was also adopted which stated the ‘object’ of the party as
follows: ‘The establishment of a workers’ and peasants’ republic based

on the socialization of the means of production and distribution, by

the liberation of India from British imperialist domination.’ The

resolution adopted for the establishment and formation of the party

clearly spelt out that:

Whereas the workers and peasants of India are unable to live a

human life on account of being exploited both by foreign and native

capitalists and landlords in India. And whereas the existing political

parties in India are dominated by bourgeois interests which are

diametrically opposed to the well-being of the Indian workers and

peasants. This conference of the Indian communists resolves that a

party be formed for the purpose of the emancipation of the workers

and peasants of India. This party shall be known as the Communist

Party of India and the ultimate aim of the party shall be the

establishment of a republican swaraj of workers and peasants, and

the immediate object of the party shall be the securing of a living

wage to the workers and peasants by means of nationalization and

municipalization of public services namely land, mines, factories,

houses, telegraphs and telephones, and railways and such other

public utilities which require public ownership. . . . No one who is a

member of any communal organization in India shall be admitted as

11
a member of the Communist Party.

The last sentence bears special significance. As Irfan Habib notes: ‘The

Communist Party was, perhaps, the first political party of any

significance to exclude persons belonging to communal organizations.’

12

Significantly, the Kanpur Conference decided to dissolve

Singaravelu’s Madras-based ‘Labour-Kisan Party of Hindustan’ and

decided to take over its organ, the Labour and Kisan Gazettee as the

organ of the newly-founded CPI. The central office of the CPI too was

transferred to Bombay and it was resolved that the Executive

Committee would supervise five provincial centres of the party, in

Calcutta, Bombay, Kanpur, Madras and Lahore. Singaravelu was

elected president of the party, Azad Sobhani vice president. S.V. Ghate

and Janki Prasad Bagerhatta were elected general secretaries. Besides

Bombay, secretaries were appointed for four other circles:

Krishnaswamy Ayyangar for Madras, Satyabhakta for Kanpur, S.D.

Hassan for Lahore and Muzaffar Ahmad for Calcutta.

So the outcome of the conference was contrary to what Satyabhakta

conceived of. According to Muzaffar Ahmad, Satyabhakta ‘quitted the

conference before it ended’. ‘I have never seen him since the day he left

the conference after packing his papers into a khaddar bag. . . .

Satyabhakta left without handing our papers, the list of members,

13
accounts, etc. of his party.’

In fact in a letter in Bengali dated January 19, 1927 written

probably to M.N. Roy, Ahmad alleged that after their conviction in

the Kanpur Case, Abani Mukherji went to Kanpur and advised

Satyabhakta to form a Communist Party. ‘Among the members of this

party some were agents of Hindu Sabha and Hindu organizations,

some were from Khilafat and Jamiat-e-Ulema. We could not tolerate

such an insult to the Communist Party. We went to Kanpur and

captured the Communist Party. If we did not do that we would have

14
been implicated even in India’. Subsequently Satyabhakta left the

Party and formed a new outfit, named the ‘National Communist

Party’, eventually to fade into political oblivion.

It is interesting to note that immediately after the Kanpur

Conference, the CPI sent fraternal greetings to the sixth session of the

AITUC. The session was held in Madras from 9 to 10 January 1926.

In his message Chettiar, President of the CPI said: ‘The Communist

Party wish the Congress long period of useful life and activity for

securing to the Indian workers their legitimate rights in the country,

and the party assures the Congress that it will spare no efforts in

standing by the Congress in its fearless endevour to serve the Indian

15
masses.’
 The newly formed CPI, in spite of many limitations, organizational

and ideological, tried to move ahead. Muzaffar Ahmad went back to

Calcutta in the first week of January 1926 and issued an appeal (‘On

Building of the Communist Party’) which was published in Labour

Swaraj Party’s weekly organ the Langal dated January 21, 1926 (Vol.

I, No. 5):

As everybody knows, the first conference of the communists in India

was held at Kanpur during the last week of December. It has been

decided to set up a central office of the Communist Party at Bombay

and separate branch offices at Kanpur, Calcutta, Lahore and

Madras. The only representative who could be present from Bengal

was Radha Mohan Gokulji. I too was present but I had gone there

from Almora. The responsibility for setting up an office in Bengal

and for building up the party in Bengal has been placed on me. My

health is not at all good. The Government of India released me only

when I was almost on the point of death, suffering from

tuberculosis in the UP jails. Then, after three months at Almora in

Kurmachal, though I have got back strength enough to move about,

I have not yet been completely free from this fell disease, nor do I

know if I shall ever be free of it altogether. Under the circumstances,

it is neither desirable nor perhaps possible for me to stay on in

Calcutta. However, the task of building up the Communist Party

can in no way be shelved as a result of my absence alone. To those

who are communists in Bengal, I send a fervent appeal – come

together and build up the party. It is not a crime according to the

laws of the land to ask men to become communists. I shall be highly

obliged if the communists in Bengal let me know what they are

16
prepared to undertake in the matter of building up the party.

There is no reason to believe that the response to this call was great.

Even any formal provincial-level party organization had not developed

until the early 1930s. Either the CPI was not very keen to form

provincial organizations or it was not possible for the party to

mobilize the necessary public support. After the Kanpur Conference

the communists concentrated on organizing workers’ and peasants’

parties in the provinces where they had some kind of mass base.

The Comintern’s stand regarding the Kanpur Conference needs to

be assessed as well. It is understood that Roy was informed of

Satyabhakta’s initiative before the Kanpur Conference actually took

place. In October 1925, Roy’s Masses of India carried a dispatch from

Bombay (‘New Political Parties’) which said: ‘It is premature to say

what shape this Communist Party will ultimately assume and how far

it is going to be Communist in its programme and actions’.

Roy’s first reaction to the ‘so-called CP of Kanpur’ is found in a

letter to Bagerhatta dated January 13, 1926: ‘Our line should be a

dual organization: a loyal nationalist party with a radical republican

programme (Peoples’ Party) and an illegal Communist Party inside it.’

The next letter is dated February 17, 1926, from Muhammad Ali, one

of the members of the Foreign Bureau. Ali did not mention a people’s

party, but the open form of the Communist Party and said that the

organization should be given ‘a definite shape’ in March (1926). He

suggested that the newly formed party should be affiliated to the

Comintern.

In the next letter dated March 20, 1926, Roy took a different stand.

Despite criticism of Mohani, Satyabhakta and Singaravelu in the letter,

he expressed hope that the next meeting of the CPI Central Committee

would resolve to affiliate the party with the Comintern. However, he

pointed out that the formal affiliation could not be effected until the

next Congress and a party delegation must be sent to the next

Congress. He also felt that the Gaya programme should be the

minimum programme of the Party and the CPI should make ‘a united

front with nationalist movement’. He also suggested: ‘The party will

maintain the foreign bureau as the ideological centre composed of

comrades who are not in position to work inside the country. The

foreign bureau will act as the organ through which the international

relations of the party will be maintained; the Communist Party of

India will be a section of the Communist International’.

 Roy’s letter also contains a minimum programme for the party as

follows:

(1) Complete national independence (it is not necessary to stipulate

anything about the means). (2) Federated democratic republic. (3)

Universal suffrage. (4) Guarantee for national minorities (solution

of the communal question on the basis of democratic rights). (5)

Abolition of landlordism. (6) Nationalization of land; land will be

owned only by those cultivating it. (7) Minimum wages and 8-hour

day for the workers. (8) Progressive social legislation (9) Free and

compulsory primary education. (10) Freedom of press, speech and

assembly. (11) Equal political and civic rights for women. (12)

Nationalization of the public utilities. The minimum programme

will be so framed as may assure its acceptance by the republican

nationalists. The programme outlined is an advanced republican

programme. The Communist Party will make a united front with

17
the nationalist movement on this basis.

He made it clear that though ‘attempts to organize a legal

communist party are tolerated by our rulers, we must not have any

illusions on this score. We must be prepared for attack any moment

and organize the party in such a way that an attack on legality will

not destroy the party. In other words, an illegal organization should be

built up side by side with the legal apparatus.’

Roy also wrote an unsigned article titled ‘What is a Communist

Party?’ in the January 1926 issue of his monthly Masses of India (Vol.

II, No. 1) rejecting Satyabhakta’s effort. In another article, Roy

criticized Mohani and Singaravelu, labelling them ‘childish’:

Nothing can be more non-communistic than to say that the Indian

working class will play its historic role in the struggle for national

freedom and work out its own salvation independently of the

international proletarian movement. Those who maintain and

 propagate this point of view are far from being Communists: they

18
are veritable enemies of the Indian working class.

However in spite of its limitations, the Kanpur Conference provided

the scattered communist groups and elements in India with a common

platform to operate under a central organizational structure for the

first time. As E.M.S. Namboodiripad observed:

The Kanpur Conference played an important role in paving the way

for the formation of an organization permanently functioning under

the leadership of the Central Committee reorganized in 1933. The

conference held earlier at Tashkent and the committee formed there

under the leadership of Roy did play their respective roles in

creating conditions for holding the Kanpur Conference. That is, if

Tashkent was the first step in the growth of the Communist

movement in India, the second was Kanpur. The Communist

movement which the authorities tried to crush through the Kanpur

19
Conspiracy Case, in effect, became an organized force.

The Kanpur Conference took place in December 1925, and in the

following year, notwithstanding its lack of political-organizational

strength as well as Roy’s critical stance towards it, the CPI tried to

intervene in the prevailing political situation in the country. Three

important instances can be cited of this: the CPI’s message to the sixth

session of the AITUC (quoted above); the issuing of the CPI manifesto

on the communal problem; and the party’s manifesto to the Gauhati

Session of the Indian National Congress.

Manifesto on communal problem: May 1926

The communal problem had become a serious political issue in the

last phase of the non-cooperation movement, when riots broke out in

places like Multan and Malabar. Some important nationalist leaders

including Madan Mohan Malaviya and Lala Lajpat Rai joined the
Hindu Mahasabha, while many Muslim leaders joined the Muslim

League. These same leaders had stood shoulder to shoulder in the

Non-Cooperation Movement just a couple of years ago. Issues such as

the playing of music in front of mosques or the slaughter of cows

became communally charged. According to official estimates, 112

communal riots broke out between 1922 and 1927, leaving 450 dead

and more than 5,000 injured. Of these 112 riots, 21 took place in

20
1926 alone.

After the Kanpur Conference, CPI’s first open call to the Indian

people was through its Manifesto on the ‘Hindu-Muslim Problem’.

Dated May 15, 1926, this Manifesto, published jointly by Muzaffar

Ahmad and J.P. Bager-hatta, placed an entirely new solution to the

communal problem in India. The Manifesto pointed out:

Have the Hindus and Mussalman masses nothing in common in

India? Are both of them not suffering equally under the ruthless

exploitation of the foreign bureaucracy? Are they not economically

ruined by the foreign and Indian capitalists and landlords? The

union can only be realized when they are told of their common

grievances, so that they should be conscious of their common

miserable plight. It may be difficult for bourgeois political

philosophy to find a common ground to stand upon. The masses –

the common workers and peasants – are, however, as a matter of

fact already united by virtue of their common economic interests,

only the consciousness of this union is interfered with by large doses

of conflicting religious dogmas administered by interested parties.

Religious propaganda is an indigenous method of exploitation by

the able doctors of Divinity. This they have to do in order to

preserve feudal rights of the upper classes, without whose support

they cannot live and prosper.

The preaching behind every religion is that of obedience and faith

and it created a tradition and lived by it. To-day the power of

tradition is destroyed. Religion begets servility. You are taught to

obey God, His apostles, obey parents, obey masters, obey your
 landlord, obey your king, and obey even those blessed souls, the

rich people. A country where people have only learnt to obey could

never demand its freedom and where liberty cannot be hoped for,

power becomes the grand object of human desire and the passion

for it is the most ardent and unscrupulous. . . . [We] want to impress

upon our countrymen with all the earnestness we are capable of to

begin with a new phase of the movement with an economic

programme reflecting the immediate demands of the workers and

peasants – the proletarians of the country – and commence a

struggle subordinating all religious and communal questions to the

great politico-economic one. . . . The Communist Party of India,

which stands for the economic emancipation of the people, to create

a society having no bloodsuckers and wage slaves – a classless

society, is ready to join hands with you in your struggle against the

21
ruthless exploitation of the present capitalist plutocracy.

The Manifesto emerged out of the understanding contained in the

Constitution of the CPI. Thus, as E.M.S. Namboodiripad says,

right from the inception of the Communist Party as a movement, a

new approach towards the Hindu-Muslim strife, as in the case of

many other problems, appeared on the Indian political scene. As

distinct from the bourgeois-petty bourgeois approach, this new,

communist approach linked the socio-cultural problem of Hindu-

Muslim rift to the political problem of anti-imperialist struggle and

to the economic and political problem of the fight between the

22
exploited and exploiter.

Attempt to organize the Second Conference

By August 1926 J.P. Bagerhatta persuaded Ghate to decide that the

second conference of the CPI would be held in November 1926 in

Lahore. Initially Delhi was selected as the venue but he later shifted it

to Lahore. The fifth issue of Ganavani (September 9, 1926), weekly

organ of newly-founded Bengal Peasants’ and Workers’ Party edited

by Muzaffar Ahmad, carried a news item that the ‘Second Congress of

the Communists of India’ would be held in Delhi in the second week

of November.

The Foreign Bureau, of which Roy, Muhammad Ali and Clemens

Dutt were members, sent a letter to the CPI CC that it was not in

favour of holding the conference. In the letter dated October 13, 1926

Roy explained a new tactical line for the Indian communists:

. . . it would be wiser not to call our party a communist party. Apart

from tactical reasons, there are political reasons for this. There are

honest people sharing our views, in general, who do not dare join

the communist party. We may call these people cowards; but the

fact is we have still got to build the party. And this cannot be done

unless we are able to gather around us all the available materials

from which the party can grow. The most important reason,

however, is that to be able to accomplish the gigantic, the

communist party have a broad basis. We must have a mass party

which can operate legally. A small conspirative group will be of no

use. But the name of the party should be changed, provided you

agree to it, not mechanically. It must be through an organizational

process. Groups and individuals that may enter a revolutionary

working class party (communist except in name) must be

approached; preliminary conversations should be carried on as

regards programme and organization; then a conference should be

called jointly to launch a broad working class party, say the

workers’ and peasants’ party. But let us repeat there is no hurry. It

might be just as good, perhaps, to consolidate our own forces before

starting out to draw in others. One thing, however, should be made

clear. This proposition is not the same as that for the formation of a

people’s party. They are two entirely different things. One is a veiled

communist party while the other is a revolutionary-nationalist party.

23
 However, the proposed Lahore Communist Conference never took

place and ‘a broad open party’ of Roy’s conception was never formed

in India. The workers’ and peasants’ parties which came into existence

in some provinces during 1926–28 engineered the building up of class-

conscious organization of workers and peasants and a national

revolutionary leftwing inside the national movement.

Manifesto for the Gauhati Congress

The CPI issued a manifesto for the Gauhati Session of the Indian

National Congress in December 1926. Unlike the previous manifestos

issued for the Congress sessions at Ahmedabad (1921), Gaya (1922),

and Belgaum (1924), the present manifesto was the first to be issued

24
in the name of the ‘Communist Party of India’. It was printed in

London and Muzaffar Ahmad recalls that Abdul Halim made

25
arrangements for its distribution in Gauhati. The internal

squabbling of the post-C.R. Das Swarajya Party and the Provincial

and Central Assembly election dominated the Gauhati session.

The CPI Manifesto dated December 1, 1926 expressed a kind of

hopelessness about the Congress: ‘The year 1925 was marked by a

complete decomposition of the nationalist movement presents a

picture which is apparently very discouraging’. Sharply criticizing the

Congress leadership it said:

Today the National Congress exists but in name, a number of

conflicting political groups contending for the possession of its

prostrate frame. Nationalism – the courageous fight for real

freedom – is drowned in the surging sea of communalism. Bickering

over petty formalities is the outstanding feature of political life of

the country. More than half a dozen political constellations are

vilifying each other. Each claims to represent the nation. But none of

them touch the vital issues before the nation, their sole object being

to secure a majority in the legislatures.

 Even those who recognize the impotence of these pseudo

parliamentary bodies are nevertheless frantically trying to enter

them. They have forgotten that the road to freedom does not lie

through the blind alley of those impotent and unrepresentative

legislative bodies. They have forgotten that in the fight for national

freedom these at best can only serve as auxiliaries to other more

powerful and effective weapons. . . . The authority of the National

Congress will be asserted, it will regain its position as the supreme

organ of the Indian people, only if at Gauahati the tricky politics of

the bourgeois leaders are frustrated. This can be done by mobilizing

the rank and file on a platform of revolutionary nationalism. . . .

The National Congress can save itself only in one way. It is roundly

repudiating the programme and policy that seek to make it an

instrument of parties betraying national interests for the sake of a

small minority. The repudiation of the bankrupt policy of bourgeois

nationalism should be followed by the adoption of a programme of

democratic national freedom. Pseudo parliamentary should be

replaced by militant mass action. The policy of surrender and

compromise should be discarded in favour of a policy of courageous

and genuine fight with imperialism. The National Congress should

be liberated from the treacherous bourgeois leadership and brought

under the inspiring influence of a republican people’s party.

Rejecting the proposal for Dominion Status the Manifesto also said:

Dominion status will bring material advantage to whom? To the

Indian bourgeoisie. An agreement with imperialism will assure the

development of Indian capitalism. Protection is needed by those

who have something to protect. They again are the capitalist and

landowning classes who are afraid that national revolution

involving the worker and peasant masses might encroach upon their

preserves. The classes of Indian society that live and thrive by

exploiting the toiling masses and to whom national freedom means

the freedom to increase this exploitation want the protection of

British imperialism against the possible revolt of the people. This is

 the meaning of dominion status. Materials advantages for the

Indian bourgeoisie and protection of the rights and privileges of

exploiting classes – these are the principal elements of the swaraj,

which the founder of the Swaraj Party desired to see established.

The Manifesto also contains a programme of the nationalist

movement which was similar to the already proposed ‘minimum

programme’ for the CPI for organizing a ‘Peoples’ Party’:

The movement for national freedom can be led to victory only by a

party of the people. Unless it is led by a party which acts according

to a clearly-defined programme, the nationalist movement will be

floundering like a rudderless ship. . . . The people must have

freedom, complete and unconditional. There must be a people’s

party to demand and fight for this freedom. . . . A national assembly

elected by universal adult (man and woman) suffrage will be the

supreme organ of the people. All caste and class privileges will be

abolished. The country will be thoroughly democratized.

To the masses, national freedom must offer more concrete

advantages. It must remove their immediate economic grievances

and guarantee them a higher standard of life. National freedom

must establish the principle. The land belongs to the tiller. Parasitic

classes living in luxury on unearned incomes from land will be

deprived of their vested interest. . . . The cultural level of the

peasantry will be raised through the introduction of machinery in

agriculture and through free primary education.

The national government will guarantee the industrial workers an

eight-hour day and minimum living wage. There will be legislation

as regards decent working conditions and housing. Unemployed

workers will be taken care of by the state.

Public utilities such as railways, waterways, telegraphs etc. will be

the property of the nation. They will be operated not for private

profit, but for the use of the public.

 Workers (also peasants) will have full freedom to combine, and

the right to strike to defend their interests.

There will be complete freedom of religion and worship. National

and communal minorities will enjoy the right of autonomy.

Bombay meeting: January 1927

The organizational condition of the CPI was still fragile inside India.

Though the Lahore Conference was postponed, the CPI Central

Executive Committee (CEC) met on January 16–18, 1927, in Bombay

and resolved to hold the ‘Second Congress’ of the Party on March 17–

28 in Lahore. The meeting also adopted a ‘Resolution on the need to

organize a Workers’ and Peasants’ Party’.

CPI leaders were assembled in Bombay to meet Shapurji Saklatvala,

the British Communist MP who was coming to India from England on

January 14, 1927. Saklatvala’s visit was a big event for the Indian

working class. It was like welcoming a national hero. CPI leaders

planned to meet him and on that occasion wanted to hold the long-

delayed meeting of the Central Executive Committee in Saklatvala’s

presence. In fact they wanted Saklatvala to preside over the second

communist conference. S.V. Ghate (joint general secretary) sent a letter

(January 1, 1927) to Saklatvala, requesting him to take part in the

conference: ‘On behalf of the CPI I extend to you our heartiest

welcome on your return to India. . . . Our own party, which came in

existence a year ago under the most adverse conditions, has not been

able to make headway with its programme. However, we have great

hopes that with your suggestions and lead, we shall be able to do

26
some substantial progress with our work.’

But Saklatvala refused to attend the Communist Party Conference,

which was not affiliated to the Comintern and issued a letter in this

regard which was published in the Bombay-based newspaper, the

Indian National Herald.

Saklatvala’s stand was shocking to the CPI leaders. Ghate and

Bagerhatta immediately sent a protest letter to Saklatvala: ‘We in India

have every right to form a Communist Party and to contribute to in

our own way to the cause of international communism. The question

of international affiliation comes later. This is what we understand

from the opinion expressed by the communist leaders of international

reputation. . . . All the same in spite of your non-cooperation with us

27
we extend our hearty welcome to our conference at Lahore.’

Muzaffar Ahmad’s letter from Bombay on January 19, 1927,

written perhaps to Roy, echoes the same sentiment:

I have come to Bombay on the occasion of Saklatvala’s visit. But

received the return readily! He thinks it better to keep company

with the reactionary trade unionists than to spare time with us. Not

only that, he is not even ready to accept our very existence. It has

been planned to elect him president of the Communist Conference

to be held at Lahore. But he is not willing to be president as the

Communist Party of India is not affiliated to the Comintern. But in

1925 he accepted the invitation of Satyabhakta of Kanpur. . . .

Saklatvala told us to dissolve the Communist Party, at least to

change the name. Same is the opinion of two other friends. But they

don’t know its consequence. If we dissolve the party or change its

name, then very soon anybody on behalf the police will come

forward and form a new communist party. Will it be good for us? In

our opinion, the Communist Party be kept alive, even if it is only in

name.

In the same letter Ahmad wanted to know about the Comintern-CPI

relationship:

What will be the nature of our relationship with the Comintern that

I want to know? Everyone advises us to work with the

International. But we are none of the International. If it is so why

are we going to endanger ourselves in the name of International?

There should be an open heart discussion on it. We are ready to

work in any situation. But why should be exploited for ever? We

 never raised anything about affiliation. But Saklatvala is saying on

his own that, on special consideration, we could be included in the

British Party. In that case at the time of sending delegation to the

International British Party will include two more delegates for India.

Has the International any such idea about us? We want a detailed

answer. The main point is what the benefit in involving us is if we

28
don’t have the self-respect of fraternity?

However, the initial difference with Saklatvala was sorted out soon.

Saklatvala also realized the situation in India. In a letter (January 18,

1927) to Ghate and Bagerhatta he said: ‘If you want to hold any

conference of Communist brethren of India, no one desires to stop

you, and I am perfectly willing to do whatever is in my power to make

such a conference a success so that out of your efforts a regular and

properly authorized Communist Party of India may take birth.’ He

29
also expressed his desire to meet the CPI leadership.

Meanwhile, the working council of the CEC was held at Bombay

from January 16 to 18, 1927, in the presence of Muzaffar Ahmad, J.P.

Bagerhatta, Krishnaswamy Iyengar, R.S. Nimbkar, Samsuddin Hassan

30
and S.V. Ghate. The meeting passed a resolution deploring

Saklatvala’s open press statement.

. . . the action of Comrade Saklatvala in sending the copy of his

letter to the Secretary of Reception Committee to the press is quite

objectionable and great blow to the cause of communism in India,

31
this committee strongly protests against his action.

The meeting resolved to go ahead with the proposed second

Communist congress at Lahore from 17 to 20 March (1927) and

elected Muzaffar Ahmad to the presidentship of the Congress. A

committee was also appointed for drafting a new constitution of the

party to be placed before the Congress.

 But the Lahore Congress could not be organized. There were

differences within the leadership especially over Bagerhatta’s role.

Muzaffar Ahmad in his autobiography recorded that Bagerhatta was a

spy of the police and during the party meeting in January 1927 he had

admitted this to Ghate. Although Muzaffar Ahmad did not favour

organizing the Lahore Congress, a detailed report of the Bombay

meeting was published in the organ of Bengal Workers’ and Peasants’

32
Party, Ganavani, which he edited.

On March 14, 1927 CPI leaders met Saklatvala in Delhi. CPI

leaders also met then on March 14 and 15, and they decided to hold a

CEC meeting in coming May in Bombay. Muzaffar Ahmad, Ghate,

Bagerhatta, K.N. Joglekar were amongst others present at the Delhi

meeting. The meeting in Bombay was held on May 31. Muzaffar

Ahmad was not in favour of any meeting in May as well and remained

absent. He sent a letter to Party headquarters from Calcutta.

Bombay meeting: May 1927

Leaders of the CPI met on May 31, 1927 at Bombay. This was an

extended meeting of the Central Executive of the CPI. Muzaffar

Ahmad was not present. S.A. Dange, who was released from jail on

May 24, 1927, on the completion of his sentence in the Kanpur case,

also remained absent.

This meeting was a very important step in party’s effort to create an

effective all-India centre at a critical stage. As Adhikari points out: ‘. .

. this enlarged meeting . . . inaugurated the centralized functioning of

the party on an all India plane and created a guiding centre for the

33
first upsurge of party’s mass activity of 1927–29’. The meeting

adopted a new constitution of the party comprising of 21 articles. The

new constitution, the second one after the adoption of the first

constitution in Kanpur Conference (1925), interestingly defines the

party membership as: ‘Only those subscribing to the programme laid

down by the Communist International will be eligible for its

membership’. However, the constitution nowhere mentions that the

CPI was a section of the Communist International.

The new constitution incorporated a new body, that is, a ‘foreign

bureau’ almost as suggested by Roy earlier. Article 13 reads as

follows:

The presidium with the sanction of the CE will maintain a foreign

bureau as an ideological centre, composed of comrades who are not

in a position to work inside the country. The foreign bureau will be

representative of the CE and will act as the organ through which the

international relations of the party will be maintained. But it will

not in any way work inconsistent with the party’s programme and

resolutions. The foreign bureau will have a regular office at a place

of their convenience and will keep a constant touch with all the CPs

34
and the Comintern and will give publicity to Indian affairs.

A resolution passed unanimously also states that the CPI ‘looks up

to the communist parties of the world, as well as the International, for

lead and guidance, in the work undertaken by this party in this

country.’

The constitution adopted at Madras was no doubt a marked

advance over the constitution finalized at the Kanpur Communist

Conference. It may be noted that the Third Comintern Congress (June

22–July 12, 1921) adopted a model constitution for the communist

parties. On the eve of its Fifth World Congress, this model was

35
published in the Inprecor. But even the new CPI constitution did

not comply with the model circulated by the Comintern. As Adhikari

comments: ‘Three basic features of Marxist-Leninist working class

party organization are absent in this constitutions : (1) that it is a

working class party, (2) that every member pledges himself to work

through a collective – a basic branch or a committee and under its

discipline, and (3) that the guiding principle of a communist party

36
organization is democratic centralism.’
 The meeting also resolved a brief note on the outline of the Party’s

programmatic understanding. Criticizing the ‘present bourgeois

leadership in the Congress as it proved itself to be gradually

compromising with imperialism’ and ‘directly in opposition to the

interests of the masses’, CPI called upon all its members to join the

Congress and ‘form a strong leftwing in all its organs for the purpose

of wrestling them from the present alien control’ and to form a

‘republican wing’ in the AICC with the cooperation of the ‘leftwing’

of the Congress.

The party further called upon its members to ‘cooperate’ with the

‘radical-nationalists’ in the Congress and ‘to formulate a common

programme’ on the lines of the following seven-point ‘minimum

common programme’ as laid down by the CPI:

(i) complete national independence, and the establishment of a

democratic republic based on universal adult suffrage. (ii) Abolition

of landlordism. (iii) Reduction of land rent and indirect taxation,

higher incidence of graduated income-tax. (iv) Modernization of

agriculture with state aid. (v) Nationalization of public utilities. (vi)

Industrialization of the country with state aid. (vii) 8 hour-day and

37
minimum wage.

The resolution also reiterated that the ‘members of the party shall

not be members of any communal organization and shall always try to

expose the class character of such movements’.

The meeting also restructured the party organization. A presidium

was elected with Ahmad, Bagerhatta, G.R. Darveshi and K.S.

Ayyangar as members. Dange was also made a member of the

presidium with a condition that he had to sign the ‘party creed’. S.V.

Ghate was reelected general secretary and S.H. Mistry the treasurer.

Eight other members were also elected to the executive committee.

They were: Singaravelu Chettiar, Hasrat Mohani, R.S. Nimbkar, M.A.

Majid, Joglekar, Soumyendra Nath Tagore, Abdul Halim and S.D.

Hasan.
 It may be mentioned that Soumyendra Nath, grandnephew of

Rabindranath Tagore, was elected Secretary of the Bengal Peasants’

and Workers’ Party at its second conference held in Calcutta on

February 19–20, 1927. In April 1927 he left for Europe and was

inducted into the CEC in absentia. Soumyendra Nath also joined the

Sixth Congress of the Comintern (1928).

The Bombay meeting of the CPI declared Ganavani (Bengali weekly

from Calcutta), Mehnatkash (Urdu weekly from Lahore) and Kranti

(Marathi weekly from Bombay) as the party’s ‘non-official’ organs. All

these weeklies were actually organs of the workers’ and peasants’

parties in the respective provinces, except in Lahore. Kirti was not

included in this list. This Punjabi monthly (later in Urdu also) was

launched from Amritsar in February 1926 by Bhai Santokh Singh.

Sohan Singh Josh took charge as editor in 1927.

At that time the presence of the Party was felt in five areas of the

country. In Bengal, Muzaffar Ahmad, Abdul Halim and others were

active in Bengal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party. In Lahore G.A.

Darveshi, M.A. Majid, S.D. Hasan and Ramchandra were active

mainly on the trade union front. In Bombay, the Party had some

influence, like in Bengal. Bagerhatta and Arjunlal Sethi were active in

the province of Rajputana. In Madras, the CPI had its representation

through Chettiar. In the United Provinces, Azad Sobhani and his

comrades were trying to hold the party flag high. However, nowhere

were independent activities of the Party being carried out.

Communists were active in workers’ and peasants’ parties, Indian

National Congress, and in trade union bodies.

It is worth noting that there was no immediate reaction from either

Roy or the Comintern regarding the crucial Bombay meeting. The

Eighth Plenum of the Comintern Executive Committee (ECCI) was

held from May 18 to 30, 1927, that is just before the Bombay

meeting. But the Plenum was devoted entirely to the discussion on the

Chinese situation. Moreover, Roy was then in China. In December

1926, after the end of the Seventh ECCI Plenum, Roy accompanied by

Louise Geissler went to crisis-ridden China as the head of the

Comintern delegation. After his disastrous experience there Roy

returned to Moscow in August–September 1927. So for a long period,

Roy was more or less detached from Indian affairs. It was only in his

letter dated December 30, 1927, addressed to the CPI CC that Roy

attempted to resume his intervention in communist activities in India.

The letter was intercepted by the police and subsequently published in

the hardcore anti-communist and pro-British Calcutta-daily The

Statesman on August 18, 1928 and made famous as the ‘Assembly

Letter’.

Madras meeting: December 1927

Before Roy wrote this letter, the CPI Executive Committee again

met in Madras from December 28 to 30, 1927. All the leading

communists had come together to Madras for the INC Session

(December 1927), and organized a secret meeting at Chettiar’s

residence. K.N. Joglekar, R.S. Nimbkar, S.A. Dange, Philip Spratt, S.V.

Ghate, Shaukat Usmani, M.A. Majid and Ayodhya Prasad attended

the CPI CEC meeting. This was Dange’s first formal attendance at the

CPI CEC meeting. The meeting took some important organizational

decisions.

Hasrat Mohani and S.D. Hassan were expelled from the Party for

their association with communal outfits. Bagerhatta’s resignation was

also accepted. Usmani was elected a presidium member of the party.

The meeting also decided formation of an All India Workers’ and

38
Peasants’ Party.

It is also significant that though no all-India workers’ and peasants’

party was formed till December 1928, a Manifesto was issued to the

Madras Congress Session on behalf of the ‘Workers’ and Peasants’

39
Party’; the CPI itself did not issue any manifesto.

The Manifesto was critical of the Congress which worked in

‘defence of the interests of the landowing and capitalist classes’. It also

said:
 India must demand an absolutely unrestricted national constituent

assembly, elected by universal adult suffrage, which shall be the

supreme organ for expressing the will of the people. Nothing short

of that can be accepted. India must become a democratic country.

But while it is necessary to put forward the demand for a

constitution drafted by the representatives of the people, and

establishing a constituent assembly, such a demand by itself does not

more than touch the fringe of the real needs which the masses feel

and suffer. It is necessary, but only a preliminary. It is required to

provide the means whereby the needs of the people can be expressed

and remedied. And these needs are primarily social and economic.

The national government must guarantee to the peasants: the land

belongs to the tiller; reduction of land rents; exemption from rent

for poor peasants; assistance by means of credits to the cultivator.

For the industrial workers, there must be guaranteed: the eight-

hour day; a minimum living wage.

Legislation in regard to working conditions and housing.

State provision for the unemployed.

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

telegraphs, waterways, etc. must be run for the public use.

Workers and peasants must be given full rights of combination

and of strike.

There must be free primary education for all.

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

40
speech.

The Madras Congress Session was significant because it could not

ignore the demands of the left. It passed a resolution declaring

complete independence to be its ultimate aim. This was the first time

that the Congress made such a declaration.

 Roy’s Assembly Letter

41
Though Roy’s letter (December 30, 1927) had little real impact

on the activities of the communists in India it is an interesting

document which shows his difference with the CPI leadership on the

role and status of the CPI in India as an open party. Roy’s view was

that it was an ‘illusion’ to believe that

a CP can be organized in India legally. . . . We do not propose self-

liquidation; but are opposed to legalist deviation which will render

the CP a harmless nominal entity, unworthy of repression. . . . A CP

can exist legally in India if it abstains from the preparations to

‘wage war against the King’ . . . . Satya’s show was tolerated and

patronized from behind the scene, because, in addition to other

pernicious purposes, it served the purpose of creating the

atmosphere of ‘legal communism’. Finally, our CP is ignored

because of its remarkable inactivity.

Regarding organizing the CPI as an ‘illegal’ body Roy said:

Political party is a comparatively new thing in India; and there

prevails a rather faulty idea about it. An illegal organization is

traditionally associated with terrorist conspiracy, bombs and

revolvers. It is not understood how a party can be illegal and carry

on political activities. It is thought that, if the CP is illegal, its very

name should not be known to anybody. A political party is

confounded with secret conspiracy. Forced underground, the CP

will not make a secret of its existence. Not in the least. On the

contrary, through literature (journals, manifestoes, declarations,

appeals on every event touching the life of the workers and

peasants) printed and circulated conspiratively, the existence of the

CP will be made known to every worker and peasant. The

programme of the party will be published. Members will be

recruited. Central and local organization will exist and function.

Local, provincial and national conferences of the party will be held

 whenever necessary. Every member of the party will actively and

openly participate in labour and peasant movements, also in the

revolutionary nationalist struggle, as a communist, under the

guidance of the party, according on the programme of the party;

only it will not be publicly known that he is a communist.

Communist nuclei should be formed in every factory. Thus

organized, the CP will not altogether disappear from the political

scene, leaving the ground free to imposters like Satya, as some

comrades fear will be the effect if the CP were illegal.

Regarding the relationship between the Communist Party and the

Workers’ and Peasants’ Party he explained:

. . . the WPP is not and should not be merely a legal cover for the

CP. In the case it would only be a change of name to deceive to police;

. . . We proposed the formation of the WPP as a much broader

organization. It should be the rallying ground of all the exploited

social elements (proletariat, peasantry and petty bourgeois) which

must unite themselves in a revolutionary struggle against foreign

imperialism and native reaction, the elements that must participate in

the struggle for the creation of such political and economic conditions

as will help the proletariat in its further struggle against capitalism.

The communists should be in the WPP and by virtue of their being the

conscious vanguard of the working class will be the driving force of

the party. But the WPP is distinct from the CP in that its programme is

not a communist programme. Its programme is the programme of

democratic revolution which includes the realization of the minimum

political and economic demands of the workers and peasants. The CP

supports this programme as its minimum programme. . . . The social

elements ready to fight for this programme are not all necessarily

communists and never will be communists; but organized in the WPP

they will be under the influence of the proletariat and be led by the CP

without subscribing to its programme of socialism. The gradual

decomposition of the bourgeois nationalist parties created conditions

very favourable for the rapid growth of a party with such a

revolutionary programme. . . . The present form of the organization

obstructs the development of the WPP. It is too openly identified with

the CP. . . . It is publicly known that practically all the members of the

CC of the CP are the leaders of the WPP. Of course, in fact it should

be so; but the cat has been unnecessarily let out of the bag by

publishing the list of the CC of the CP. This mistake must be rectified

as soon as possible.

What is evident in Roy’s suggestion in his letter is a striking

difference with his earlier letter dated October 13, 1926 addressed to

the Indian communists after the formation of CPI in Kanpur. His

earlier proposition of a ‘veiled communist party’ had been amended

by this time.

In the ‘assembly letter’ Roy also suggested that it is ‘high time’ for

the WPP to form a national organization and the ‘situation is very

favourable’, he said, to convene a national conference for that

purpose. Roy also recommended that the Workers’ and Peasants’

Party should be affiliated to the League Against Imperialism.

Roy’s letter had hardly any practical impact on communists in

India. The letter, though dated December 30, 1927, actually reached

the communist organizers by May–June 1928, that is, about a month

before the Sixth Congress of the Comintern (July 17–September 1,

1928) held in Moscow.

Roy wrote this letter at a time when, after his China debacle, he had

been virtually removed from the Comintern leadership. He was hardly

in a position to act on behalf of the Comintern. He was also absent in

the Sixth Congress.

Whatever the reasons, we find no open activity of the communists

under the banner of the CPI in 1928. The May 31, 1927, meeting was

incidentally the last open session of the CPI. The CEC meeting held in

December 1927 was a secret one. In fact the CPI leadership met only

once in the whole of 1928, in December, at the time of the All India

Workers’ and Peasants’ Party conference in Calcutta. In 1928, all

efforts were concentrated on building Workers’ and Peasants’ Parties

in various provinces. The year also witnessed an unprecedented

upsurge in militant workers’ struggle. Strikes in the organized sector

shook the colonial rulers. The bourgeois nationalist leadership

appeared uneasy. The rising class consciousness among the organized

workers further sharpened the contradiction of the working people

with the reformist and rightist nationalists on the one hand, and the

colonial regime on the other.

 FIVE

WORKERS'

AND

PEASANTS'

PARTIES
THE PERIOD FOLLOWING THE KANPUR Communist Conference

witnessed the establishment of workers’ and peasants’ parties in

various provinces of India, culminating in the formation of the All

India Workers’ and Peasants’ Party by the end of 1928. Though

communists led these parties in various provinces, the WPP was not a

Communist Party, or even a veiled Communist Party. As the General

Statement of the Meerut prisoners was to explain this in 1932, the

WPP was conceived of as the organizational form of the united front

of the working class, the peasants and the petty-bourgeoisie to carry

1
through the national democratic revolution’.

Bengal

The first such organization was formed in Bengal in 1926 with the

transformation of the Labour Swaraj Party of the Indian National

Congress into Bengal Peasants’ and Workers’ Party. The Labour

Swaraj Party was formed on November 1, 1925, by Hemanta Kumar

Sarkar, Qazi Nazrul Islam, Qutubuddin Ahmad, Dr Nareshchandra

Sengupta, Samsuddin Hussain, and others. The decision to form the

party was taken in the first All Bengal Peasants’ Conference (February

7–8, 1925) at Bogra (now in Bangladesh). Muzaffar Ahmad was then

in Almora in the United Provinces following his release in September

1925 from the Kanpur Conspiracy Case. Abdul Halim, one of

Muzaffar Ahmad’s closest associates in Bengal, was also not among

the organizers of the Labour Swaraj Party, though his elder brother

Samsuddin Hussain, a radical Congressman, took part in the Bogra

Conference. The organizers of the Labour Swaraj Party were not

communists, at best they had utopian socialist tendencies and

sympathized with the cause of peasants and workers.

The Labour Swaraj Party was a party of the Indian National

Congress (its membership was open only to the members of the INC)

with the ‘object’ of attaining ‘swaraj in the sense of complete

independence of India based on economic and social emancipation

and political freedom of men and women’. At the same time its

programme expressed faith in the ideas of Sri Aurobindo: ‘the

salvation of India as pointed out by Sri Aurobindo Ghose lies in the

combination of young declassified intellectuals and the workers,

industrial and agricultural’. Hemanta Kumar Sarkar was a Swarajist

member of the Bengal Legislative Council. But after the death of

Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das in June 1925, pro-left Swarajists found

it difficult to endorse the official Congress line and were looking to

2
establish their own independent identity.

The Labour Swaraj Party launched its weekly Bengali organ Langal

on December 16, 1925, under the stewardship of Qazi Nazrul Islam.

Langal had tremendous impact in political circles. Roy wrote of the

weekly:

It is with great delight that we welcome the new Bengali weekly

Langal, India cries out for such journals. Indian revolutionaries

must get tired of the ‘political firework’ of bourgeois nationalism

and find their own ways. . . . The appearance of the Langal is one of

those signs. It represents the tendency of ‘to the masses’. The

declassed intellectuals are beginning to recognize the importance of

establishing relations with the masses. . . . The talents of the

revolutionary bard, Nazrul Islam should be devoted to voice the

suffering and aspirations of the downtrodden ‘dumb million’. Let

him sing for them – to inspire them with the courage to revolt

against exploitation and with the hope for a new era of freedom and

3
prosperity.

However, Langal was closed in April 1926 due to a shortage of

funds. Its last issue came out on 15 April. A new weekly Ganavani,

under the editorship of Muzzafar Ahmad, took its place. The first

issue of Ganavani came out on August 12, 1926. Muzaffar Ahmad

said: ‘The reason for changing the name was that from its name many

people assumed that Langal was exclusively for the peasants, while

4
this paper of ours was for the toiling masses.’
 The Labour Swaraj Party, despite its shortcomings, became the hub

of radical-minded political activists in Bengal. It was not a coincidence

that Muzaffar Ahmad took shelter at the Labour Swaraj Party office

at 37 Harrison Road, Calcutta, upon his return from Kanpur on

January 3, 1926. As a communist, even at such an early stage,

Muzaffar Ahmad could not be party to the programme of the Labour

Swaraj Party. But it was the party which was politically the closest to

Muzaffar Ahmad and his comrades. The Labour Swaraj Party

opposed the compromising attitude of the INC leadership, and Langal

sympathized with the Kanpur Communist Conference.

Muzaffar Ahmad’s call to form the Communist Party in Bengal was

published in Langal of January 21, 1926, eighteen days after he

reached Calcutta. The Krishnanagar Conference which declared the

new name and programme of the party was held on 6–7 February

1926. Dr Nareshchandra Sengupta was elected president of the Bengal

Peasants’ and Workers’ Party and Hemanta Kumar Sarkar elected

secretary. Muzaffar Ahmad was elected to the executive committee.

The object of the party was ‘the attainment of swaraj in the sense of

complete independence of India based on the political, social and

5
economic equality of women and men’. Unlike its predecessor, the

Bengal Peasants’ and Workers’ Party was organized as an independent

party and it demarcated itself from both the INC and the ‘terrorist’

movement.

It is interesting that M.N. Roy in his letter to Bagerhatta, dated

January 13, 1926, commented on the Labour Swaraj Party. The letter

was strongly critical of the Kanpur Communist Conference and

recommended that the communists in India should take initiative to

form a legal nationalist party, a peoples’ party with a radical

republican programme, like the Gaya programme. He felt that ‘the

newly formed Labour Swaraj Party seems to be moving in our

direction’. But Roy was critical of the Bengal Peasants’ and Workers’

Party of Bengal too, as its programme was different from the Gaya

6
programme.
 However, the observation of the Intelligence Department chief Sir

David Petrie was different: ‘The name of the Labour Swaraj Party was

. . . changed to the Peasants’ and Workers’ Party – a name which calls

to mind the Krestintern or Red Peasants’ International of Moscow.’

Petrie also dubbed the programme of the Labour Swaraj Party as

7
‘distinctly communist’.

The second conference of the Bengal Peasants’ and Workers’ Party

was held in Calcutta on February 19–20, 1927. Saumyendranath

Tagore was elected general secretary of the party, Atul Chandra Gupta

president, Hemanta Kumar Sarkar secretary of the Peasants’ Section,

and Abdur Razzak Khan secretary of the Workers’ Section. Muzaffar

Ahmad was re-elected to the Executive Committee and Abdul Halim

was inducted formally as an executive committee member along with

Dharanikanta Goswami and Gopen Chakraborty. Saklatvala, visiting

Calcutta at that time, was present at the conference, held in at the

Indian Association Hall in central Calcutta. Saumyendranath Tagore

left Calcutta in May 1927 for Europe, from where he proceeded to

attend the Sixth Congress of the Comintern (July–September 1928) in

Moscow. In his place Abdur Razzak Khan was elected acting secretary

8
of the party.

Bombay

The second conference of the Bengal party was significant on many

accounts. The conference made the party politically and

organizationally more consolidated. Further, it emerged as a model for

the organizers in other provinces. It may be noted that the CPI

Executive Committee meeting, held nearly a month before (16–18

January 1927), decided upon the formation of a workers’ and

peasants’ party in Bombay province, the first such organization

outside Bengal, and the publication of a Marathi weekly. Ahmad also

attended the meeting. Subsequently, on 13 February 1927, six days

before the second conference of the Bengal Peasants’ and Workers’

Party in Calcutta, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party was formed in

Bombay with D.R. Thengdi as the president and S.S. Mirajkar as the
secretary. S.V. Ghate, K.N. Joglekar, R.S. Nimbkar, S.M. Jhabwala,

and Lalji Pendse were elected members of the executive committee.

The Marathi weekly organ of the party, Kranti appeared on May 7,

9
1927, under the editorship of Mirajkar.

The origins of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party (WPP) of Bombay

bore similarity to that in Bengal. The nucleus of the party was a small

group of leftwing radicals and communists, who, on November 26,

1926, formed the Congress Labour Party (CLP). This party was

transformed into a Workers’ and Peasants’ Party, as per CPI’s decision

in January 1927. Mirajkar was also the secretary of CLP. The WPP of

Bombay was organized as an independent party to work inside the

National Congress and also to form a left wing there, and for the fight

for complete independence it sought to form a broad anti-imperialist

front. Formally, the object of the party was: ‘To establish swaraj

(complete national independence) wherein the means of production,

distribution and exchange are publicly owned and socially controlled.’

10

It was significant that the Bombay party circulated a programme of

action to the AICC, which was holding its session in Bombay on May

5, 1927, through its members in the AICC, namely K.N. Jogelkar and

R.S. Nimbkar. The copies of the programme were sent to the AICC

members in advance with a cover letter dated April 24, 1927 by

Mirajkar. The programme said:

The present Congress activity and programme are completely

divorced from the everyday life of the masses, . . . which has become

a feeble body. . . . In the interest of the vast majority of the people it

is necessary to free the Congress from the narrow shackles of class

interests and to yoke it to the task of attaining national freedom

from the imperialist bondages, as a step towards complete

11
emancipation of the masses from exploitation and oppression.
 The programme of the Bombay Workers’ and Peasants’ Party was

published in Kranti, in its second issue dated, May 14, 1927, under

the headline: ‘What should Congress Do? – It should accept the

programme of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party – the platform of the

minimum demands of the toiling and common people of the country.’

It is noteworthy that in its second conference (February 19–20,

1927) the Peasants’ and Workers’ Party of Bengal adopted a new

programme similar to that of the Bombay party. It announced the

same final goal as well as the same set of immediate demands.

The emergence of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party in Bengal and

Bombay marked a turning point for the working class movement in

the Indian subcontinent. The change in the situation was reflected in

the seventh session of the AITUC held at Hindu College, Delhi, on

March 12–13, 1927, under the presidentship of Rai Sahib Chandrika

Prasad. Saklatvala was also present at the session and the AITUC

appointed the Workers’ Welfare League of India (London) as its agent

in Britain. The session also elected S.V. Ghate as one of the two

assistant secretaries of the AITUC. Thus Ghate became the first

communist AITUC office bearer. D.R. Thengdi, president of Workers’

and Peasants’ Party of Bombay, was elected the administrative

secretary. Muzaffar Ahmad also attended the session. The year 1927

also marked a new stage in the history of working class movement.

On May 1 of that year workers across India celebrated May Day on

the call of the AITUC.

Before May 1927, a workers and peasants’ party had also emerged

in Rajputana under the leadership of Arjunalal Sethi, who had

attended the Kanpur Communist Conference in 1925. By the Bombay

CEC meeting of the CPI held on May 31, 1927, workers’ and

peasants’ parties were formed in three provinces, Bengal, Bombay and

Rajputana. The extended meeting of the CEC approved the

programmes laid down by the workers’ and peasants’ parties in these

three provinces and resolved that the CPI members ‘shall try to form

similar organizations where such do not exist’.

 In his article, ‘The New Party’ published in Ganavani of April 14,

1927, Muzaffar Ahmad explained the formation of the workers’ and

peasants’ party:

Those who know the proceeding of the last Gauhati Congress will

certainly have realized that the present Congress is not for the

Indian masses. . . . Hence, when in response to the call of the age,

the demand was made that Congress must stand for the masses its

leaders had perforce to admit that they were not of the party of the

masses – that they belonged to their own party – that is, the party of

capitalists, merchants and zamindars. . . . Then again the condition

of the All India Trade Union Congress is yet more lamentable. . . .

In brief a real workers’ movement has not so far begun in this

country. Because there is no conception of radical change, the

present workers’ movement is not doing the workers much good. . .

. Because they are the worst exploited, because they are resourceless,

and most of all, because, thanks to the factory system, they can very

easily organize, it is our workers who can take the lead in the

struggle for our national freedom. If they, who are to lead, lag

behind, there is no doubt that our struggle for emancipation will

prove useless. . . . For these reasons, it has become very necessary to

form a new party. This party is the party of the masses. We have

called it the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party. It will include not merely

the proletariat . . . but also peasants and the lower middle classes

who have joined the national movement are largely dissatisfied with

12
autocracy of the capitalists.

It is interesting to see what M.N. Roy was thinking of at the time

about the workers’ and peasants’ parties. In the April 1927 issue of

Masses of India, Roy contributed a long article titled ‘The Workers’

and Peasants’ Party’, which shows his favourable stand. In this article

Roy formulated the two-fold task of the Party:

At the present stage, the fight for a militant nationalist and labour

movement is the immediate requirement in India. The fight for

 militancy needs to be waged both in the field of nationalist

organizations and the field of workers’ and peasants’ organizations.

This is the special function that can be fulfilled by the Workers’ and

Peasants’ Party. It is not itself the party of national revolution

aiming at leadership of national struggle, nor is it the international

class party of the proletariat. It is somewhat in the nature of an

organized left wing which will endeavour to secure the adoption of

a militant programme of mass action by the existing organizations

and to build up the mass movement in an organized manner on that

basis. . . . The Workers’ and Peasants’ Party will, on the one hand,

strengthen the forces of the left in the national movement and on

the other hand it will prepare the way for a powerful class

leadership of the revolutionary workers and peasants. It must have a

13
mass following or it will be of no avail.

AITUC Kanpur Session

The eighth session of the AITUC was held in Kanpur on November

26–28, 1927, just a month before the Madras Session of the INC,

under the presidentship of Diwan Chamen Lal. Congress leader

Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi was chairman of the reception committee.

They received congratulatory messages from the Communist Party of

Great Britain and the League Against Imperialism. Besides Philip

Spratt, the session was attended by A.A. Purcell, MP, J. Hallsworth,

MP, delegates of the British Trade Union Congress and Hardy Janes of

the Workers’ Welfare League of India, London. N.M. Joshi, general

secretary, in his speech at the session not only welcomed the

appearance of newspapers like Kranti, Mehanatkash, Kirti and

Ganavani but also expressed the hope that the trade unions would

give their generous support to them.

A statutory commission had been set up by the government on

November 26, 1927, ‘for the purpose of inquiring into the working of

the system of government, the growth of education and the

development of representative institutions in British India’. Headed by

the Labour MP Sir John Simon, it was known popularly as the Simon
Commission. The eighth session resolved to boycott the Simon

Commission and urged the British Labour Party to withdraw their

two representatives from the Commission. Instead, the session decided

to form a sub-committee with Spratt as convenor to draw up a

‘Labour Constitution for the future government of India’.

The eighth session of the AITUC showed that the nucleus of

communists formed around the workers’ and peasant parties had

started functioning as a coordinated group and was pushing the

AITUC towards a more radical programme. The Kanpur AITUC

session elected D.R. Thengdi as one of the vice-presidents and S.A.

Dange as one of the assistant secretaries. C.F. Andrews and N.M.

14
Joshi were elected President and General Secretary respectively.

WPP manifesto for Madras Congress

In the Madras session of the Indian National Congress (December

26–28, 1927), a manifesto was issued on behalf of the Workers’ and

Peasants’ Party. CPI CEC members who had assembled in Madras to

attend the Congress session also met secretly at Singaravelu Chettiar’s

residence. The meeting resolved to hold a conference at Calcutta to

form an All India Workers’ and Peasants’ Party. Muzaffar Ahmad was

given the charge of organizing the proposed conference.

In the Madras Session, the Congress for the first time in its history

resolved to fight for complete independence. The session also resolved

to boycott the Simon Commission. Communist leaders like Ahmad,

Nimbkar, Joglekar and Spratt took active part in the session.

In the wake of the visit of the Statutory Commission the drafting of

a constitution for India was a vital issue before the session. The WPP

Manifesto gave the call for ‘an absolutely unrestricted national

constituent assembly, elected by universal adult suffrage, which shall

be the supreme organ for expressing the will of the people. . . . A

national assembly guaranteeing complete national independence and

the democratization of national life in every respect – this must be the

15
main plank of the congress platform.’ The significance of the slogan
of a national constituent assembly was explained by Ahmad in his

defence statement (June 2, 1931) in the Meerut Conspiracy Case: ‘At a

time when the national bourgeoisie was going to pass the resolution of

complete independence of India, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party

thought it best to raise before it the highest democratic slogan of

bourgeois revolutions. . . . The slogan of boycott of the Simon

Commission was a negative one. Mere passing of the resolution of

independence was not a positive action. A real positive action –

summoning of constituent assembly – to assert the right of self-

16
determination was suggested.’

The manifesto was drafted by Muzaffar Ahmad in consultation with

Philip Spratt and was printed in Calcutta before they left for Madras.

Notably, Roy, who in his famous assembly letter dated December 30,

1927, had criticized CPI and Workers’ and Peasants’ Parties, praised

them in his article, titled ‘Imperialism and Indian Nationalism’,

(Inprecor, 5 January 1928) on the Madras session: ‘The activities of

the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party and the revolutionary consciousness

created thereby among the masses have contributed largely to the

17
resolution of the Madras National Congress.’

Communists also attended the Republican Congress on December

28, 1927. This was held at the venue of the Madras Congress, and

was ‘a sort of a conference of the leftist delegates in the congress

18
session’. The session was presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru who

outlined how the Republican Congress could function as a ‘leftist

consolidation’ inside the National Congress. The session elected the

executive committee with Jawaharlal Nehru as the president and

Muzaffar Ahmad as one of the three secretaries.

WPP in Simon boycott movement

The workers’ and peasants’ parties took a leading role in organizing

the movement for the boycott of anti-Simon Commission with the aim

of mobilizing workers and peasants to the greatest extent possible in

the struggle for complete independence.

 The members of the Simon Commission landed in Bombay on

February 3, 1928. On the basis of the Madras Congress resolution,

February 3 was declared as an all-India protest day. Meetings and

demonstrations took place not only in Bombay but across all major

cities – Calcutta, Madras, Lahore, Lucknow, Delhi, and Peshawar. The

movement created a new wave of countrywide anti-imperialist mass

mobilization. On that day the city of Bombay witnessed a massive

workers’ demonstration. Muzaffar Ahmad, who was in Bombay,

recollected the events forty years later: ‘We led a workers’ procession

walking all the distance from Matunga to Foras Road. It was on this

occasion also that the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party came out on the

streets with red flags and festoons displaying hammer and sickle . . .

there was a massive meeting, at which, perhaps a mike was used for

19
the first time.’

According to R.S. Nimbkar, who was then secretary of the Bombay

Provincial Congress Committee, the Municipal Workmen’s Union in

Bombay had taken a lead in organizing the Simon Commission

boycott propaganda amongst the workers. Later, in his statement in

Meerut Court, Nimbkar placed an assessment of the boycott

demonstration: ‘The majority of workers understood the political

significance of this day. After 1922, this was perhaps the only occasion

when the whole city observed a very successful hartal. . . . The

February 3 demonstration was the beginning of a new stage of

development in which the masses entered the political field as an

independent political force under the leadership of their own party

20
and organizations.’

The executive council of Workers’ and Peasants’ Party of Bombay

also adopted a resolution on the boycott on January 29, 1928. The

resolution made an evaluation of the situation and emphasised the

task of the working class. The first paragraph of the resolution

expresses the attitude of the party:

The appointment and arrival of the Simon Commission confront the

national movement with a serious responsibility. The Commission,

 which comes for the purpose of continuing the subjection of India

to imperialist exploitation, serves to remind the whole nation of its

servile status and the ills irremediable under the present system,

which it suffers. It gives the nationalist movement a chance to rally

the nation once more to the call of independence and the solution of

its problems of poverty and misery. The opportunity must be seized.

21

The workers’ and peasants’ parties also played a leading role during

the Simon Commission’s second visit in October of the same year. A

massive protest rally was organized, this time in Calcutta in January

1929. Bengal peasants’ and workers’ party took part in the rally along

with the Provincial Congress. The slogan ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ (Long

Live Revolution) was raised for the first time in the Calcutta rally.

In October, S.S. Mirajkar of Bombay Workers’ and Peasants’ Party

sent a protest telegram to Simon. In Lahore, the British police brutally

attacked veteran leader Lala Lajpat Rai who was leading the protest

demonstration against the Simon Commission. The injury led to

Lalaji’s death on November 17, 1928, which shocked the whole

nation.

Nehru Report

The hopes raised during the Madras session and subsequent boycott

demonstrations were shortlived. Even before the arrival of the Simon

Commission in February 1928, the Congress leadership announced

their decision to convene an All Party Conference to frame a

‘constitution’ of India to present the British government. This decision

of the Congress high command was in sharp contradiction with the

demand of the workers’ and peasants’ party for convening a

constituent assembly, elected by universal adult suffrage, to settle the

future relations of India with Britain. The party had raised this

demand in its manifesto placed before the Madras Congress session.

The party recorded its opposition to this decision of the Congress

during its Simon boycott programme.

 The All Party Conference was scheduled to be held in Delhi on

February 12, 1928. Invitations were sent to AITUC, Workers’ and

Peasants’ Party, and the CPI (Bombay) as representatives of workers.

From February 12 to March 11, 1928, the conference held its

preliminary discussions and met again on May 19, 1928 in Bombay.

In the meetings held in Delhi, AITUC did not send any

representatives. In its eighth session held at Kanpur in November

1927, AITUC had appointed a sub-committee with Spratt as

Convenor to draw up a ‘Labour Constitution for the Future

Government of India’. As the sub-committee could not hold any

meeting before February 12, 1928, it was not possible for the AITUC

to present any official view at the All Party Conference. The Workers’

and Peasants’ Party and the CPI also did not take part in the Delhi

deliberations. However, S.S. Mirajkar on behalf of the Workers’ and

Peasants’ Party issued ‘An Open Letter to the All Party Conference’,

dated February 9, 1928. This ‘Open Letter’ questioned the very

rationale for calling such a conference and reiterated the demand for

22
convening a constituent assembly based on universal adult suffrage.

However, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party joined the Bombay

meeting on May 19 and Dange as the leader of the delegation

explained his Party’s stand. The party representatives voted against the

resolution for electing a sub-committee to draft the future

23
constitution.

The Bombay conclave elected Motilal Nehru as the convenor of the

Constitution Drafting Committee. The other members elected to this

committee were Tej Bahadur Sapru, Ali Imam, G.R. Pradhan, Shuaib

Qureshi, M.S. Aney, M.R. Jayakar, N.M. Joshi, Sardar Mangal Singh

and Subhash Chandra Bose. Though N.M. Joshi, the AITUC general

secretary, was inducted, he did not attend its meetings nor did he sign

the report.

These developments increased the differences between the Congress

and the communists. All the resolutions of the Workers’ and Peasants’

Party and the CPI during this period, especially after acceptance of
dominion status as the Congress goal, record their condemnation of

what was dubbed as a gross betrayal of the anti-imperialist tradition

24
of the national movement. It was also the policy of the communists

to build good relations with the left wing leaders inside the Congress,

like Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, Srinivasa Iyengar,

Satyamurti, etc. The ‘Independence of India League’ was formed in

November 1928 which raised criticism against the Motilal Nehru

Report on the demand of complete Independence.

The Nehru Report on constitution was submitted on August 10,

1928, and was placed before the All Party Conference in its next

session held in Lucknow on August 28–31, 1928. The conference met

again at Calcutta in December 1928 prior to the forty-third Congress

session. As apprehended by many, the Nehru Report charted out a

constitutional framework for dominion status.

The Lucknow All Party Conference (which coincided with the Sixth

Congress of the Comintern in session in Moscow) endorsed by

majority vote the Nehru Report. But on August 29 Jawaharlal Nehru

categorically declared in the meeting that he stood for complete

independence, and not for dominion status. He read a statement in the

conference on independence and on August 30 Jawaharlal and other

signatories (among them Subhash Chandra Bose, Srinivasa Iyengar)

decided to form a new platform called the ‘Independence for India

League’ without leaving the Congress. On November 3–4, 1928, the

general body meeting of the League held in Delhi elected Srinivasa

Iyengar as the president, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra

Bose as joint secretaries and Shiva Prasad Gupta as the treasurer.

Significantly, it also decided to ‘associate’ with the League Against

Imperialism.

The communists and the workers’ and peasants’ parties rejected the

Nehru Report unhesitatingly but to them the Independence for India

League raised a serious issue. The statement issued by the Bengal

Peasants’ and Workers’ Party recorded its disagreement with the

decision of the Lucknow All Party Conference in unequivocal terms,

but it said nothing about the Independence League. The party came
out with an official stand only at the All India Conference held in

Calcutta in December 1928. The Political Resolution of the AIWPP

Conference said:

The Independence for India League is . . . to be looked upon as the

resultant of different tendencies: (1) a hesitating and as yet confused

move on the part of a section of the petty bourgeoisie towards a

revolutionary policy, with perhaps on the part of some of the idea of

exploiting the revolutionary mass movement for the attainment of

independence for the middle classes. (2) An attempt by a section of

the bourgeoisie to extort concessions from imperialism by

threatening it with a movement for independence among the middle

classes and the masses. (3) An attempt by a section of the

bourgeoisie to regain that control over the mass movement and the

petty bourgeoisie with the increasingly reactionary attitude of the

bourgeois class as a whole, and the bourgeois labour leaders, in

25
causing it to lose.

‘A Call to Action’

The adoption of the document, ‘A Call to Action’, in the third

conference of the Bengal Peasants’ and Workers’ Party, held from

March 31 to April 1, 1928, was very significant in the prevailing

political situation of the country. The conference, held in Bhatpara, an

industrial area of district 24 Paraganas, elected Muzaffar Ahmad as

the secretary of the party, which was renamed the Workers’ and

Peasants’ Party of Bengal. Just before Bengal Party’s conference, the

first annual conference of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party of Bombay

was held on March 18, 1928. Decisions of this conference along with

a document titled ‘Thesis on our Attitude towards the Congress and

26
present Labour leadership’ formed the basis of ‘A Call to Action’.

In the backdrop of the anti-Simon Commission movement and the

vacillating attitude of the INC leadership on the question of the draft

constitution for India, ‘A Call to Action’ reflected a change in the

mood of the communists even before the Sixth Congress of the

Comintern. Taking into consideration both political and

organizational issues, ‘A Call to Action’, even with its sectarian

tendencies, significantly influenced the political positions communists

took for that year and after.

On the role of Indian bourgeoisie the document observed: ‘. . .The

Indian bourgeosie is in a position of subordination to British capital

and is relatively weak and backward. . . . In general its development is

blocked by the completion of the established large scale British

industries and British control of finances and tariff policy.’ And

further: ‘The essence of the policy of the bourgeoisie as a whole, and

now even of the left section, is compromise with imperialism. . . . The

bourgeoisie as a whole can no longer be looked upon as the leader of

the national movement.’ While discussing the role of the petty

bourgeoisie the document said:

The lower strata of the petty bourgeoisie, the unemployed etc., a

section of the non cooperators, and the remnant of the terrorist

parties – are the unformed ‘left’ of the Congress and constitute part

of the ground from which the workers’ and peasants’ parties are

now rising. . . .

The chief immediate task for the party is, by putting forward its

correct, consistent and uncompromising policy, in contrast to the

unhistorical, vacillating and timid policy of the present leaders, to

gather together all fighting progressive forces from all sections, and

thereby to establish its own organization, which will enable it to

carry on its ultimate function. A strong conscious and well

disciplined Workers’ and Peasants’ Party is the most pressing need

of the present. . . . We must endeavour to make the Congress adopt

a programme of mass demands and to support them its current

programme. . . . We must support the Congress while it fights

imperialism, but must not hesitate to criticize the compromising

tendencies of Congress leaders, however prominent. The alliance of

the party with the petty-bourgeois left of the Congress must be

 consolidated on the basis of direct action for complete

27
independence, as against the compromising bourgeois leadership.

Intervention in youth movement

A significant move on the part of communists and WPP activists

was their intervention in the growing and organized youth movement,

especially in Bengal, Punjab and Bombay provinces.

The first formal decision to organize youth wings was taken by the

enlarged executive committee meeting of the Workers’ and Peasants’

Party in Bombay on January 29, 1928, in the backdrop of the anti-

Simon Commission boycott movement. The decision was endorsed by

the provincial conferences of the party in Bombay and Bengal in

March 1928. ‘A Call to Action’ adopted by the party dealt with the

issue in detail and pointed out that the young generation in Indian had

two options: ‘either to pursue the path of traditional pure nationalism,

which will inevitably lead it to be defence of capitalism and hence of

imperialism and of political and social reaction’, or to ‘take the side of

the historically progressive mass movement, assist of in its difficulties,

and advance the cause of national independence, democracy and

economic and cultural programme.’

The document resolved that the WPP ‘should attract to its banner

the newly organizing forces of the youth and must establish an

‘independent youth organization’ by recruiting working class and

peasant youth ‘to broaden the social base of the traditional youth

organization’.

It also charted out a six-point programme of action for such a youth

organization:

(i) Participation in the political nationalist movement.

(ii) Advance the cause of trade unionism among young workers, and

study their working conditions.

 (iii) Fight for the redress of the special grievances of the youth,

especially the unemployed.

(iv) Political study and self preparation.

(v) Conduct of education in political and economic subjects among

workers, villages and students.

(vi) Act as a centre within the existing general youth organizations

for the propaganda of radical ideas and the advancement of a sound

policy.

In Bengal, under the direct initiative of the WPP, the Young

Comrades League was formed by the end of July 1928 and in August

the League’s ‘Statement of Programme and Policy’ was adopted. The

Bengali name of the organization was suggested as ‘Tarun Bandhu

Dal’. Within a short span of time branches were opened in districts

like Dacca, Barisal and Mymansingh. Philip Spratt, Abdul Halim,

Dharani Kanta Goswami, Asutosh Roy, Gopen Chakraborty took

active interest in organizing the youth. While in Bengal the WPP

stressed on bringing the younger generation, especially those who

were associated with revolutionary terrorism, into working class

politics, the situation in Bombay and Punjab was different.

The Bombay Presidency Youth League, which held its first

conference by the end of January 1928, was more a moderate body,

though both Mirajkar and Dange were active in the League. The

second conference of the Bombay Youth League was held in December

1928 in Pune. K.F. Nariman presided over this conference. It may be

noted that Nariman also presided over the session of the All India

Youth Congress held in Calcutta in December 1928 just before the

Congress session. Subhash Chandra Bose was a patron of the

conference. Adhikari notes: ‘It does not appear that the Workers’ and

Peasants’ Party was able to play any significant role in it or build its

own youth organization in that period in Bombay, being fully

occupied with the great textile strike and with the organization of

28
Girni Kamgar Union (Red Flag) after the termination of the strike.’
The situation changed after the Meerut arrests. By the end of 1929

communists began to take initiative and formed Youth Workers’

League.

In Punjab, the organizers of Workers’ and Peasants’ Party played an

active role in mobilizing the Naujavan Bharat Sabha in April 1928. In

its first conference, presided over by Kedarnath Sehgal, Sohan Singh

Josh and M.A. Majid were present. Though Naujavan Sabha was

formed as a broad based organization, WPP had been its guiding

spirit.

However, the All India Conference of Workers’ and Peasants’ Party

did not give adequate attention to the youth wing. Documents show

that a manifesto of the youth front of the WPP of Bengal was read at

the conference only on the fourth day. Even the ‘Political Resolution’

contained nothing on the issue. Except in Bombay the whole initiative

stopped with the Meerut arrests.

Assembly Letter: prelude to attack

The increasing influence of the communists in the working class

movement by mid-1928 alarmed the British government and

communists were singled out for government repression. The attitude

of the colonial authority was reflected in a review report of the

Intelligence Department on the developments during the year. The

report runs: ‘The menace of communism to the peace in India is

looming larger then ever, and unless the authorities are armed with

wider powers to deal with leaders of the movements . . . the events of

the next year or two may well be fraught with the greatest

29
consequence of the security of the country.’

The prelude to the Public Safety Bill was the publication of the so-

called ‘Assembly Letter’ allegedly written by M.N. Roy to Muzaffar

Ahmad in the pro-British newspaper, The Statesman on 18 August

30
1928, ten days before the Lucknow All Party Conference. But

Ahmad had never received this letter and he had no idea about it

before The Statesman published its full text. An extract of the letter
was also published in the London Times on 26 August. There was a

great uproar in official circles on the letter and it figured in the

proceedings of the autumn session of the Central Legislative Assembly

on September 10, 1928.

In the backdrop of this propaganda of a ‘communist menace’, J.F.

Crerar, Home Member, introduced the Public Safety Bill in the

Assembly on September 6, 1928. This bill was directed primarily at

curbing British Communists like Spratt and Bradley who came to

India to help in organizing the communist movement. On September

4, 1928, the Trade Disputes Bill was introduced to suppress the

increasing militancy of the working class movement.

Both these measures were opposed by the nationalist movement.

Communists were successful in mobilizing almost all sections of the

nationalist leadership on these issues. Motilal Nehru, whose draft

constitution was facing a stiff opposition in this period, spoke firmly

against the Public Safety Bill on September 14, 1928, ‘. . .this is a most

vicious piece of legislation and is calculated to bring about results just

opposite of what is contemplated . . . if this measure is passed into

law, it will be the biggest blot upon the statute-book.’ Srinivasa

31
Iyengar called the Bill completely unnecessary.

The Public Safety Bill was debated in the Assembly for four days

and was referred to a Select Committee which had no representatives

of the nationalists. With slight modifications, as advised by the Select

Committee, the government reintroduced the bill. When it was put to

vote in the Assembly on September 24, 1928 it was defeated 62–61.

The president of the Assembly, Vithal Bhai Patel broke a tie to vote

against it. It was an historic event, but the government was desperate,

and re-submitted the bill with minor revisions in the Assembly in

January 1929.

Punjab and United Provinces

In the period after the Madras session of the INC, workers’ and

peasants’ parties were formed in Punjab and UP. In Punjab, the need
to form such a party had been felt as early as April 1927. The group

centering around the pro-communist Punjabi monthly, Kirti (published

since February 1926 under the editorship of Santokh Singh) took a

leading role in the formation of the party. Santokh Singh, who had

attended the Fourth Congress of the Comintern (November–December

1922) and the Kanpur Communist Conference in December 1925,

spelt out the policies of the paper in the first issue: ‘The Kirti will

voice the rights and demands of the workers and will pen down the

history of working class struggles, their successes and failures, and

how through these struggles they would learn new lessons and steadily

32
and firmly come into their own.’ Sir David Petrie remarked: ‘. . . the

establishment of the Sikh Communist paper showed that Moscow’s

efforts to sow the seeds of the Bolshevism among the disaffected Sikhs

33
in India had not altogether been unsuccessful.’

After Santokh Singh’s death on May 19, 1927, at the age of 35,

Sohan Singh Josh took charge of the paper. Bhagat Singh was also

associated with the Kirti. In April 1927, an Urdu weekly,

Mehanatkash came out in Lahore under the editorship of

Ramchandra and Gauhar Rahman Darbeshi and played an important

role in mobilizing workers and peasants.

The Workers’ and Peasants’ Party of Punjab was formed on 12

April 1928 in Hoshiarpur at the initiative of radical Akali leader Bhai

Sohan Singh Josh, who later became president of the All India

Workers’ and Peasants’ Party, and Bhag Singh Canadian. Muzaffar

Ahmad recollected that Sohan Singh Josh and Bhag Singh Canadian

had come to attend the Kanpur AITUC session in November 1927

and decided that they would also form a party of peasants and

34
workers in Punjab. The inaugural meeting was attended by M.A.

Majid, Kedarnath Sehgal, Ramchandra Kapur and Feroz-ud-Din

Mansur. Josh was elected general secretary and Hansraj president. The

second conference of the Punjab party was held on September 28–30,

1928, at Lyallpur. The party had an affiliated body in Calcutta, Bengal

Kirti Dal. The third conference of the party was held in Rohtak on

March 10, 1929.

 The formation of Workers’ and Peasants’ Party in Punjab was

closely followed by the formation of the party in the United Provinces.

The UP Workers’ and Peasants’ Party was organized at a conference in

Meerut on October 14–16, 1928. The Meerut Conference was

attended, among others, by Philip Spratt and Muzaffar Ahmad. The

conference elected Vishwanath Mukherjee of Gorakhpur the president

and Dharamvir Singh of Meerut the vice president. P.C. Joshi of

Allahabad, who nearly a decade later became CPI general secretary,

was elected secretary. Branches of the party were organized in Delhi

(secretary – Feroz-ud-Din Mansur, who was later convicted in the

Peshawar Communist Conspiracy case), Meerut (secretary –

Gourishankar), Jhansi (secretary – Krishnagopal Sharma, editor of a

pro-left Hindi weekly, Krantikari) and Gorakhpur (secretary –

Vishwanath Mukherjee). At the inaugural conference the UP Workers’

and Peasants’ Party accepted and adopted the rules and regulations of

35
the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party of Bengal. H.K.S. Surjeet rightly

points out that the formation of WPP in four major provinces (Bengal,

Bombay, UP and Punjab) ‘made important contributions to spread the

Communist movement among the working class, peasants and the

36
middle class . . .’.

1928: working class advance

The year 1928 saw the greatest tide of working class advance in the

postwar period. For the first time a working class leadership had

emerged, close to the workers in the factories, guided by the principles

of class struggle and operating as a single force in the economic and

political fields. The response of the workers was overwhelming. The

political strikes and demonstrations against the arrival of the Simon

Commission in February placed the working class in the vanguard of

the national struggle.

The official report, India in 1928–29, recorded for the period April

1, 1928 to March 30, 1929, that

 The total number of strikes was 203, involving no less than 506,851

people as compared with 129 strikes in 1927–28 in which 131,655

people were involved. The total number of working days lost was

31,647,404 which is greater than the total number of working days

lost in the five preceding years taken together.

The main centre of the militant working class movement was

Bombay. The great general strike of Bombay cotton textile workers for

six long months, from April 26 to October 6, 1928, against anti-

worker ‘rationalization’ scheme of the mill-owners was a historic

event. The protracted strike was a huge learning experience for the

Indian working class. Even reformists had to accept the leadership of

the communist trade unionists. The Girni Kamgar Union (Lal Bawta)

was an offspring of this great strike. It was founded on May 22, 1928,

and was officially registered the next day with A.A. Alve as president

and S.A. Dange as general secretary. Starting with a membership of

324 it grew steadily and the membership reached 54,000 by December

37
1928 and 65,000 by the first quarter of 1929. On the basis of

membership, it became the biggest trade union organization of the

country led by the communists.

In Bengal, workers of the Lilooah Workshop of the East India

Railway observed strike from March 5 to July 9, 1928, that is, for

more than four and a half months. Bauria Jute Mill workers struck

work from 16 July 1928 to 16 January 1929.

A ten-day strike of the South Indian Railway workers, which

commenced on July 19, 1928, had a profound impact on Madras

politics. Singaravelu Chettiar was arrested along with Mukundlal

Sarkar in connection with this strike on July 23 and jailed for eighteen

months, only to be released in August 1930.

AITUC Jharia Conference

Just before the Calcutta Conference of the All India Workers’ and

Peasants’ Party, the ninth AITUC Conference was held at Jharia,

Bihar, on December 18–20, 1928, under the presidentship of M.

Daud. According to B.F. Bradley, the ninth Trade Union Congress ‘met

at the end of a year that is unparalleled in the history of the working

class movement in India for its organized revolt against the conditions

38
imposed upon the workers by the capitalists’. J.W. Johnston

(American Communist Party) of the Berlin-based League Against

Imperialism and J.F. Ryan (Australian Communist Party) of Pan-

Pacific Trade Union attended the session.

The Jharia conference passed some important political resolutions.

One of them declared the aim of AITUC to be the transformation of

India into a Socialist Republic of the workers. Jharia Session resolved

to send 50 delegates to the All Party Conference in Calcutta and

demanded that the following formulations be considered the basis for

the future constitution: (i) formation of a socialist republican

government of the working class; (ii) universal adult franchise; (iii)

abolition of Indian states and establishment of socialistic republican

government in their place; (iv) nationalization of industries and land;

(v) right to work; and (vi) non-enactment of repressive and

reactionary ‘labour legislation’.

Another resolution empowered the Trade Union Congress (TUC) to

apply for affiliation with the League Against Imperialism, Berlin. D.R.

Thengdi and Joglekar were nominated to attend the Paris session of

the League Against Imperialism to be held in July 1929.

Other resolutions condemned the two notorious bills – the Public

Safety Bill and the Trade Disputes Bill – and directed one day’s general

strike as a protest; and in case the Bill was passed, a general strike

39
throughout India.

The Jharia Session passed a number of resolutions on the

relationship of AITUC with the International Trade Union movement.

The conference endorsed the decision of the AITUC Delegation to

withdraw from the British Commonwealth Labour Conference on the

ground that ‘the British Labour party has been guilty of a grave

betrayal against the working class of India.’ A resolution was moved

wishing success to Saklatvala, a communist candidate to the British

parliamentary election. Moreover, the AITUC expressed its

unwillingness to affiliate itself with the International Federation of

Trade Unions (IFTU) because of its sectarian outlook. At that time,

IFTU was controlled and directed by some anti-Soviet and anti-

40
communist political elements.

The increasing communist influence in the working class movement

was evident in the election of the new office bearers of the AITUC.

Though Jawaharlal Nehru was elected president (he was then general

secretary of the INC) and N.M. Joshi, a ‘moderate’, retained the

general secretary’s post, the ninth session elected Muzaffar Ahmad

(who could not attended the session due to his pre-occupation with

the preparatory work of the ensuing AIWPP conference) along with

D.B. Kulkarni and Dr Bhupendra Nath Dutta among the vice

presidents. Dange was re-elected as one of the two assistant

secretaries. B.F. Bradley, Philip Spratt, D.R. Thengdi were elected

executive council members. At the end of the session, K.N. Joglekar, in

thanking the presidium, said that he hoped that the next congress of

41
AITUC to be held at Nagpur would turn out ‘considerably red’.

That was the real revolutionary spirit on the eve of historic Meerut

trial.

AIWPP Conference in Calcutta

The All India Conference of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Parties,

attended by all existing provincial organizations, was held in Calcutta

42
on December 21–24, 1928. Delegates from workers’ and peasants’

parties of Bombay, Punjab, United Provinces and Bengal were present

at the conference. S.V. Ghate, K.N. Joglekar, D.R. Thengdi, S.S.

Mirjakar, R.S. Nimbkar, G. Adhikari, S. Kumaranand from Bombay

and Sohan Singh Josh, Bhag Singh Canadian, Feroz-ud-Din-Mansur

from Punjab attended the conference. Ramchandra Kapur, M.A.

Majid and Kedarnath Sehgal were arrested on the eve of their

departure for the Calcutta conference. Bhagat Singh also attended the
conference in secret. P.C. Joshi, Gouri Shankar, Balwant Singh, L.N.

Kadam came from United Provinces. Viswanath Mukherjee could not

attend as he was behind bars. From Bengal, besides Muzaffar Ahmad,

a prominent role was played by Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, Dharani

Kanta Goswami, Abdur Razzak Khan, Gopal Chandra Basak and

Gopendra Chakravaborty. J.F. Ryan of Pan-Pacific Trade Union came

from the Jharia AITUC session to attend the Calcutta conference. B.F.

Bradley and Philip Spratt played a vital role in the conference in

shaping the political and organizational orientation of the party.

Sohan Singh Josh was nominated president of the conference and

subsequently elected president of the All India Workers’ and Peasants’

Party, while R.S. Nimbkar from Bombay was elected secretary.

The resolution proposing the formation of the All India Workers’

and Peasants’ Party was formally moved by Muzaffar Ahmad. D.R.

Thengdi and Hemanta Kumar Sarkar spoke in support and the

resolution to affiliate the party to the League Against Imperialism was

carried unanimously. The conference approved a draft of the

constitution of the party, which records the objective of the party as

‘the attainment of complete independence from imperialism in general

and British imperialism in particular and thorough democratization of

India based on economic, social and political emancipation of the

masses.’

The conference resolved to form a peasants’ organization and to

fight for the abolition of adhiar/barga systems and the abolition of

‘landlordism whatsoever without any compensation’.

The constitution debarred party members from any involvement

with any communal organization or communal propaganda.

There was a notable shift in the party’s stand on calling for a

constituent assembly on the basis of universal adult suffrage. The

AIWPP conference made no reference to that demand. Perhaps they

thought given the history of Congress leadership’s compromise even a

constituent assembly would not make any tangible gains.

 The conference resolved not to allow its members membership of

the Independence for India League. K.N. Joglekar disfavoured this

stand but could not garner much support. The constitution

empowered the National Executive Committee to decide on the

participation of any of its member in the Indian National Congress.

Two documents adopted by the conference, the ‘Political

Resolution’ and the ‘Workers’ and Peasants’ Party Principles and

Policy’, gave an analysis of the prevailing political situation of the

country and enunciated the attitude of the party towards various

classes and strata of the society.

The ‘Political Resolution’, quite expectedly, criticized the Nehru

Report:

The publication of the Nehru Report, which by its frankness and

moderation revealed the true nature and aims of bourgeois

nationalism brought about a crisis within the Congress ranks. The

hypocrisy of the bourgeois nationalist propaganda for sometime

past, especially of its support of complete independence, was very

clearly shown.

In this context, the document made an assessment of the Independence

League:

. . . the Independence for India League was launched and rapidly

found support among the bourgeois politicians, although its policy

not yet formulated in detail, must seem nothing short of mass

revolution if taken seriously. There was even some talk of revolution

and of socialism. The possibility arose of a serious breach in the

ranks of the bourgeoisie if such mild talk were allowed to continue,

even if only for purpose of demonstration, before the masses and

petty bourgeoisie, whose psychology it fitted so well.

Regarding the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party’s relation with the

Independence League, it said:

 Although not homogeneous in membership, the Independence

League has a definite policy and programme. It is in essence a

bourgeois organization whose policy is an insincere travesty of that

of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party, and whose object is in large

part to prevent the independent growth of the mass movement.

Workers’ and Peasants’ Party members cannot enter the

Independence League as members, as to do so would be to attribute

to it before the masses a seriousness and importance which it does

not possess. The Workers’ and Peasants’ Party can only work with

the Independence League in a united front, on the basis of the

propaganda for independence, which in spite of its frivolous

character has objectively some value. But it is necessary continually

to expose the League’s faults of programme and policy, and its

fundamentally bourgeois, even fascist character, and ultimately

counter-revolutionary role.

The ‘Political Resolution’ adopted at the All India Conference also

pointed to a ‘new stage’ in party’s relation with the Indian National

Congress:

The appropriate expression of the old relation between the

movements was that the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party constituted

itself as a left wing of the national movement and worked as a

section of the Congress. But, in the ‘new stage’ it said: The two

movements separate, and their leading organizations must do so

also. The Workers and Peasants’ Party must henceforth play a

definitely independent path.

At the same time it ruled out immediate complete separation with

the Congress for tactical purposes:

For some time however the Congress will maintain its composite

character, of a loose organization, with indefinite creed, under

bourgeois leadership, but with a petty bourgeois following including

different social strata and different political tendencies, some of a

 potentially revolutionary nature. While this is the case, and while

the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party remains relatively weak and

unorganized in the country, it will be necessary to follow the

traditional policy of forming fractions within Congress

organizations, for the purpose of agitation and of exposing its

reactionary leadership and drawing the revolutionary sections

towards the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party. This policy however is

only temporary. The Workers’ and Peasants’ Party can have no

intention of dominating or capturing the Congress; the function of

its members within the Congress is a purely critical one. Party

members cannot therefore be allowed to take office in Congress

organizations. The object of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party can

only be to build up its own independent organization, so that it can

as soon as possible dispense with the necessity of agitation with the

Congress.

In the document ‘WPP Principles and Policy’ it said:

It should be emphasized that the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party does

not deny the existence of considerable differences between the

Indian and the British bourgeoisie nor does it seek to minimize their

political importance. But it maintains that, these differences

notwithstanding, the Indian bourgeoisie will never take part, but on

the contrary will vehemently oppose, any revolutionary movement

against imperialism, without which neither the independence of the

country nor the welfare of the masses can be secured.

The document did a comparative analysis between the Indian and

the Chinese bourgeoisie and concluded: ‘In its different conditions it is

inevitable that the Indian bourgeoisie should be far less revolutionary

than the Chinese’.

The conference resolved (‘Political Resolution’) that it was of

‘especial importance’ to support the Chinese workers and peasants

‘against the white terror of the bourgeois nationalists in alliance with

imperialism, and exposure of the part played by the Chinese

bourgeoisie in the movement’.

The All India Workers’ and Peasants’ Party conference marked a

turning point in India’s nationalist movement. However, a careful

scrutiny of the deliberations in the conference may reveal lack of a

definite plan of action of the party. Perhaps the time was not ripe

enough to draw a final resolution.

Calcutta Congress session

The Calcutta session of the INC was held between December 29,

1928– January 1, 1929. The main issue before this forty-third session

was the Nehru Report. However, the Calcutta session will be

remembered equally for a historic intervention by the working class,

led by the communists. The question could no longer be avoided:

would the Congress stick to demanding dominion status, as the Nehru

Report did, or would it demand complete independence, as the

communists urged?

In the All Party Conference on December 22 the AITUC

representative had opposed the Nehru Report and placed the

resolution passed by the Jharia session. But his intervention was not

strong enough. The Independence for India League did not make a

serious effort to register their demand of complete independence and

took a compromising stand. In fact Subhash Chandra Bose himself

was one of the signatories to the Nehru Report. Besides, when Gandhi

moved the resolution on All Parties’ Committee Report it was

seconded by none other than Srinivasa Iyengar, the president of the

Independence League.

Nimbkar and Joglekar placed an amendment against the resolution

which was defeated. The full text of their amendments is reproduced

below to show points on which communists differed with Gandhi’s

line:
 This congress having considered the constitution recommended by

the All Parties’ Committee Report is of the opinion that it is totally

unsatisfactory and unacceptable for the following principal reasons:

1. That it allows the bourgeoisie to compromise with British

Imperialism by establishing a so-called Dominion Status which

involves the safeguard of vested interest, land-owning, feudal and

capitalist, and sacrifice of the interest of the masses.

2. That by recognizing the titles of the princes, it proposes to

perpetuate the tyrannical and undemocratic system of government,

entailing unchecked exploitation of the masses, which exists in the

native states.

3. That it safeguards and acquiesces in the exploitation of the

human and material resources of India by foreign capital.

4. That it guarantees and allows enjoyment of all titles to private

and personal property, acquired by questionable means, which

perpetuates the exploitation of the masses.

5. That it guarantees payment of all foreign state debts.

6. That it proposes to place the armed forces of the country under

the control of a committee, which will at first consist partly of

British officers, thus depriving the people of their inherent right of

self defence.

7. That it proposes to give executive powers and power of veto to

governor-general and governors, nominated by the king, thus

depriving the Indian people of their sovereign rights.

This congress therefore declares that its aim is the attainment of

complete national independence based on political, economic and

43
social equality, entirely free from British imperialism.

They also put forward another amendment on the ‘Future

Programme’ of Congress placed by Gandhi only to be rejected by

majority vote.
 On Gandhi’s insistence, ultimately the Nehru Report was accepted

and the British Government was given an ultimatum to accept the

report by December 31, 1929, failing which the Congress would

organize a non-violent non-cooperation movement. Nehru spoke in

support of complete independence, although he was not in a mood to

defy Gandhi. This compromise of the Congress leadership no doubt

was seen by the communists and militant leaders of the workers and

peasants as a betrayal of the rising aspirations of the people for

national independence. The only serious challenge before Gandhi in

the open session was Subhash Chandra Bose’s amendment calling for

complete independence, which was defeated 973 to 1350. The

communist leaders, K.N. Joglekar and R.S. Nimbkar, both AICC

members, supported Bose and tried to intervene wherever possible.

But the intervention by the communists should not be assessed only

from the resolutions passed in favour of the dominion status.

Rightwing Congress leaders also found it difficult to legitimize their

stand before the multilayered national liberation movement. The

session passed resolutions condemning Public Safety Bill and Trade

Disputes Bill. It appreciated the role of the League Against

Imperialism. Even the official resolution on All Party Report had to

concede that ‘nothing in this resolution shall interfere with the

carrying on, in the name of the congress, of the propaganda for

complete independence.’

Although there was no formal appeal or manifesto for the Congress

session, neither from Workers’ and Peasants’ Party, nor the CPI, the

Calcutta session of the Congress was marked by a huge demonstration

of workers led by the Worker’s and Peasants’ Party on December 30.

Nearly fifty thousand workers joined the programme within the

Congress pandal. Initially, Congress volunteers blocked the gate but

withdrew after the intervention of Congress president Motilal Nehru,

Jawaharlal Nehru and others. Motilal, Jawaharlal, and even Gandhi

addressed the gathering. The meeting adopted a resolution in support

of complete independence which was contrary to the majority decision

of the Congress:
 This mass meeting of the workers and peasants from all industries

declares that all the workers and peasants of the land shall not rest

content till complete independence is established and all

exploitation from capitalism and imperialism cease. We do call

upon the National Congress to keep the goal before them and

44
organize the national forces for that purpose.

According to E.M.S. Namboodiripad, then a young Congress

delegate:

The mammoth march of workers into the venue of the Calcutta

session was not an isolated incident. It was a high level

demonstration of the workers’ movement which had been growing

systematically over the past few years as well as of the political

consciousness that had begun to emerge within that movement. . . .

This was a clear indication of the fact that the working class had

risen as an organized political force and that they had begun to

enter the platform of the bourgeois politics led by Gandhi, Motilal

45
Nehru and others.

The government was alarmed, and an intelligence report noted: ‘The

rapidly growing influence of the communists was reflected in the

proceedings of the recent session of the All India National Congress at

Calcutta. More than in any other previous Congress, the Calcutta

gathering showed that it was anxious to placate the labour

46
extremists.’

A Socialist Youth Congress was also held in Calcutta on December

27, 1928, to coincide with the Congress session. Jawaharlal Nehru

presided over the session and gave a pro-socialist speech. Dr

Bhupendranath Dutta, who was chairman of the reception committee,

hailed Marxist-Leninist methods in clear terms. The meeting adopted

a resolution which: ‘(i) condemns the Trade Disputes Bill and Public

Safety Bill; (ii) demands complete independence and not dominion

status; (iii) declares communism as the way out; and (iv) suggests
dictatorship of the proletariat as the concrete form in which a socialist

47
way can work.’ However, the conference was attended neither by

the activists of Workers’ and Peasants’ Party, nor of the CPI. Like the

Independence for India League, the Socialist Youth Congress too failed

to satisfy the communists.

This was the beginning of what was to be Jawaharlal’s most radical

period. He had attended the International Congress against Colonial

Oppression and Imperialism held in Brussels in February 1927. Upon

his return, he submitted a confidential report to the Congress Working

Committee, in which he wrote:

Most of us, specially from Asia, were wholly ignorant of the

problems of South America, and of how the rising imperialism of

the United States, with its tremendous resources and its immunity

from outside attack, is gradually taking a stranglehold of Central

and South America. But we are not likely to remain ignorant much

longer for the great problem of the near future will be American

48
imperialism, even more than British imperialism.
 SIX

SIXTH

CONGRESS

OF THE

COMINTERN
THE SIXTH CONGRESS OF THE Communist International (July

17–September 1, 1928) was held at a time when the national

liberation struggle in the Indian sub-continent was passing through a

period of turmoil and had a profound impact on the communist

movement in India. The Sixth Congress has been criticized for its

sectarian and ultra-left positions, especially the formulations on the

role of the communist parties in colonies and semi-colonial countries

in their struggle for national independence.

The Sixth Congress was held at a time when the Comintern was

engaged in an ideological battle against right-opportunist tendencies.

In the period between the Fifth and Sixth Congress, many right-

opportunist groups were expelled from the communist parties in

various countries and from the Comintern itself. The Comintern also

had to attach special importance to the fight against Trotskyism. This

context prejudiced some of the positions of the Comintern.

However, the Sixth Congress was a landmark in the international

communist movement. For the first time in the history of the

Communist Internationals a complete programme for the world

communist movement was adopted, only the second such document

after the Communist Manifesto. Noted historian of the labour

movement, William Z. Foster, writes:

At the sixth congress . . . the Comintern adopted its first rounded-

out programme. The major documents passed at its previous five

congresses were but segments of a general programme. In fact, the

sixth congress programme was the first such document constructed

since the Inaugural Address, written by Marx and adopted by the

First International in 1864. Never in all its history was the Second

International, with its component parties constantly at loggerheads

over conflicting bourgeois national interests, able to agree upon a

1
general programme for the World labour movement.

The Sixth Congress analysed the compulsions of the contemporary

world, manoeuvring of imperialism, exploitation of the working class

and increasing plunder of the working masses in the colonies and

semi-colonies:

The development of capitalism, and particularly in the imperialist

epoch of its development, reproduces the fundamental

contradictions on an increasingly magnified scale . . . two main

revolutionary forces are organizing against the organized might of

finance capital – on the one hand, the workers in the capitalist

states, on the other hand, the victims of the oppression of foreign

capital, the masses of people in the colonies, marching under the

leadership of the international revolutionary proletarian movement.

The Sixth Congress also marked a consolidation of post-Lenin

communist leadership all over the world, represented by figures such

as Stalin (USSR), Thaelmann (Germany), Thorez (France), Togliatti

(Italy), Mao Tse-tung (China), Gottwald (Czechoslovakia), Pollitt

(Great Britain), Buck (Canada), Roca (Cuba), and Codovilla

(Argentina). Zinoviev, who had been expelled from the Soviet

Communist Party, was replaced in December 1926 by Nikolai

Bukharin as the president of the Comintern, although the latter

subsequently joined the opposition which resulted in his expulsion

from the CPSU and the Comintern. 592 delegates attended the Sixth

Congress from 57 parties and nine organizations. According to the

report of the credential committee, outside of the CPSU, there were

5,88,000 communists in the world in 1928. During the debates on the

3
reports, nearly a hundred delegates took the floor.

Six Indian delegates

In the Congress, India was represented by six delegates: Shaukat

Usmani (under the assumed name Sikandar Sur), Mohammad Shafiq

(Raza), Saumyendranath Tagore (Spencer/Narayan), Clemens Dutt,

4
Mohammad Ali and G.A.K. Luhani. At that time, Mohammad Ali,
Clemens Dutt and Luhani were working under the Eastern Bureau of

the Comintern. Ali and Dutt were members of the CPI Foreign Bureau

along with M.N. Roy. Usmani and Tagore went from India. Roy was

not present at the Sixth Congress apparently because of illness.

Usmani also mentions the presence of ex-muhajir Syed Habib Ahmad

5
Nasim from India. In the absence of any centralized organizational

structure, the CPI was not in a position to officially nominate any

delegate to the Comintern Congress.

Shaukat Usmani was elected to the presidium of the congress and as

an alternate member of the next ECCI. Usmani came back to India

after the Congress and also attended the All India Workers’ and

Peasants’ Party Conference in Calcutta in the fourth week of

December 1928 and subsequently the secret meeting of the CPI CEC,

held immediately after that conference. He admitted his mistake to the

party and began to work under the party. He was arrested and

convicted in the Meerut Case. However, he was expelled from the

6
party while he was in prison in 1932 for anti-party activities.

M.N. Roy was not present at the Sixth Congress. After his return

from China, Roy reached Moscow on February 4, 1928, and attended

the opening session of the Ninth Plenum of the ECCI on February 9.

But illness forced him to leave the Plenum midway. Roy also prepared

a ‘Draft Resolution on the Indian Question’ (dated March 24, 1928) a

document that reflected his right reformist tendencies. This document

7
was not placed before the Congress.

Roy was not elected to the new ECCI. He remained a member of

the party and continued to function in Berlin under the Communist

Party of Germany. Roy’s articles continued to appear in the Inprecor

till March 1929. Thereafter Inprecor stopped publishing his articles.

On March 25, 1929, Inprecor (Vol. IX, No. 16) carried an article by

Paul Schubin on the AIWPP Conference held at Calcutta, in which

‘Comrade Roy’ was criticized openly. After Inprecor stopped

publishing his articles, Roy came out in the open about his alliance

with the rightist opposition of Brandler and Thalheimer in the

German Communist Party and began to contribute to their press. In

the Tenth Plenum of the ECCI, Roy came in for sharp criticism. He

was accused of pursuing ‘the opportunist policy of a bloc with

national bourgeoisie’ and ‘contributing to the press of Brandlerite

renegades’. Roy’s expulsion from the Comintern was announced in the

Inprecor of December 13, 1929.

Discussion at the Congress

The Sixth Congress, held nearly four years after the fifth one, is

remembered for the debates on three main issues:

(i) the programme of the Comintern, its constitution and rules;

(ii) methods communists should follow in their struggle against

imperialist war; and

(iii) formulating the second Colonial Theses, that is, guidelines for

organizing revolutionary movements in the colonies and semi-

colonial countries. Otto Kuusinen placed the report on the colonial

8
question.

The Colonial Theses of the Sixth Congress revised the

understanding of the theses adopted at the Second Congress of the

Comintern (1920) under Lenin’s guidance. Up to the Fifth Plenum of

the ECCI (March 21 to April 6, 1925) the Comintern pursued an

understanding of forming anti-imperialist united fronts whereby the

national bourgeoisie as a whole had to be supported as well as

exposed, corresponding to its dual role of opposing as well as

collaborating with imperialism. This was reflected in the resolution of

the Fifth Plenum in 1925, which, while calling for the participation of

the communists in the Indian National Congress and the left wing of

the Swaraj Party, advised them to simultaneously direct their efforts

towards organizing the peasantry and the amalgamation of the trade

unions with a view of capturing the leadership of struggles.

 However, in his speech delivered on May 18, 1925, at a meeting of

students of the Communist University of Toilers of the East, Stalin

distinguished the situation in India from Egypt and China, where

despite the split in the nationalist bourgeoisie into revolutionary and

reformist wings, the latter had not yet fully gone over to imperialism.

In India, on the other hand, he said, the compromising wing had

struck a deal with imperialism since it was afraid of a revolution. In

India, Stalin said, the compromising section of the bourgeoisie was

forming a bloc with imperialism against the workers and peasants of

its own country. Hence this compromising section of the national

bourgeoisie should be attacked and attempts should be made to create

a revolutionary anti-imperialist bloc and to ensure the hegemony of

the proletariat in this bloc. At the same time, the Communist Party

can and must open a front with the revolutionary wing of the

bourgeoisie so that after isolating the compromising nationalist

bourgeoisie the vast masses of the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie

9
could be led in the struggle for liberation.

The Colonial Theses of the Sixth Congress was deeply influenced by

the events in China. The first united front had given way. The

Communist Party of China was on the run facing attacks from Chiang

Kai Shek’s army. Trotsky argued that the revolutionary wave in China

had failed and that it was the time for shedding tears rather than a

counter-offensive. Reviewing the developments in China, India and in

other oppressed colonies, the Sixth Congress observed that the

revolutionary movement in these countries was in the bourgeois-

democratic stage. The bourgeois-democratic revolution in the colonies

was directly linked with their struggle for freedom from the imperialist

yoke.

The Congress adopted a general programme for the international

communist movement as a whole. Regarding the colonial and semi-

colonial countries it said:

The principal task in such countries [China, India, etc.] is, on the

one hand, to fight against the feudal and pre-capitalist forms of

 exploitation, and to develop systematically the peasant agrarian

revolution; on the other hand, to fight against foreign imperialism

for national independence. . . . In the colonies and semi-colonies

where the proletariat is the leader of and commands hegemony in

the struggle, the consistent bourgeois democratic revolution will

grow into proletarian revolution in proportion as the struggle

10
develops and becomes more intense.

The programme emphasized the task of agrarian revolution, asking

the communists in the colonial and semi-colonial countries to ‘rouse

the broad masses of the peasantry for the overthrow of the landlords

and combat the reactionary and medieval influence of the priesthood,

of the missionaries and other similar elements’.

In these countries, the principal task is to organize the workers and

the peasantry independently (to establish class Communist Parties of

the proletariat, trade unions, peasant leagues and committees and –

in a revolutionary situation, Soviets etc.), and to free them from the

influence of the national bourgeoisie, with whom temporary

agreements may be made only on the condition that they, the

bourgeoisie, do not hamper the revolutionary organization of the

workers and peasants and that they carry on a genuine struggle

against imperialism.

The Colonial Theses start with an analysis of the changes in the

international situation.

The Sixth congress of the Comintern declares that the ‘Theses on

the National and Colonial Question’ drawn up by Lenin and

developed at the second congress are still valid, and should serve as

a guiding line for the further work of the communist parties. Since

the time of the second congress, the actual significance of the

colonies and semi-colonies as factors of crisis in the imperialist

world system has vastly increased.

It drew attention particularly to the strengthening of the capitalist

class, industrial development, the intensification of the agrarian crisis,

the growth of the proletariat and the beginnings of its organization

and the pauperization of the mass of the peasantry. It also drew

attention to the changed position in the respective balance of forces

between imperialist and socialist countries.

In India the policy of British imperialism, which used to retard the

development of native industry, evoked great dissatisfaction among

the Indian bourgeoisie. The class consolidation of the latter which

replaced its former division into religious sects and castes, and

which was expressed in the fusion of the Indian National Congress

(organ of the bourgeoisie) with the Muslim League effected in 1916,

confronted British imperialists with a national united front in the

country. Fear of the revolutionary movement during the war

compelled British imperialism to make concessions to the native

bourgeoisie which found expression in the economic sphere, in

insignificant parliamentary reforms introduced in 1919.

The Colonial Theses described the first non-cooperation movement

of 1919–22 as ‘the first great anti-imperialist movement in India’

which ‘ended in the betrayal of the cause of the national revolution by

the Indian bourgeoisie’. It pointed out that

the real threat to British domination comes, not from the bourgeois

camp, but from the growing mass movement of the Indian workers,

which is developing in the form of large-scale strikes; at the same

time the accentuation of the crisis in the village bears witness to the

maturing of an agrarian revolution. All these phenomena are

leading to a radical transformation of the whole political situation

in India.

The Theses rejected the theory of industrialization of colonies under

imperialism, which came to be known as ‘decolonization’, advanced

by Roy and others. It emphasized the necessity of carrying forward the

agrarian revolution by building worker-peasant alliance and leading

the struggle for complete independence. The Theses attached

particular importance to the peasant question in the colonies and the

necessity of forging links with the proletariat. The rapid growth of the

labour movement in India, China and Indonesia pointed to the

possibility of the emergence of the proletariat as an independent class

force in direct opposition to the national bourgeoisie, free from the

influence of nationalist and social reformist leaders. The Theses

emphasized the characteristic features of the proletariat in the

colonies:

The prominent part of the colonial proletariat is derived from the

pauperized village with which worker remains in connection even

when engaged in production. In the majority of colonies (with the

exception of some large factory towns such as Shanghai, Bombay,

Calcutta, etc.) we find as a general rule, only a first generation of

proletariat engaged in large-scale production. Another portion is

made up of the ruined artisans who are being driven out of the

decaying handicrafts which are widely spread even in the most

advanced colonies. The ruined artisan, a petty owner, carries with

him into the working class a guild tendency and ideology which

serves as a case for the penetration of national reformist influence

into the labour movement of the colonies. . . .

The objective contradiction between the colonial policy of world

imperialism and the independent development of the colonial

peoples is by no means done away with, neither in China nor in

India nor in any other of the colonial and semi-colonial countries;

on the contrary, the contradiction only becomes more acute and can

be overcome only by the victorious revolutionary struggle of the

toiling masses in the colonies. . . . The alliance with the USSR and

with the revolutionary proletariat of the imperialist countries creates

for the people of China, India and all other colonial and semi-

colonial countries, the possibility of an independent free, economic

and cultural development, avoiding the stage of the domination of

 the capitalist system or even the development of capitalist relations

11
in general.

Criticizing the attitude of the national bourgeoisie towards

imperialism the Theses pointed out that they ‘do not adopt a uniform

attitude in relation to imperialism’. They were characterized as the

trading or comprador bourgeoisie who ‘directly serve the interests of

imperialist capital.’ But ‘the remaining portions of the native

bourgeoisie, especially the portions reflecting the interests of native

industry, support the national movement and represent a special

vacillating compromising tendency which may be designated as

national reformism’. This was not the case in China, but ‘in India and

Egypt we still observe, for the time being, the typical bourgeois–

nationalist movement to an opportunist movement subject to great

vacillations, balancing between imperialism and revolution’. The

Theses described the contradictory pulls in the vacillating character of

the native bourgeoisie but ‘its capitulation, however, is not final as

long as the danger of class revolution on the part of the masses has

not become immediate, acute and menacing’.

Regarding the tactics to be pursued by the communists the Theses

said:

to help the toiling masses in India, Egypt, Indonesia and such

colonies to emancipate themselves from the influence of the

bourgeois parties, it is necessary to reject the formation of any kind

of bloc between the Communist Party and the national reformist

opposition. This does not exclude the formation of temporary

agreements and the coordinating of separate activities in connection

with definite anti-imperialist demonstrations, provided that these

demonstrations of the bourgeois opposition can be utilized for the

development of the mass movement, and provided that these

agreements do not in any way limit the communist parties in the

matter of agitation among the masses and among the organizations

of the latter.
Further,

it is absolutely essential that the communist parties in these

countries should from the very beginning demarcate themselves in

the most clearcut fashion, both politically and organizationally,

from all the petty bourgeois groups and parties. In so far as the

needs of the revolutionary struggle demand it, a temporary

cooperation is permissible, and in certain circumstances, even a

temporary union between the communist party and the national-

revolutionary movement, provided that the latter is a genuinely

revolutionary movement, that it genuinely struggles against the

ruling power and that its representatives do not put obstacles in the

way of the communists, educating and organizing in a revolutionary

sense the peasants and wide masses of the exploited.

The Colonial Theses argued against special workers’ and peasants’

parties, however revolutionary in character they may be, because

they can too easily at particular periods be converted into ordinary

petty-bourgeois parties and accordingly communists are not

recommended to organize such Parties. . . . The basic task of the

Indian communists consist in struggle against British imperialism for

the emancipation of the country for destruction of all relics of

feudalism, for the agrarian evolution and for establishment of the

dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry in the form of a Soviet

republic. These tasks can be successfully carried out only when there

will be created a powerful communist party, which will be able to

place itself at the head of the wide masses of the working class,

peasantry and all the toilers, and to lead them in the struggle against

the feudal-imperialist bloc. . . . The union of all communist groups

and individual communists scattered throughout the country into a

single independent and centralized party represents the first task of

Indian communists.
 ‘The axis of bourgeois democratic revolution’

Stressing the importance of peasant question, the Theses stated:

Along with the national emancipatory struggle, agrarian revolution

constitutes the axis of the bourgeois democratic revolution in the

chief colonial countries. Consequently, communists must follow

with the greatest attention the development of agrarian crisis and

intensification of the class contradictions, in the villages, they must,

from the very beginning, give a consciously revolutionary direction

to the dissatisfaction of the workers and to the incipient peasant

movement, directing it against imperialist exploitation and bondage

as also against the yoke of various pre-capitalist (feudal and semi-

feudal) relationships as a result of which peasant economy is

suffering, declining and perishing.

While it correctly analysed the nature of the working class and the

importance of the agrarian revolution in the freedom struggle, the

Theses marked a shift from the earlier strategy of an anti-imperialist

united front. In the background of the growth and development of

working class movements, the deepening crisis of capitalist economy

and the betrayal of the revolutionary movement in China by the

Kuomintang, the Theses overestimated the strength of communist

parties and the working class in leading national liberation movements

in the colonies. The Comintern’s assessment that the world capitalist

system was in crisis was borne out by the Great Depression, but this

still did not mean that the system was about to collapse altogether, nor

did it mean that communist parties were necessarily in a position to

lead anti-colonial movements in the colonies.

The Comintern’s assessment of India was coloured by this analysis:

The basic task of the Indian communists consists in struggle against

British imperialism, for the emancipation of the country, for

destruction of all relics of feudalism, for the agrarian revolution and

 for the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat and

peasantry in the form of Soviet Republic.

The Indian delegation took a stand against the theory of

decolonization and supported the draft Colonial Theses presented by

Kuusinen, though Soumyendranath Tagore spoke in favour of the

workers’ and peasants’ party.

Rejection of decolonization

During the debate on Kuusinen’s report, a dispute arose on the

question of imperialism’s role in the colonies. Some of the delegates

claimed that imperialist colonial policy promoted industrialization in

the colonies. For example, India, they argued, was undergoing a

British-controlled process of industrialization. This argument

implicitly defended the social-democratic theory of ‘decolonization’,

according to which imperialism plays a progressive role in the colonies

by forcing the pace of capitalist development and converting the

colonies into capitalist countries. The theory of decolonization

justified imperialist policy in the colonies and weakened the peoples’

struggle against imperialist oppression.

The Sixth Congress exposed the reactionary essence of the

decolonization theory. It emphasized that imperialism retards

industrialization in the colonies and prevents the full development of

their productive forces. The basic tendency of imperialist policy

towards the colonies was to preserve and heighten their dependence.

All the chatter of the imperialists and their lackeys about the policy

of decolonization being carried through by the imperialist powers,

about promotion of the ‘free development of the colonies’ reveals

itself as nothing but an imperialist lie. It is of the utmost importance

that Communists both in the imperialist and in the colonial

countries should completely expose this lie.

 The question of the role of the bourgeoisie in the national liberation

movement was one of the highlights in the discussion of the Sixth

Congress. The national bourgeoisie in the colonial countries did not

adopt a uniform attitude to imperialism. A part of this bourgeoisie

directly served the interests of imperialism and upheld an anti-

national, pro-imperialist point of view. ‘The remaining portions of the

native bourgeoisie, especially the portion reflecting the interests of

native industry, support the national movement and represent a special

vacillating compromising tendency which may be designated as

national reformism (or, in the terminology of the theses of the Second

Congress of the Communist International, a ‘bourgeois-democratic’

tendency)’.

The Colonial Theses contained some erroneous and contradictory

propositions on the questions of the strategy and tactics of the

national liberation struggles, and the role of the national bourgeoisie.

Although a distinction was drawn between bourgeois national-

reformism and the feudal-imperialist camp, the general appraisal of

the role of the national bourgeoisie was blinkered. It was claimed, for

instance, that ‘the national bourgeoisie has not the significance of a

force in the struggle against imperialism’.

At the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU (1954), Kuusinen accepted

that this appraisal by the Sixth Congress of the Comintern of the role

of the national bourgeoisie in the colonial and semi-colonial countries

‘bore a definite shade of sectarianism’.

Unity of all the communist groups and the formation of an

independent centralized party were recognized by the Sixth Congress

to be major tasks of the Indian communists. Communist parties of the

imperialist countries were also urged to establish close, regular and

constant contacts with the revolutionary movement in the colonies in

order to give this movement active support and practical assistance.

Impact on India
 The formulation of the Sixth Congress and the subsequent

interventions of the Comintern leadership had a negative impact on

the organizational growth of communists in India. But, as far as

activities of the Indian communists are concerned, there are other

important factors. Specially, the Meerut arrest by the third week of

March 1929 was a big blow to the communists in the subcontinent.

Immediately after the conference of All India Workers’ and

Peasants’ Party (Calcutta, December 21–24, 1928), communist leaders

convened a meeting in Calcutta on the instructions received from the

Comintern. The CPI CEC meeting, held from December 27 to 29,

1928, decided to elect a ten-member Central Executive Committee. It

consisted of Mirajkar, Dange, Nimbkar (then all India Secretary of

WPP), Joglekar, Ghate, Muzaffar Ahmad, Abdul Halim, Shamsul

Huda, Abdul Majid and Sohan Singh Josh. Ghate was elected General

Secretary, and the executive decided to request to the Comintern for

formal affiliation. The meeting decided to seek formal affiliation to

the Comintern. It also decided to accept the Theses on the Colonial

Question ‘as a basis for work’ and resolved that they would ‘test’ the

possibility of forming an open CPI. The meeting did not take any

decision on the directive to wind up the workers’ and peasants’ party.

12

The plenary session of the Sixth Congress concluded on September

1, 1928, but the Editorial Commissions, set up for the finalization of

the programme and the basic reports, continued functioning

thereafter. For instance, the ‘Programme of the Comintern’ was

published in English in Inprecor on November 25, which also

published the ‘Theses on the International Situation and the Tasks of

the CI’. The ‘Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies

and Semicolonies’, known as the Colonial Theses of the Sixth

Congress, was published on December 25. The complete text of this

important document was not available to Indian communists till the

early months of 1929. Extracts, containing references to India, were

however put before the Calcutta Central Committee meeting

(December 1928) by Dr Gangadhar Adhikari, who had arrived from

Berlin at the beginning of the month and had also attended the AIWPP

Calcutta conference.

Besides the ‘Colonial Theses’ adopted at the Congress, a message

was sent (dated December 2, 1928) by the Comintern Executive

Committee to the All India Conference of Workers’ and Peasants’

Parties questioning the rationale for the existence of the party. The

message that the ECCI sent was received in Calcutta only after the all

India conference. The message was in tune with the guidelines adopted

13
in the Sixth Congress.

The greatest danger to the organization of the masses, to the

creation of a revolutionary bloc of the proletariat and the peasantry

and to the proletarian leadership in this bloc, consists not only in

bourgeois nationalism as such, but comes from the organization and

groups of ‘prominent’ petty-bourgeois intellectuals actually

influenced by the form of the Independence League.

The victorious progress of . . . struggle demands in our opinion

above all, the creation of an independent class party of the

proletariat, the uniting and raising of the isolated actions of the

peasants to the highest political level, and the formation of a real

revolutionary bloc of workers and peasants, under the leadership of

the proletariat not in the form of a united workers and peasants

party, but on the basis of cooperation in deeds between the mass

organizations of the proletariat on the one hand, and peasant

leagues and committees on the other. . . . The organization of the

Workers and Peasants bloc is based upon the common interest of

the workers, peasants, and the town poor, in the fight against

imperialism and feudal reaction. [Nevertheless,] it does not

eliminate the class differences, and therefore, it does not imply by

any means the fusion of the workers and peasants into the party.

Describing their experiences in Russia, the ECCI message advised

the Indian communists to organize and consolidate the communist

party. In this context the existing condition of the CPI was criticized:
‘The existing (only on paper) Communist Party of India, since it does

not show any signs of revolutionary life, has no grounds to consider

and even to call itself communist, although there are individual

communists among its members.’ The Comintern advised the all India

conference to discuss the question of the workers’ organizations and

the peasants’ organization, so that the former be ensured a clear cut

and consistent class development, and the latter the full embracing of

the struggling peasantry.

The Comintern directives posed a serious organizational and

political dilemma before the communists in India. The AIWPP was

formed because of the organizational work of the communists for over

three years. It was not easy to change the course of action all of a

sudden. Moreover, the question was, would the ground realities allow

the communists to wind up the workers’ and peasants’ parties they

had so meticulously built over the years.

The impact of the line prescribed by the Comintern was reflected in

14
the ‘Manifesto of CPI to All Workers’. This document justified the

necessity of revitalizing the CPI alongside the Workers’ and Peasants’

Party. The manifesto said, for the establishment of socialism, ‘when all

men and women will really be equal, when from each will be taken by

society according to his ability, and to each will be given according to

his need’, under the ‘dictatorship of the working class’, the

Communist Party, ‘the workers’ own party . . . is also needed – is

needed most of all’. The fulfillment of this goal is not possible by the

trade unions or by Workers’ and Peasants’ Party alone. The Manifesto

described the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party as ‘a necessary stage’ and

as a party that gathers together forces for ‘the first fight against

imperialism for the independence of the country’. The Manifesto

called upon the workers and the trade unions to support, the Workers’

and Peasants’ Party and ‘help and take the lead in the policy for which

its stands’. In the end the Manifesto appealed to the workers to

organize ‘now’ the communist party, ‘their vanguard . . . if they are to

emerge victorious’.
 The Manifesto was an attempt on the part of the communists in

India to adjust with the Comintern directives. But despite its sincerity,

the Manifesto was not free from vagueness. The communists at that

stage, were perhaps the right role for the Communist Party. Whatever

the explanations, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party was functioning in

the eyes of the people as a Communist Party in a different name. It

was perhaps difficult for the Indian communists at that stage to chart

out separate and feasible sets of programme, approved by the

Comintern, for the two parties – Workers’ and Peasants’ Party and

CPI.

In fact, for all practical purposes the CPI was becoming an

appendage of the WPP. The Sixth Congress, on one hand, took a

myopic stand on the role of the WPP. On the other, it sought to

refocus on the role of the CPI as an independent party. Was there a

clear understanding about CPI’s role even in the ranks of the

Comintern? CPSU leader, P. Schubin, who took a prominent part in

the Sixth Congress wrote in an article published in the Inprecor (April

15
5, 1929) that in India the ‘objective situation demands the

organization of the proletariat advance guard in a Communist Party . .

. there exist all the elements for such an organization. . . . All

subjective elements for the organization of communist mass party

already exist’. The decision of the CPI CEC meeting in December

1928 at Calcutta to test the possibility of an ‘open CPI’ seems to be an

attempt to find an answer to this question.

The CPI had never been an underground party in India, either

before or during the Calcutta conference of the AIWPP. The

Comintern’s suggestion to wind up the WPP just after its first all India

conference was practically impossible. Faced with this dilemma and

before charting out a decisive path, the communists in India had to

face a huge blow from the colonial regime, the Meerut Conspiracy

Case, instituted in March 1929.

 SEVEN

NEW UPSURGE
AT THE TURN OF 1929, there were indications of mass upsurge

everywhere in India. Viceroy Irwin, in a calculated move, proposed

convening a Round Table Conference after the publication of the

Simon Commission Report. The moderates in the Congress welcomed

the proposal. Motilal Nehru convened a conference in Delhi to

formalize the position on the ‘proposal’. The ‘Delhi manifesto’

accepted the proposal for the Round Table Conference on the

condition that the details of the Dominion Status would be the point

of discussion. Gandhi, Annie Besant, Motilal Nehru, Tej Bahadur

Sapru and Jawaharlal Nehru issued a statement, which asserted: ‘We

appreciate the sincerity underlying the declaration [of Irwin] . . . we

hope to be able to tender our co-operation with His Majesty’s

Government in their effort to evolve a scheme for a Dominion

1
Constitution suitable to India’s needs’. Subhash Bose refused to put

his signature on this document. Nehru did, only to withdraw it later.

He was expelled from the League Against Imperialism for his initial

concurrence to the Delhi manifesto. However, Irwin’s offer came to

nothing as the conditions put by the Congress were rejected.

The Purna Swaraj resolution

The stage was set for the Lahore Session of the Congress in

December 1929. The whole country was waiting for some mass-action

and the onus to work out a plan of action to match this mood fell on

the Congress. Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Congress President to call

himself a socialist, presided over the Lahore session. He was of the

belief that

The brief day of European domination is already approaching its

end. . . . The future lies with America and Asia. The communal

divide between the Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs will no longer be

there. The struggle will centre around economic demands. Now the

only goal is Purna Swaraj, so that a society can be built, based on

equality. As the British is a patron of imperialism and capitalism and

it sustains on mass-exploitation, India can no longer remain under

 its rule. The Dominion Status won’t give real independence. For

that, the military and economic domination of the British must be

removed. . . . We stand therefore . . . for the fullest freedom of

India. This Congress has not acknowledged and will not

acknowledge the right of the British Parliament to dictate to us in

any way. To it we make no appeal . . . India submits no longer to

2
any foreign domination.

Nehru admitted that the Congress would not adopt socialism right

away, but he felt that to eradicate poverty and inequality, it will have

to adopt it sooner or later. By socialism, Nehru meant minimum

wages, reduction of working days, and control of industries by labour

through co-operatives, and right over land to the peasantry. He did

not discount the use of violence in the imminent mass movement,

though the Congress tactically preferred to stick to non-violent

methods.

He explained his political creed: ‘I must frankly confess that I am a

socialist and a republican and am no believer in Kings and princes, or

in the order which produces the modern Kings of industry, who have

greater power over the lives and fortunes of men than even Kings of

old and whose methods are as predatory as those of the old feudal

3
aristocracy.’

The Lahore session adopted the Purna Swaraj resolution on

December 31, 1929. On January 26, 1930, millions of Indians took

the oath of freedom and observed a symbolic Independence Day.

In the meanwhile, India was hit by the Depression. The poor,

especially the urban poor, were the worst hit. In this context, Gandhi’s

eleven-point ‘ultimatum’ to Irwin was a compromise, particularly in

the context of the Purna Swaraj resolution. Gandhi’s demands were

mostly economic in nature – abolition of salt tax, reduction of land

revenue by half, protection of indigenous textile industry, reservation

of coastal shipping for Indians, etc. – but, as E.M.S. Namboodiripad

points out, ‘A close look at the “eleven points” would reveal the class-

interest that lay behind them. Most of them were the demands raised
 4
by the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie.’ He characterizes the

eleven points ‘political kite-flying’, and points out that ‘the kite

snapped in the storm of opposition from the British government’.

Revolutionary currents

On 14–16 February, Congress Working Committee authorized

Gandhi to initiate the Civil Disobedience Movement according to his

own plan. Gandhi decided on salt satyagraha as the launching pad of

the new phase of his movement. The famous Dandi March (March

12–April 6, 1930) led to spontaneous demonstrations all across the

country. The British resorted to brutal means of repression but could

not suppress the rising tide of the nationalist movement. On May 4,

1930, Gandhi was arrested and sent to Yeravda prison. Calcutta was

rocked by agitations protesting the arrest of Jawaharlal Nehru and

Jatindramohan Sengupta.

The Civil Disobedience Movement had various dimensions, and did

not always follow Gandhian guidelines. In 1930, more than fifty cases

of ‘terrorist’ activities were recorded. On April 18, 1930, Surya Sen

alias Masterda and his comrades raided the Chittagong armoury. On

April 22, Surya Sen’s followers fought valiantly against the British

forces in the hilly terrain of Jalalabad. Among his followers were the

two young women revolutionaries, Kalpana Dutt (later Joshi) and

5
Pritilata Waddadar. In the same year, Binoy Bose assassinated the

I.G. Police in Dacca. Binoy, along with Badal and Dinesh, led a daring

assault on the Writers’ Building. The participation of women in

revolutionary activities gradually went up. Young students like Bina

Das, Santi and Suniti were involved in the killing of high British

officials.

The best-known revolutionary of the period was, of course, Bhagat

Singh. In March 1926, he established the Naujawan Bharat Sabha,

based on socialist lines. He was also among the founder-members of

the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army, founded in September 1928

at a meeting in Delhi at the Ferozshah Kotla. His comrades included

Shiv Varma, Jatin Das, Ajoy Ghosh (who was to become General

Secretary of the CPI), Phanindranath Ghosh, and the two he went to

the gallows with, Sukhdev and Rajguru. They displayed ‘a remarkable

openness to new ideas . . . . Bhagat Singh, in particular, was marked

by an increasingly deep commitment to Marxian socialism and –

equally remarkable, perhaps, given the strong Hindu religiosity of the

6
earlier terrorists – militant atheism’. Bhagat Singh explained in his

trial that revolution to him was ‘not the cult of the bomb and pistol’,

but a total change in society culminating in the overthrow of both

foreign and Indian capitalism and the establishment of the

dictatorship of the proletariat. ‘The labourer is the real sustainer of

society . . . . To the altar of this revolution we have brought our youth

as incense, for no sacrifice is too great for so magnificent a cause. . . .

7
We await the advent of revolution. Inquilab Zindabad.’ As he

awaited execution, Bhagat Singh began a systematic study of

Marxism, and wrote a profoundly moving piece entitled ‘Why I am an

Atheist’, in which he defended his rejection of religion on grounds of

8
human dignity and rationalistic logic.

There was a popular upsurge in the North-West Frontier Province

under the leadership of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his Khudai

Khidmatgars that forced the British to send army columns to

Peshawar and Kohat and the entire province was brought under

martial law. They had to even resort to bombarding the tribal areas.

Despite such an onslaught, the Pathans stood their ground. The

Garhwali Regiment, consisting of Hindu soldiers, refused to fire at

their Muslim brethren in Peshawar. The government was forced to

withdraw the troops and Peshawar was virtually a free city between

April 25 and May 4, 1930. The Garhwali soldiers were later court-

9
martialled and prosecuted.

In Sholapur, Maharashtra, the workers of the textile mills went on a

strike to protest against Gandhi’s arrest. It snowballed into a massive

and militant uprising, culminating in a pitched battle between the

workers and the British Police. The leaders of the Sholapur uprising,

Mahappa Dhansetti, Qurban Hussein, Shrikrishna Sharda and

Jagannath Shinde, were executed on July 12, 1931. Initially, Bombay

city remained relatively calm. With the emergence of a ‘radical’ group,

led by K.F. Nariman and Yusuf Meher Ali the Congress workers tried

to mobilize the workers in mill and dock areas.

In Gujarat, particularly in the districts of Kheda, Broach and Surat,

the peasants began their protest in the Gandhian, non-violent way, but

soon the movement turned violent. In the Central Provinces,

Maharashtra and Karnataka, the forest satyagraha became the most

widespread and militant form of civil disobedience. In some places,

no-rent campaigns were planned. In Tamilnadu, C. Rajagopalachari

embarked on a march from Trichinopoly to Vedaranniyam on the

Tanjore coast to violate the salt law in April 1930. Non-violent as well

as violent protests were organized in different cities of Tamilnadu. The

Malabar salt marches were the handiwork of the Congress leader

Kelappan, who shot to fame in mid-1920 through the Vaikom temple

satyagraha. Similar marches were organized in coastal Orissa,

particularly in Balasore, Puri and Cuttack districts, under the

leadership of Gopabandhu Chandhuri. In Assam, the civil

disobedience remained somewhat subdued. In Bengal, especially in the

Midnapur district, anti-British protest bordered on violent outbreak.

10
The British authority called it no less than an ‘uprising’.

Barring a few urban centres like Kanpur in UP, the focal point of the

movement was the peasantry, which did not always toe the Congress

line. Across different regions, there were some common trends in the

Civil Disobedience Movement. First, the movement saw mass

participation on a scale hitherto unprecedented, and new sections,

including the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie, were drawn into the

movement. However, the leadership of the movement remained more

or less in the hands of the bourgeois group and rich farmers. Second,

in some areas like Tamilnadu, caste politics marred the solidarity in

the movement. Third, the Muslims, unlike in the Non-Cooperation

Movement, by and large kept away from the mainstream. In fact, in a

few areas in the United Provinces, communal tension ran high and

riots broke out.

 Gandhian politics and the Left

Meanwhile, the moderates in the Congress, under the pressure of

businessmen and industrialists, were keen on compromise with the

11
British. Some of them even attended the First Round Table

Conference (November 12, 1930–January 19, 1931) in London.

Gandhi, in prison, also showed signs of conciliation. After a lot of

bickering within the Congress, the Gandhi-Irwin Pact was signed on

March 5, 1931. According to this Pact, the Congress agreed to

suspend the Civil Disobedience Movement and to join the next Round

Table Conference. Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose openly

expressed their disagreement with this pact. However, in the March

1931 Karachi session of the Congress, Nehru quietly capitulated to

Gandhi’s wishes. However, a portion of the Bose-Nehru ‘resolution’

may be quoted here: ‘In order to end the exploitation of the masses

12
political freedom must include real economic freedom’. However,

Gandhi did not agree with this slogan, and Nehru, the obedient

disciple, fell in line.

The Second Round Table Conference proved to be a

disappointment. The minorities’ issue bogged down the session.

Gandhi returned to India on December 28, 1931. The Congress

Working Committee resumed the Civil Disobedience Movement on

January 4, 1932. The British pounced on the activists with

unprecedented repression. More than a lakh people were arrested

between January 1932 and March 1933. By the latter half of 1932,

the Second Civil Disobedience Movement had lost its vigour. Clearly,

the Congress image had taken a beating. When the Third Round Table

Conference was convened in London in November 1932, the Congress

declined the invitation. By May 1933, the Civil Disobedience

13
Movement was as good as dead.

Given the increasing differences with the Congress, regarding

ideology as well as action, it was almost inconceivable for the

communists to follow the course charted by Gandhi. The Comintern

dubbed Civil Disobedience as an ‘oppositional manoeuvre’, which was

not instinctively taken up by the Congress, but was thrust upon it by

 14
popular upsurge. O.V. Kuusinen accused Gandhi of fearing the

15
revolutionary organizations more than the British. The Salt

Satyagraha was a ‘clever device to limit the struggle against

imperialism. . . . Gandhist boycott is at bottom boycott of the Indian

Revolution and is thereby calculated to help the triumph of the British

16
colonial power in India.’ Virendranath Chattopadhyaya argued that

‘the real struggle that is going on is not between the Congress and the

British imperialism but between the Congress and the Indian

17
revolutionary movement’. This political situation led to the

formation of the ‘League Against Gandhism’ in Bengal the following

year.

The CPI sharply indicted Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas

18
Chandra Bose. The Meerut prisoners were highly critical of the

Civil Disobedience Movement and summarily rejected Gandhi’s stand

at the Round Table Conference. The communists thought it diluted

the complete independence resolution at the Karachi session. In their

statement the Meerut prisoners declared: ‘Independence to the

ordinary Congress leader is a phrase with which to keep the rank and

file contented and perhaps to threaten the Government. It is nothing

more’. However, M.N. Roy wanted the CPI to join the Civil

Disobedience Movement. The Indian communists rejected his line.

Roy was in for a shock, when the Gandhi-Irwin Pact was signed.

Virendranath Chattopadhyaya called this Pact an exposure of

19
Gandhi’s duplicity, which ‘reached its high water mark’.

Nevertheless, a section of the communists in different parts of India

joined the Civil Disobedience Movement. Many who later became

communists participated in the satyagraha with huge enthusiasm.

Among them was Harkishan Singh Surjeet, who was imprisoned in

Lahore. Eminent communist leader from Bengal, Benoy Choudhury, in

his reminiscences My Life and Experiences, talks about the ‘intensity

of the desire to fight for freedom amongst the youths in those days’.

Choudhury, along with Harekrishna Konar and Saroj Mukherjee

violated the salt act as a mark of protest. Saroj Mukherjee was in the
Karachi session of the Indian National Congress in 1930. Choudhury

writes: ‘Saroj took part in the Karachi Congress in order to have first

hand information about all that had happened in the conference.

From his report on the Congress session at Karachi, it seemed to us

20
that Gandhi’s leadership had a dual character’. In spite of mass

participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement, disillusionment

with Gandhi’s leadership was also growing, and it only increased with

the news of the Gandhi-Irwin Pact.

In Bombay, the communists were divided on the issue of joining the

Civil Disobedience Movement. This resulted in a split in 1932. The

faction led by S.V. Deshpande felt that keeping away from the

movement, would isolate the communists from the masses. They

wanted the communists to mobilize protests against British repression

without diluting their disagreements with the Congress’s method of

agitation. Others, like B.T. Ranadive, disagreed. A few individual

communists, including S.G. Sardesai and Meenakshi Sardesai, were

imprisoned for their active participation in the Civil Disobedience

Movement. Bankim Mukherjee, Abdur Rezzak Khan and Moni Singh

who later became leaders of the communist movement, joined the

21
Civil Disobedience Movement under Congress leadership. In

Kerala, on April 13, 1930, a jatha, consisting of 32 members was

organized from Calicut by Kelappan for Salt Satyagraha. At least five

of the 32 were to become the founders of the Communist Party in

Kerala. P. Krishna Pillai, who became the first Secretary of the

Communist Party in Kerala fought with the police to defend the

22
‘national flag’ on Calicut Beach on November 11, 1930. A.K.

Gopalan, then a schoolteacher, actively participated in satyagraha in

Guruvayur. He was to become Kerala’s front-ranking communist

leader and later a Politburo member of the CPI (M).

E.M.S. Namboodiripad wrote: ‘The inauguration, on November 1,

1931, of the Guruvayur Temple Entry Satyagraha and connected

activities also identified me with Congress organization. I was slowly

but surely moving to take the plunge . . .’. E.M.S. was imprisoned

along with Krishna Pillai. He recalled one Kamalnath Tiwari, co-

accused with Bhagat Singh in Lahore Conspiracy Case who was

imprisoned in Cannanore jail. He, according to E.M.S., ‘sowed the

seed of the Congress Left wing and the Congress Socialist movement

23
in Kerala.’ E.M.S. and Krishna Pillai, after their release from jail,

formed a branch of the Congress Socialist Party in May 1934. In the

same year, both of them led the leftists to a leadership position in the

Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee. A.K. Gopalan, Secretary of the

first left-led Kerala Provincial Congress Committee, undertook a tour

of Cochin and Travancore in 1934 for enrolling Congress members,

24
using the occasion to popularize socialism.

Before 1934, the history of communist movement in Andhra is

associated with the ideological orientation of the nationalist youth and

activists in various people’s fronts. The news about Meerut

Conspiracy case and the activities of revolutionary terrorists of

northern India attracted the attention of P. Sundarayya (founder of the

Communist Party in Andhra) and other youth. They propagated anti-

colonial views among the students and encouraged students to

subscribe to Young Liberator, a radical monthly journal from Bombay.

Kambhampati Satynarayana, also known as ‘Senior’, joined the

Communist Party in Andhra in the early period. Both Kambhampati

and Sundarayya actively participated in the Civil Disobedience

Movement in 1930. They were arrested and imprisoned. After their

release, Sundarayya worked to organize agricultural labourers, and

this became the foundation of the Communist Party in Andhra.

Kambhampati came under the influence of Amir Hyder Khan and

joined the Communist Party in 1932.

The national liberation struggle was an area where the radical youth

got introduced to left ideas. Pratapa Ramasubbaiah was inspired by

the court statements of the prisoners of Meerut Conspiracy Case and

was attracted towards communism. Ramasubbaiah was arrested and

kept in jail for his participation in the Civil Disobedience Movement

in 1930. Before his arrest he formed Yuvajana Sanghams (Youth

Leagues) in Guntur district in association with Shaik Galib and

25
Amancharla Gopalarao.
 Dr Chelikani Ramarao (b. 1901) of Kakinada left his home in 1921

and joined the Non-cooperation Movement. He was arrested and kept

in jail. There, he met Nilkanta Brahmachari, a revolutionary terrorist

who had killed the collector of Salem and was serving a life sentence

in Rajamundry jail. From him Ramarao learned about communism

26
and the Russian Revolution. Ramarao studied medicine in

Hyderabad and returned to Kakinada in 1930 to participate in Civil

Disobedience Movement. Jailed again, he befriended Bengali detenus

in Rajahmundry jail and learned the principles of communism from

them. After his release from jail, he joined in the Communist Party in

the late 1930s.

Pandiri Mallikarjuna Rao, by 1930, had fair knowledge of

communist ideology. He used to receive several books, like Stalin’s

Leninism from abroad. In 1930, while preparing for Salt Satyagraha,

Gandhi visited Sitanagara Ashramam where a meeting was arranged.

Mallikarjunarao spoke in the meeting and he criticized the Gandhian

way of struggle. He became a member of CPI after 1930s. Damisetti

Parthasarathi participated in the Simon boycott agitation and was

inspired by the speeches of Swami Kumaranand. The death sentence

imposed on Bhagat Singh and his friends, police atrocities in Vadapalli

Radhotsavam and the failure of Civil Disobedience Movement turned

27
him towards Marxism.

During the Civil Disobedience Movements of 1930–34, an entire

generation of Indian youth suffered imprisonment. The government

tried to suppress militant activities ruthlessly. Many revolutionaries

were arrested and brutally murdered. They were kept in different jails

across India. While in jail, revolutionaries and satyagrahis established

contacts with each other and the revolutionaries exerted their

28
influence on the satyagrahis. Many young people who were under

Gandhi’s influence during the Civil Disobedience Movement and went

to jails as Gandhians were influenced by the revolutionaries in jail and

came out ardent supporters of socialism.

Consider, for instance, what happened in Andhra. Dr Chelikani

Rama Rao, arrested during the Civil Disobedience Movement was

sent to Rajahmundry Central jail. He learnt the basic principles of

socialism in jail, and joined the Socialist Party. Darbha Krishna

Murthy wrote of the influence of Lahore conspiracy prisoners. In jails

he read many books and turned towards socialism. Kothamanu

Satyanarayana, Ganapati Satyanarayana, Muddukuri

Chandrasekhararao, Tanikella Venkatachalapathi were also influenced

by these revolutionaries in jails. Jonnalagadda Ramalingayya, arrested

during the Civil Disobedience Movement was sent to Tiruchinapalli

jail where he met the prisoners of the Lahore conspiracy case. He was

dissatisfied with the Gandhi–Irwin Pact, which did not include the

release of Bhagat Singh and his comrades. In Tiruchinapalli jail,

Bengali detenus Pratul Chandra Ganguly and Surendra Mohan Ghosh

played an active role in revolutionizing the minds of the youth. They

celebrated Bhagat Singh day on March 24, 1932. They sang songs on

Bhagat Singh and raised slogans like ‘Inquilab Zindabad’ (‘Long live

the revolution’). They spoke on the life of Bhagat Singh and exhorted

fellow prisoners to follow his principles. They held classes on

revolutionary literature. Surendra Mohan Ghosh and Jeevan Lal

Chatterjee explained these books in classes. They advocated violence

as a means for achieving independence.

Among the Bengali detenus who were sent to Rajahmundry Central

Jail, Pratul Bhattacharya played an important role in the growth of

29
socialist ideas in Andhra. In jail the Bengali detenues changed their

views to mass struggle in place of revolutionary terrorism.

Jonnalagadda Ramalingayya who was arrested for the second time

after the failure of the second Round Table Conference, was sent to

Rajahmundry central jail where he met Bengali prisoners like Pratul

Chandra Bhattacharya and Binoy Roy Choudhary, who influenced

him to turn to the socialism.

Depression and the rise of fascism

The Comintern, which had predicted the world economic crisis,

alerted the communist parties to the fact that this would lead to a

sharpening of the contradictions of imperialism precipitating a new

upsurge of revolutionary activity in the capitalist countries and the

colonies. The intensification of class struggle would lead to the

increased use of repression by the state as well as fascism, on the one

hand, and to a widening of the front of the revolutionary struggle on

the other. The Eleventh Plenum of the Comintern warned that ‘The

bourgeoisie is organizing terrorist fascist groups, is breaking up labour

and all other revolutionary organizations, is depriving the workers

and the toiling peasants of the right of assembly and free press, is

suppressing strikes by means of compulsory arbitration and violence,

shooting down unemployed demonstrations and striking workers, and

30
is ruthlessly suppressing the revolutionary peasant movement.’

The mass upsurges of the 1930s were closely related to certain

economic changes. The worldwide Depression which set in from late

1929 affected India in several ways, the major two being: (i) a sharp

fall in prices, particularly of agricultural commodities, and (ii) a severe

crisis in the export-oriented economy. The Depression also sharply

enhanced the burden of revenue, rent and interest payments, and those

worst affected by this were the relatively better-off or ‘middle’

peasants with surplus to sell or land to mortgage. It was really a

process of ‘de-peasantization’ and peasant organizations, particularly

left-inclined Kisan Sabhas, rallied peasant proprietors, tenant

smallholders, and sharecroppers around issues of reduction of

revenue, irrigation charges, rent and debt burden, return of alienated

land and the abolition of zamindari, the most radical slogan of the

period. Congress support for even such specific kisan demands was

often inhibited by its landlord links. A tendency towards growing

conservatism by rich peasants was manifesting itself by the mid-1930s

in states like Gujarat and some parts of northern India. Thus Congress

rightism took an institutional shape in rural belts.

The Depression brought about a qualitative shift in the overall

pattern of British colonial exploitation of India, which, though

somewhat weakened by the First World War, had remained

fundamentally unchanged till 1929. Down to the late 1920s, India still

took in about 11 per cent of British exports (including no less than 28

per cent of Lancashire textiles). Britain’s export-surplus with non-UK

countries of agricultural raw materials remained crucial for Britain’s

balance of payments, while India was still a vital field for British

capital investment in extractive and export-oriented industries

(mining, tea, and jute). The Depression brought down the value of

Indian exports from Rs 311 crore in 1929–30 to Rs 132 crore in

1932–33 (imports fell off in the same period from Rs 241 crore to Rs

133 crore), and the Home Charges could be met only by massive

31
exports of gold through distress sales by Indians.

Although the Depression did create a number of problems, the

Indian bourgeoisie got an opportunity to change the older forms of

colonial economic ties for a major advancement. The political

consciousness of the growing strength of the Indian capitalist groups

was by no means unambiguous, for there were, as the following

section will indicate, considerable regional variations in attitudes and

repeated conflict between short-term and longterm interests. However,

in general, one could say that the overall weight of the bourgeois

groups in national politics expanded during the 1930s, and at times

proved quite decisive in Civil Disobedience, constitutional discussions,

and ministry-making alike.

Left orientation in the labour movement

The Depression had an adverse impact on the working class in

India. In the industrial sector, massive retrenchment, cut in wages, and

lack of alternative means of employment hit the workers hard.

However, an organized face-off with this severe economic crisis was

not possible due to splits in the AITUC. The split in the tenth session

of AITUC, held at Nagpur in November 1929, culminated in the

formation of the Indian Trade Union Federation. The President of the

session, Jawaharlal Nehru, deeply regretted the split but could not

prevent it. The second split in AITUC occurred in its eleventh session

at Calcutta in July 1931. Subhas Chandra Bose presided over the

session. S.V. Deshpande and other Marxists, including D.B. Kulkarni,

Bankim Mukherjee, Dr Bhupendranath Dutta and S.G. Sardesai,

 32
established the All India Red Trade Union Congress. As a historian

of the working class puts it:

[The] Indian labour movement stood divided into three national

centres – the most calamitous setback the movement had ever

encountered. . . . [The] first split was not al all a fortuitous one. The

split was prepared by previous developments, by the fact that the

trade union movement was outgrowing the trend of economism and

indifference to politics. . . . That the personal factors also played

behind the first split was admitted by Nehru also who presided over

the tenth session and was a close witness to all that took place. . . .

The second split, in one sense, was more deplorable than the first

one. The first one was the result of a conflict between the Right-

wing and the Left-wing, while the second was the most lamentable

33
result of conflict within the Left-wing itself.

In spite of these setbacks, in terms of labour organization and

militancy the anti-imperialist struggle was on the upswing. ‘In spite of

a considerable amount of organizational disunity prevailing at the

time, the working class waged economic struggles against this crisis’.

34

Capitalist growth, particularly under conditions of weakening but

still formidable colonial domination and worldwide Depression,

inevitably meant a growing burden on the working class. Already bad

working conditions were made worse by repeated ‘rationalization’

drives (in 1928–29 and again after 1934), wage cuts, and lay offs. The

pattern of consequent labour unrest reached a peak in 1928–29 (with

203 strikes and lockouts involving 506,851 workers and the loss of

31,647,404 working days in 1928), a decline in face of repression (e.g.

the Meerut trial) and splits, and a revival again from the mid-1930s.

There were 3,793 strikes and lockouts involving 647,801 workers in

35
1937.
 In the early 1930s, labour disputes were on the rise. For instance,

there was an outstanding protest agitation by the carters in Calcutta in

April 1930. The strike was called against a ban on transport of goods

in the afternoon. Abdul Momin along with Swami Visvananda and

Bankim Mukherjee organized the carters. They put up barricades

using carts, practically bringing the city transport to a standstill. The

police opened fire on the strikers, resulting in the death of seven

carters. The martyrs were both Hindus and Muslims. The young

nationalists of Calcutta joined the ranks of the agitating carters.

Ultimately, the government was forced to reach a compromise with

the strikers.

In 1931, 5,300 workers joined hands in the strike in Hastings Jute

Mill in Bengal. Sholapur Cotton Mill in the Bombay Presidency

witnessed a strike by 15,000 workers. Similar incidents occurred in

the cotton mills of Madurai and in other parts of the country. The

following year, strikes were organized in railway workshops in Bengal

and Madras and in the jute mills in the neighbourhood of Calcutta. As

the impact of the Depression intensified, more and more workers lost

jobs or had to face wage-cuts. However, the statistics show that by

36
1933, labour disputes had declined, compared to 1931:

However, the strikes which occurred during 1931 to 1935 were of

sporadic nature having no consistent connection between one and the

other. Undoubtedly, the question of organizational disunity dogged the

working class movement in the early 1930s.

Emerging out of the splits and ideological crosscurrents, there were

attempts to establish some sort of cooperation between various

sections of the Indian trade union movement. The All India

Railwaymen’s Federation took the initiative to convene a trade union

conference at Bombay on May 10, 1931. A Trade Union Unity

Committee was formed and its report prescribed a unity formula,

keeping the communists out. In the twelfth session of the AITUC, held

in September 1932 in Madras, J.N. Mitra took the chair. The Trade

Union Unity Committee report was rejected in this session. In April

1933, Indian Trade Union Federation and the newly founded National
Federation of Labour were merged to form the National Trade Union

Federation. It had its inaugural session at Bombay on December 24–

26, 1933, under the chairmanship of Mrinalkanti Bose.

Meanwhile, the communists were also chalking out their own

strategy for unity in the trade union movement. Release of some of the

prisoners of the Meerut Conspiracy Case in mid-1933 boosted their

morale. This year the AITUC’s thirteenth session was held at Kanpur

on December 3. G.L. Kandalkar was the president. There was no

substantial achievement. The unity among the trade union factions

was still an elusive dream. It took another two years to overcome the

sectarian split. In the fourteenth session of the AITUC, held in

Calcutta, the Red Trade Union Congress merged with the AITUC.

Peasant movements

The 1920s and 1930s were a period of peasant struggles across the

country. Some of these struggles had a long history, some were more

spontaneous. In many instances, the peasants turned to Gandhi and

the Congress for leadership; as for instance, in the Champaran

struggle which catapulted Gandhi to all India prominence. However,

as a historian points out, ‘the tremendous breadth of Gandhian

movements cannot be explained purely by what Gandhi as a

37
personality thought, stood for, or actually did.’ In many instances,

the peasants ended up giving vague rumours about Gandhi a radical,

anti-zamindar twist. In the process, they would also attribute their

own hard-won successes to his magic hand. Therefore, when Baba

Ramchandra led the peasants of Pratapgarh in the early 1920s and

succeeded in halting their evictions, the credit for this victory went to

Gandhi and the Congress, though they had little to do with it directly.

This situation was also the result of the fact that the Workers’ and

Peasants’ Parties were unable to make any significant inroads into the

countryside, even though they gave radical anti-feudal slogans,

because their limited cadres were mostly city-based and involved in

trade union activities. The Bengal unit of the party made some

headway with the mostly Muslim peasants of Kishoregunj in East

Bengal in the late 1920s. When the Bengal Tenancy Amendment Bill

(1928) came up, the Congress failed to speak in defence of peasant

rights and opposed an amendment to give sharecroppers tenancy

rights. Similarly, in Punjab as well, Fazl-i-Hasan’s efforts to protect

agricul-turalists from urban Hindu moneylenders were opposed by the

Congress-Hindu Mahasabha combine. The Praja Party (based in

Bengal) and the Unionists (based in Punjab), both claiming to be pro-

peasant, were oriented in fact towards relatively prosperous farmers

rather than the mass of poor peasants, agricultural workers, and

sharecroppers. ‘The Congress in both provinces was still losing

valuable potential support, through a combination of Hindu

communalism and failure to develop even a moderately reformist

38
agrarian programme.’

The reason for Congress reticence was that, as a party, it had deep

links with zamindar elements. This was most obvious in areas that

were permanently settled by the British, such as Bengal and Bihar. For

instance, Bihar was witness to perhaps the largest pre-1947 kisan

movement, led by Swami Sahajanand Saraswati. Sahajanand began

with the Congress, and in fact took part in the Non-cooperation

Movement as well. He founded the Bihar Provincial Kisan Sabha in

1929, but at that time the organization was rather moderate in its

outlook. Increasingly however, as Sahajanand became more and more

radical, he grew disillusioned with the Congress; the Congress, in turn,

eventually banned any of its members from even attending

Sahajanand’s meetings in the districts where he had influence, namely

Champaran, Saran and Monghyr.

 The Congress succeeded in mobilizing peasants basically in

raiyatwari areas, where the British government, rather than a local

zamindar, was the rent collector. This is seen, for instance, in coastal

Andhra, where the government’s decision to raise revenue rates in

1927 led to a powerful movement of the rich and middle peasantry,

led mainly by Congress activists.

The most notable success that the Congress achieved in mobilizing

peasants occurred in Bardoli in the Surat district of Gujarat in 1928.

The agitation began when the Bombay Government decided to raise

revenue rates by 22 per cent. The Congress, under Vallabhbhai Patel,

was able to mobilize both the patidar landholders and their kaliparaj

debt-serfs, to lead a widespread, powerful, and non-violent agitation

that soon captured the imagination of the nation. The Bardoli

agitation occurred at the same time as the Girni Kamgar strike in

Bombay. The two were quite unrelated, and certainly there was no

organizational link between the two. Yet, the British feared a link-up

between the two:

My police officers inform me that they were practically certain that

the communists would use the Bardoli situation, if the Government

took action there, to call a general strike, both on the BB and CI

and GIP [railways], and they think that they would have got the

39
men out.

The government abruptly decided not to send armed police into

Bardoli and to return land confiscated from peasants. The Bardoli

peasants won a famous victory, the Congress reaped its political

benefit, but what had hastened the victory was the fear that the

colonial state had of communists.

 EIGHT

THE

MEERUT TRIAL
THE MEERUT CONSPIRACY CASE IS a landmark in the history of

India’s national liberation struggle. It came at a time when the entire

capitalist world was reeling under the Great Depression, whereas the

newly born socialist state of Soviet Russia was making tremendous

advances. Militant struggles of the working class reached a new high

during this period, and a large number of these were led by

communists and revolutionaries. This had a great impact on the

national movement, while demonstrating that Marxism had taken

root in India.

Meerut, a small town in the United Provinces, had been one of the

centres of the Revolt of 1857, but over the next seven decades it

remained a more or less insignificant military station about a hundred

miles from Delhi. Between 1929 and 1933, however, it shot into the

limelight on account of the protracted farce that the trial of Meerut

prisoners was. The courage shown by the communists in the case gave

an impetus and direction to the growing movement of the working

class, peasantry and other toiling masses. With this trial the British

imperialists wanted to suppress communist activities and isolate the

communists from the mainstream of the freedom movement.

According to B.T. Ranadive, the Meerut case was ‘a tribute to the

anti-imperialist political work’ done by the communists among the

1
workers, peasants, and youth. The Meerut trial laid the foundation

of an organized communist movement. The CPI set up its first all-

India centre after the trial.

On March 20, 1929, thirty-one communist/labour leaders were

arrested in different parts of India. Most of them were well-known

figures in the trade union and working class movement. Of them,

thirteen were from Bombay, ten from Bengal, five from UP, three from

Punjab and three were Englishmen. The arrested included eight

members of All India Congress Committee and almost every member

of the executive committee of the recently established All India

Workers’ and Peasants’ Party. Their arrest was accompanied by

thorough raids and house searches. Attempts were made to justify the

case by denouncing all the arrested men as communists.

 Besides its political implications, the case itself was conducted, to

quote from the final judgment by the Allahabad High Court, on a

2
‘gigantic scale’. The proceedings lasted for nearly four-and-a-half

years. The preliminary proceedings before the Magistrate took over

seven months, resulting in the commitment of the accused to the

Court of Session on January 14, 1930. In the Sessions Court, the

presentation of prosecution evidence took over thirteen months. The

recording of the statements of the accused occupied over ten months.

The defence evidence lasted for about two months. The arguments

continued for over four-and-a-half months. The Sessions Judge took

over five months thereafter to pronounce his judgment on January 14,

1933. The last of the appeals was filed in the Allahabad High Court

on March 17, 1933. The date for hearing of the appeals was fixed on

April 10, 1933. But the accused themselves applied for an

adjournment of the hearing till after the long vacation. Accordingly,

the argument commenced on July 24, 1933, and after eight working

days, was concluded on August 2, 1933. The next day, the Chief

Justice of the High Court delivered the final judgment.

The evidence in the case consisted of twenty-five printed volumes of

folio size. There were altogether 3,500 prosecution exhibits, over

1,500 defence exhibits and no less than 320 witnesses were examined.

The judgment itself was in two printed volumes covering 676 pages of

folio size. The government spent sixteen lakh rupees from the public

exchequer on the case even before it was referred to the High Court.

The Statesman, the Anglo-Indian newspaper, in its editorial on

January 18, 1933, commented on the Additional Sessions Court

judgment:

The Meerut Case has been a new cause celebre creating new and

unenviable records in public expense, long delay and ingenious

obstruction. . . . There has been much and natural criticism of the

protracted proceedings which have cost the country sixteen lakhs. It

may be said that it is better to spend sixteen lakhs and scotch a

 conspiracy than to spend a far greater sum in quelling the disorders

3
to which it might otherwise have led.

Pre-arrest preparation

The colonial administration was preparing to frame a ‘conspiracy’

case against communist organizers and their associates months before

they were arrested. For instance, in a telegram dated December19,

1928, the British Secretary of State revealed to the Viceroy that the

government was gathering information in connection with the

4
‘proposed conspiracy trial’. Again, in a letter to Stanley Jackson, the

Governor of Bengal, dated January 18, 1929, Viceroy Irwin wrote:

‘We have . . . at present reasonably good hopes of being able to run a

comprehensive conspiracy case against these men. If we could do this,

it would in our opinion deal a more severe blow to the Indian

5
Communist movement than anything.’

The case began on March 15, 1929, when the District Magistrate of

Meerut issued arrest warrants against the accused persons. The

Governor General of India, Lord Irwin, had granted sanction to

launch prosecutions under Section 121-A of the Indian Penal Code

just the day before. The officer who filed the complaint before the

Magistrate was R.A. Horton, who described himself as an officer-on-

special duty attached to the Central Intelligence Bureau of the Home

Department of the Government of India.

In the meantime, the central leadership of the CPI met in Bombay

from March 17 to 19, 1929, when G. Adhikari presented concrete

proposals for further reorganization of the party. The Bombay meeting

was not attended by all the leaders. For instance, Muzaffar Ahmad

stayed at Calcutta. On March 20, 1929, police arrested thirty-one

leaders with the charges of conspiracy ‘to deprive the King Emperor of

the sovereignty of British India’ under Section 121-A of the Indian

Penal Code. They were: Muzaffar Ahmad (Calcutta), S.A. Dange

(Bombay), S.V. Ghate (Bombay), K.N. Joglekar (Bombay), Dr G.

Adhikari (Bombay), P.C. Joshi (Allahabad), R.S. Nimbkar (Bombay),

S.S. Mirajkar (Dadar, Bombay), Shaukat Usmani (Bombay), M.A.

Majid (Lahore), Sohan Singh Josh (Amritsar), Dharanikanta Goswami

(Calcutta), Gopal Chandra Basak (Dacca), Shibnath Banerjee

(Howrah), M.G. Desai (Bombay), Ayodhya Prasad (Jhansi), K.N.

Sehgal (Lahore), Radharaman Mitra (Calcutta), S.H. Jhabwala

(Bombay), D.R.Thengdi (Poona), Gopen Chakraborty (Dacca), G.R.

Kasle (Bombay), Kishorilal Ghosh (Calcutta), Arjun Atmaran Alve

(Bombay), Visvanath Mukherjee (Gorakhpur), L.R. Kadam (Jhansi),

Gauri Sankar (Meerut), Shamsul Huda (Calcutta), Dharamvir Singh

(Meerut), Philip Spratt (CPGB member), and B.F. Bradley (CPGB

member).

Amir Haidar Khan and Hugh Lester Hutchinson, an Englishman,

were included in this list a few days later. Unlike Spratt and Bradley,

Hutchinson was not a member of any communist party and had come

to India as a freelance journalist. After the arrests on March 20, he

started working in communist-influenced trade unions in Bombay and

writing for English weekly, New Spark. A supplementary complaint

was filed against Hutchinson on June 11, 1929, and he was brought

to Meerut. After his release in August 1933 and subsequent departure

from India, Hutchinson took part in the solidarity movement for

6
Meerut prisoners in Britain and wrote of his trial experience.

A complaint was also filed against Amir Haidar Khan. The police

however failed to arrest him. Amir Haidar belonged to Rawalpindi

district of Punjab. He was a sailor. On one of his trips he left his ship

and stayed behind in America, where he took up a job in an

automobile factory. While working there he mastered not only his job

but also to speak and write English. He obtained an aviator’s license

and purchased a second hand aeroplane. He joined the Communist

Party in America and was sent for training to Moscow. After the

completion of his training he returned to India. He worked for the

Party in Bombay while serving in the General Motors Company.

As soon as he got news of the warrant of arrest against him, he

went underground. While in hiding, he visited Europe. On his return

to India, he devoted himself to the task of building the Communist

Party in Madras. Many of the leaders of the Communist Party in

south India, like P. Sundarayya, had joined the Party inspired by Amir

Haidar Khan. On May 7, 1932, towards the fag end of the trial at

Meerut Sessions Court, he fell into the hands of the police. To bring

him for trial at Meerut at that stage would have meant starting the

entire proceedings from the beginning – a course which the

Government could not take after so many years. Proceedings,

however, were started against him in Madras, and he was sentenced to

rigorous imprisonment for two years.

Both Langford James, the Chief Counsel for the prosecution, and

Horton had wanted to include the names of Abdul Halim and

Hemanta Kumar Sarkar from Bengal and Lalji Pendse and D.B.

Kulkarni from Bombay among the accused in the case along with

7
Hutchinson and Amir Haidar Khan. But ultimately that did not

happen. Halim played a tremendous role in organizing the Meerut

defence movement in Bengal and was instrumental in revitalizing the

communist organization in the province.

M.N. Roy was also arrested during the Meerut trial after his return

to India. The Bombay police arrested him on July 21, 1931, and

prosecuted him in the original Kanpur conspiracy case. Roy was

ultimately released on November 20, 1936.

All those arrested in this case were not members of the Communist

Party. Besides Amir Haidar Khan, only thirteen were CPI members.

Bradley and Spratt were members of the Communist Party of Great

Britain. Dr Adhikari was originally a member of the Communist Party

of Germany. Abdul Majid and Shaukat Usmani were the members of

the CPI formed in Tashkent. Dharanikanta Goswami (an official of

the BPTUC), Gopendra Chakravarty (associated with the East India

Railway Union), Gopal Basak (one of the leading organizers of the

Youth Front of the Bengal Workers’ and Peasants’ Party) and

Radharaman Mitra (Secretary, Bengal Jute Workers’ Union) were not

members of CPI, but in the court they declared themselves

‘communists by conviction’. Other prisoners like Kishorilal Ghosh

(Secretary, Bengal Provincial Trade Union Congress), Dharamvir Singh

(Workers’ and Peasants’ Party, United Provinces), and Shibnath

Banerjee (President, Bengal Jute Workers’ Union) were not

communists.

Muzaffar Ahmad mentions that there was even a possibility of

8
implicating Jawaharlal Nehru in the Meerut case. In his

Autobiography, Nehru writes:

The Meerut Conspiracy case had helped greatly in directing people’s

minds to these new ides (socialism and communism) and the world

crisis had compelled attention. Everywhere there was in evidence a

new spirit of enquiry, a questioning, and a challenge to existing

9
institutions.

In course of the prosecution the Government of India submitted a

list of names of individuals and organizations, described as ‘co-

conspirators’. This list, however, was not submitted at the beginning.

But as their names were being referred to time and again during the

inquiry at the Magistrate’s Court, the accused demanded to know how

these references came up. A long list of ‘co-conspirators’ containing

the names of 12 organizations and 51 individuals was submitted

before the Court. It included the names of George Allison (alias

Donald Campbell), Clemens Dutt, Virendranath Chattopadhyay,

M.N. Roy, S. Saklatvala, J. Ryan, Agnes Smedley, A. Lozovsky, Harry

Politt, Khusi Muhammad alias Muhammad Ali alias Sepassi, Percy

Gladding, and others. Among the organizations cited in the list was

the League Against Imperialism and League for National

Independence, which had Jawaharlal Nehru as a member of the

10
Executive Committee.

The indictment

The Meerut prisoners were charged under Section 121-A of the

Indian Penal Code, which declared: ‘Whoever within or without

British India conspires to commit any of the offences punishable by

Section 121 or to deprive the King of the sovereignty of British India

or any part thereof, or conspires to overawe, by means of criminal

force or the show of criminal force, the Government of India or any

local Government, shall be punished with transportation for life or

any shorter term, or with imprisonment of either description which

may extend to ten years.’

The charge against the prisoners is of particular interest. The

11
following is the official statement:

1. That there exists in Russia an organization called the Communist

International. The aim of this organization is, by creation of armed

revolution, to overthrow all the existing forms of Government

throughout the world and to replace them by Soviet Republics

subordinate to, and controlled by the central Soviet administration

in Moscow.

2. That the said Communist International carries on its work and

propaganda through various committees, branches, and

organizations, controlled by and subject to itself, for example, the

Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI), and

various sub-committees of the same, including a sub-committee

concerned with Eastern and Colonial affairs (Colonial Bureau); the

Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), which is a section of the

Communist International; the Red International of Labour Unions

(RILU), the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, the League Against

Imperialism, the Young Communist League (YCL) and various

other bodies.

3. That the ultimate objective of the said Communist International

is the complete paralysis and overthrow of existing Governments in

every country (including India), by means of a general strike and

armed uprising. It has outlined a programme or plan of campaign

which should be followed for the achievement of this ultimate

objective. Among the methods so ordained are:

The incitement of antagonism between Capital and Labour.

 The creation of workers’ and peasants’ parties, youth leagues,

unions etc., ostensibly for the benefit of the members thereof, but in

fact for the purpose of propaganda: the domination of such parties

by communists pledged to support the aims of the Communist

International and the unification of such bodies under one control

subservient to the Communist International.

The introduction of fractions or nuclei of such communists with

illegal objects as aforesaid into existing trade unions, nationalist

bodies and political and other organizations, with the object of

capturing the same or obtaining their support in the interests of the

Communist International.

The encouragement of strikes, hartals, and agitation.

Propaganda by speeches, literature, newspapers, the celebration of

anniversaries connected with the Russian Revolution, etc.

The utilization and encouragement of any movement hostile to

the Government.

4. That in the year 1921 the said Communist International

determined to establish a branch organization in British India, and

the accused Sripad Amrit Dange, Shaukat Usmani and Muzaffar

Ahmad entered into a conspiracy with certain other persons to

establish such branch organizations with a view to deprive the King

Emperor of his sovereignty of British India.

5. That thereafter various persons, including the accused Philip

Spratt and Benjamin Francis Bradley were sent to India by the

Communist International through the medium of one of its

branches or organizations, and with the object of furthering the

aims of the Communist International.

6. That the accused named in this complaint reside at different

centres throughout British India. They have conspired with each

other, and with other persons known or unknown within or without

British India, to deprive the King Emperor of the sovereignty of

British India, and for such purpose to use the methods and carry out

the programme and plan of campaign outlined and ordained by the

 Communist International, and in fact they used such methods and

carried out such plan of campaign with the assistance of, and

financial support from, the Communist International.

7. That the accused have met and conspired together as aforesaid at

various places within and without British India, and amongst others

at Meerut, and in pursuance of such conspiracy as aforesaid, the

accused formed a Workers’ and Peasants’ Party at Meerut and there

held a Conference thereof.

8. That the above named accused have committed an offence under

section 121-A of the Indian Penal Code and within the jurisdiction

of this Court. It is, therefore, prayed that the Court will enquire into

the above named offence.

This document demonstrates that the accused were being charged for

engaging in ordinary working class activities which were not regarded

as a crime in Britain or any other democratic country.

Selection of Meerut as the place for trial was well-planned.

Primarily, the authorities wanted to avoid trial by jury. Both in

Bombay and Calcutta, two principal centres of communist activities,

the case would be tried by the High Court with a jury. A ‘very secret’

document of the Home Department, dated February 20, 1929,

exposes the real motive of the rulers of British India: ‘We could not . .

. take the chance of submitting the case to a jury. However good the

case, there could be no assurance that a jury would convict, and we

cannot put the case into Court unless we are convinced that it will

12
result in conviction’.

The same document further states that ‘quite apart from the point

about a jury’ there are ‘good reasons’ for avoiding Calcutta and

Bombay, such as

(i) With the present dangerous atmosphere prevailing among the

labouring population both in Bombay and Calcutta it is clearly

undesirable to have the trial of either at these places.

 (ii) Though [Meerut] is not at the moment a particularly active

centre of the conspiracy, it is clear that acts in furtherance of the

13
conspiracy have been performed there.

The Government appointed a renowned Calcutta High Court

Barrister, Sir Langford James (with a monthly fees of Rs 34,000),

whom the administration consulted before the case formally started.

The Government depended much on Sir James’ opinion on the merit

of the case. But James could not see the final outcome of the trial, as

he died on March 28, 1930. After his death, Mr M.I. Kemp carried on

the case.

The actual trial of the case started on June 12, 1929, before Mr

Milner White, Special Magistrate of Meerut. The preliminary

proceedings before the magistrate, which took over seven months,

resulted in the commitment of the accused to the session’s court on

January 14, 1930. The venue of the case remained the same and the

case was transferred to the Special Judge Mr R.L. Yorke, ICS. In the

session’s court, the presentation prosecution evidence lasted over

thirteen months. The recording of the statements of the accused

occupied over ten months; the defense evidence lasted for about two

months. The arguments continued for over four-and-a-half months.

The judge took over five months to pronounce his judgment in

January 1933.

Unlike in previous ‘communist conspiracy’ cases, the prisoners at

Meerut decided to use the court as a platform to propagate their

agenda to the greatest extent possible. Muzaffar Ahmad recollected

his conversation in this regard with Dr Adhikari at the barrack of the

Meerut District jail:

I told Dr Adhikari that the careful preparations with which the

Government had launched prosecution against us showed that long

sentences were inevitable. Then, why should we not turn the

Sessions Court into a propaganda platform by making political

statements? I told him further how deeply sorry I was for not having
 made a similar use of the Kanpur Conspiracy Case. Dr Adhikari

agreed to my proposal. It was also agreed that when all of us could

14
meet together we would take a decision on this issue first.

The main object of the colonial rulers in instituting the case was to

suppress the gradually consolidating communist and working class

movement in India. The sudden and simultaneous removal of almost

the entire front-ranking leadership from the political scene was a blow

to the working class movement in India. But the trial became an ideal

platform for the communists to propagate their ideology for the

resurgence of organized communist activities in a more cohesive all

India form. A ‘confidential’ IB report commented with usual anger:

‘The Meerut prisoners have, it must be admitted, extracted (so far as

foreign countries are concerned) more of advertisement and political

15
capital from their trial than did their predecessors at Kanpur.’

General Statement

In this context the General Statement submitted by the prisoners

during the trial was significant on many accounts. As Muzaffar

Ahmad recollected:

We, the communist accused, came to the decision that by making

statements day after day we would transform the court-room into a

political forum for the disseminations of our ideology and to equip

ourselves for this mission by study beforehand. It was decided

further that besides statements to be given individually by every

accused, the communist accused would make a General Statement.

16

The General Statement submitted before the Additional Sessions

Judge was signed jointly by eighteen communist prisoners: B.F.

Bradley, Muzaffar Ahmad, Dr G. Adhikari, Ayodhya Prasad, Gopal

Basak, Gopen Chakraborty, Shamsul Huda, Dharanikanta Goswami,

S.V. Ghate, K.N. Joglekar, P.C. Joshi, M.A. Majid, Radharamon

Mitra, S.S. Mirajkar, Sohan Singh Josh, Philip Spratt, Shaukat Usmani

and R.S. Nimbkar. Four of these, Dharanikanta Goswami, Gopen

Chakraborty, Gopal Basak and Radharaman Mitra, described

themselves as ‘communist by conviction’.

Dange, who was arrested as a communist, was however not a

signatory. The reason, as Muzaffar Ahmad reports, was that Dange

had been expelled from the party earlier, ‘for carrying on from jail

17
factional activities in Bombay’. However, Dange submitted a

separate document before the same court. The General Statement,

originally a document running over 400 pages was formally

introduced by R.S. Nimbkar on December 2, 1931, a day after the

Second Round Table Conference ended in London. Nimbkar

completed his statement on January 18, 1932. Dange placed his

statement (of more than 600 pages) before the court from October

1931 to January 1932.

The joint General Statement, which created tremendous sensation in

India and abroad, expressed the programmatic understanding of the

Indian communists more clearly than any other document of the

period. In the backdrop of the resolutions adopted at the Sixth

Congress of the Comintern (1928) and CPI’s Draft Platform of Action

published in December 1930, the General Statement proclaimed for

the first time the analysis of the world situation and the national

situation, the national revolution, agrarian problem, the trade union

movement, tactics for achieving national liberation and the basic ideas

of communism.

They boldly stated at the outset of their statement that:

This is a case which will have political and historical significance. It

is not merely a case launched in the ordinary course of its duties by

the police against 31 criminals. It is an episode in the class struggle.

. . . We have no doubt that ultimately the proletarian revolution will

take place in India. . . . We are equally convinced by the same study

that in a colonial country, such as India is, the revolution that will
 precede the proletarian revolution, will be of the nature of the

bourgeois-democratic revolution. This will achieve the complete

freedom of India from the control of British Imperialism, and the

complete abolition of all feudal and pre-feudal terms of social

organization and will result in the establishment of an Independent

Democratic Republic. This is the revolution for which we were

working, and we are convinced that the programme which was put

before the country, the programme of the united anti-Imperialist

front of all those classes capable of carrying through the revolution,

18
was the only correct programme for attaining it.

The judgment

The Statement, despite its brilliant and bold style of presentation,

failed, like the CPI Draft Platform of Action, to correct the left

sectarian approach of the Comintern’s Sixth Congress, especially on

issues like the role of national bourgeoisie, and the role communists

should play in mobilizing all sections of the people suffering from

colonial exploitation without diluting the necessity of expanding

working class hegemony. However, it was an attempt to assess the

ground realities, ideological and organizational, and to intervene

collectively in the emerging political issues.

The Additional Sessions Judge Yorke, who was specially appointed

for this case, read his judgment on January 16, 1933, at the end of

which was this admission:

As to the progress made in this conspiracy its main achievements

have been the establishment of Workers and Peasant Parties in

Bengal, Bombay and Punjab and the UP, but perhaps of deeper

gravity was the hold that the members of the Bombay Party

acquired over the workers in the textile industry in Bombay as

shown by the extent of the control which they exercised during the

strike of 1928 and the success they were achieving in pushing

forward a thoroughly revolutionary policy in the Girni Kamgar

Union after the strike came to an end.

 . . . The fact that the revolution was not expected actually to

come to pass for some years seems to me to be no defence whatever.

No one expects to bring about a revolution in a day. It is in the light

of all the above facts that I have endeavoured to assess the relative

guilt of the different accused in this case and to ‘make the

19
punishment to fit the crime’.

All but four of the 31 accused were sentenced to varying terms of

transportation and rigorous imprisonment. While the judgment was

being written, D.R. Thengdi passed away whilst on bail in Pune. He

had been President of Bombay Workers’ and Peasants’ Party.

Visvanath Mukherjee, Shibnath Banerjee and Kishorilal Ghosh were

acquitted. In all twenty-seven of the accused were convicted. They

were:

Transportation for life

Muzaffar Ahmad

Transportation for a period of twelve years

S.A. Dange, Philip Spratt, S.V. Ghate, K.N. Joglekar, R.S. Nimbkar

Transportation for a period of ten years

B.F. Bradley, S.S. Mirajkar, Shaukat Usmani

Transportation for a period of seven years

Mir Abdul Majid, Sohan Singh Josh, Dharanikanta Goswami

Transportation for a period of five years

Ayodhya Prasad, Gangadhar Adhikari, P.C. Joshi, M.G. Desai

Four years rigorous imprisonment

 Gopen Chakraborty, Gopal Chandra Basak, Hugh Lester

Hutchinson, Radharaman Mitra, S.H. Jhabwala, K.N. Sehgal

Three years rigorous imprisonment

Shamsul Huda, Arjun Atmaram Alve, G.R. Kasle, Gauri Shankar,

L.R. Kadam.

Appeal to High Court

Following Yorke’s verdict all 27 ‘convicts’ decided to appeal to the

Allahabad High Court, a bench of which took up the hearing of the

case on July 24, 1933. Chief Justice Dr Sir Shah Mohammad Suleiman

and Justice Douglas Young heard the appeal and after conducting

proceedings on eight working days they delivered their judgment on

August 3, 1933.

At the Allahabad High Court the stalwart Dr Kailash Nath Katju

moved the appeal for the accused. Among the junior advocates,

Shyamakumari Nehru, Ranjit Sitaram Pandit and Banke Behari, a

friend of P.C. Joshi, came forward to assist them. Pandit also took the

initiative along with Khurshid Naoroji to set up a Defence Committee

and collect funds for the Meerut prisoners.

The High Court ruled that ‘the conspiracy was impracticable, one

might even say impossible of achievement. The steps taken by the

accused till their arrest were in one sense utterly puerile and could not

be conceived to lead to any such serious consequences as the accused

dreamt of.’

The High Court dismissed all the charges framed against M.G.

Desai, H.L. Hutchinson, H.S. Jhabwala, Radharaman Mitra,

Kedarnath Sehgal, Govind Ramachandra Kasle, Gouri Shankar,

Lakshman Rao Kadam and Arjun Atmaram Alve. Sentences were

passed against Ayodhya Prasad, P.C. Joshi, Gopal Basak, Dr Adhikari,

and Shamsul Huda, but considering the imprisonment already

undergone by each of them as sufficient punishment, the Court

ordered their release. The sentence passed against Gopen Chakravarty

was reduced to seven months. The sentences passed against Muzaffar

Ahmad, Dange and Shaukat Usmani were reduced to rigorous

imprisonment for three years. Philip Spratt’s sentence was reduced to

rigorous imprisonment for two years. The sentences passed against

Ghate, Joglekar, Nimbkar, Bradley, Mirajkar, Sohan Singh Josh,

Dharanikanta Goswami and Mir Abdul Majid were reduced in each

20
case to rigorous imprisonment for one year.

The period of remission already earned by them was taken into

account and all of them were released in November 1933.

Meerut defence movement

The Meerut trial was perhaps unique for the strong solidarity

initiative in the form of an organized movement in India and abroad,

21
particularly Britain. As one contemporary observer recalled:

The trial received wide publicity and evoked the solidarity of labour

all over the world. The nature of the charge led to the accused

making long speeches to elucidate their principles. I well remember

seeing youths carefully cutting out reports from the papers and

22
pasting them into books. It was their first textbook of socialism.

The Meerut trial forced the non-communist nationalist leaders to

take a position. Gandhi visited Meerut jail on October 27, 1929, to

see the conditions of the prisoners. He deplored the arrest in his write

up in the Young India, dated April 4, 1929. Jawaharlal Nehru also

visited the Meerut jail. As the president of the AITUC, he appealed to

the British Trade Union Congress on June 22, 1929:

In view of Government attempts to break the labour movement in

India and hamper trade union organization by repressive legislation

and arrest all prominent workers, we trust your council will help the

India trade union movement to fight repression. In particular, we

request that you insist that accused in the Meerut trial are not
 deprived of the rights of jury trial, which most of them possess in

their provinces. The Government is carrying on Meerut inquiry

obviously as propaganda with their head publicity officer personally

23
supervising public arrangements in Meerut.

In another personal letter of the same date to Walter Citrine, secretary

of the British Trade Union Congress, Nehru argued:

I would like to point out that this trial cannot be isolated from the

general situation and must be treated as one phase of the offensive

which the Government here has started against the Labour

movement. . . . There is a lot of shouting about communists and

communism in India. Undoubtedly there are some communists in

India, but it is equally certain that this cry of communism is meant

to cover a multitude of sins of the Government. . . . The real issue is

the breaking of the Trade Union movement in India. . . . We would

like you to expose and oppose the whole policy underlying the

recent labour legislation of the Government of India and the Meerut

24
trial.

The Indian National Congress set up a Meerut Defence Committee

immediately after the arrests, with Motilal Nehru as president and

Jawaharlal Nehru as secretary. The committee formed a body with

M.A. Ansari as president and treasurer, and Jawaharlal Nehru,

Chowdhary Raghubir Narain Singh, Piyareylal Sharma, Dr

Muhammad Alam, and Lala Girdharilal to control the fund and

supervise the expenditure and make all other arrangements for the

defence of the accused. On April 7, 1929, Motilal Nehru, Madan

Mohan Malaviya, Srinivasa Iyengar, M.A. Ansari, N.C. Kelkar and

others issued the following appeal for funds to enable the Meerut

accused to defend themselves.

The government has started the prosecution of thirty-one persons,

mostly young men belonging to various political and labour unions,

 Youth Leagues and other similar organizations on a charge . . . for

conspiring to deprive the King of the Sovereignty of British India.

The offence is punishable with transportation for life or any shorter

term or with impri-sonment of either description, which may extend

to ten years. These men have been arrested in Bombay, Calcutta,

Allahabad, Meerut, Lucknow, Jhansi, Lahore and Amritsar, and

taken to Meerut to stand their trial. . . .

By initiating these prosecutions the government has accepted the

challenge thrown out to them in the various legislatures and from

public platforms to try public men for political offences in the

ordinary courts and under the ordinary law. The government has

ample resources to conduct the prosecution but the means of the

accused are very limited and left to themselves they cannot be

expected to put up a proper defence.

The Labour Unions, Youth Leagues and other similar

organizations are in all countries the most powerful instruments of

social and political advance. Apart, therefore, from the fact that it is

our obvious duty to see that our fellow countrymen accused of very

serious crime should have the fullest opportunity to defend

themselves, it should be our special concern to protect and

strengthen the legitimate activities of these organizations.

At a moderate estimate a sum of at least one lakh of rupees will

be required to collect necessary evidence to provide the best

available legal assistance to the accused. This amount is well worth

spending in a case which seriously affects the public activities of the

country. We appeal to all patriotic Indians and political, social,

labour and commercial organizations of all shades of political

opinion to contribute handsomely to the defence fund. . . . We hope

that all Nationalist newspapers in the country will support the fund

25
and give wide publicity to it. . . .

Bhagat Singh and his comrades, themselves under trial (Lahore

Conspiracy Case) also expressed their solidarity with the Meerut

prisoners. They had been arrested when the Meerut trial was in
progress for throwing a bomb on the floor of the Central Legislature

on April 8, 1929, to protest against the passing of the Trade Dispute

26
Bill.

Leader of the Self-Respect Movement in the Madras Province,

Periyar E.V. Ramaswamy, openly sympathized with the Meerut

prisoners. P. Rama-murthi, the legendary Tamil communist leader,

remembers that Ramaswamy wrote a ‘flaming editorial’ in his

newspaper Kudi Arasu (Republic) in protest against the conviction.

It is utter stupidity to think the Communist movement can be

destroyed by passing such savage sentences on its leaders. It is like

thinking that one can extinguish a fire by pouring ghee on it. We

felicitate the Meerut comrades and are only sorry that we, young

men, did not take the opportunity of being sentenced like them. We

once again heartily felicitate them mentally, through word of mouth

27
and through the written word.

The sudden arrests of the thirty-one communist leaders sparked off

tremendous excitement throughout India, especially in Calcutta,

Bombay and other working class strongholds. In Bombay, the textile

mill workers suspended work in protest on March 21. In Allahabad, a

large student gathering protested specially the arrest of Joshi. The

following day the All India Youth League called a special meeting in

Allahabad which was presided over by Jawaharlal Nehru who

strongly condemned the arrests. On the same day a huge protest

meeting was held in Calcutta.

The leaders of the National Congress also moved an adjournment

motion in the Central Legislative Assembly on 21 March. The

president Vithalbhai Patel allowed the motion; it was disallowed by

the government on the pretext that the case was sub-judice. Crerar, the

Home member, defended the arrest in his reply to a short notice

question of Motilal Nehru.

 AITUC openly denounced the so-called trial. The annual AITUC

session held in Nagpur from November 28 to December 1, 1929,

resolved to boycott the Royal Commission (known as Whitley

Commission after its chairman), which was appointed by the British

Government, ostensibly to inquire into the condition of the Indian

workers. R.S. Ruikar (who later joined the M.N. Roy-led anti-CPI

camp) in his speech as the reception committee chairman not only

criticized the commission but also said, referring to the Meerut arrests:

‘With 33 prominent Trade Unionists, clamped up behind prison bars

in Meerut jail, any cooperation with this commission is practically

tantamount to the support of the repressive policy of the government’.

28
The AITUC Executive Committee which met on November 17–18,

1930, at Calcutta under the presidentship of Subhas Chandra Bose

adopted a resolution demanding immediate and unconditional release

of the Meerut prisoners. Ramani Ranjan Guha Roy, editor, printer and

publisher of the Sramik newspaper was prosecuted for publishing the

29
article, ‘The Meerut Case’ in the July 4, 1931, issue of the paper.

The Comintern leadership came out sharply to denounce the Meerut

trial. Soon after the arrests, the Comintern Presidium met on March

30
28, 1929, and issued a proclamation. The Indian situation featured

prominently in the Tenth Plenum of the Comintern which met at

Moscow on July 3–19, 1929 and emphasized the importance of

building a strong Communist Party in India.

British workers and communists built a determined solidarity

movement. The London-based Meerut Prinsoners’ Releases

Committee collected funds for the prisoners. Romain Rolland came

out openly in support of the Meerut prisoners and wrote:

The aim of British Imperialism is to nip in the bud every effort,

every chance of the millions of Indian workers, who are struggling

in an inferno, to bond themselves together in their own defence. . . .

They are for us the living symbol of those thousands of victims in

the great combat which today is being fought throughout the world

to break the yoke of imperialism. All these victims make a victory,

 for they bear witness to the inequity which is crushing them, and to

the irresistible rising of the new revolutionary forces which are

31
awakening mankind. Nothing henceforward will arrest them.

Muzaffar Ahmad recollected:

Over all these years we had to depend almost entirely on

contributions which came from the British workers, though, of

course, there were occasional contributions of small amount from

sources within the country. Even the meagre sum which we used to

pay as fee to Mr Sheoprasad was paid out of the remittances of the

British workers. The workers of other European countries and

America also came forward to help us. But the British Government

in India permitted us to receive only the remittances of the workers

of Great Britain. On the initiative of the Communist Party of Great

Britain and British friends, the British workers had set up a Defence

Committee with Mr Reginald Bridgeman as its Secretary. In

deciding to appeal to the High Court we counted wholly on the

32
special funds collected by this Defence Committee.

The Meerut arrests provoked an immediate reaction in Britain. The

government had to face a series of questions with regard to the arrests.

Saklatvala played a big role in the Meerut solidarity movement even

after his defeat in the parliamentary election in 1929. Apart from the

communists, other left wing organizations including the Independent

Labour Party in Britain and a section of even the ruling Labour Party

came out openly criticizing the repressive measures.

R. Bridgman, secretary, British section of the League Against

Imperialism, sent a message (March 22, 1929) to Jawaharlal Nehru:

The British section of the League Executive was deeply shocked at

the Indian situation. The League met especially yesterday. We hope

you will telegraph a full statement of facts to the British Trade

Union Congress and invoke its aid to protect the Trade Union
 movement. Please also keep us informed of the new developments

bearing in mind the probable attempt of the Government to enlist

the sympathy of the Indian capitalists against the Trade Union

33
movement.

It is also interesting to note that Sir Stafford Cripps and D.N. Pritt,

renowned barrister, also agreed to accept the brief on behalf of the

prisoners for appeal to the Privy Council. Personalities like Albert

Einstein, Bernard Shaw and Harold Laski sympathized with the

prisoners. Laski wrote in his preface to Hutchinson’s book: ‘The

Meerut trial belongs to the class of cases of which the Mooney trial

and the Sacco-Vanzetti trial in America, the Dreyfus trial in France,

34
the Reichstag Fire trial in Germany, are the supreme instances’.

The radical British press also highlighted the issue and sympathized

with the prisoners throughout the years of the trial. As the case

concluded, one of the communist accused K.N. Joglekar’s newly-wed

wife Ambika wrote a letter, which was published in the Manchester

Guardian in February 1933:

The unique ‘Meerut Conspiracy Case’ is over. The result is out. The

judgements vary from transportation for life to 3 years’ rigorous

imprisonment. Because the persons concerned in the case

represented Labour, ‘C’ class treatment has been awarded to them.

In Indian gaols, ‘C’ class is for ordinary criminals. It means 9 hours

manual labour with bad food and clothing. After 3 months interval

they are allowed to write a letter or to have an interview with a

relative. As food and rest are necessary to live a life, reading and

books are equally important for middle-class life. In gaol books are

supposed to be something dangerous.

The judgement was delivered on 16 January 1933. Not even the

relatives were allowed to attend the court. We had to stand outside

the gate, waiting for the result. We were promised an interview on

the gaol premises. After hurrying 3 times to the gaol, we were told

to come the next day, 17 January 1933. On that day I had to stand
 at the gate for nearly 3 hours and then only was I allowed to see my

husband for 20 minutes.

We were married on the 10 January 1933. Mr Joglekar could not

be freed on bail or parole for one day. Just to sign the marriage deed

he was brought to the District Magistrate’s Court for an hour. Now

he is sentenced to 12 years’ (transportation). Signed. Ambika

35
Joglekar.

However, in India the Meerut defence movement could not gather

much momentum in nationalist circles. The National Congress which

initially showed much enthusiasm lost interest in the issue very soon.

Their preoccupation with other political issues overshadowed the

Meerut developments. The communist and other left elements also

failed, owing to organizational deficiency, to organize a sustained

campaign. It was mainly on CPGB’s initiative that the Meerut defence

movement in Britain rose to a new height. From 1929 to the end of

1933, the solidarity movement for Meerut prisoners became a militant

political movement, which helped build up a perceptible favourable

public opinion in support of India’s struggle for freedom.

In India the trial provided the communists, despite their

organizational weakness, an ideal platform to come to a common

understanding about strategies and tactics and to propagate them

through broader channels. Following the release of the communist

prisoners in late 1933, the Party was able to find a stronger political

and organizational foundation to spread its activities. It was also

successful in expanding its support base among the revolutionary

terrorists who were in search of an alternative path for national

liberation. Clemens Palme Dutt was right in assessing that

. . . just as the Bolshevist Conspiracy trial at Cawnpore, during the

period of the Labour Government in 1924, denoted the beginning

and not the end of revolutionary consciousness and Communist

sympathy among Indian workers, so now the Meerut trial means

not the extinction of the Communist movement but a turning point

from which the period of struggle of the Indian working class for

leadership in the mass movement against imperialism takes on a

36
new and definite character.
 NINE

TOWARDS

AN ALL-INDIA

CENTRE
THE PERIOD FOLLOWING THE ARREST of the leading

communist organizers in the Meerut Conspiracy Case and the

subsequent repression had posed a serious challenge before the

communist movement in India. We have already discussed the political

and organizational implications of the Sixth Congress Theses on the

CPI and how the inexperienced party had to pass a tumultuous

period.

The situation before the communists was particularly challenging

when the party was all set to take a new course after the formation of

the All India Workers’ and Peasants’ Party in December 1928. As an

open political platform of the communists, the AIWPP got virtually no

time to settle down and implement its programme owing to the

sudden arrest of almost its entire leadership. It could not recover from

the blow and became defunct after the arrests, though no formal

decision was ever taken to dissolve the party as the Comintern

recommended.

The organizational condition of the CPI too was in the doldrums.

The party was yet to resolve the question whether it should function

as an open party or as an underground organization. The Meerut case

was imposed on the Indian communists at a time when, following the

Sixth Congress recommendation, they just began to ‘test’ the

possibility of forming an open centralized Communist Party. This was

discussed at the secret meeting of the CPI CEC held at Calcutta from

1
December 27 to 29, 1928. But before any step could be taken, even

before reaching a concrete decision in this regard, almost all top level

leaders were thrown behind bars, thereby resulting in organizational

gaps in all major centres of communist activities.

In Bengal, Abdul Halim was the only leading figure that the British

police did not put behind bars. In Madras, Singaravelu Chettiar came

out of jail after eighteen months in August 1930, when the Civil

Disobedience Movement was in full swing. He joined E.V.

Ramaswamy’s Self-Respect Movement and helped influence leftist

2
elements within it. Though he was not involved in open communist

activities, it is known that he had contact with Amir Haider Khan,

who before his arrest in 1932 was instrumental in revitalizing

communist organization in South India in particular. In Kanpur,

virtually no one was left to fill up the vacuum. In Lahore, the arrest of

Majid and Sehgal meant there was no one to fill their place. In

Bombay, S.V. Deshpande and B.T. Ranadive tried to keep the trade

union front going.

The Meerut arrests meant that the party ceased to function as an

all-India organization and small groups began to function as local

bodies, virtually isolated from each other. Therefore, the first

challenge was to build up an all India centre. Even before the Meerut

arrests, however, the party’s functioning as an all-India organization

was less than satisfactory.

The Meerut prisoners tried to utilize whatever limited opportunity

they had to intervene in national politics. They used the trial to

challenge colonial imperialism and influence the agenda of the

national liberation struggle. The trial also gave them an opportunity

to interact with each other on political issues and to hone their

theoretical understanding. Needless to say, programmatic

understanding is the key to the organizational and ideological

advancement of any Communist Party. The key issue that faced

communists was to work out the relationship with the national

bourgeoisie, and to determine their respective roles in the national

liberation struggle. The Sixth Congress of the Comintern did not help

matters, because it was responsible for the sectarianism and

indecisiveness of the party on certain issues.

Limited activities of the communists

Even after the Meerut arrests, communists continued to play a

significant political role, especially in the working class movement. At

the tenth session of the AITUC held in Nagpur from November 28–

December 1, 1929, the first since the Meerut arrests, the communist

trade unionists took a leading position. The Nagpur session, for the

first time, extended affiliation to the communist-dominated Girni

Kamgar Union (GKU) of Bombay with a membership of 40,000,

albeit after a heated debate. The session elected Subhas Chandra Bose

as President, and GKU secretary S.V. Deshpande, a communist from

Bombay, was elected General Secretary, in place of the reformist N.M.

Joshi.

The Girni Kamgar Union was established in Bombay in May 1928

at the initiative of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party. A.A. Alve, who

was previously the president of Girni Kamgar Mahamandal (a

moderate organization established in 1923), became president and

K.N. Joglekar became secretary. Communist leaders like R.S.

Nimbkar, S.V. Ghate, S.S. Mirjakar, B.F. Bradley and S.H. Jhabwala

were active in the GKU until their arrest in the Meerut case. Initially

starting with a membership of only 324, GKU grew rapidly and its

membership reached 54,000 by December 1928 and 65,000 by the

3
first quarter of 1929. When A.A. Alve was arrested in the Meerut

case he was succeed by G.L. Kandalkar, while S.V. Deshpande took

the place of K.N. Joglekar as secretary. In April 1929, trouble cropped

up over the dismissal of workers in the Wadia group of mills. The

GKU called a general strike on April 26, 1929. By May 1, 1929, the

4
strike had spread to 64 mills affecting 1,09,292 operatives. It was a

heroic struggle of the Bombay working class. The Bombay police

commissioner issued an order on July 12, 1929, prohibiting workers’

meetings. Deshpande and B.T. Ranadive violated the order on the

same day and were arrested. Soon GKU became the victim of

governmental repression. There were also differences within the ranks.

Reformists and pro-M.N. Roy trade unionists also took advantage to

spread their divisive activities. Ultimately, the GKU was divided in

5
1932, when a new Lal Bawta GKU was formed.

Meanwhile, the AITUC Nagpur session rejected the Motilal Nehru

Report ‘as a proposal by the Indian capitalist class for compromise

with British imperialism involving a partnership in the exploitation of

the working class and the perpetuation of the dominance of capitalism

over the people of India’. It declared that ‘the emancipation of the

working class in India cannot be achieved without the complete

political, economical independence of the country from British

imperialism and native feudal allies, abolition of capitalism and the

6
establishment of a workers’ republic’. The new mood of the working

class movement became evident in the rejection by the Nagpur session

of the Whitley Commission (the Royal Commission on Labour

appointed in July 1929) which was meant to cheat the people and was

to be an instrument in the hands of reformist leaders. The Session

further resolved to boycott the Simon Commission. Naturally, all this

was too much for the moderates to swallow.

The Nagpur session also witnessed the first split in the AITUC when

Chamanlal, V.V. Giri (later to become the President of India), R.R.

Bakhle, B. Shiva Rao and their associates decided to leave the AITUC

accusing it of being a ‘Moscow-inspired organization’. On December

1 they held a separate meeting and resolved forming a new

organization, the Indian Trade Union Federation (IFTU). The new

outfit openly announced that its proposed constitution ‘should contain

a clause excluding unions and men with communist tendencies, from

7
being affiliated to or represented in the Federation’.

It has been mentioned in a previous chapter how communists broke

away from the All India Trade Union Congress at its eleventh session

held in Calcutta from July 4 to 7, 1931. Presided over by Subhas

Chandra Bose, the session witnessed heated debate on many vital

issues. On July 6, the communist members of the Executive Council

consisting of B.T. Ranadive, Jalaluddin Bukhari, M.L. Jaywant,

Somnath Lahiri among others went out of the session and arranged a

separate meeting of the Executive Committee. They formed a new

trade union body, the All India Red Trade Union Congress with D.B.

Kulkarni as President, S.V. Deshpande, Bankim Mukherjee, and S.G.

Sardesai as General Secretaries and Dr. Bhupendranath Dutt as

8
Treasurer. The move was a sectarian mistake, and was corrected

later.

The communists had to resolutely fight against the opportunist and

divisive policies of the Royists, particularly on the trade union front.

Under leftist cloaks, they sought to capture the trade union

organizations so far dominated by the communists. They wanted to

utilize the vacuums created by the continued governmental repression

against the communists. In October 1933 the Royists formed the

9
Bombay Provincial Working Class Party to counter the communists.

Though centralized functioning of the party was absent,

communists tried their best to organize political activities. In Bombay,

the communist organizers were striving to revitalize different mass

organization like the Young Workers’ League, Marxist League and

Kamgar Vangmaya Prasarak Mandal, etc. They launched the Workers’

Weekly on March 20, 1930 with Deshpande as editor. The Young

Workers’ League was established in June 1930. Deshpande and B.T.

Ranadive played a prominent role in this. Its objects were to establish

a Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic and to enact the constitution of

India on socialistic principles. R.M. Jambhekar was appointed as the

organizing secretary and an office was opened in a room on the first

floor of Jaffrabad Building in Lal Bagh mill area of Bombay. The

Young Workers’ League became the main platform for communists in

Bombay. The League was instrumental in the establishment of a

publishing wing, the Kamgar Vangmaya Prasarak Mandal (Workers’

Literature Publishing Company) in 1931. In October 1931 its first

publication was brought out, a Marathi translation of The

Communist Manifesto. The Mandal also published a book on the

Paris Commune, a Marathi translation of Gorky’s Mother, and some

translations of Lenin’s and Stalin’s writings. Organizational problems

and differences plagued the League during 1932, but Adhikari revived

10
the activities of the League in early 1933, when he was out on bail.

In Punjab, the communists were active in the Kirti Kisan Party and

Naujawan Sabha. Muzaffar Ahmad recalls that Sohan Singh Josh and

Bhag Singh Canadian met him in November 1927 when they came to

attend the AITUC meeting in Kanpur, and spoke of their intention to

form a party of peasants and workers in Punjab. The party was

11
formed in April 1928. The Deshsewak, a newspaper based in

Jullundhar, reported the aims of the party to be:

 First, to liberate labourers and peasants from every kind of political,

economic and social serfdom and inculcate class warfare;

Secondly, to organize labourers and peasants to achieve complete

independence from British imperialism;

Thirdly, by means of mass action to set up a workers and peasants

Government which will nationalize land, factories, banks and

12
railways and to cancel all debts.

Feroz-ud-Din Mansur, a convict in Peshawar Conspiracy Case had

started a weekly, Kisan Mazdoor in January 1930.

In Madras Presidency, till his arrest in the Meerut Conspiracy Case

in May 1932, Amir Haider Khan fought almost a lone battle to

reorganize the communist groups. He arrived in Madras in March

1931 and succeeded in forming pro-communist groups in three textile

mills and organized the Young Workers’ League in Madras which

continued communist propaganda work in trying times. He also

maintained close contact with communists in Bombay. After

completing his jail sentence in 1934 Amir Haider Khan re-established

some of his old contacts. He had also influenced a few younger

Congressmen during his stay in jail. Among these were P. Sundarayya

to whose persistent discipline and untiring effort, the organization of

the Communist Party units in Madras and Andhra areas owes a lot. B.

Srinivasa Rao, another outstanding communist, was also one who

came over to Communism after his contact with Amir Haider Khan.

K. Bashyam, the artist, also helped to bring some of the later leaders

of the movement into contact with Amir Haider Khan. A confidential

Home Department report commented that: ‘Amir Haider Khan with

his recent training in methods of communist attack, was clearly a most

dangerous individual, and the fact that he was sentenced at the end of

the year to terms of imprisonment . . . gives cause for congratulation’.

13

In Bengal, Abdul Halim, a member of the CPI CEC, was arrested in

April 1930 for organizing the carters’ strike in Calcutta. He was

convicted and was released in January 1931. He was again jailed on

January 26, 1931, and was incarcerated for nearly a month. In line

with Comintern directives, the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party of Bengal

was virtually dissolved in mid-1931. According to a police report, a

new organization, the Bengal Krishak League was formed in July 1931

with Atul Gupta as president and Hemanta Kumar Sarkar as secretary.

By February 1932, Halim took the initiative to organize the Workers’

Party of India in Calcutta. But both organizations failed to make any

14
real impact.

The attempt to form a communist nucleus was taking shape by this

time. In early 1931, the CPI Calcutta Committee was formed with

Halim as secretary and Ranen Sen and Abani Chowdhury, among

others, as members. The CPI Calcutta Committee was later

15
transformed into the CPI Bengal Committee by November 1933. In

the same year, Halim took initiative to form Ganashakti Publishing

House. Until 1937–38, the Ganashakti Publishing House was the

centre of the Bengal communists. In fact the CPI Calcutta Committee

took initiative to publish a number of short-lived communist

periodicals in Bengali, such as weekly Chasi Majur (December 1931),

weekly Din Majur (September 1932), monthly Marxbadi (October

1933), and monthly Marx-panthi (November 1933).

Comintern’s initiatives

The role played by communists in India during 1929–33 cannot be

understood except in the context of international developments and

changes in the Comintern stand.

In the autumn of 1929, the USA was seized with a stock market

panic of unprecedented magnitude. The financial and banking crash

that spread to other countries was the first symptom of a world

economic crisis. The crisis of 1929–33 was not only the longest but

also the most destructive of its kind, which further aggravated the

general crisis of capitalism. But in this same period the Soviet Union

mooted and implemented the first five-year plan which astonished the
whole world and inspired the struggle for human emancipation

worldwide.

The Tenth Plenum of the Comintern Executive Committee met at

Moscow from July 3 to 19, 1929. After the end of the Sixth Congress,

this Plenum formulated some major policy formulations in relation to

the role of the communists in the colonies and semi-colonies. The

Tenth Plenum reiterated the left-sectarian stand already formulated by

the Sixth Congress. Kuusinen, the Comintern spokesman for India

criticized the Indian communists for their failure to consolidate a

communist party and to do ‘any really practical revolutionary work’

among the peasantry. Paul Schubin also spoke and criticized the

continued existence of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party. The Tenth

Plenum also endorsed the decision to expel Bukharin from the

Comintern and the CPSU (B).

The Eleventh Plenum, held in March–April 1931, emphasized the

growing contrast between the two systems, socialism and capitalism.

The Plenum stressed the necessity of stepping up the anti-war

movement by the communist parties. It stated that the principal task

of the communist parties ‘is to win the majority of the working class

as an essential condition for victory over the bourgeoisie and for

preparing the working class for the decisive battle for the dictatorship

16
of the proletariat’. Regarding anti-fascist mobilization, which was

gradually becoming a vital political issue before the world communist

movement, the Comintern could not overcome its sectarian stand. The

Eleventh Plenum stated that the development of social democracy ‘is

an uninterrupted process of evolution towards Fascism’, a stand that

the Comintern had to rectify subsequently. The Plenum asked the

communist parties to win the masses by conducting the fight along the

following points:

(i) against the capitalist offensive, against wage-cuts and mass

dismissals, for higher wages, for social insurance at the expense of

the employers and for immediate relief of the unemployed;

 (ii) against the bourgeois dictatorship in all its forms, against the

terror of the employers and police, for the liberty of revolutionary

workers’ organizations, for the disbanding and disarming of the

fascist organizations, for the creation of mass self-defence against

the fascists, for the organization of mass political strikes against the

political reaction of the bourgeois dictatorship;

(iii) against the preparations for imperialist war and anti-Soviet

military intervention, against intervention in the Soviet areas of

17
China.

At the time of the Twelfth Plenum (August–September 1932) the

principal issue before the Comintern was the urgent necessity of

rallying the masses to confront the attacks of crisis driven capitalism

18
and increasingly aggressive fascistic machination. In his report at

the Plenum, Kuusinen called upon the communist parties to mobilize

the people on the basis of a united workers’ front policy stressing on

‘the immediate practical aims of the present class-struggles of the

proletariat, the actual action slogans of communist policy . . . not the

principles of communist programme which are, yet, incomprehensible

to the non-party and reformist workers, but which ought to be

popularized among them during the course of the actual partial

struggles’. The Twelfth Plenum was the beginning of the Comintern’s

journey towards a united front policy, eventually adopted at the

Seventh Congress of the Comintern in 1935.

The Comintern also took active interest in helping Indian

communists organize themselves and took the initiative to send

emissaries. However, Comintern emissaries could not do any

substantive work due to the tougher stand of the government and

organizational fragility of the party. In early 1930, Comintern sent

Prem Lal Singh to India. He stayed for few months before returning to

Moscow. He did manage to visit Meerut and meet the undertrials

there. After that, the American communists William N. Kweit and his

wife Helen Bowlen arrived. Another communist organizer from the

USA, Harry Somers, joined them in July 1930. They tried their best to
reorganize Bombay-based communist groups. But by September 1930

19
they were detected and deported from India. Another American

communist, Henry G. Lynd, stayed in India for about a year. Two

Canadians, Johan Magnes Clark and William Bennett, stayed for a

20
year as well. But soon they were put under arrest and deported.

Draft Platform of Action

While the Meerut trial was on, the CPI came out with its Draft

21
Platform of Action, before the General Statement was placed in

Meerut. Copies of the Draft Platform were widely circulated at the

Karachi session of the Indian National Congress in March 1931.

Basing itself on Marxism-Leninism, it broke with the policy of

bourgeois-feudal outlook and linked the success of anti-imperialist

struggle with the agrarian revolution and the abolition of all social

inequalities. It linked this battle with that against imperialism, and

called on all sections to join the freedom struggle. Never before had

India seen such a revolutionary document directly addressing the

problems of all sections of Indian people, as well as the immediate

needs of the revolutionary struggles to overthrow the British rule. The

Draft Platform declared the ‘guiding principles’ of the CPI to be:

‘Firmly and courageously, and notwithstanding any sacrifices the

Communist Party will defeat, the disorganizing and treacherous work

of the national reformists, it will organize the masses of the workers

and peasants and lead them to victory over imperialism and take the

lead in the further march towards socialism.’

Adopting these as its guiding principles, the CPI sought to advance

the following ‘main objects for the present stage’ of the Indian

revolution:

1. The complete independence of India by the violent overthrow of

British rule. The cancellation of all debts. The confiscation and

nationalization of all British factories, banks, railways, sea and river

transport and plantations.

 2. Establishment of a Soviet Government. The realization of the

right of national minorities to self-determination including

separation. Abolition of the native states. The creation of an Indian

Federal workers’ and peasants’ Soviet Republic.

3. The confiscation without compensation of all the lands, forests

and other property of the landlords, ruling princes, churches, the

British Government, officials and money-lenders, and handing over

for use to the toiling peasantry. Cancellation of slave agreements

and all the indebtedness of the peasantry to money-lenders and

banks.

4. The 8-hour working day and the radical improvement of

conditions of labour. Increase in wages and State maintenance for

the unemployed.

The Platform declared:

In order to destroy the slavery of Indian people and emancipate the

working class and the peasants from the poverty which is crushing

them down, it is essential to win the independence of the country

and to raise the banner of agrarian revolution which would smash

the system of landlordism surviving from the middle ages and would

cleanse the whole of the land from the medieval rubbish. An

agrarian revolution against British capitalism and landlordism must

be basis for the revolutionary emancipation of India.

Despite some serious mistakes the Platform was qualitatively

different from what the Congress and other bourgeois-landlord parties

were preaching. The document broke with the bourgeois-feudal

outlook and linked the ultimate success of the national liberation

struggle and into anti-imperialist spirit with the agrarian revolution

and the abolition of all sorts of inequalities imposed by the old system.

As B.T. Ranadive explains:

 Never before did India see such a revolutionary document directly

addressed to the problems of all sections of the Indian people and

the immediate needs of revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of

British rule. . . .

The Platform demanded the abolition of rank, caste, national and

communal privileges, and full equality of all citizens irrespective of

sex, religion and race; complete separation of religion from the state

and the expulsion of missionaries as direct agents of imperialists,

with confiscation of their properties.

The communist Platform, for the first time in India, linked India’s

struggle with the international struggle of the working class, and

made people aware that the international movement, led by the

Communist Party, was fighting the common enemy of all the

peoples, that the great October Revolution had opened up a new era

22
for the national liberation movement.

However, the Platform also contained serious mistakes and wrong

notions about the role of the Indian bourgeoisie. This arose from the

understanding imparted by the Colonial Theses adopted in the Sixth

Congress:

Linked up, as it is, with the system of landlordism and usury and

terrified at the thought of a revolutionary insurrection of the toiling

masses, capitalist class has long ago betrayed the struggle for

independence of the country and the radical solution of the agrarian

problem. . . . The greatest threat of the victory of Indian revolution

is the fact that great masses of our people still harbour illusions

about the National Congress, and have not realized that it

represents a class organization of capitalists working against the

fundamental interests of the toiling masses of our country. . . . The

most harmful and dangerous obstacle to the victory of the Indian

revolutions is agitation carried on by the ‘Left’ elements of National

Congress led by Jawaharlal Nehru, Bose, Ginwala and others, under

the cloak of revolutionary phraseology they carry on bourgeois

 policy of confusing and disorganizing the revolutionary struggle of

the masses, and helping the Congress to come to an understanding

23
with British imperialism.

The formulation emphasized the necessity of ruthless war against

‘left’ national reformists to isolate them from the masses. It called

upon the toilers to form a united front against imperialism, landlords,

moneylenders, and capitalists. Therefore, instead of merely an anti-

imperialist united front, the Platform talked of the formation of a

front against imperialism, feudalism and capitalism. It is not

accidental, therefore, that the Platform also spoke of the formation of

Soviet power in its programme. The Platform rejected the possibility

of the national bourgeoisie’s participation in the anti-imperialist

struggle.

This understanding led to sectarian attitude in early 1930s, which

did great damage to the Party’s image amongst the people leading to

misunderstanding about its revolutionary outlook. These mistakes

were corrected later, after the Seventh Congress of the Communist

International in 1935.

Meerut General Statement

The perception of communists in India had its reflection in the

General Statement of the Meerut prisoners. Notwithstanding the

sectarianism of the Sixth Congress, the communist prisoners made a

serious and objective attempt to give the party a positive direction. Dr

Adhikari’s observation is significant: ‘the keynote of their court

declarations was the first for uniting the working class in militant

trade unions, for building anti-imperialist front by working inside the

National Congress to fight reformism, compromise and revolutionize

24
the national independence movement.’

Regarding the nature of revolution the General Statement says that

the revolution ‘must comprehend’ three ‘principal elements’:

 1. The most obvious is that it will secure national independence,

political independence, which involves the overthrow of British rule

and the establishment of a completely independent national State,

and economic independence, which means the expropriation of all

foreign debts, etc. Only in this way can the ruinous exploitation of

India be stopped, and the way prepared for a general advance of the

productive forces.

2. All the feudal and semi-feudal institutions in the land system

(landlordism) and in the State (the Indian States) will be abolished

completely. As we have seen these are parts of the Imperialist

exploiting system, which must go when that system goes. But they

further constitute a tremendous obstacle to the advance of

agriculture and the rural population, and so must be abolished.

3. It is clear that the revolution must be a popular one. In the

circumstances of India at present, it cannot be confined to a mere

replacement of one exploiting ruling class by another. It must

achieve some form of popular democratic rule and the opening up

for the people of immediate possibilities of advance in the matters,

which touch them nearly, in sanitation, health, housing, education,

and social and cultural advance generally. In short the revolution in

India will be of the nature of the bourgeois democratic revolution,

25
modified by the conditions of a colonial country.

Regarding the role of the Indian bourgeoisie in relation to the

revolution, the General Statement took a categorical stand:

. . . although the revolution may be of bourgeois democratic type it

does not necessarily follow that it will be carried through or led by

the bourgeois class itself. The situation in India and the position of

the bourgeoisie leads us to conclude that this is the case here: the

bourgeoisie will not lead the national revolution. . . . Nevertheless

we consider that the Indian bourgeoisie is not objectively capable of

pursuing a revolutionary policy. The main reasons for this are as

follows:
 1. The close association of British and Indian capital in Indian

industry. . . .

2. The dependence of Indian merchant capital on export and

import, which is largely concerned with British goods or is

controlled by British interests. . . .

3. The close connection between the Indian bourgeoisie and the

indisputably loyalist landowning interest. . . .

4. The general weakness and backwardness and the deeply divided

character of Indian capitalism. It has not even a single united

political party. Its forces are divided among the Congress, the

Liberal Federation and various communal and other organizations,

which reflect real differences of interest in some cases, though they

are able to come together on certain issues, namely in the All Parties

Conference and the boycott of the Simon Commission. . . . The

bourgeois class in short is too weak, and their interests are bound

up too closely with both British Imperialism and Indian feudalism,

while the contradiction between its interest and those of the masses,

its only possibly revolutionary allies, and are too direct to enable it

to embark upon a policy of revolutionary overthrow of British rule.

(pp. 213–14)

It further asserts that

the Indian bourgeoisie cannot pursue a revolutionary policy. It may

act for a time in more or less vigorous opposition to Imperialism but

it can never go to the point of revolution against Imperialism. In its

actual political activity it is normally as much concerned to check

the beginnings of the revolutionary movement of the masses as it is

to oppose the Government; and when seriously threatened by the

mass revolution, it will become directly and actively counter-

revolutionary, and will join with Imperialism against the masses.

The claims of the bourgeoisie to represent and lead the whole of the

nation are untenable. The bourgeoisie represents for a time a force

wavering and vacillating between the counter-revolutionary bloc of

 Imperialism and its allies, the princes and landlords and the loyal

upper classes, and the revolutionary bloc of the workers and

peasants and the town poor, the petty bourgeoisie and the

revolutionary youths. It vacillates for a time between the two great

camps of revolution and counter-revolution, assisting to a certain

extent, especially in the early stages, in the growth of the

revolutionary movement, but later coming more and more to

hamper its growth, to confuse the issue and mislead it, and

eventually, as the revolution gathers strength, finding itself forced to

line up more and more definitely with the force of counter-

revolution. In regard to the ultimately counter-revolutionary role of

the national bourgeoisie there can be no doubt. (p. 219)

Regarding compromising attitude of the Indian bourgeoisie it said:

We conclude therefore that there is no objective basis for a lasting

compromise really satisfactory to the aspirations of the Indian

bourgeoisie. Compromise of a permanent character will come, it at

all, only when the mass revolutionary movement drives the

bourgeoisie into open counter-revolutionary alliance with

Imperialism (the temporary) Irwin-Gandhi Pact has been set at

naught by Imperialism within a very short time after its adoption.

The recent developments do not change the view expressed by us at

all. On the contrary, they strengthen our arguments. . . . There is no

objective basis for a final compromise. The compromise, which may

be reached, will be a surface compromise only, based on no real

concessions by Imperialism. And in time the Indian bourgeoisie will

find this out, as did the Egyptians. The result will be the same – a

temporary lull in the struggle and resumed conflict later, with the

bourgeoisie in a more difficult position, owing to its error of having

fallen into the Imperialist trap. (p. 228)

While discussing on the ‘Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Front’ it

said:
We have established that the bourgeoisie cannot lead the Indian

revolution; and that it stands in a position separate from the

revolutionary classes in Indian society, and must ultimately oppose

the revolution. We believe also that the petty bourgeoisie cannot

lead the revolution. This class, especially the urban petty

bourgeoisie certainly includes large sections, which are objectively

interested in the success of the revolution; and will gain by it. But . .

. we fully agree the petty bourgeoisie as a class is incapable of

leading the revolution. . . . Owing to its position it is not able easily,

as the working-class is to appreciate the real nature of the present

economic and political system. It ends to present a system of society

to itself in personal terms, as its own existence is an individualist

one. Hence the most consistent and determined revolutionary policy

which the petty-bourgeoisie as such develops is terrorism. And, as

we have pointed out repeatedly terrorism as a revolutionary policy

is generally entirely useless. The petty-bourgeoisie is not united as a

class, is insufficiently capable of being organized, and has not

sufficiently clearcut interests to act as the powerful united driving

force which is required for the leadership of the revolution. It is not

a class which can take the lead. It can only be led . . . .

As we have stated in dealing with the working-class movement,

individuals from the petty-bourgeois class can and do perform

useful service for the mass revolution, but not as members of that

class. They do this service only by bringing their technical

qualifications and using them in the organization and preparation of

the masses for revolution in the spirit of the working-class political

policy.

This is why we have always devoted considerable attention to the

Youth Movement, the organization of the petty-bourgeoisie, and to

the National Congress. We have pointed out to them that the

historical role of their class in spite of its revolutionary enthusiasm

is betrayal of the revolution and that in order to serve the revolution

genuinely as large a section of them as possible must come over to a

conscious service of the mass revolution. We have done this by

exposing the reformism of the national bourgeoisie on the one hand

 and on the other the inability of the petty-bourgeoisie as a class to

break loose from the leadership of the bourgeoisie. . . . (pp. 234–37)

The revolution for which we were striving, as we have just

explained at some length, and for which the W.P.P. stood, as its

publications show, was the national revolution. We want the

freedom of India from British Imperialism, and, as we have

explained again and again, we could work on the basis of a ‘united

front’ with any others who stand for Independence, or even with

people who pretend to stand for independence, but do not mean it,

such as the leaders of the ill-fated and short-lived Independence

League. It is case of sheer misrepresentation to state that the

revolution for which we are striving is anti-national. (p. 255)

In this context, it also makes a comparison between the Indian

bourgeoisie and the Chinese bourgeoisie:

The situation in India is somewhat different from that in China.

Here we are convinced, as a result of an economic study which we

have already sketched and as a result of political experience that the

bourgeoisie is incapable of playing even the revolutionary part

which the Chinese bourgeoisie did. Its position is no more than one

of opposition, peaceful and non-violent opposition to Imperialism,

but ultimately violent opposition to revolution. Hence our tactics in

relation to the bourgeois reformists are not those of alliance but of

criticism and opposition. But this line we take not in the interest of

any ulterior policy but in the interest of the national revolution. (p.

256)

Three Party letter

Whatever be the merit of this assessment the party was not in a

position to mobilize the people in its favour and its isolation from the

mainstream national movement continued. The Comintern kept a

close watch on the developments in India. How important the Indian

situation was is evident in an ‘open letter’ issued jointly by

Communist Parties of China, Great Britain and Germany. The letter

sought to address the challenge before the CPI for revitalizing its

activities. The open letter was first published in the Comintern organ

26
Inprecor dated 19 May 1932. Though issued in the name of three

communist parties, the ‘suggestions’ had full endorsement of the

Comintern. The letter helped Indian communists in their effort to

restore the unity of the Party.

The letter felt that

The general picture of the communist movement is not satisfactory.

On the one hand, there is a tremendous development of the working

class movement which is unprecedented in the past. On the other

hand, the Communist Party as yet consists of small number (though

the number is increasing) of weak groups, often isolated from the

masses, disconnected with each other, politically not united and in

some places not clearly differentiated from national reformism,

adopting a conciliatory policy towards it. . . . Lagging behind the

Communist vanguard must be rapidly and most decisively

overcome. This is the first and the most important task for all those

honest communist revolutionaries who stand by the platform of

action of the CPI.

The letter made a ‘distinction’ between the ‘bourgeois Congress

leadership and those sections of the workers, peasants and

revolutionary elements of the town’s petty bourgeoisie’ who for lack

of proper understanding of the ‘treacherous character’ of the Congress

followed it. It suggested that it is ‘necessary’ for the communists in

India to participate in all mass demonstrations organized by the

Congress, and coming forward with their own ‘Communist slogans

and agitation’.

The letter summed up that ‘the slogan of an all India illegal,

centralized Communist Party, ideologically and organizationally

united, a true section of the Comintern, fighting for the platform of

action of the Communist Party of India and programme of the

Comintern must become the central slogan for gathering and forming

the Party and for the struggle against wavering, against a tendency of

keeping to isolated circles, against toning down.’

Evidently, the letter was based on the understanding of the Platform

of Action and the Sixth Congress Theses but demarcated from it in

one respect, that is, the necessity of participating in mass actions

organized by the National Congress and not to allow the Communist

Party to be isolated from the mainstream. It categorically emphasized

on the unity of the Party.

However, the open letter was not enough to correct the mistakes

and sectarian stand of the CPI. Despite the party’s efforts of revival it

could not do away with the proposition of negating the role of the

national bourgeoisie in the struggle for freedom. The main emphasis

of the communists was on the exposure of the bourgeoisie rather than

the participation of the party in mass actions, the civil disobedience

movement. Efforts to give effect to the suggestions of the open letter

were taken up after the release of first batch of the Meerut prisoners.

Appeal of the Calcutta Committee (March 1933)

The three parties’ letter helped initiate introspection among

communist ranks in India. A reference to the letter is found in the

‘Manifesto of the CPI to the Revolutionary Intellectuals and to the

Workers and Peasants’ put out by the Calcutta Committee of the CPI

27
in March 1933. Saroj Mukherjee recalls that the manifesto was

drafted by Somnath Lahiri with inputs from Abdul Halim, Dr Ranen

28
Sen, Abani Chowdhury and others. Copies of the manifesto were

sent to different parts of India and abroad, and communist groups

from various provinces met in Calcutta at the end of 1933. In the

meanwhile, the Calcutta Committee published the first issue of its

organ, The Communist, in September 1933.

The Calcutta Committee manifesto was aware that

communist movement in India has reached such a stage of

development that it is absolutely necessary to raise resolutely and

 firmly the standard of struggle for an All Indian Communist Party,

for uniting and welding together all the individual communists and

isolated groups, for the organizational and ideological unity of the

Communist ranks, utilizing and developing at the same time the

initiative from below to form and develop new local groups and

organizations.

The appeal reveals the self-critical mood of the group. It candidly

admitted that the party had ‘committed many mistakes in the past’.

But above all, the appeal reflects a conviction when it says, ‘let us put

the interest of the proletariat above everything else and direct all our

efforts towards the rapid formation of the communist party’.

Though the Calcutta Committee appeal did not in any way reflect

the stand of all groups who were active in various parts of India, the

move drew attention of all concerned.

The Communist Party of China wrote an ‘Open Letter’ dated July

16, 1933, to Indian communists, which was published in Inprecor on

November 24, 1933. In this letter, the CPC appreciated the move of

the Calcutta Committee and commented that it ‘energetically took up

29
the call for the formation of an All India Committee’.

Reorganizing the Central Committee

It was not till middle of August 1933 when the first of the Meerut

prisoners were released, that anything in nature of a serious attempt of

reorganization was made. In the meantime Dr Adhikari, who was

released on bail in early 1933, pending his appeal, played a prominent

role in mobilizing various Marxist and leftist groups in different parts

of India towards re-forming a united party.

In December 1933, an all India conference was convened in

30
Calcutta by the communists in Bengal. Dr Adhikari, Abdul Halim,

Somnath Lahiri, Dr Ranen Sen, P.C. Joshi (UP), S.G. Patkar (Bombay),
M.L. Jaywant (Nagpur), and Gurdip Singh (Punjab) took part in the

deliberations. The meeting was important on three accounts:

(i) the Provisional Central Committee of the CPI was elected;

(ii) the Draft Provisional Statute was adopted; and

(iii) the Draft Political Theses were adopted.

Dr Adhikari was elected secretary. It was decided to reorganize the

Provisional Committee as early as possible. In spite of its similarity

with the Draft Political Action (December 1930), a closer study

reveals that due weightage was given by the CPI to the three parties’

letter and the ‘Open Letter’ of the CPC in the Draft Political Theses.

Saroj Mukerjee, who worked as a volunteer during the Conference

records that the five-day conference was held in different places. It

was inaugurated in a room at the upper floor of Amjadia Hotel at

Jakaria Street in central Calcutta. To evade police raid, the second day

it was held at Komedan Bagan Lane in central Calcutta. On the third

day, it shifted to Dr Ranen Sen’s quarter at Manicktala Hospital. The

last two days were spent in Howrah in an adjoining room of a mosque

31
near the Fish Market; the maulavi was Dr Sen’s friend.

The Comintern leadership seemed to endorse the decision of the

Calcutta meeting, since it published in 1934 two important documents

in its organ, Inprecor: the Draft Provisional Statute on May 11 and

32
the Draft Political Theses on July 20, 1934. Basically keeping

within the framework of the Draft Platform of 1930, the Draft Theses

made an attempt to correct the sectarian line. It admitted that the

‘refusal to see the economic conflict between the nationalist

bourgeoisie and British imperialism’ led to an ‘under-estimation of the

nationalist bourgeois influence on the masses’. It admitted that during

the Civil Disobedience Movement, 1930–31, communists did not

realize the full significance of the movement and kept themselves

isolated from the struggle of the masses, which was ‘a sectarian

deviation’. It also called for a united anti-imperialist front under

proletarian leadership and said, ‘the Communist Party must win the

leadership in the anti-imperialist movement of the masses’.

The Draft Political Theses, adopted by the provisional CC of the

CPI stressed on the necessity of building ‘a centralized, disciplined,

united mass underground Communist Party’, as its ‘chief and basic

task’ and called up ‘all advanced workers and revolutionaries devoted

to the cause of the working class to join the rank of the Communist

Party, now being built in order to fight to carry on the historic tasks of

Indian revolution’.

With the approval of the Draft Theses, the CPI got formal affiliation

to the Comintern. With this, the communist movement in India

embarked on a new course.

 TEN

SUMMING UP
THE COMMUNIST MOVEMENT IN INDIA developed and took an

organized shape in the midst of the turbulent period of the freedom

struggle. Communism in India was a product of the radical impetus

coming out of the national liberation struggle catalyzing with the

impact of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917. Though the

Communist Party of India was first organized abroad, in Tashkent, by

émigré Indian revolutionaries, the formation of the Party was not an

isolated event, unconnected to developments within the country. The

seeds of class politics and the ideology of scientific socialism sprouted

in the soil of the subcontinent once the message of the October

Revolution reached its shores. The awakening of national

consciousness and the realities of colonialism prepared the social and

political grounds for embracing the theory of Marxism-Leninism. The

developments in India, the jewel in the crown of the British empire,

had attracted the attention of Marx and Engels when they were

engaged in formulating the theory of scientific socialism.

After its formation in 1919, the Communist International

(Comintern) took special interest in Indian affairs. The world

communist movement came out in open and unqualified support for

the struggle of the Indian people and sought to mobilize opinion

around the world in support of the national liberation struggle. The

Comintern’s role in support of the Indian freedom struggle was

consistent, even though it failed in the early period to fully grasp the

role of various classes in the independence struggle and formulate an

appropriate strategy. In fact, the Comintern and the fledgling

communist groups within the country demanded complete

independence for India even earlier than the Indian National

Congress.

The formation of the Party in Tashkent was followed by communist

groups springing up in important centres like Calcutta, Bombay,

Lahore and Madras. The British colonial regime sensed the danger

posed by the rudimentary communist activities and the revolutionary

message coming from Moscow. From the very outset, the British rulers

unleashed repression on the communist groups and activists. The

conspiracy cases against the communists in Peshawar, Lahore and

Kanpur were meant not to crush an organized movement but to

suppress the very possibility of communism taking root in India. In

fact, no other stream in India’s national liberation struggle suffered

from colonial repression as much as the communists during the period

covered in the present volume, 1920 to 1933.

From the beginning, the communist movement brought with it its

strong ideological moorings and this aided the process of the political

maturity of the national struggle. In other words, the communist

movement influenced virtually all other streams, particularly the

radical ones. This contributed immensely to the rise of radical trends

even inside the Congress in the post-First World War period. The

militant and consistent anti-imperialist stand of the communists

attracted the various revolutionary currents and fighters to join their

ranks. Among them were the Gadar fighters of Punjab, the colleagues

of Bhagat Singh, the revolutionaries of Bengal, the militant working

class fighters of Bombay and Madras presidencies and radical anti-

imperialist Congressmen from different parts of the country.

Communists played the principal role in transforming the demand

for independence from the vaguely-enunciated idea of Swaraj to a pro-

people concept of freedom not just from the colonial regime, but also

from social and economic exploitation and sectarian strife. In this

manner, communists brought about a fundamental change in the

framework and agendas of the freedom struggle. Despite its

organizational limitations, the CPI, guided by the Comintern, forced

attention on the class exploitation of workers and peasants. The

communists were the first to organize these classes.

It was the CPI which played a pioneering role in linking India’s

national struggle to the world-wide anti-imperialist movement which

added a new dimension to the movement.

However, the communist movement could have achieved more in its

early phase but for its mistakes in working out the correct relationship

with the national bourgeoisie, especially in the late 1920s. The

sectarian stand of the communists restricted the Party’s growth. The

left-sectarian stand of the Comintern, particularly after the Sixth

Congress in 1928, had a negative impact on the Indian communist

movement and isolated the Party from the main current of the anti-

colonial movement. The Party lost some vital opportunities to

intervene in popular movements such as the Civil Disobedience

Movement and thereby put its alternative agenda before the masses.

Though discarded by the Sixth Comintern Congress, the experiment

of organizing Workers’ and Peasants’ Parties in the second half of the

1920s helped prepare the ground for a nation-wide communist

movement.

The Meerut conspiracy case implicated all the prominent

communist leaders of the period. The trial provided a common

platform for all the communist groups to sit together for a relatively

long time and to initiate the process of self-introspection. The Meerut

Solidarity Movement showed the potential might of the working class

in defying the colonial system. The Party took a new turn politically

and organizationally at a time when the Civil Disobedience Movement

had failed to yield desired results. It took nearly thirteen years, after

1920, to organize a workable all India Party Centre. The

reorganization of the CPI central committee at the fag end of 1933,

after the release of the Meerut detenues, was crucial not only for the

communist movement, but also for other streams of India’s freedom

struggle at a time of irreversible transition. The national movement

itself entered a new phase after 1933–34, and the communists, despite

severe governmental oppression and the ban, contributed immensely

to it.
NOTES
 1 Introduction

1 E.M.S. Namboodiripad, National Question in Kerala, Bombay 1952, p. 102.

2 Sumit Sarkar, Modern India: 1885–1947, Macmillan, New Delhi 1983, pp.

56–57.

3 ‘Sanskritzation’ refers to efforts of caste groups to move up the social

hierarchy by taking on some of the practices of their social superiors. See M.N.

Srinivas, Village, Caste, Gender and Method, Oxford University Press, New

Delhi 1996.

4 E.M.S. Namboodiripad, A History of Indian Freedom Struggle, Social Science

Press, Trivandrum 1986, p. 40.

5 Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, p. 44.

6 Engel’s letter to Karl Kautsky, September 12 , 1882, quoted in R.P. Dutt, India

Today, Manisha, Calcutta, 1983, p. 95.

7 Karl Marx, ‘The British Rule in India’, in Marx and Engels, The First Indian

War of Independence, 1857–1859, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1978, p. 14;

also reproduced in On the National and Colonial Questions, edited by Aijaz

Ahmad, LeftWord, New Delhi 2001, p. 62.

8 Marx, ‘The British Rule in India’, The First Indian War of Independence, p.

18; On the National and Colonial Questions, edited by Aijaz Ahmad, p. 65.

9 Karl Marx, ‘Future Results of British Rule in India’, On the National and

Colonial Questions, edited by Aijaz Ahmad, LeftWord, New Delhi 2001, p. 73.

10 Karl Marx, ‘The Revolt in the Indian Army’, in Marx and Engels, First Indian

War of Independence, p. 36; On the National and Colonial Questions, edited

by Aijaz Ahmad, pp. 76–77.

11 Karl Marx, First Indian War of Independence, p. 8–9.

12 For a discussion of Rammohun’s contribution to the cause of social reform,

see E.M.S. Namboodiripad, History of Indian Freedom Struggle, pp. 98–101.

13 Letter to N.F. Danielson, February 19, 1881, On the National and Colonial

Questions, p. 104. Emphases in original.

14 Somprakash, dated 28 Falgun 1279 B.S. and 1 Pous 1280 B.S.

15 ‘Samya’, Bankim Rachanabali, Vol. II, Patraj Publications, Calcutta 1983.

Translated from the original Bengali.

16 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Socialism’, published in Sadhana, May 1893, Rabindra

Rachanabali, Vol. 17, Vishwabharati, Calcutta 2000, pp. 687–88.

17 Aurobindo Ghosh, New Lamps for Old, cited in Chinmohan Sehanabis, Rusi

Biplab O Prabasi Bharatiya Biplabi, Manisha, Calcutta 1973, p. 18–19.

18 Vivekananda, Works, Vol. IV, p. 180, quoted in Gautam Chattopadhyay,

Communism and Bengal’s Freedom Movement, Vol. I, People’s Publishing

House, New Delhi 1970, p. 6.

19 Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, p. 72.

20 Ibid., pp. 72–73.

21 J.V. Naik, ‘Lokmanya Tilak on Karl Marx and Class Conflict’, Economic and

Political Weekly, May 1, 1999.

22 Ibid.

23 L.P. Sinha, The Left-Wing in India (1919–47), New Publishers, Muzaffarpur

1965, p. 15.

24 Sehanabis, Rus-Biplab O Prabasi Bharatiya Biplabi, pp. 56–57.

25 Bhupendranath Dutta, Aprakasita Rajnaitik Itihas, New Nababharat, Calcutta

1983.

26 For details, see Sohan Singh Josh, Hindustan Gadar Party: A Short History,

Vol. II, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi 1978.

2 Formation of the Communist Party

1 See Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–91,

Vintage, New York 1996.

2 For the Montford Reforms and their background, see S.R. Mehrotra, ‘The

Politics behind the Montagu Declaration of 1917’ in C.H. Philips (ed.), Politics

and Society in India, London 1963.

3 See V.N. Dutt (ed.), New Light on the Punjab Disturbances, Delhi 1974.

4 Prem Sagar Gupta, A Short History of All India Trade Union Congress, 1920–

47, AITUC, New Delhi 1980, p.12. Sukomal Sen writes on this event: ‘Mr B.P.

Wadia accidentally happened to be its founder and first president.’ Sukomal

Sen, Working Class of India: History of Emergence and Movement, 1830–70,

K.P. Bagchi, Calcutta 1997, p. 130.

5 Ravinder Kumar, ‘The Bombay Textile Strike, 1919’, Indian Economic and

Social History Review, March 1971, and R.P. Dutt, India Today, pp. 332–40.

6 For details on the muhajirs, L.P. Sinha, Left-Wing in India. See also Shaukat

Usmani, Historic Trips of a Revolutionary (Sojourn in the Soviet Union),

Sterling, New Delhi 1977; Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party

of India, 1920–29, National Book Agency, Calcutta 1970; M.A. Persits,

Revolutionaries of India in Soviet Russia, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1973;

R.A. Ulyanovsky (ed.), The Comintern and the East, Progress Publishers,
 Moscow 1979; and G. Adhikari (ed.), Documents of the History of the

Communist Party of India, Vol. I, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi 1971.

7 Amrita Bazar Patrika, December 15, 1919.

8 Muzaffar Ahmad, Kazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha, National Book Agency,

Calcutta 1965, pp. 42–43. Nazrul Islam was then serving in the army and was

stationed at Karachi (1918).

9 Gautam Chattopadhyay, Communism and Bengal’s Freedom Movement,

Calcutta 1970, p. 20.

10 Sohan Singh Josh, Hindustan Gadar Party, Vol. II, p. 195. Lala Lajpat Rai,

affectionately known as the Lion of the Punjab, was severely beaten up by the

police at Lahore during the agitation against the Simon Commission and died

shortly afterwards. He was the first President of AITUC in 1920.

11 Sohan Singh Josh, Hindustan Gadar Party, Vol. II, p. 196.

12 For details on Aaj, see Jayantanuj Banerjee, Indian Nationalism vs

International Communism, Calcutta 1966, pp. 195–201. It goes without saying

that once Aurobindo became known as a spiritual icon, he did not accept

Bolshevism or communist ideology. See Aurobindo Ghosh, The Ideal of Human

Unity, Pondicherry 1950.

13 Shashi Bairathi, Communism and Nationalism in India: A Study in Inter-

Relationship, 1919–47, Anamika Prakashan, New Delhi 1987.

14 Sohan Singh Josh, Hindustan Gadar Party, Vol. II, pp. 106–07.

15 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1919–24, Calcutta 1971, p. 2.

16 File 405, Serial No. 1–3, West Bengal State Archives.

17 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1919–1924, pp. 11–13.

18 Ibid., pp. 12–13, 35–37.

19 Gupta, A Short History, p. 15.

20 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1919–1924, p. 19.

21 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, pp. 9–10.

22 For more details on the Indian revolutionary abroad, see Persits,

Revolutionaries of India; Panchanan Saha, The Russian Revolution and the

Indian Patriots, Calcutta 1987; and Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, pp. 1–

75. Also see Bhupendranath Dutta, Aprakasita Rajnaitik Itihas, Calcutta 1953.

23 Persits, Revolutionaries of India, p. 38.

24 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, pp. 12–14. The Khairi brothers were not

communists, and even after their visit to Moscow, there was no change in their

Pan-Islamist beliefs. Much later, during the Second World War, they were

arrested in India as ‘Nazi agents’.

25 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, p. 16. See also Persits, Revolutionaries of

India, pp. 39–40.

26 Persits, Revolutionaries of India, p. 48.

27 Ibid., p. 42.

28 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, p. 39.

29 Collected Works of Lenin, Vol. 31, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1977, p. 138.

The letter was originally published in Pravda, May 20, 1920.

30 Persits, Revolutionaries of India, p. 58.

31 For details, see Jane Degras, The Communist International, 1919–43:

Documents I, Oxford 1956.

32 For the full text, see Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, pp. 151–55.

33 Information concerning Indian representation has been compiled from several

official accounts of the Second Congress including The Second Congress of the

Communist International, Proceedings, Moscow 1920, p. 500, cited in G.

Overstreet and M. Windmiller, Communism in India, Perennial Press, Bombay

1960, p. 27; and Persits, Revolutionaries of India, pp. 124–25.

34 V.I. Lenin, ‘Preliminary Draft Theses on National and Colonial Questions’,

Collected Works, Vol. 31, Progress Publishers, Moscow, pp. 144–51.

35 Persits, Revolutionaries of India, p. 174.

36 Ibid., p. 171.

37 Ibid., p. 172.

38 M.N. Roy, Memoirs, Allied, Bombay 1964, p. 395.

39 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, pp. 231–32.

40 M.N. Roy, Memoirs, p. 465.

41 Persits, Revolutionaries of India, p. 200.

42 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, p. 55.

3 Spread of communist activities

1 Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, p. 249.

2 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1919–1924, p. 27.

3 R.P. Dutt, India Today, Calcutta 1983, p. 341.

4 K. Murugesan and C.S. Subramanyam, Singaravelu – First Communist in

South India, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi 1975, p. 158.

5 Master Hari Singh, Punjab Peasants in Freedom Struggle, Vol. II, People’s

Publishing House, New Delhi 1984.

6 For more details on peasant struggles of the time, see A.R. Desai (ed.), Peasant

Struggles in India, Bombay 1979, and D.N. Dhanagare, Peasant Movements in

India, 1920–50, Delhi 1983.

7 S.A. Dange, When Communists Differ, quoted by G. Adhikari, ‘The Comintern

Congresses and the CPI’, Marxist Miscellany, No. 2, People’s Publishing House,

New Delhi 1971, p. 5.

8 Persits, Revolutionaries of India, p. 258.

9 Sehanabis, Rusi Biplab o Prabasi Bharatiya Biplabi.

10 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, pp. 80–81.

11 Overstreet and Windmiller, Communism in India, pp. 36–37. See also Persits,

Revolutionaries of India.

st
12 Bhupendranath Dutt, Studies in Indian Social Polity, (1 edn. 1944) Calcutta

1983, p. 31.

13 R.P. Dutt, India Today, pp. 346–47. For the full text of the Manifesto see

Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, pp. 351–54. The Manifesto was approved by

both Lenin and Stalin. It was printed in Moscow and brought to India and

distributed by Nalini Gupta secretly.

14 See, for instance, ‘Independence’, published in Young India on January 13,

1927, where Gandhi writes: ‘Year after year a resolution is moved in the

Congress to amend the Congress creed so as to define swaraj as complete

independence and year after year happily the Congress throws out the

resolution by an overwhelming majority. The rejection of the resolution is proof

of the sanity of the Congress.’ Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (CWMG),

vol. XXII, Publication Division, 1969, p. 52.

15 Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India, pp. 84–106.

16 Cecil Kaye, Communism in India, Editions India, Calcutta 1971, p. 21.

17 Kaye, Communism in India, cited in Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India

1919–1924, p. 117.

18 Home/Poll/F. No. 103/1923, part I, NAI, New Delhi.

19 Irfan Habib, ‘The Left and the National Movement’, in Indian People in the

Struggle for Freedom, Sahmat, New Delhi 1998, p. 106.

20 ‘Theses on the Eastern Question’ adopted at the Fourth Congress of the

Communist International (November 5–December 5, 1922). For details, see

Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, pp. 531–59.

21 Home/Poll/F. No. 956/1922, NAI, New Delhi, p. 11. See also Muzaffar

Ahmad, Myself and Communist Party of India, p. 319.

22 Sohan Singh Josh, Hindustan Gadar Party, Vol. II, pp. 212–23 for details

about the Gadar Party-Comintern connection.

23 Ibid., pp. 214.

24 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, p. 83.

25 S.A. Dange, Selected Writings, Vol. I, Lok Vangmaya Griha, Bombay 1974,

pp. 161–66.

26 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. II, pp. 97–98.

27 Ibid., p. 97.

28 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1919–24, pp. 158–59.

29 Ibid., pp. 158–59.

30 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. II, pp. 593–95.

31 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1919–24, pp. 160–61.

32 Ibid., pp. 166–67.

33 Ibid., pp. 81–82.

34 The full text of the speech was reprinted in Labour-Kisan Gazette, Madras,

January 31, 1924. See Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, pp. 588–91.

35 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. I, pp. 573–77.

36 See ibid., pp. 577–88 for the full text.

37 Kaye, Communism in India, p. 227.

38 See Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. II, pp. 6–16 for the full text.

39 Editorial in Vanguard, February 15, 1923, reproduced in Adhikari (ed.),

Documents, Vol. II, pp. 17–22.

40 Ibid., pp. 114–29 for the full text.

41 Ibid., pp. 135–38.

42 Murugesan and Subramanyam, Singaravelu, p. 189.

43 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. II, p. 391.

44 Ibid., p. 146.

45 Ibid., pp. 138–40.

46 Ibid., p. 154.

47 Ibid., p. 274.

48 See Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India, pp. 327–406

for details.

49 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. II, p. 281.

50 Ibid., p. 279.

51 Ibid., pp. 300–03.

52 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1919–1924, pp. 141–44.

53 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. II, pp. 348–65.

54 Ibid., p. 364.

55 From the website www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv7n2/busingh.htm.

56 Dange, Selected Writings, pp. 396–97.

57 See Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. II, pp. 382–88 for the full text.

58 Dange, Selected Writings, pp. 398–400.

59 Ibid., pp. 403–08.

60 See Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. II, pp. 437–48 for the full text.

61 Ibid., p. 422.

62 Ibid., p. 431.

63 J.V. Stalin, Works, Vol. VII, Foreign Languages Publishing House, Moscow

1954, pp. 90–134 for the May 9 speech, and pp. 135–54 for the May 18

speech.

4 Kanpur Communist Conference

1 Satyabhakta, ‘Early Days of Communist Movement in India’, in Ali Asraf and

G.A. Syomin (ed.), October Revolution and India’s Independence, Sterling, New

Delhi 1977, pp. 53–54.

2 Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India, p. 350.

3 Kaye, Communism in India, p. 261.

4 David Petrie, Communism in India, 1924–27, edited by Mahadev Prasad Saha,

Editions India, Calcutta 1972, p. 159.

5 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. II, pp. 639–40.

6 Meerut Case Records, P 1796 (a); ‘The First Indian Communist Conference’, a

circular written by Satyabhakta as ‘Secretary, The Indian Communist Party’,

Kanpur, dated October 12, 1925, cited in ibid., p. 638.

7 Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India, p. 409.

8 Ladli Mohan Roy Chowdhury (ed.), The Seed-Time of Communism in India,

National Book Agency, Calcutta 2000, p. 182.

9 Overstreet and Windmiller, Communism in India, p. 78. See also J. Coatman,

India in 1925–26, Government of India, Calcutta 1926, pp. 195–96, and D.

 Petrie, Communism in India, 1924–27, p. 179.

10 N.N. Mitra (ed.), Indian Annual Register, 1925, vol. II, pp. 367, 371. For

Adhikari’s version of the Kanpur Conference, see Documents, Vol. II, pp. 591–

670.

11 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. II, pp. 665–66.

12 Irfan Habib, ‘The Left and the National Movement’, Social Scientist, May–

June 1998, p. 10.

13 Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India, p. 409.

14 Letter in Bengali by Muzaffar Ahmad, January 19, 1927. From the personal

collection of Subodh Roy, preserved in the library of the History Commission,

CPI (M), Kolkata.

15 Gupta, A Short History, p. 68.

16 Translated from the original Bengali.

17 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIA, p. 28–29.

18 M.N. Roy, ‘The Indian Communists and the Communist International’,

Masses of India, II, March 1926, p. 6, quoted in Overstreet and Windmiller,

Communism in India, p. 79.

19 Namboodiripad, History of Indian Freedom Struggle, pp. 323–24.

20 Ibid., p. 329.

21 Govt. of Bengal, I.B. File No. 35/1926 (Sl. No. 2/26), cited in Roy Chaudhury

(ed.), Seed-Time of Communism, pp. 166–73.

22 Namboodiripad, History of Indian Freedom Struggle, p. 331.

23 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIA, pp. 163–64.

24 For the full text of the Manifesto, see Jyoti Basu et al. (eds.), Documents of the

Communist Movement in India, Vol. I (1917–28), National Book Agency,

Calcutta 1997, pp. 324–40.

25 Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India, p. 492.

26 Meerut Record, p. 1287 (14). See Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIB, p. 3.

27 Ibid., p. 4.

28 From the personal collection of Subodh Roy, preserved in the library of the

History Commission, CPI (M), Kolkata.

29 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIB, p. 6.

30 Ibid., p. 6.

31 Ibid., pp. 139–40.

32 Ganavani, Vol. I, No. 18, June 9, 1927.

33 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIB, p. 63.

34 Ibid., p. 209. The full text is reproduced on pp. 207–11.

35 Inprecor, Vol. 5, No. 11, February 5, 1924.

36 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIB, p. 59.

37 Ibid., p. 212.

38 Ibid., p. 136.

39 For the full text, see ibid., pp. 301–06.

40 Ibid., p. 305.

41 For full text of Roy’s letter, see Gautam Chattopadhyay, Communism and

Bengal’s Freedom Movement, pp. 163–76.

5 Workers’ and Peasants’ Parties

1 Jyoti Basu et al. (eds.), Documents of the Communist Movement, Vol. II, p.

253.

2 For the full text of the aims and objectives of the Labour Swaraj Party, see

Gautam Chattopadhyay, Communism and Bengal’s Freedom Movement,

Appendix D, pp. 177–79.

3 Article in The Masses of India, Vol. 2, No. 3, March 1926, reproduced in

Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. II, pp. 687–89.

4 Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India, pp. 416–17.

5 For the full text, see Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIA, pp. 155–66.

6 Ibid., pp. 26–28.

7 Petrie, Communism in India, p. 128.

8 Muzaffar Ahmad, Amar Jiban o Bharater Communist Party, National Book

Agency, Calcutta 1988, p. 347.

9 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIB, 1927, pp. 31–39.

10 Ibid., pp. 166–68.

11 For full text of WPP programme for AICC, see Adhikari (ed.), Documents,

Vol. IIIB, pp.169–72.

12 Ibid., pp.176–80.

13 Ibid., pp. 34–35.

14 For a detailed account, see A Short History, pp. 101–14.

15 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIB, p. 305.

16 Ibid., pp. 125–26.

17 Ibid., p. 311

18 Ibid., p.123.

19 Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India, p. 467.

20 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIC, 1928, pp. 185–86.

21 Ibid., pp. 183–85.

22 See ibid., pp. 195–97 for the full text.

23 See ‘Critique of the Nehru Commission of the All Parties Conference’, in ibid.,

pp. 192–224.

24 For details see Sinha, Left-Wing in India, pp. 191–95.

25 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIC, p. 719.

26 Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India, p. 467.

27 For the full text of ‘A Call to Action’ (Meerut Record, p. 523), see Adhikari

(ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIC, pp. 244–82.

28 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIC, pp. 92–93.

29 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1925–34, pp. 70–72.

30 See Chapter 4, Kanpur Communist Conference.

31 K.M. Panikkar and A. Prashad (ed.), The Voice of Freedom: The Speeches of

Pandit Motilal Nehru, Bombay 1961.

32 Sohan Singh Josh, Hindustan Gadar Party, Vol. II, pp. 224–28.

33 Ibid., p. 228.

34 Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India, p. 420.

35 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIC, p. 287.

36 Harkishan Singh Surjeet, March of the Communist Movement in India,

National Book Agency, Calcutta 1998, pp. 28–29.

37 R.P. Dutt, India Today, p. 413.

38 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIC, 1928, p. 367.

39 N.N. Mitra (ed.), Indian Annual Register, 1928, Vol. II, Calcutta.

40 Gupta, A Short History, pp. 133–47.

41 Ibid.

42 For a detailed account of the Calcutta AIWPP Conference, see Muzaffar

Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party, pp. 431–34; Adhikari (ed.),

Documents, Vol. IIIC, 1928, pp. 708–76.

43 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIC, 1928, pp. 676–79.

44 Ibid., pp. 439–40.

45 Namboodiripad, History of India’s Freedom Struggle, p. 363.

46 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India, Vol. II, pp. 69–70.

47 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIC, 1928, p. 446–47.

48 Quoted in Bipan Chandra et al., India’s Struggle for Independence, Penguin

India, New Delhi 1988, p. 392.

6 Sixth Congress of the Comintern

1 W.Z. Foster, History of the Three Internationals, International Publishers, New

York 1955, p. 83.

2 Ibid., pp. 83–84.

3 Outline History of the Communist International, prepared by the Institute of

Marxism-Leninism, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1971, p. 273.

4 G. Adhikari, ‘The Comintern Congress and the CPI’, Marxist Miscellany,

People’s Publishing House, New Delhi 1971, p. 30.

5 Shaukat Usmani, Historic Trips of a Revolutionary, p. 91.

6 Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India, pp. 449–50. See

also Philip Spratt, Blowing up India, Prachi Prakashan, Calcutta 1955, p. 41.

7 For the full text of Roy’s Draft Resolution see Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol.

IIIC, pp. 572–606.

8 The main agendum discussed in the Sixth Congress is narrated in Foster,

History of the Three Internationals; Ferrando Claudin, The Communist

Movement: From Comintern to Cominform, Penguin, 1975; and Outline

History of the Communist International. The last book vividly deals with the

discussions on ‘The Revolutionary Movement in the Colonial and Semi-

Colonial Countries’, pp. 283–87.

9 For the full text of the speech, see J.V. Stalin, Collected Works, Vol. 7, Foreign

Languages Publishing House, Moscow 1954, pp. 135–54.

10 For the full text of the ‘Programme of the Communist International’, see Jyoti

Basu et al. (eds.), Documents of the Communist Movement in India, Vol. I, pp.

785–862. For analysis and discussion of the proceedings of the Sixth Congress,

see Outline History of the Communist International and Foster, History of

Three Internationals.

11 Cited in Harkishan Singh Surjeet, March of the Communist Movement in

India, pp. 34–35.

12 Adhikari (ed.), Documents, Vol. IIIC, pp. 782–86.

13 Ibid., pp. 757–65.

14 Ibid., pp. 787–91.

15 Ibid., pp. 776–81.

7 New upsurge

1 R.P. Dutt, India Today, p. 361. For Subhas Bose’s criticism of the Delhi

Manifesto see S.C. Bose, The Indian Struggle (1920–34), p. 359. See also N.N.

Mitra (ed.), Indian Annual Register, 1929, Vol. 2, p. 14.

2 N.N. Mitra (ed.), Indian Annual Register, 1929, Vol. 2, p. 14.

3 Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s Independence and Social Revolution, New Delhi

1984, Chapter I.

4 Namboodiripad, History of India’s Freedom Struggle, p. 399.

5 For details about the Chittagong revolutionaries, see Kalpana Dutt,

Chittagong Armoury Raiders, Reminiscences, People’s Publishing House,

Bombay 1945.

6 Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, p. 268.

7 Quoted in ibid., p. 268.

8 See Ajoy Ghosh, Bhagat Singh and His Comrades, People’s Publishing House,

Bombay 1946.

9 Kamala Mukherjee, ‘Pathan Nationalism and Peshawar Disturbances, 1930’,

in Nisith Ranjan Roy (ed.), Challenge: A Saga of India’s Struggle for Freedom,

Delhi 1984, pp. 343–53.

10 See Nisith Ranjan Roy (ed.), Challenge, for a number of useful articles on

various aspects of people’s movements in colonial India. Some of the other

important books on the subject include: Namboodiripad, History of the

Freedom Struggle of India, and The Communist Party in Kerala: Six Decades of

Struggle and Advance, National Book Centre, New Delhi 1994; Amalendu

Guha, Planter Raj to Swaraj, ICHR, Delhi 1977; and Sumit Sarkar, Modern

India.

11 See Aditya Mukherjee, ‘Indian Capitalist Class: Aspects of its Economic,

Political and Ideological Development in the Colonial Period’, in S.

Bhattacharya and Romila Thapar (eds.), Situating Indian History, New Delhi

1986.

12 Denis Judd, Jawaharlal Nehru, University of Wales Press, 1993, p. 24.

13 Bairathi, Communism and Nationalism, p. 133.

14 V. Molotov, ‘Report on the Activities of the Delegates of the CPSU in the

ECCI,’ Inprecor, Vol. IX, No. 33.

15 Inprecor, March 20, 1930.

16 Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, p. 286.

17 ‘The Reign of Violence of the MacDonald Government in India’, Inprecor,

Vol. 10, No. 19.

18 ‘Draft Platform of Action’, Inprecor, Vol. 10, No. 58, 1930.

19 Inprecor, 20 March, 1930. For more details, see R.P. Dutt, India Today, pp.

372–75.

20 Benoy Choudhury, My Life and Experiences, Calcutta 1999.

21 Bairathi, Communism and Nationalism, p. 120.

22 Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, p. 300. See also T.J. Nossiter, Communism in

Kerala: A Study in Political Adaptation, Oxford University Press, Delhi 1982,

p. 71, and Bairathi, Communism and Nationalism, p. 122.

23 E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Reminiscences of an Indian Communist, New Delhi

1987, p. 42.

24 Namboodiripad, The Communist Party in Kerala, pp. 22–23.

25 Pratap Ramasubbaiah, Porata Pathamalo Nenu, Marxist Study Centre,

Hyderabad, 1987, pp. 21, 70.

26 Kambhampati Satyanarayana, Andhra Pradesh lo Communist Udyama

Charitra, Vijayawada, 1984, p. 40.

27 Ibid., pp. 40–41.

28 K. Chinnayasuri, Andhra lo rytu udyama, A.P. Peasant Association, Vijaywada

1986, p. 60. See also K. Gopalan Kutty in Studies in History, Vol. 5, No. 2,

1989, p. 178.

29 Report of the Special Branch CID, to the Inspector General of Police, Madras,

dated May 18, 1934.

30 Outline History of the Communist International, p. 306.

31 Claude Markovits, Indian Business and Nationalist Politics, 1931–39,

Cambridge 1985, pp. 19–20. See also Amiya Bagchi, Private Investment in

India, Orient Longman, Delhi 1980.

32 Sukomal Sen, Working Class of India, pp. 272–77.

33 Ibid., pp. 273–75.

34 Ibid., p. 290.

35 Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, p. 261, and R.P. Dutt, India Today, p. 337.
36 Sukomal Sen, Working Class of India, p. 291.

37 Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, p. 181.

38 Ibid., p. 275.

39 Wilson to Birkenhead, August 7, 1928, quoted in Sarkar, Modern India, p.

278.

8 The Meerut trial

1 B.T. Ranadive, ‘The Role Played by Communists in the Freedom Struggle in

India’, in B.T. Ranadive and Jyoti Basu, Role of Communists in the Struggle for

Independence, Fiftieth Anniversary Independence Series No. 2, CPI (M)

Publications, New Delhi n.d., p. 16.

2 From the final judgment of the Chief Justice Dr Sir Shah Mohammad Suleiman

and Justice J. Young of the Allahabad High Court delivered by the Chief Justice

on August 3, 1933. Quoted by Muzaffar Ahmad in his Introduction to

Communists Challenge Imperialism from the Dock, National Book Agency,

Calcutta 1987, p. x.

3 ‘A Small Town in UP’, editorial in The Statesman, January 18, 1933,

reproduced in The Statesman Anthology, compiled by Nirajan Majumdar,

Calcutta 1975, pp. 426–27.

4 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1925–34, pp. 73–74.

5 Ibid., p. 76.

6 H.L. Hutchinson, Conspiracy at Meerut, G. Allen and Unwin, London 1935.

7 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1925–34, pp. 98–99.

8 Communists Challenge Imperialism, p. vii.

9 Jawaharlal Nehru, An Autobiography, Oxford University Press, New Delhi

1982, p. 364.

10 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1925–34, pp. 141–43.

11 For the full text of the prosecuting counsel’s opening speech, see N.N. Mitra

(ed.), The Indian Annual Register, 1929, I, pp. 68–77.

12 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1925–34, p. 89–91.

13 Ibid., p. 89–91.

14 Communists Challenge Imperialism, pp. i–ii.

15 Ashok Kumar Mukhopadhyay (ed.), India and Communism, National Book

Agency, Calcutta 1997, p. 120. Originally compiled in 1933, revised in 1935,

Preface by H. Williamson.
16 Communists Challenge Imperialism, p. ii.

17 Ibid., p. vi.

18 For the full text, see Communists Challenge Imperialism.

19 See www.wcml.org.uk.

20 Meerut Conspiracy Case: King Emperor versus P. Spratt and others, 2 Vols.,

and Pramita Ghosh, Meerut Conspiracy Case and the Left Wing in India,

Papyrus, Calcutta 1978, p. 147.

21 For details of international repercussions, see Ghosh, Meerut Conspiracy

Case, pp. 149–59.

22 Leonard M. Schiff, The Present Condition of India, London 1939, p. 58,

quoted in Tilak Raj Sareen, Russian Revolution and India, 1921–29: A Study of

Soviet Policy Towards Indian National Movement, Sterling, New Delhi 1978,

p. 103.

23 Ghosh, Meerut Conspiracy Case, pp. 110–11.

24 Ibid., p. 111.

25 See www.wcml.org.uk.

26 While serving the term Bhagat Singh was again charged with the murder of the

British police officer Saunders. He was hanged, along with Rajguru and

Sukhdev, on March 23, 1931.

27 P. Ramamurthi, The Freedom Struggle and the Dravidian Movement, Orient

Longman, 1987, p. 77.

28 Gupta, A Short History, p. 155.

29 Panchanan Saha, History of the Working Class Movement in Bengal, People’s

Publishing House, New Delhi 1978, pp. 109–10.

30 The Statesman, March 29, 1929, and The Tribune, March 30, 1929, cited in

Pramita Ghosh, Meerut Conspiracy Case, p. 48.

31 See www.wcml.org.uk.

32 Muzaffar Ahmad, Communist Challenge Imperialism, p. xii.

33 Ghosh, Meerut Conspiracy Case, p. 95.

34 Harold Laski’s preface to Hugh Lester Hutchinson’s book, Conspiracy at

Meerut, G. Allen and Unwin, London 1935, quoted in Pramita Ghosh, Meerut

Conspiracy Case, p. 168.

35 From www.maze-in.com/saklatvala/pages/23htm.

36 Clemens Palme Dutt, ‘The Class Struggle in India’, Labour Monthly, June

1929, cited in Panchanan Saha, Rajni Palme Dutt: A Biography, Biswabiksha,

Calcutta 2004, p. 35.

 9 Towards an all-India centre

1 For details of this secret meeting, see Chapter 6, ‘Sixth Congress of the

Comintern’.

2 Murugesan and Subramanyam, Singaravelu, pp. 59–84.

3 Industrial Labour in India: Studies and Reports of ILO, 1938, p. 385, cited in

Sinha, Left Wing in India, p. 126.

4 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1925–1934, pp. 305–22.

5 Ibid., pp. 305–22.

6 Gupta, A Short History, pp. 152–53.

7 Ibid., p. 166.

8 Ibid., pp. 272–73.

9 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1925–1934, p. 276.

10 Ibid., pp. 248–75.

11 Muzaffar Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party of India, p. 420.

12 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1925–34, p. 240.

13 Ashok Kumar Mukhopadhyay, India and Communism, p. 150.

14 Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India 1925–34, p. 386.

15 Saroj Mukherjee, Bharater Communist Party o Amra, Vol. I, National Book

Agency, Calcutta 1993, p. 72.

16 Outline History of the Communist International, p. 307.

17 Ibid., p. 308.

18 For details of the Twelfth Plenum, see Outline History of the Communist

International, pp. 324–29.

19 Ashok Mukhopadhyay, India and Communism, pp. 147–48.

20 Ibid., pp. 148–51.

21 Published in Inprecor, December 16, 1930. This was also published in the

Daily Worker, London, and Pravda, Moscow. The full text of the document is

available in Jyoti Basu et al. (eds.) Documents of the Communist Movement in

India, Vol. III.

22 B.T. Ranadive, ‘The Role Played by Communists in the Freedom Struggle in

India’, pp. 9, 11.

23 Jyoti Basu et al. (eds.) Documents of the Communist Movement in India, Vol.

III, p. 75.
24 Adhikari, ‘The Comintern Congresses and the CPI’, Marxist Miscellany, Vol.

2, People’s Publishing House, New Delhi 1971, p. 53.

25 Jyoti Basu et al. (eds.), Documents of the Communist Movement in India, Vol.

II, p. 212. Subsequent references in the body of the text.

26 For the full text of the letter, see Jyoti Basu et al. (eds.), Documents of the

Communist Movement, Vol. III, pp. 15–41.

27 For the full text of the manifesto, see ibid., pp. 105–20.

28 Saroj Mukherjee, Bharater Communist Party o Amra, Vol. I, pp. 58–59.

29 For the full text of the letter, see Jyoti Basu et al. (eds.), Documents of the

Communist Movement, Vol. III, pp. 121–42.

30 Ranen Sen, Banglar Communist Party Gathaner Pratham Jug (1930–48),

Bingsho Satabdi, Calcutta 1388 B.S., p. 65.

31 Ibid., pp. 65–66 and Saroj Mukherjee, Bharater Communist Party O Amra,

Vol. 1, p. 70.

32 For the full text, see Jyoti Basu et al. (eds.), Documents of the Communist

Movement, Vol. III, pp. 143–63.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
 Abdul Halim 1901–1966

One of the earliest organizers of communist activity in Bengal. Born

on December 6, 1901 in Burdwan district. Resigned his job to take

part in the Non-Cooperation Movement in 1921. Arrested. Came in

contact with Muzaffar Ahmad after release and joined the Workers’

and Peasants’ Party. Worked to organize the Communist Party when

Ahmad and others were imprisoned in the Meerut Conspiracy Case.

Played an important part in regrouping the CPI Central Committee in

1933–34. Founded the Ganashakti Publishing House. Imprisoned

several times. Member of the West Bengal Legislative Council from

1952 till his death on April 29, 1966.

Abdul Majid

Born in Lahore. Left India in 1920. Convicted in the Peshawar

Conspiracy Case in 1923. Played a leading role in the Kanpur

Communist Conference in 1925. Convicted in the Meerut Conspiracy

Case.

Acharya, M.P.B.T. 1887–1967

One of the founder members of the Communist Party of India in

Tashkent in 1920. His name in the Home Department records is given

as Mandayam Parthasarathi Tirumal Acharya, but he always wrote

M. Pratiwadi Bhayankar Acharya. Born in Madras. Left for Britain in

1907–08 for studying, but joined revolutionary activities. Worked

with Virendranath Chattopadhyay, followed him to Europe, and was

in the Berlin Committee. He was in Turkey in 1915, and in Kabul up

to 1918. In the winter of 1918–19 he and Abdul Rab followed

Mahendra Pratap into Soviet Russia, and met Lenin there. Active in

Soviet Turkestan in forming the Indian Revolutionary Association.

Attended the Second Congress of the Comintern. Worked first in the

Indian Independence Committee and later in the League against

Imperialism in the 1920s. Was in Berlin when Hitler came to power.

Returned to India in 1935.

Adhikari, Gangadhar 1898–1981

Prominent Marxist theoretician and prolific writer. Was in Berlin

between 1922 and 1928. Elected Chairman of the Indian Association

in Central Europe formed by Virendranath Chattopadhyay in 1927.

Attended the first all India conference of the Workers’ and Peasants’

Parties in Calcutta and the underground meetings of the CPI CEC in

December 1928. Sentenced in the Meerut Conspiracy Case. Played a

leading role in the reorganization of the CPI in 1933–34 and became

its General Secretary. Internment in Bijjapur during 1934–37. Edited

the Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India. Died

in 1981.

Ahmad, Muzaffar 1889–1973

One of the founders of the communist movement in India. Born in a

middle class Muslim family in Sandip (now in Bangladesh) on August

5, 1889. Started his career as a government employee. Edited daily

Nabajug in 1920 with Qazi Nazrul Islam. Along with friend and

comrade Abdul Halim, initiated communist work inside the national

movement. Member of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee

during 1926–27 and 1937, and member of the All India Congress

Committee during 1927–29 and in 1937. Joined the trade union

movement in 1923. Was instrumental in founding various trade

unions in and around Calcutta. Imprisoned several times for political

and trade union activities. Sentenced to four year’s rigorous

imprisonment in Kanpur Conspiracy Case in 1924. Released soon due

to severe illness. One of the founders of the Workers’ and Peasants’

Party. Edited its organ, Ganavani. Joined the communist conference in

Kanpur in December 1925 and was elected to the Presidium of the

CPI when it was reorganized in 1927. Was elected Vice President of

AITUC at the Jharia session in 1928. Convicted in the Meerut

Conspiracy Case. Released in 1936. Elected President of the All India

Kisan Sabha in 1936. Founded National Book Agency, the Party’s

publishing house, and Ganashakti press. Author of several books,

including his autobiography, Myself and the Communist Party of

India, and Qazi Nazrul Islam Smritikatha. Was a member of the

Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) at the

time of his death in December 18, 1973.

Amir Haider Khan 1900–1989

Born in Sealian village of Rawalpindi district (now in Pakistan) in a

poor family. Went to Bombay to work as a shiploader at a young age.

Travelling by ship he made contact with Indian revolutionaries

abroad. Left his ship and stayed in America, where he worked in an

automobile factory. Obtained an aviator’s license and purchased a

second-hand aeroplane. Joined the Communist Party of the USA and

was sent for training to Moscow. After completing his training, he

returned to India. Worked for the Party in Bombay while serving in

the General Motors Company. Upon getting news of an arrest warrant

against him, he went underground. While in hiding, visited Europe.

On return to India, devoted himself to building the Communist Party

in Madras. Was responsible for recruiting a number of young political

workers into the Communist Party, among whom was P. Sundarayya.

On May 7, 1932, towards the fag end of the Meerut trial, he fell into

the hands of the police. To bring him for trial at Meerut at that stage

would have meant starting the entire proceedings from the beginning –

which the government wanted to avoid. Proceedings, however, were

started against him in Madras, and he was sentenced to rigorous

imprisonment for two years. After release from jail he was again

arrested in 1936. Released in 1942, he settled down in his native

place. Struggled against military dictatorships in Pakistan, and spent

many years in jail. Made his first visit to India after independence in

1988. Died on December 27, 1989.

Barkatullah 1854–1927
 Scholar and master of seven languages – Arabic, Persian, Urdu,

Turkish, English, German and Japanese. Professor of Urdu at Tokyo

University, Japan. A founder member of the Gadar Party. Was Prime

Minister of the provisional government of India established in Kabul.

Travelled to several countries to seek support for Indian independence.

Met Jawaharlal Nehru at the anti-fascist conference at Brussels in

1927. Went to USA thereafter, and died on September 27 of the same

year.

Bhagat Singh 1907–1931

One of the most outstanding revolutionaries of India, martyred at

the age of 23. Born in a peasant family in Banga village of Lyallpur

district of Punjab on September 27, 1907. Father Kishen Singh and

uncle Ajit Singh were both members of the Gadar Party. Studied at

National College founded by Lala Lajpat Rai. Was founder member of

Naujawan Bharat Sabha. Witness to the lathi charge that led to Lajpat

Rai’s death in the anti-Simon Commission protest in Lahore. Along

with Batukeshwar Dutt, threw a bomb in the Central Assembly in

Delhi on April 8, 1929. Arrested and tried. Convicted, along with

Sukhdev and Rajguru, of murdering the police officer Saunders, and

hanged on March 23, 1931.

Chattopadhyay, Virendranath 1880–1941

Born in Hyderabad in 1880. In 1901 went to Britain to sit for the

ICS examination, but got involved in revolutionary activities. Came

close to Shyamji Krishnavarma, and helped him edit the journal

Indian Sociologist. Later helped Madam Cama in Paris in bringing out

Bande Mataram and Talwar till 1914. Joined the French Socialist

Party. Then went to Germany. In 1917 set up a branch of the Indian

Independence Committee in Stockholm. Attracted to socialism after

the October Revolution. Went to Moscow in1920, and again in 1921.

When the League Against Imperialism was formed in 1927, he became

its General Secretary. His articles on the Indian question began to

appear in the Comintern organ Inprecor from February 1930. At the

end of 1932, left Berlin for Moscow and joined the Institute of

Ethnography as head of the Indian Department. Knew over a dozen

languages. Died in 1941. A. Volsky published a memoir of

Virendranath in Russian from Leningrad in 1969.

Chettiar, M. Singaravelu 1860–1946

Born in a fishing family of Madras. Enrolled as a lawyer in the

Madras High Court in 1907 and soon joined trade union movement.

Attended the Gaya session of the Indian National Congress in 1922,

where he demanded complete independence. Founded the Hindustan

Labour Kisan Party in 1923. Began correspondence with M.N. Roy

around this time. Presided over the Kanpur Communist Conference in

December 1925. Led a heroic strike of railway workers in 1928, and

was imprisoned till 1930. Joined Periyar’s Self-Respect Movement.

Died on February 11, 1946 in Madras.

Dange, Shripad Amrit 1899–1991

Prominent communist leader from Bombay. Born on October 10,

1899. Plunged into the national movement in 1917 under the

leadership of Bal Gangadhar Tilak and joined the non-cooperation

movement. Prolific writer. In 1921 published Gandhi vs Lenin. In

1922 started his path-breaking weekly, Socialist. Arrested and

sentenced in the Meerut Conspiracy Case. Was by then a leading

figure in the AITUC. Elected to the Bombay Assembly in 1946.

Became chairman of CPI. Under his leadership CPI supported the

Emergency imposed by the Congress government in 1975. Was

expelled from the CPI in 1981. Attepmted to float a new party, All

India Communist Party. Died on May 22, 1991.

Dutt, Bhupendranath 1880–1961

 Born on September 4, 1880 in Calcutta. Brother of Swami

Vivekananda. Firebrand leader during the anti-partition movement in

Bengal. Arrested for his seditious article in Yugantar. Left for Europe

after release. Graduated from New York University in 1912 and

passed his MA in 1914 from Brown University. Adopted socialist ideas

during his stay in the USA. Went to Berlin. Secretary of the Berlin

committee during 1916–1918. A scholar in anthropology, he was

awarded a Doctorate from the Hamburg University in 1923. Visited

Moscow in 1921 and met Lenin. Returned to India in 1925. Became a

member of the AICC in 1929. Joined the AITUC and later the All

India Kisan Sabha. Prolific writer, author of many books. Died in

Calcutta on December 25, 1961.

Dutt, Pramathanath 1895–1954

Alias Daud Ali. Came to India from the USA during the First World

War to assist in revolutionary work under the Berlin Committee. Did

propaganda among Indian soldiers taken as war prisoners in

Constantinople. While in Persia, taken prisoner by the British, escaped

and crossed into Soviet Russia in 1921. Part of the Indian delegation

of revolutionaries who negotiated with Soviet leaders in that year.

Remained in Soviet Russia, worked in the Oriental Institute of

Leningrad University till his death.

Dutt, Rajni Palme 1896–1974

One of the founding members of the Communist Party of Great

Britain in 1921. Born June 19, 1896 to Indian father and Swedish

mother. Joined the Independent Labour Party while a student at

Oxford in 1914. In the same year, founded the famous Marxist

journal The Labour Monthly, which he edited for nearly five decades.

Was also editor of the CPGB newspaper Daily Worker. Author of the

classic India Today, RPD (as he was affectionately called) was a

brilliant scholar, and a leading figure of the international communist

movement. Co-authored the Dutt-Bradley Theses in 1936. Had a deep

connection with India, which he visited in 1946. Retired from active

politics in the mid-1960s owing to bad health.

Feroze-ud-din Mansoor

A muhajir, he was in the aviation class in the Tashkent military

school, and attended the University for the Toilers of the East. Left

Tashkent for India via the Pamirs in 1922. Sentenced to one year’s

imprisonment in the Peshawar Conspiracy Case. After release, was an

active communist organizer and journalist. Worked in Naujawan

Bharat Sabha, wrote for the Mehnatkash and later for Kirti. Leading

member of the CPI in the Punjab in the 1940s. After Partition, became

the first Secretary of the Communist Party in West Pakistan.

Ghate, Sachidanand Vishnu 1896–1970

Labour leader from Bombay. Passed BA in History from St. Xavier’s

College, Bombay. Was one of the organizers of the defence movement

during the Kanpur Conspiracy Case. Attended the Kanpur Communist

Conference in December 1925, and was elected one of the two

General Secretaries of the CPI. Elected Assistant Secretary of the

AITUC in 1927. Played a major role in the historic Bombay textile

strike of 1928. Convicted in the Meerut Conspiracy Case. Elected

AITUC Vice President in 1938. Died in October 1970 in Delhi.

Gupta, Nalini

Born in Bakarganj district (now in Bangladesh). Went to Britain in

1914. Visited Moscow in 1921 and befriended M.N. Roy. Returned to

India as Roy’s emissary in December 1921 and met Muzaffar Ahmad.

Sentenced in the Kanpur Conspiracy Case. Left for Europe in 1927.

Accused of spying for the British police. Spent many years in

Germany. Returned to Calcutta after the Second World War began.

Died on January 21, 1957 at Calcutta.

 Joglekar, Keshav Nilkant

One of the earliest communist activists in Bombay. Was a member

of the AICC, Secretary BPCC and one of the organizers of the defence

committee during the Kanpur Conspiracy Case. Edited the Socialist

for six moths. Accused and convicted in the Meerut Conspiracy Case.

Later joined the Forward Bloc. Died in November 1970.

Josh, Sohan Singh

Attracted to the national liberation movement from revolutionary

terrorist activities. Influenced by the Gadar movement in Punjab. One

of the founders of Naujawan Sabha. Elected president of the All India

Workers’ and Peasants’ Party in December 1928. Convicted in the

Meerut Conspiracy Case. Elected as a member of the AICC. Became

member of the CPI Central Committee in 1951. Wrote a history of the

Gadar party. After the split in the Communist Party in 1964, remained

with the Dange-led CPI till his death.

Lahiri, Somnath 1909–1984

Prominent communist leader and militant trade unionist. Born on

September 1, 1909 in Calcutta. Attended the Calcutta session of the

Indian National Congress in 1928 as an observer and the Karachi

session in 1930 as a delegate. Joined the CPI Calcutta Committee in

1931. Shifted to the CPI headquarters in Bombay in 1934. Chairman

of the editorial board of the Party daily Swadhinata. Politbureau

member of the CPI in 1948–50. Elected to the Constituent Assembly.

Member of the United Front cabinet of 1967 in West Bengal. Died in

Calcutta on October 19, 1984.

Mohammad Shafiq

Originally from Nowshera tehsil of district Peshawar. Was a clerk in

the irrigation department. Joined the anti-Rowlatt agitation and went

to Kabul in May 1919. Attended the Second Congress of the

Comintern. Became Secretary of the CPI formed in Tashkent in 1920.

Returned to India the following year, was arrested and convicted in

the second communist conspiracy case in 1924. Imprisoned for three

years. Took part in the Sixth Congress of the Comintern. Returned to

India in 1932.

Mohani, Hasrat 1881–1951

Celebrated Urdu poet and nationalist journalist. Real name Fazl-ul

Hasan. Born in the Unnao district of United Provinces. Passed BA

from Aligarh in 1903 and joined the Bombay session of the Indian

National Congress the following year. Follower of Bal Gangadhar

Tilak. Placed, in 1921, resolutions demanding complete independence

at the sessions of the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League,

and the Khilafat Conference. Was chairman of the reception

committee of the Kanpur Communist Conference, December 1925.

Expelled from the CPI in 1929. Elected to the Constituent Assembly in

1946. Voted against the draft constitution, demanding a constitution

on the Soviet model. Took part in the socialist conference hosted by

Sarat Chandra Bose in Calcutta in October 1949. Died in May 1951

in Lucknow.

Mukherjee, Abani 1891–1937

Born in Jabalpur in June 1891. Went to Japan in 1910, and later to

Germany. Came back to India, worked in Calcutta, got involved in

revolutionary terrorist activities, and left India again in 1915. Jailed

for two years in Singapore. Met M.N. Roy in Berlin. Took part in the

Second Congress of the Comintern. A founder member of the CPI in

Tashkent in 1920. Co-authored, with Roy, the CPI manifesto to the

Ahmedabad session of the Indian National Congress in December

1921. Came back to India by the end of 1922 and remained here till

the beginning of 1924. Spent the rest of his life in the Soviet Union.
 Nimbkar, R.S.

Joined the communist movement through the militant trade union

activities in Bombay during the early 1920s. Elected general secretary

of the All India Workers’ and Peasants’ Party in December 1928.

Convicted in the Meerut Conspiracy Case. Active in the trade union

movement after his release.

Roy, M.N. 1887–1954

A pioneer of the communist movement in two countries, India and

Mexico. Real name Narendranath Bhattacharya, took the alias of

Manabendranath Roy. Involved with revolutionary terrorism as a

student. Left India in 1915 to secure German help to fight the British.

Went to the USA, and then on to Mexico, to avoid police harassment.

Met the Russian communist Borodin in Mexico. Organized the

Socialist Party of Mexico and became its General Secretary. This soon

converted itself into the Communist Party of Mexico, the first

communist party outside the Soviet Union. Attended the Second

Congress of the Comintern and played a key role in the founding of

the Communist Party of India on October 17, 1920. Elected

Chairman of the Central Asiatic Bureau of the Comintern. Edited a

number of journals and wrote many books. Expelled from the

Comintern in December 1929. Returned to India soon, was arrested,

and released in November 1936. Attended the Faizpur session of the

Indian National Congress the following month. During the Second

World War, formed the Radical Democratic Party, only to dissolve it

soon. The International Humanist and Ethical Union, formed in 1952

in Amsterdam, elected him Vice President in absentia. Had an accident

around this time, which damaged his brain. Serialized his memoirs in

his journal Radical Humanist in his last days. Died on January 25,

1954, in Dehra Dun, India.

Saktalvala, Shapurji 1874–1936

 Communist Member of Parliament in Britain. Born in Bombay,

mother Jerbai was a sister of J.N. Tata. Went to England in 1905.

Joined the Independent Labour Party. Was a founder member of the

Workers’ Welfare League of India as well as the Communist Party of

Great Britain. Elected to parliament twice, in 1922 and 1924. Toured

India in 1926–27. A key figure in the Meerut defence movement in

Britain. Died on January 16, 1936.

Santokh Singh

A Punjabi emigrant to California, he became General Secretary of

the Gadar Party when it was reorganized in 1919–20. Went to Soviet

Russia with Rattan Singh to establish contact with the Comintern, and

attended its Fourth Congress. Returned to India in 1925 and brought

out the monthly Kirti in 1926. Died in 1927.

Satyabhakta

Real name Chamanlal. Editor of Pranvir from Nagpur, later shifted

to Kanpur. After the Kanpur Conspiracy Case, conceived organizing

the Communist Party on a legal and national basis. Established a

socialist bookshop in Kanpur and set up an ‘Indian Communist Party’.

Took the initiative to convene the first All India Communist

Conference in cooperation with Hasrat Mohani, and invited Shapurji

Saklatvala to preside. At the conference, however, his ideas were not

acceptable to the majority of delegates from communist groups from

all over India. Left the conference and soon vanished from the

political scene altogether.

Tagore, Saumyendranath 1901–1974

Born in Calcutta in October 1901. Nephew of Rabindranath

Tagore. Graduated from Presidency College in 1921. Elected Secretary

of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Party of Bengal in 1927. Left for Europe

and took part in the Sixth Congress of the Comintern. Distanced

himself from the CPI after his return. Founded the Revolutionary

Communist Party of India in 1937. Died on September 22, 1972 in

Calcutta.

Usmani, Shaukat

A muhajir, he attended the Tashkent military school, and the

University for the Toilers of the East. Fought for the defence of Kirkee

alongside the Red Army. Attended the Sixth Congress of the

Comintern. Convicted in the Kanpur Conspiracy Case with Dange,

Muzaffar Ahmad and Nalini Gupta. Author of Peshawar to Moscow.

Edited Payam-i-Mazdoor from Bombay till his arrest in the Meerut

Conspiracy Case. Sentenced to seven years, which was reduced to

three. Towards the end of the case, he moved away from the CPI and

worked with the Revolutionary Socialist Party after his release. Went

abroad after Independence, eventually settling down in Cairo.

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