Communist Histories

volume i

Edited with an Introduction by

vijay prashad
Published in July 2016 by
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
ISBN 978-93-80118-37-6 (e-book)
Individual essays © respective authors, 2016
This collection © LeftWord Books, 2016
Table of Contents

Vijay PrashadIntroduction: Communist Histories

Suchetana ChattopadhyayBeing ‘Naren Bhattacharji’
Fredrik PeterssonThe ‘Colonial Conference’ and Dilemma of the
Comintern’s Colonial Work, 1928-29
Margaret StevensCuba and the Red International, 1934
Elisabeth ArmstrongIndian Peasant Women’s Activism in a Hot Cold War
Archana PrasadThe Warli Movement and its Living Histories
Lin ChunThe Lost International in the Transformation of Chinese Socialism
Contributors
Vijay Prashad
Introduction: Communist Histories

HISTORY WITH THE COMMUNISTS LEFT OUT

As the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union collapsed between 1989 and
1991, the debate over the past and future of Communism rose to a fever
pitch. New archives in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe opened up
to allow scholars to assess not only the history of these regions, but also of
the Communist movement elsewhere. In particular, the Communist
International (Comintern) archives possessed material that would shine a
light on Communist activities from 1919 to 1943, the period when the Left
coalesced into the Communist movement in many parts of the world. A
flurry of books on Communism, particularly on these decades of the
Comintern, emerged.[1] The tenor of these books was generally unkind to
the Communist movement – although it is better to have them than no
history at all. The general suggestion was that Communists from the United
States to Indonesia operated as puppets of the Soviet Union. They had no
autonomy from Moscow, and indeed survived largely due to Moscow Gold.
Since the Soviet Union had now fallen – went the argument – it was time
for its satellites to all fall into the black hole of history.
In Italy, for example, the new leadership of the Communist Party (PCI)
began to reassess its past, particularly the role of Palmiro Togliatti (its
leader from 1930 to 1934 and then from 1938 to 1964). Togliatti was not
only the pillar of the PCI, but he was also, as Justice Minister, one of the
key drafters of the Italian Constitution of 1947.[2] Elected to the leadership
of the PCI in 1988, Achille Occhetto denounced Togliatti’s support for
Joseph Stalin and his policies. It was Stalin who deformed Communism,
Occhetto argued, and produced the mockery of what had come to be known
as comunismo reale, de facto communism, not ideal communism.[3] The PCI
collapsed a few years later, and re-appeared as the Democratic Party of the
Left (PDS) – dressed entirely in Social Democratic rather than Communist
garments. Occhetto was its first leader. He realized quickly that the attack
on Togliatti had opened a can of worms against the Left tradition and any
Left party – even one avowedly anti-Communist. ‘We have squared our
accounts with the past. But if there is anybody who says that we no longer
have the right to exist as a party because of our past, then our answer is: you
are not looking for historical truth; you are instigating a shameful
persecution’.[4]
Corruption scandals dented both the Christian Democrats and the
Socialist Party, which opened the door for the PDS to lead an Alliance of
Progressives to victory in 1994. This prospect drew Silvio Berlusconi from
his boardroom to the streets. He galvanized the Right as the Pole of Liberty,
which included the fascist parties. Since they had shielded their history
from attack, Berlusconi went after the Left. ‘Left-wingers pretend they have
changed’, he said in his opening speech, ‘they claim that they are liberal-
democrats now, but it is not true, they are the same as before, their
mentality, their culture, their deepest beliefs and their behaviour are just the
same as before’.[5] The attack at the historical role of the Communists was
not merely a historiographical debate; it was one that was used to discredit
the Left as rooted in Soviet history and therefore anachronistic in the new
age. The fascists, on the other hand, did not need to stand to account for
their views. Berlusconi rode this attack on the Left to victory. The Left was
largely wiped off the face of the Italian political landscape. From coming
close to power in 1994, they fell to the lure of moderation. The Democratic
Party, now in power, is the remnant of this collapse.
In India, the story – much the same – took place a decade earlier. From
the margins of Indian politics, the Extreme Right began to make its
appearance on the main stage. Rechristened as the Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP), the Extreme Right won only two seats in the Indian parliamentary
elections of 1984. But this was an aberration. Its leadership mounted their
chariots for the Ramjanambhoomi campaign to build a temple to Ram on
the site of an old mosque in Ayodhya. The BJP believed that this campaign
would consolidate a ‘Hindu vote bank’ in its favour. By 1996, the BJP
would become the largest party in the Indian parliament. It was a
spectacular rise. At the same time, the Left rose from thirty-three seats in
parliament in 1984 to fifty-two seats in 1996. If this is any indicator of
political strength, the Left appeared buoyant. It played a decisive role in the
formation of the United Front government in 1996, which kept the BJP out
of power for two years. An attack on the Left, therefore, was not
idiosyncratic. It was politically essential.
In 1984, economist and journalist Arun Shourie wrote a series of
articles in the Illustrated Weekly of India. The series went after the Left for
its role in the Freedom Movement. The event that allowed Shourie to
condense all his calumnies against the Left was the role of the Communists
in the Quit India struggle of 1942. The Communists, Shourie wrote, took
their orders from Moscow to support the Great Patriotic War and thereby to
ignore the ‘Do or Die’ cry of the August 9 Quit India agitation. This is the
betrayal of the communists. Shourie would later expand these articles into a
book – Only Fatherland: Communists, Quit India and the Soviet Union
(1991). The attack on the Left allowed Shourie to do three things. First,
Shourie’s jeremiad distracted attention from the Right’s marginal role in the
Freedom Movement – and, in terms of the 1942 uprising, to shift the focus
from V.D. Savarkar’s campaign to strengthen the British war as early as
1941 and Savarkar’s order to the Hindu Mahasabha, on September 4, 1942,
to ignore the Quit India movement and ‘stick to their posts and continue to
perform their regular duties’.[6] Second, it allowed Shourie to ignore the
fascist complicities of India’s Extreme Right.[7]
Third, Shourie’s slash and burn critique attempted to undermine the
communist’s considerable role in the fight for independence. Historian
Sumit Sarkar pointed out that Shourie’s use of historical materials was
shoddy – using statements without context, making gross generalizations
without the humility of the historian’s craft.[8] For Shourie, the Communists
were marionettes of Moscow. When Moscow said that the war of 1939-41
was an imperialist war, the Communists nodded; when Moscow said that
the war from 1941 was a people’s war, the Communists nodded. At no point
did Shourie take seriously the Indian communists – neither the CPI’s own
assessment at the CPI’s 2nd Congress in 1948 nor the words of its leadership
in oral history interviews conducted by the Nehru Memorial Museum and
Library’s deputy director Hari Dev Sharma.[9] S.S. Mirajkar, one of the
founders of the CPI, told Sharma that the jailed party leadership debated the
attitude of the communists against the Nazis. Before the Nazi invasion of
the Soviet Union, the Indian communists understood the virulent nature of
Nazi ideology and militarism (a position shared with the Congress leader
Jawaharlal Nehru). Even after the German-Soviet non-aggression treaty in
August 1939, the CPI held the belief that the best way to defeat fascism was
to fight for socialism in India. ‘The war crisis’, noted the CPI leadership,
‘brings out in the sharpest manner and intensifies thousand-fold the conflict
between the British government and the Indian people.’ This crisis ‘opens
up the perspective of the transformation of imperialist war into a war of
national liberation’.[10] The CPI called for a general strike on 2 October
1939, a few days after the declaration of war. Ninety thousand workers
participated in this strike, which was the first anti-war protest in the entire
international labour movement.[11] Debate amongst the leadership over a
six-month period led to the conclusion that the communists must support
both the Soviet Union against the fascist attack and continue to fight for
freedom in India. The People’s War thesis, Mirajkar said, ‘was the result of
our own thinking’.[12] Part of the communist leadership understood, as B.T.
Ranadive wrote in 1948, that the war for the future was going to be fought
at Stalingrad. It was here – from 1942 to 1943 – that the Soviet Union wore
down the Nazi war machine at the cost of over a million Soviet lives.[13]
Did the CPI betray the Indian freedom movement, as Shourie alleged?
The evidence shows that at no point in 1942-43 did the communists operate
as informers against others, and in many cases, the communists continued
to fight in the freedom movement at the same time as they assisted in the
war effort. In Bengal’s Midnapur district, for instance, communists such as
Haren Mitra and Rabi Mitra of Kespur ‘took a leading part of the [Quit
India] movement’.[14] After the Quit India struggle, many of its leaders,
ended up in the Communist party – people such as Nana Patil, Bapurao
Jagtap, Jharkhand Rai, Sarjoo Pandey and of course Aruna Asaf Ali. They
knew that the Communists had played a leading role in the freedom
movement, and, would – in 1945-48, lead a series of important rebellions
from Punnappra-Vayalar in Travancore to Telengana in Hyderabad, from
the Warli struggle in Maharashtra to the peasant struggle in Tanjore, as well
as provide key support to uprisings such as the RIN Mutiny, the Tebhaga
struggle and the working-class strike wave that went from Bombay to
Madras. None of this enters the ledger of the Extreme Right, which at that
time cultivated hate amongst its adherents in preparation for the communal
riots of the same period. If the measure is taken on betrayal, there is little
question that the Extreme Right sits heavily on the scale.
 Shourie’s jeremiad did not come from nowhere. Despite the importance
of Marxist thought in the Indian academy, intellectuals pilloried the
communist movement along similar lines. Romesh Thapar, one-time
member of the CPI, used his journal – Seminar – in 1974 to dismiss the
movement with piercing sarcasm. ‘The history of the communist
movement’, he wrote in a special number dedicated to Marxism and India,
‘as the main purveyor of Marxism in the country, reveals a vacillation
between blunders and irrelevancies, both accompanied by unique courage’.
[15]
In that volume, historian Bipan Chandra writes that the communists’
‘record of failure is rather long, for at no stage during the last fifty years
have the Indian Marxists succeeded in achieving more than a small part of
what was historically possible’.[16] Chandra previews here what he would
say in a collection he edited nine years later.[17] What grouse united these
writers – from Romesh Thapar to Bipan Chandra – was that the communists
should not have broken with the Congress. Indeed, if the communists had
properly tethered themselves to the Congress, then the latter would not have
been able to drift so rapidly rightwards. This is a judgment shared in our
times by the historian Ramachandra Guha.[18]
From the 1920s, the communist movement debated its relationship with
the Indian National Congress. Before the 1940s, the Congress was not an
electoral party, but the vehicle for the Indian nationalist movement. The
debate in those three decades (1920-1950) allowed the communists to refine
their own theory of struggle – to fight to build an alternative modernity to
that of capitalism and colonialism. Anti-colonialism was shared across the
Congress, but not anti-capitalism. The communists rightly worried that if
they liquidated themselves into the Congress there would be no anti-
capitalist force left. Debates with the Comintern on the relationship to the
Congress mirrored debates there on how the Chinese, Vietnamese and
Indonesian communists should treat their own national movements. War
destroyed the bourgeois national forces in China and Vietnam, opening the
door for the communists to deepen their roots in society and in the political
world. No such opportunity afforded Indonesia and India, where the
bourgeois nationalists maintained their hegemony through the anti-colonial
movement. The Indonesian Communist Party (PKI), despite the difficult
circumstances, grew to be a significant force in the country. As a threat, it
was cut down by a brutal military coup in 1965, backed by Australia and the
United States, with a million people killed in short order. This violence
removed the PKI from Indonesia.[19] India’s communists did not face such
annihilation, although the CPI did face political repression – either prison
for its leadership in the late 1940s or removal by fiat of its democratically
elected government in Kerala in 1957. The Indian National Congress
transformed itself into a modern political party with a narrow agenda that
required the excision of the left (the Communists in 1944 and the Socialists
in 1948). The narrow class character of the Congress required the break,
which was mutual.
The critics of the Indian communists did not acknowledge sufficiently
the larger forces arrayed against the movement, nor the local difficulties of
building unified struggles in social settings fragmented by caste and
religion. Chandra suggests a horizon that was ‘historically possible’, but
does not elaborate upon it. Capitalist social forces drew sustenance from
feudal hierarchies – with caste and gender reshaped to provide the basis for
capitalist accumulation. The objective conditions of exploitation and
oppression weighed heavily on the Indian communists, as they did on all
popular movements of this era. A confident and powerful Indian
bourgeoisie had entrenched itself in the various institutions of the new
Indian state. In the early 1950s, the CPI debated the role of the bourgeoisie
and its alliance with the older feudal forces, the general sensibility of the
masses and the weakness of the party.[20] To be useful, Chandra’s dismissal
of the CPI should have gone beyond the posture of argumentation. It would
have necessitated an engagement with social history and world history –
digging deep into the locations of communist struggle, on the one side, and
opening the aperture to look widely at the geopolitics in Asia. Little of this
was conducted.[21]
Social history came to India in the 1970s, helped along certainly by the
influence of E.P. Thompson (who addressed the Indian History Congress in
1976) and by British social history in general.[22] Eric Hobsbawm had
warned that ‘social history’ did not entail merely exploration by historians
of the social domain, namely cultural matters such as family life, food,
death and so on. If institutions of power – such as the state – were removed
from social history, it would take the politics out of – for instance – gender
relations and caste relations.[23] The state is involved in both the practices of
governance and social reproduction, within whose domains lay the elements
of social history. The ethos of social history was not unfamiliar to Indian
history writing, which had come of age in the national movement, in which
the people had asserted themselves as historical agents. It was imperial
historiography that wanted Indian history to be merely the history of the
intrigues of elites. Others – even Nehru’s volumes – had come to social
history not through methodology but from the ethos of the national
movement. Uneven surely, but this was their consensus.
The framework of social history allowed scholars of communism to
begin a rich engagement with communist struggles and state building.
Going beneath the heavy handed dismissals of Stalinism, Sheila Fitzpatrick
and her colleagues began to write more balanced accounts of the Soviet
Union of the 1930s.[24] From Italy – despite the debates around Togliatti and
because of the influence of Antonio Gramsci – came a more open approach
by scholars to the history of the communist party and its impact on millions
of peasants and workers. Paolo Spriano’s multi-volume history of the party,
published between 1967 and 1975, provided a fine example of official party
history. The volumes are rich in detail and leavened by the contradictions
between structural constraints and cultural hopes.[25] Maurizio Bertolotti’s
Carnevale di massai – in the micro-history tradition of Carlo Ginzburg –
put on the anthropologist’s spectacles to observe how peasants and workers
felt drawn to communism.[26] These books did not take an antithetical stance
against communism. They took a deep interest in the appeal of the horizon
of communism in order to better understand it and to see why it had begun
to fade. Little of this kind of granular attention to communist struggles was
visible in the social history written on India or elsewhere in the Global
South.
In 1982, Sabyasachi Bhattacharya delivered an important presidential
address at the Indian Historical Congress. Bhattacharya argued the case that
‘history from below’ in the Third World was not merely the addition of the
people to history but it was a ‘reassessment of the ‘nationalist’ interpretive
framework in history and other social sciences’.[27] In other words, what is
necessary is a history of the working people of a country – those in trade
unions and those in the informal sector, those who work directly under the
regime of capital and those who work to reproduce society. This was a
formidable challenge, which included the accumulation of the histories of
the institutions of the workers – amorphous culture certainly, but also trade
unions and left parties. Scholars who worked in this tradition produced a
series of books on working-class history and formed – in 1996 – the
Association of Indian Labour Historians.[28] In this work – particularly in
Chitra Joshi’s book on Kanpur and my work on Delhi – the historians
charted out the linkages between the working-class struggles and the
formation of trade unions and left parties. A social history of Indian
communism could very well have developed out of this trajectory.[29]
What derailed this thrust was the emergence of Subaltern Studies that
same year, and its rapid shift to an epistemology of spontaneity. The journal
appeared with a great deal of élan, some of it exaggerated, as its main
premises – a history from below – had been largely commonplace by then.
[30]
Certainly Subaltern Studies rekindled enthusiasm for this approach to
history writing, and to the need for acute attention to the social conditions
and contradictions of state policy. The essays in the first two volumes of
Subaltern Studies seemed hardly unfamiliar, even though they had formally
adopted vocabulary (elite-subaltern) that seemed far more reductive than
the conventional Marxist class categories. By the subsequent volumes,
Subaltern Studies drifted away from ‘history from below’ towards a concern
with matters of elite culture and power in a disembodied fashion.[31]
Subaltern Studies correctly suggested that most of Indian historiography
had ignored the cultural worlds of the people, and that this needed
emphasis. It then opted for a theory of consciousness that – as the years
went by – hardened the gap between the elite and the subaltern. This
bifurcated categorization had no room in it for the organizer – the trade
union and peasant militant, the people who built the trade unions and the
kisan sabhas, the communist and socialist parties. These people do not
appear in these studies. They had to be cast out of the story or disparaged as
nothing other than the elite.[32] This is a methodology that favours political
spontaneity – uprisings happen, they produce police records and oral
narratives, out of which can be gleaned the consciousness of the
autonomous peasantry (for Dipesh Chakrabarty, the jute mill workers
remain peasants in their factory towns).[33] The communists vanished from
their record. It was history with the Communist left out.
One of the most effective ways to reduce the role of the Communists is
to cast them out as outsiders who are feeble because they are culturally
outsiders (brahmins, perhaps, in a world of Dalit workers). It is certainly
true that the Indian Communist movement developed out of the extremist
sections of the nationalist movement in Bengal, Madras, Maharashtra, and
Punjab. It did not emerge in the 1920s out of the working-class and peasant
struggles, although these activists learned to abjure elitist deeds of violence
in favour of involvement in working-class and peasant struggles. Early
work came in the working-class areas, such as in the factory towns of
Jamshedpur and Bombay. In 1920, when workers struck at the Tata factory
in Jamshedpur, they found their militancy sufficient but their lack of certain
skills to be debilitating. ‘Messengers were sent to Calcutta for some one to
lead them’, remembered Moni Ghosh.[34] Eight years later, having struggled
alongside various left activists, the workers – now left activists in their own
right – took charge of their own organizations. The Tata’s General Manager,
C.A. Alexander, sensed this transformation amongst all the workers in the
1928 strike. This was ‘pucca Bolshevism’, he wrote, and the workers ‘must
again be put back in their proper place’.[35] Much the same kind of
intervention by communists helped the workers to organize the Girni
Kamgar Union, through which workers themselves became communists.[36]
Archana Prasad’s paper in this volume – on the Warli movement – shows
that while the Parulekars played a decisive role in the early Warli struggle,
it was the Warlis themselves who became communists and developed their
struggles. The erasure of communists, therefore, is not the removal of the
‘outsider’ alone but also of the worker and peasant who becomes a
communist and acts in his or her community as a communist.
In the first decade of Indian communism, it is certainly true that the CPI
concentrated its attention in the working-class urban areas. But the agrarian
crisis of the 1930s shifted the sights of the party toward the peasantry.
Although Marxism came to India from Russia and not Germany, the CPI
was slow to adopt the agrarian emphasis of Lenin and Mao. It was in rural
Bengal alongside the peasant upsurge that the communists put down roots
in the famine relief work and in the Tebhaga movement. In rural Telangana,
the communists led a revolt against the landlords and against the state. It
was in rural Tripura and in the coastal regions of western India, under
communist leadership, that the people fought for tribal rights and land
rights. Perhaps the rural struggle most in need of study is the uprising in the
Thanjavur region of today’s Tamil Nadu. Harsh conditions set in place by
landlords forced the Dalits into the condition of bonded labour (pannayals).
The young communist militants such as B. Srinivasa Rao (BSR) and A.M.
Gopu went to Thanjavur, with little experience of rural areas or of labour
struggles. They lived with the local Dalit workers and learned of their trials
first hand. It took a great deal of effort for BSR, P. Ramamurti and Gopu to
build a small unit of communists in rural Thanjavur, helped by new
comrades that they recruited – such as Kalappal Kuppu, who was shot dead
by the police in 1948. These communists built up a Kisan Sabha unit
amongst the Dalit workforce, who fought against tenant eviction in the
early 1950s and won the passage of the Pannayals Protection Act of 1952.
The CPI was known, in Tamil Nadu, as Pallan Parayan Katchi, or the Party
of Pallars and Parayars. Thanjavur was red base, largely because of the
resilience of the Dalit peasants of the district but also because of the dogged
work of people like BSR. Their absence from the historical record suggests
that political movements need not be built – they will somehow build
themselves. There is a great deal of passivity suggested by the erasure of
BSR, P. Ramamurti, Gopu and Kalappal Kuppu.[37]
Ranajit Guha, the prime mover of Subaltern Studies, opened the first
volume with a nod to the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci’s six-point
project for the study of subaltern classes (although he does not quote them).
[38]
Of these six, number four reads – ‘the formations which the subaltern
groups themselves produce, in order to press claims of a limited and partial
character’ – which means that a study of the subaltern classes must look
carefully at the formations – the organizations – of the subaltern classes.[39]
When Gramsci elaborated on this through questions of political
mobilization and leadership, he noted, ‘Only a very skillful leadership,
capable of taking into account the deepest aspirations and feelings of those
human masses can prevent disintegration and defeat’.[40] This is a manifesto
for the study not only of the cultural worlds and economic landscape of the
working class and peasantry, but also of their struggles through the
constraints and resources of culture to produce leadership and institutions of
power. A communist history, as this series of volumes would like to
approximate, would find its manifesto in precisely this journey. It is what
we hope to accomplish.

ARCHEOLOGY OF COMMUNISM
 Communist histories are buried under a mountain of sediment – some
of it is the crud of ideology and others the difficulty of finding materials,
often destroyed by those who wanted this history to disappear.
The most treacherous obstacle is to pierce the fog of ideology.
Communism and communist movements have an antithetical relationship to
the order of things. The broad common sense of our times sees these
movements as objectionable or worthless. Sympathy for them is rare, even
in places – such as India – where the movements remain resilient, although
not powerful. This lack of understanding provokes from the researcher an
adverse reaction to the main concepts of communism. For example, a
clichéd understanding of ‘democratic centralism’, a central concept of
communist organizations – leads to a dismissal of communist movements as
somehow directed entirely from the headquarters. What is the point, then, of
doing a study of communist campaigns in a remote locality if everything
that could be learned of it can come from a study of the resolutions from the
Politburo? But democratic centralism does not obviate the creativity of
politics at different levels. If the researcher had a less dogmatic approach to
the organization of the party, then he or she might study the way in which
communist parties themselves struggle with democracy and discipline, the
needs of close adherence to the agreed upon line and the flexibility
necessary for mass organizational work. This was the basis of Elisabeth
Armstrong’s work on the All-India Democratic Women’s Association as
well as of Robin Kelley’s book on Alabama communists.[41]
Scholars of communism – in our time – feel obliged to stand apart from
the subject that they wish to study – take a stand athwart the party, want to
write of its ideals but dislike its organization, lack the most elementary
openness to the people who are in these parties. Most of them have no faith
in the possibility of a socialist horizon, which makes them look at
communists as if they are lost tribe in a forest who has not yet encountered
modernity. These same intellectuals – liberal in sensibility – write about the
Extreme Right with a tone of horror; when it comes to their texts of the
Left, it is somewhere between belittlement and condescension. This misses
the tenor of the Left (it also, as it happens, misses the tenor of the Right).
An archeologist of communism cannot afford such distance. Proximity
does not mean agreement, only a sensibility that suggests openness toward
understanding. Such an approach is necessary because of the failures of the
communists themselves to provide materials to best understand what they
have done or are doing. E.M.S. Namboodiripad admitted that he would be
the ‘last to claim that the theoretical work of India’s Marxists has been
equal to their practical achievements. Nor would I deny the force of the
argument that this lag in the theoretical field has an adverse impact on
practice itself’.[42] Communists are often too busy to properly document
their own activities, hastily – in the lamplight of damp huts – writing
reports to be delivered at party congresses. Details are sparse here for fear
of leading an adverse State to the cadres in this or that locality. The
language sounds mechanical, as habits of phrase – borrowed from older
comrades, who themselves took their lessons from the literature of
international communism – take the place of the genuine wisdom of the
communist activist. Even a brief conversation with these activists teaches
one so much about lived realities and the socio-economic context of
localities; but this is rarely set down in print. It is what serves to obscure the
work of communists. A method is necessary to read these texts.[43]
Papers of the communist parties are rarely allowed in the public
domain. These are hidden away in party offices or even burnt. Periodically
parties provide their own view of the past, collecting some documents for
collections. In India, the CPI and the CPI-M have produced shelves of such
collections.[44] Many of these books collect work that had already been
published at that time – party constitutions, programmes, election
manifestos, pamphlets, and so on. What we do not have in these volumes
are the notes from the meetings, reports from the districts to the leadership,
evidence of the kinds of debates that took place inside the community of the
party. Renu Chakravartty’s Communists in Indian Women’s Movement
draws from such material, and cites them at great length.[45] But such notes
and reports have not yet been collected into publically available volumes.
Notes from the Politburo and Central Committee meetings from the early
years into the 1980s would provide a window into the discussions over such
crucial matters as the assessment of the communists towards the bourgeois
nationalists, as the arguments over the idea of armed struggle and as the
debate over the cultural shifts in the working class and peasantry in the era
of consumerism.
Such debates could be glimpsed in memoirs of communist leaders, but
even these are rare – as rare as biographies of these figures. Communists,
being people of the masses, are loath to tell their own stories or to allow
others to do so. Their humility is not false. Rooted in the worlds of
struggling peasants and workers – men and women who fight to survive and
to change the conditions of their existence – Communist activists find their
own stories less important than those of their comrades in the fight.
Suchetana Chattopadhyay’s ‘biography’ of Muzaffar Ahmad, for instance,
cannot remain with him alone. That would not be possible. She roots the
individual lives into their social world of the urban working-class of
Kolkata.[46] These are the kinds of studies that we need. In this volume,
Chattopadhyay writes of the early life of M.N. Roy – his Bengal years when
he was not yet the world revolutionary. More such accounts are necessary,
particularly those drawn from the most thorough archival research and with
the widest attempt to put the individuals into context. Infrequently do
communist leaders from various levels of the party organization allow
themselves to be interviewed about their own lives, about their own beliefs
and about their own contributions to the movement. It could be that in such
texts a window might open into the world of communism. But, for fear of
appearing egotistical and in awe of those around them, that window remains
shuttered.
Like a forgotten gold mine that suddenly opens its doors to reveal new
seams, the Comintern archive revealed itself. Scholars rushed in to see what
lay in those shelves – learning about the Comintern’s own work as well as
that of national parties (from reports sent to Moscow to explain the work
being done on the ground). These documents have been essential, and many
of our papers in this volume work through them. In this volume, Fredrik
Petersson uses them to explore the limitations of Moscow’s understanding
of the necessity of building an anti-colonial platform. What these archives
tell us is what they worried about in Moscow. Rarely do we get a glimpse of
the regional developments. Margaret Steven’s essay in this volume is an
exception, since it uses the Comintern papers (and other archival sources) to
piece together the attempt to build a communist movement in Cuba.[47]
LeftWord will soon publish a volume of material – specifically related to
India – collected by Subodh Roy from the Comintern and Soviet archives,
which we hope will inspire scholars to produce local communist histories
from this collection.
 Early work on the communist movement relied on the sparse materials
provided by the communists themselves, but looked with great attention at
the police records and documents. If the communists did not always
document their work with the greatest care, the police and intelligence
services certainly kept a close eye on them. The work by the early police
officials in India was so informative and of such high quality that the
communist parties themselves reprinted them – particularly the work of Sir
Cecil Kaye, Sir David Petrie and Sir Horace Williamson.[48] One problem
with the police records is that they tend to exaggerate the influence of the
communists, especially since this idea of the ‘Bolshevik Menace’ allowed
them to target even non-communist nationalists with the heavy hand of their
powers.[49] Entire accounts of communism have been written based from
highly objectionable police files.[50] Reading the prose of counter-
insurgency requires a deft touch, but problems arise with too great reliance
upon them for the basic factual record.[51] They are not the most reliable
narrators of the smallest details because the tendency to fabricate in order to
build a criminal case was too great to ignore.
Challenges are aplenty for the archeologist of communism – in search
of stories that have begun to vanish before our eyes. This volume –
Communist Histories – is, we hope, an opportunity for scholars to go out
there, find these endangered stories and insert them with the most severe
analytical scrutiny into the historical record. We hope that this first volume
is inspiration enough for our colleagues to pursues lines of investigation
that reveal the contributions of communists not only to the history of India,
but to that of the world.
[1]
For example, in English, Yale University Press began its Annals of Communism series in the
1990s, with such titles as Stalin’s Letters to Molotov (1996), The Secret World of American
Communism (1996), The Fall of the Romanovs (1997), The Soviet World of American
Communism (1998) and The Unknown Lenin (1999). The material in these volumes – largely –
came from the Soviet archives, although the interpretation was decidedly anti-Communist. The
literature in other European languages is growing. For a good overview, see Fredrik Petersson,
‘Historiographical Trends and the Comintern: the Communist International (Comintern) and How
it has been Interpreted’, Comintern Working Papers, CoWoPa 8/2007.
[2]
Aldo Agosti, Palmiro Togliatti: A Biography, London: I.B. Tauris, 2008.
[3]
Gianluca Fantoni, ‘After the Fall: Politics, the Public Use of History and the Historiography of
the Italian Communist Party, 1991-2011’, Journal of Contemporary History, 49, 4, 2014, p. 5.
[4]
Martin Bull and Philip Daniels, ‘The ‘New Beginning’: The Italian Communist Party under the
leadership of Achille Occhetto’, Journal of Communist Studies, 6, 3, 1990.
[5]
Fantoni, ‘After the Fall’, p. 8.
[6]
Sumit Sarkar, ‘The Communists and 1942’, Social Scientist, 12, 8, September 1984, p. 50.
[7]
On the relationship between Hindutva and fascism, see Marzia Casolari, In the Shade of the
Swastika. The Ambiguous Relationship between Indian Nationalism and Nazi-Fascism, Bologna:
I Libri di Emil, 2011.
[8]
Sarkar, ‘The Communists and 1942’.
[9]
E.M.S. Namboodiripad, ‘The Left in India’s Freedom Movement and in Free India’, Social
Scientist, 14, 8/9, August-September 1986, p. 12.
[10]
‘On Our Policy and Tasks in the Period of War’, CPI Politburo Statement, October 1939.
[11]
Habib Manzer, ‘Communist Party Policy During the Imperialist War (1939-1941)’, Social
Scientist, 35, 11/12, November-December 2007, p. 56.
[12]
S.S. Mirajkar, Oral History Transcripts no. 433. Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New
Delhi. Mirajkar also noted, ‘We were part of the Communist International as long as it
functioned. We do not hide this fact but that does not mean that every time, every day we got a
telegram from the Communist International to do this or do that.’
[13]
B.T. Ranavide, ‘Report on Reformist Deviation [1948]’, in M.B. Rao (ed.), Documents of the
History of the Communist Party of India, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1976, vol. VII,
p. 135.
[14]
Hiteshranjan Sanyal, ‘The Quit India Movement in Medinipur District’, in Gyanendra Pandey
(ed.), The Indian Nation in 1942, Calcutta: K.P. Bagchi, 1988, p. 44.
[15]
‘The Problem’, Seminar 178, June 1974, p. 10. For a critique of the volume, see E.M.S.
Namboodiripad, ‘How to Study Indian Communism with Minimum Reading’, Social Scientist, 3,
1, August 1974.
[16]
Bipan Chandra, ‘Total Rectification’, Seminar, p. 25.
[17]
Bipan Chandra (ed.), The Indian Left: Critical Appraisals, Delhi: Vikas, 1983. Cf. Irfan Habib,
‘Problems of Marxist Historiography’, Social Scientist, 16, 12, December 1988.
[18]
Ramachandra Guha, ‘After the Fall’, Caravan, June 2011.
[19]
Geoffrey Robinson, The Dark Side of Paradise. Political View in Bali, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1995 and Nathaniel Mehr, Constructive Bloodbath in Indonesia: The United
States, Great Britain and the Mass Killings of 1965-1966, Nottingham: Spokesman Books, 2009.
[20]
A close reading of the 1951 Programme of the Communist Party of India and the Tactical Line
as well as the 1952 note on ‘The Results of the General Election and the Tasks Before the Party’
and the pamphlet Some of Our Main Weaknesses suggests this interpretation. These texts are in
Mohit Sen (ed.), Documents of the History of the Communist Party of India, vol. VIII, New
Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1977.
[21]
The three volume study done by Bipan Chandra’s students – Struggle for Hegemony in India by
Bhagwan Josh and Shashi Joshi (1994) – could very well have undertaken this task, but it fails.
Rather than follow up on Josh’s excellent monograph on Punjab – Communist Movement in
Punjab, 1926-1947 (1979) – the volumes march through the years offering negative judgments of
communist decision making at the highest level. There is little engagement with the communist
struggles in various localities, where the social and political constraints and opportunities could
have been assessed; there is little done with the calibration of the various strands of the Left vis-
à-vis the shifting class allegiance of the Congress Party, which drifted steadily into the arms of
the Indian bourgeoisie.
[22]
Eric J. Hobsbawm, ‘From Social History to the History of Society’, Daedalus, 100, 1971, plays
a key role here.
[23]
Geoff Eley and Keith Nield, ‘Why does Social History Ignore Politics?’ Social History, 5, 1980
and Joan Scott, ‘Women’s History: the Modern Period’, Past & Present, 101, November 1983.
[24]
Sheila Fitzpatrick, ‘New Perspectives on Stalinism’, The Russian Review, vo. 45, 1986.
[25]
Paola Spriano, Storia del Partito communista italiano, Torino: Einaudi, five volumes, 1967-
1975. Much the same kind of work appeared out of Germany, from Detlev Peukert’s Die KPD im
Widerstand: Verfolgung und Untergrundarbeit an Rhein und Ruhr 1933–1945, Wuppertal:
Hammer, 1980 to Catherine Epstein’s The Last Revolutionaries: German Communists and Their
Century, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003. See, Geoff Eley, ‘International
Communism in the Hey-Day of Stalin’, New Left Review, I/157, May-June 1986.
[26]
Maurizio Bertolotti, Carnevale di massa 1950, Torino: Einaudi, 1991.
[27]
Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, ‘History from Below’, Social Scientist, 11, 4, April 1983, p. 4.
[28]
Vijay Prashad, Untouchable Freedom: The Social History of a Dalit Community, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 1999; Chitra Joshi, Lost Worlds: Indian Labour and Its Forgotten
Histories, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2003; Rana Behal, One Hundred Years of Servitude:
Political Economy of Tea Plantations in Colonial Assam, Delhi: Tulika, 2014 and the essays in
Rana Behal and Marcel van der Linden (eds.) Coolies, Capital and Colonialism (special issue of
the International Review of Social History, 2006) – particularly the essays by Prabhu P.
Mohapatra, Shankar Ramaswami and Ian Kerr.
[29]
The kind of work published in 1986, for instance, by Indra Munshi Saldanha (‘Tribal Women in
the Warli Revolt, 1945-47. “Class” and “Gender” in the Left Perspective’, Economic & Political
Weekly, XXI, 17, 1986), Peter Custers (‘Women’s Role in Tebhaga Movement’, Economic &
Political Weekly, XXI, 43, 1986), and A. Satynarayana (‘The Rise and Growth of Left Movement
in Andhra, 1934-39’, Social Scientist, 14, 1, 1986) did not create a dent in the historiography,
although it should have. The list of those whose work on the Left in this period had begun to
draw on the resources of social history is too long.
[30]
A point well made by Sumit Sarkar, Writing Social History, Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1997, pp. 83-85.
[31]
This is the gist of Sarkar’s critique in Writing Social History, pp. 85-103 and of Himani
Bannerji’s ‘Projects of Hegemony: Towards a Critique of Subaltern Studies’ “Resolution of the
Women’s Question,”’ Economic & Political Weekly, 35, 11, 2000.
[32]
Two important books on the Indian communist movement, written in this period, followed this
approach toward the organizer – being disparaging about the caste origins of the leadership of the
communist movement, in particular. Ross Mallick’s Indian Communism: Opposition,
Collaboration and Institutionalization, Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994 and Dilip Menon,
Caste, Nationalism and Communism in South India. Malabar, 1900-1948, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994. Menon’s book, unlike Mallick’s work, is a serious attempt to
understand the cultural worlds of Kerala communism. Little else has been done along the vein of
his attempt, which is a pity.
[33]
Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal 1890-1940, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1989, p. 69. Chakrabarty’s statement is factually contested by Ranajit Das
Gupta (‘Indian Working Class and Some Recent Historiographical Issues’, Economic & Political
Weekly, 31, 8, 1996), Subho Basu (Does Class Matter? Colonial Capital and Workers’
Resistance in Bengal, 1890-1937, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004) and Samita Sen
(Women and Labour in Late Colonial India. The Bengal Jute Industry, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006).
[34]
Moni Ghosh, Our Struggle: A Short History of the Trade Union Movement in TISCO Industry
at Jamshedpur, Calcutta: Firma Mukhopadhyay, 1973, p. 2 and Sanat Bose, ‘Communist
International and Indian Trade Union Movement, 1919-1923’, Social Scientist, 8, 4, 1979, p. 30.
[35]
Dilip Simeon, The Politics of Labour Under Late Colonialism. Workers, Unions and the State
in Chota Nagpur, 1928-1939, Delhi: Manohar, 1995, p. 47.
[36]
The best assessment of the communist work to build the union is in Rajnarayan Chandavarkar,
The Origin of Industrial Capitalism: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay,
1900-1940, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, and Meena Menon and Neera
Adarkar, One Hundred Years, One Hundred Voices: The Millworkers of Girangaon. An Oral
History, Kolkata: Seagull Books, 2004.
[37]
Material for this section on Thanjavur comes from interviews I conducted, as well as from V.K.
Ramachandran, ‘Agrarian Issues, Local and National: Extracts from Conversations with P.
Ramamurti’, Review of Agrarian Studies, 4, 2, 2015; T. Selvamuthukumaran, ‘The Labour
Movement of the Communist Party of India in the East Tanjore District: An Inquiry into the
Agitations Led by the Tamil Nadu Farmers’ Association’, Indian Historical Studies, 10, 1,
October 2013; Saraswati Menon’s three part essay – ‘Responses to Class and Caste Oppression in
Thanjavur District: 1940-1952, Part 1’, Social Scientist, vol. 7, nos. 6, 7, 10, 1979.
[38]
Ranajit Guha, ‘Preface’, Subaltern Studies I, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982, p. vii.
[39]
Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Prison Notebooks, New York: International Publishers, 1971,
p. 52.
[40]
Gramsci, Selections, p. 88.
[41]
An example of such openness to the relationship between a communist party and a mass
organization is in Elisabeth Armstrong, Gender and Neoliberalism: The All-India Women’s
Democratic Association and Globalization Politics, Delhi: Tulika, 2013, and Robin D.G. Kelley,
Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists in the Great Depression, Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1990.
[42]
Namboodiripad, ‘How to Study Indian Communism’, p. 65.
[43]
Perry Anderson makes some useful comments on the procedures of a communist party history
in ‘Communist Party History’, in Raphael Samuel (ed.), People’s History and Socialist Theory,
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981, pp. 147-49.
[44]
G. Adhikari’s multiple volumes began with Documents of the History of the Communist Party
of India, 1917-1922, vol. 1, New Delhi: People’s Publishing House, 1971. This project was later
taken up by M.B. Rao and Mohit Sen. The CPI-M has a twenty-six volume collection edited by
Jyoti Basu, Documents of the Communist Movement in India, Calcutta: National Book Agency,
1997 onwards. Two more essential sets of documents collect the most substantial works, one set
edited by Subodh Roy (Communism in India: Unpublished Documents, 1925-1934 and
Communism in India: Unpublished Documents, 1934-1945 – both from the National Book
Agency, 1972 and 1976) and the second set from Sobhanlal Datta Gupta (A Documented History
of the Communist Movement in India: Selected Materials from Archives of Contemporary
History, New Delhi: Sunrise, 2007). Documentary volumes of this kind appeared from many
parts of the world in the 1990s. One comprehensive collection, from Malaysia, is exemplary –
Cheah Boon Kheng (ed.), From PKI to the Comintern, 1924-1941. The Apprenticeship of the
Malayan Communist Party, Ithaca: SEAP, 1992
[45]
Renu Chakravartty, Communists in India’s Women’s Movement, New Delhi: People’s Publishing
House, 1980.
[46]
Suchetana Chattopadhyay, An Early Communist. Muzaffar Ahmad in Calcutta, 1913-1929,
Delhi: Tulika, 2013. Of interest as well is the biography of the Maoist leader Kanu Sanyal –
Bappaditya Paul, The First Naxal: An Authorised Biography of Kanu Sanyal, New Delhi: Sage,
2014.
[47]
There are other such valuable attempts to use the Comintern papers to understand the work of
communist parties as they built their strength in different national locations. One example is the
collection edited by Matthew Worley – In Search of Revolution: International Communist Parties
in the Third Period, London: I.B. Tauris, 2004.
[48]
Subodh Roy, Communism in India. Sir Cecil Kaye with Unpublished Documents, 1919-1924,
Calcutta: Editions India, 1971; M. Saha (ed.) Communism in India, 1924-1927. Sir David Petrie,
Calcutta: Editions India, 1972; M. Saha (ed.), India and Communism. Sir Horace Williamson,
Calcutta: Editions India, 1976.
[49]
Suchetana Chattopadhyay, ‘The Bolshevik Menace: Colonial Surveillance and the Origins of
Socialist Politics in Calcutta’, South Asia Research, 26, 2, 2006.
[50]
One example is Robert Scalapino and Chong-Sik Lee’s two volume work Communism in
Korea, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972, which is built on Japanese police records.
[51]
Ranajit Guha, ‘The Prose of Counter-Insurgency’, Subaltern Studies II, Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1983 is a fascinating account of how to read police archives to unearth the
stories of peasant insurgency.
Suchetana Chattopadhyay
Being ‘Naren Bhattacharji’

Who was ‘Naren Bhattacharji’? By critically reading a specific period

of M.N. Roy’s early life on the basis of relevant primary and neglected
secondary sources, this article attempts to dissect the interplay between the
less explored aspects of contemporary youth, daily existence, surveillance
and political culture in Bengal. How did colonial surveillance monitor the
activities of Naren Bhattacharji, later well-known as M.N. Roy? What do
they reveal about him, the authority he confronted, his milieu and the
spaces he traversed every day? What were the changing social cross-
currents and how far did they prompt actions of revolutionary youth in the
pre-First World War and the early war years? Finally, how did the nature of
these activities engage with the directions of certain class-segments while
staying away from others?
The focus is on Naren’s interactions with Calcutta, the ideological
headquarters of the existing range of anti-colonialism in Bengal, and its
surroundings, from the end of the Swadeshi Movement (1906-07) to the
aborted Indo-German Plot (1915). It is argued that non-engagement with
crucial developments in the immediate vicinity, such as large-scale
evictions of slum-dwellers and war-induced privations, marked the social
content of youth militancy within nationalist revolutionary politics; like
every other branch of anti-colonial nationalism this was bereft of any notion
of social egalitarianism. The ineffective and static expressions of dissent
prompted some, such as Roy, to take a different route in future, marking a
break in theory and practice with the ‘romance’ of revolutionary terror. As
he embarked on his Mexican sojourn, became one of the founding figures
of the Comintern, followed and debated with Lenin on the strategy of
national liberation in the colonial and semi-colonial world, he abandoned
his old path. As M.N. Roy, he retained certain minor aspects of his political
training as Naren Bhattacharji, turning them on their heads as he travelled
in a new direction through the broad highway of the post-1917 world.
IN THE HOUSE OF EXTREMISM

In May 1910, a ‘a strong case’ under Section 110 of the Criminal

Procedure Code was instituted by the colonial government against Naren
Bhattacharji at the Court of Barrackpore Sub-division, a suburb in the
district of 24 Parganas, bordering Calcutta. Though satisfied that they will
be able ‘to show the dangerous character of the accused’, the police were
disturbed by a rumour. They had heard that he was planning to produce a
letter from the former Deputy Superintendent of the Police, 24 Parganas, to
prove he was a ‘police informer’ and summon a Sub-Inspector as a witness
in his defence: ‘So far we have kept out of the case all information that we
obtained from Narendra regarding the part he himself took in the Eastern
Bengal State Railway bomb outrages’. If he was unwise enough to bring up
the matter, the police was ready to furnish the bomb obtained from him by
the Sub-Inspector and ‘reveal the whole story’.
Then matters took a dramatic turn: ‘The prisoner behaved in an
extraordinary manner on Saturday, suddenly discharging his counsel and
saying he did not want the witnesses to be cross-examined any further’.[1]
Unconsciously mirroring the voice of exasperated authority in Lewis
Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (‘he only does it to annoy, because he knows
it teases’),[2] it was observed: ‘I am told that he is threatening to summon me
as a defence witness, but I hardly think he will be so foolish as to do that,
unless he does it merely to annoy after making up his mind that he is bound
to be convicted’. The case for the Prosecution closed on 30 June. One
hundred witnesses had been examined. The future of Naren, believed to be
one of the principal perpetrators in Eastern Bengal State Railway ‘outrages’
at the end of 1908 and during 1909, looked grim. A petition of the public of
Bhatpara submitted against him in 1908, was exhibited. Specific incidents
of assault, attempted assault and criminal intimidation were ‘proved’. Three
cases of ‘mischief by fire’, six episodes of use of explosives, and instances
of ‘outrage on the modesty of women’ were affirmed. Naren Bhattacharji
refused to enter any defence: ‘The accused has declined to call any
witnesses for defence or to make any statement. His conviction seems
assured’.
The Judgment was delivered on 9 July. For a while, the Intelligence
Branch (IB) officials in Calcutta waited with bated breath but could not
obtain any report on the verdict. No information could be gathered from the
district police of the 24 Parganas: ‘no one seems to know anything about it’.
Finally it was learnt that the court had ordered Naren to furnish two sureties
(each of Rs. 2,000) ‘to be of good behaviour for a period of three years . . .
or go to jail for three years’. Those who had put together the case against
him were delighted: ‘As it is practically certain that the security will not be
forthcoming, Narendra Nath Bhattacharji may be taken as out of the way
for the next three years’.[3] The joy was short-lived. On appeal to Calcutta
High Court, Naren was acquitted in 1911.[4] Paucity of records prevents us
from knowing the exact circumstances when he negotiated with the police;
according to the latter, this involved surrendering a bomb and an official
letter offering protection. He was not an informer. Had he been one, he
probably would not have stood trial with a long queue of witnesses
testifying against him in court.[5] The accounts provided in police records
indicate that though he was not considered mad, the state regarded him as
bad and dangerous to know. After his release, he went back briefly to
Kodalia, his village in 24 Parganas and then returned to a roaming
existence.
Naren first attracted attention in 1907 during a robbery at a railway
station, followed by several such ‘actions’ to secure funds for the
revolutionary underground.[6] In a sense, he was a representative figure of
bhadralok youth drawn to the armed wing of political ‘extremism’, a term
used by the state and its Indian critics to denote a radical nationalist
political position. He grew up in the years when extremism was gaining
momentum, with revolutionary terror as an offshoot. ‘Extremism’
represented a break with moderate nationalism and took shape during the
last decade of the nineteenth and the first decade of the early twentieth
century.[7] The extremists became vocal particularly after the failure of the
Swadeshi Movement of 1905-6 to achieve an annulment of the Bengal
Partition and the creation of two separate provinces in the east and the west.
[8]
Their opposition to the moderates reached its culmination during the
Surat Congress of 1907 when the split became official. Hindu revivalism of
the late nineteenth century and the failure of the moderate nationalist
leaders, such as the nationalist Surendranath Banerjee to secure any
concrete gain for the bhadralok gentry, the support-base of nationalist
protests against the Partition, generated the ideological and political
backdrop of extremism’s emergence. During and after the waning of the
Swadeshi Movement, with its emphasis on ‘self-government’, extremism
was in ‘action’ as a political current.
Amales Tripathy argues that the declining material conditions of the
Bengali upper-caste lower gentry fuelled the tendency.[9] The Bengali
middle-classes emerging in the course of the nineteenth century, especially
from the 1830s onwards, were based in land, civil professions and
government service. The last two vocations were also connected with land,
the divisions between landownership and the world of professions being
blurred. The most profitable sectors under the rule of colonial capital, trade
and industry, were virtual preserves of the colonizers; the gentry could not
gain foothold in the domain of super-profits despite various attempts.[10] In
the realm of education, colonial pedagogy had destroyed the residual pre-
colonial forms and even sidelined the invented ‘orientalist’ scholarship. As
western education increasingly dominated both the form and the content of
learning, the ‘traditional intellectual’ (in Gramscian terms) was constituted
and reconstituted under colonial rule.[11] Though differing on the exact route
to tide over a system which confined them to land and professions, all
segments of the colonial intelligentsia were agreed upon setting
‘embourgeoisment’ as their goal. The general decline in the quality of life in
the colonial and semi-colonial world by the early twentieth century, made
many turn to radical nationalism.[12]
The extremists evoked the ‘people’ in their speeches and thought. Yet
their attempts at mass mobilization were never systematic; the ‘people’ had
little trust in the bhadralok leaders.[13] Though they advocated ‘composite
[14]
nationalism’, their ‘Hindu fanfare’ alienated Muslims. The Gita, a
philosophical exposition of Brahmanical state-power was posited as the
revelatory text[15] (as substitute for the Quran or the Bible). In extremist
political culture, the country was synonymous with a mother-goddess.
Idolatrous and Hindu chauvinist symbols dominated all branches of radical
nationalism, including its armed wing. Muslims, including middle-class
youth who were otherwise attracted by the ‘romance’ of anti-colonial
militancy represented by their Hindu counterpart, were directly and
indirectly excluded.[16] According to the foremost historian of extremism,
while idealising the ‘people’, the extremists offered them little yet expected
a revolt against colonial rule. When there was no response from below,
despair led some to embark on revolutionary terror. They mistakenly
thought a limited armed strategy of forming secret societies, individual
assassination and bomb throwing would bring about revolutionary regime
change. The areas most influenced by extremism such as Calcutta, Dhaka,
Midnapur, Bukharganj and Rangpur, areas of Bengal that had suffered
intensely from the rise of food prices in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth century, became bases of their activities.[17]
Immense anger flowed under the surface of passive resistance; it was
expressed by revolutionary terror, which exercized a magnetic pull over the
young bhadralok intelligentsia. With little prospect of material security
under colonialism, they supplied the secret societies with foot soldiers.
Social desperation drove unemployed or under-employed youth and
students, trained to be low-paid clerks, teachers, and journalists to secure
pistols and crudely made bombs. This aspect was even recognized by those
entrusted to hunt them down.[18] In the early twentieth century, the civil
professions were already ‘overcrowded’.[19] Around 1909, revolutionary
terrorism was recognized as a distinct nationalist tendency, different from
both ‘Moderate’ and ‘Extremist’ forms of opposition to colonial rule. At the
time, the number of unemployed educated young men in Bengal was
calculated as 40,000.[20] A typical terrorist was normally an ex-student from
a lower middle-class bhadralok family haunted by the spectre of material
and intellectual poverty. Inspired by late nineteenth century Hindu
revivalism with its emphasis on a mythic ‘Hindu-Aryan’ superiority, he was
attracted to a cocktail of European Anarchical thinking and methods which
spoke for small proprietors, rather than landless peasants or industrial
workers.[21]
Harinabhi in the district of 24 Parganas was one of the centres of
extremism in West Bengal, an area known for ‘gentry-concentration’ where
‘land had always been scarce and new employment opportunities were
dwindling’.[22] Narendranath Bhattacharya (1887-1954), the ‘Naren
Bhattacharji’ of police reports, went to school there and was inducted into
militant nationalist politics as a teenager when extremism was about to
reach its pinnacle. Naren’s father was a school-teacher, the scion of a
brahmin family who left the priestly vocation of the male ancestors and
became a Head Pundit (Principal Teacher of Sanskrit) at Arbelia, a village
where Naren was born. The family lived at Naren’s maternal village home
in Kodalia. At the age of ten, Naren was enrolled at Harinabhi Anglo-
Sanskrit School. In 1905 he was one of the seven students expelled for
welcoming Surendranath Banerjee to the area. Changripota, Kodalia,
Harinabhi and Rajpur, were a cluster of villages linked with the socially
active Bengali Hindu gentry. Several nineteenth century bhadralok
reformers, including those who had turned from reform to revivalism at the
end of the same century were from this area.
Far from constituting a remote and passive pastoral landscape, the
villages were connected with Calcutta by railway and receptive to
intellectual transmissions from the metropolitan climate of the city. At
Changripota, Naren had joined a circle of close friends and relatives who
were shifting from extremism to revolutionary nationalism. Among the
fellow travellers were Harikumar Chakraborty and Phanindranath
Chakraborty (Naren’s cousins) and the Bose brothers, Saileswar and Shyam
Sundar. Hari and Saileswar were also among the seven who were expelled
from school.[23] In the latter half of 1906, Phanindranath introduced Naren
to the dynamic revolutionary leader ‘Tiger’ Jatindranath Mukherjee (‘Bagha
Jatin’). Naren became Jatin’s close follower.[24] The boys were interested in
sports, received physical training and through Naren’s cousin, Abinash
Bhattacharya, an early revolutionary, established contact with Anushilan
Society’s secret network in Calcutta. Influenced by the emerging current of
armed nationalist militancy, they formed a local group.[25] In 1907, Naren
was arrested for participating in a robbery at Changripota Railway Station
near Kodalia, his voice ‘muffled’ and face disguised under a layer of paint.
[26]
Supplied with an alibi, he was released due to lack of evidence. The case
pulled him into the orbit of imperial surveillance.[27]
The ‘hide and seek’ with state authorities could be traced to his growing
involvement with the revolutionary network in the course of 1906-07 when
the Swadeshi Movement was evaporating and ‘extremism’ attained its peak.
Anushilan Samiti, the original revolutionary association, was formed in
1902. Internal differences led to the formation of Jugantar, another group in
the later years of the same decade.[28] The public activities of Anushilan
members were similar to that of other Swadeshi Samitis or nationalist
volunteer associations that combined physical and moral training with
social work. Where they differed was on passive resistance.[29] While the
extremist leaders offered militant but non-violent opposition, the
revolutionaries engaged in armed actions to uproot the colonial order.
Jugantar gained greater following than Anushilan Samiti, especially during
the 1910s.[30] Naren and his friends initially met Barin Ghosh, a founder of
Anushilan who had started a journal, Jugantar, in 1906. Those who
congregated around this journal later took on its name to describe their
group alignments within the tendency.[31]
Naren’s father died in 1905.[32] The same year swept him into the
Swadeshi Movement. He attended meetings, was expelled from school and
walked to Calcutta with friends, often staying at Anushilan headquarters in
49 Cornwallis Street.[33] He joined the newly established nationalist
institutional initiatives as a student, by registering at National College
followed by Bengal Technical Institute; both had been founded in 1906.[34]
The attempt to spread national education by encouraging the boycott of
government-run schools and colleges and enrolling in Swadeshi institutions
was plagued by the problem of unemployment when indigenous enterprise,
promoted by the economic Swadeshi programme, had failed to take off. The
market value of the degrees was low in a job market controlled by colonial
capital and the state.[35] Naren was not looking for employment. This was
clearly conveyed by his actions. After matriculation, his student years had
come to an end.[36] During 1907-08, when some extremists were turning to
the path of terror, Naren was inducted into the ‘inner circle’ of the
revolutionary fold.[37] He demonstrated his abilities by participating in his
first ‘Swadeshi dacoity’ at Changripota Railway Station in 1907, having
previously threatened local merchants selling foreign cloth.[38] He
supposedly refused to take a ‘blood oath’, an initiation rite but was still
accepted.[39] It was later recalled by an older contemporary that ‘Tiger’ Jatin,
Naren’s guru, regarded him as an ‘agnostic’ and an ‘iconoclast’, and not
inclined to spiritualism.[40]
Naren rapidly became a seasoned hand within the underground. One of
his first ‘actions’ was to organize a small-scale covert attack on British
soldiers in Calcutta during 1908. When it was learnt that the gora (white)
troops were pushing around women pilgrims with batons, he led four of his
friends from the secret society, including Bholanath Chatterjee, as
volunteers to surreptitiously rough up some of them. It was claimed that he
became an expert in committing river dacoities in East Bengal. He was
excessively enthusiastic: while leaving a house, he snatched a gold chain
from the neck of a little girl. Shocked, his friend Harikumar forbade him to
repeat such an act.[41] Naren may have become a little apologetic for robbing
compatriots. Once, while looting a house near Diamond Harbour in 24
Parganas, the masked Naren solicitously informed the owner that the money
was being ‘borrowed’ and will be returned after the fall of British rule. He
was arrested in connection with this robbery in 1909 and released on bail.
The money for his bail was furnished from the revolutionary funds. He was
staying in Sibpur, Howrah, Calcutta’s twin city, when he was re-arrested in
connection with the Howrah Conspiracy Case. The first wave of
revolutionary terror ended with these arrests; a lull in activities followed.
He spent six months in solitary confinement while in prison and was finally
released in 1911. His elder brother, Sushil, mortgaged the family home to
pay for his court expenses. The house was never recovered. They now
moved from one place to another, having no fixed address and spending an
increasing amount of time in Calcutta; Naren had already developed close
ties with the revolutionary headquarters in the city. One of the earliest
recruits from the ranks of bhadralok youth when revolutionary terror was
not yet known as an identifiable anti-colonial current, he was gradually
elevated to the status of a mid-level organizer in the course of robberies,
arrests and trial.
Shifts in his personal situation involved loosening of parental authority
with the death of his father (1905) and mother (1908), even though it has
been suggested in recollections and through anecdotes that he was close to
his siblings. His elder brother Sushil offered material and emotional
support, having taken on the role of the family patriarch. Naren respected
him. He bowed to Sushil’s wishes in family matters despite disagreements
over observation of rigid Brahmanical codes, which meant denying their
dying widowed mother her last desire to consume meat.[42] His sister was
proud of her ‘patriotic’ younger brother. Naren mentioned his elder brother
Sushil, his elder sister and his younger brother, Khokon fondly to friends.[43]
His family-life did not expand. An attempt by a village elder to marry him
off at Benaras in 1908 ended in failure.[44] As the family retreated as a
primary institution of bonding and belonging, the revolutionary
underground took its place. The ‘dada’ (revolutionary elders, literally ‘elder
brothers’) figures became the symbols of paternal authority. Those he met
were men who had served under the colonial administration or had intimate
knowledge of the imperium. ‘Tiger’ Jatin Mukherjee, who adopted Naren as
his ‘right-hand man’, had worked in the Bengal Secretariat as stenographer
to senior-most civil servants such as Sir Mortimer Wheeler and L.S.S.
O’Malley. Aurobindo Ghosh, a Cambridge graduate had spent his childhood
and early youth in England. His brother Barin Ghosh was born near
London. Aurobindo employed by the Maharajah of Baroda, had turned from
extremism to revolutionary nationalist politics, and was assisted by his
brother.[45] Having experienced the functioning of the colonial system and
its subsidiaries from inside, their rejection of European claims to supremacy
ran deep.
Revolutionary terrorism as a tendency and movement emerged from the
politics of extremism but cannot be equated with it. The extremists believed
in passive resistance to bring about self-government. The revolutionaries
went a step further by adopting a strategy of armed resistance. The leaders
emphasized self-sacrifice and yogic abstinence, discouraging the younger
recruits to marry and develop family ties. To paraphrase Lenin’s reading of
anarchists as ‘liberals with bombs’, they were ‘nationalists with bombs’.[46]
Nationalism was pitted against exploitation by colonial capital triggering
widespread material distress, unemployment, mounting tolls, year after
year, from famine and epidemics. The ideology and practice of race as the
axis of colonial rule was challenged. The flame-throwers of nationhood
conformed to this way of thinking. Physically uprooting the colonizers did
not entail the establishment of an egalitarian society. Their selective affinity
with European anarchy and engagement with its various streams did not
make them advocate a stateless society in India. They envisaged a nation-
state free of colonial domination and had no programme of redistributing
social wealth among those below them. Irreverence towards and occasional
violations of private property through revolutionary robberies did not lead
to thoughts of abolition or even limited curtailment. By 1906-07, Aurobindo
Ghosh had abandoned his earlier sympathetic pronouncements for the
working populations, picked up in England.[47] In 1907, he argued against
the adoption of an agrarian programme involving rent-strikes by tenant-
farmers and peasants which could harm the interests of landlords.[48]
In practice, the training of young nationalists in the Swadeshi era
involved a flexible attitude towards labour. ‘Labour’ in an era of popular
upsurge attained an ethical meaning, prompting performance of certain
manual tasks by sons of the gentry. The aim was to promote social work
and consolidate the Swadeshi base in the local milieu; the practical impact
on the activists led to development of certain skills and not depend,
parasitically, on the labour of others. Naren as a Swadeshi teenager
absorbed this strain. His elder sister had told an acquaintance that he had a
marked interest in agriculture, occasionally tilling the land alongside (and
presumably learning from) the peasant cultivators; he had once raided local
orchards full of litchis, grown exclusively for export to the Calcutta
markets, and distributed them among the hard-pressed villagers who went
without such luxuries in life.[49] He also learnt household skills such as
cooking, cleaning and elementary nursing.[50] The social training of young
gentlemen prescribed privileging mental labour over physical labour. For
the sons of the gentry, household work was female labour and agricultural
work was the vocation of the peasants; they affirmed their role as superior
male subjects and landed proprietors by staying away from devalued labour,
with a strong connotation of social ‘debasement’. Unlike boys and young
men who despised manual work as demeaning, Naren was a part of the
middle-class male youth segment learning to be self-sufficient both from
choice and circumstance. There is no indication that learning to perform
certain kinds of work, not in conformity with the role conventionally
assigned to the sons of the middle-class gentry, made him and others regard
women or peasants as social equals. Equality was bypassed in the content of
their politics. Nevertheless, as he moved away from family life and into the
underground channels of the revolutionary network, the practical skills of
‘self-help in hard times’, which he had imbibed as a young activist, were to
help him.

IN A CITY OF ROLLING DEBRIS

Naren’s release from prison was followed by gradual severance of rural

ties and a closer relationship with Calcutta. In 1911, the city was changing.
Calcutta experienced the triple impact of crucial policy-decisions from
above. The government had announced the transfer of the headquarters of
the Indian Empire to Delhi. The step was prompted by the rise of vocal
nationalist opposition and revolutionary terror in the metropolis and the
region. To offset potential outrage over such a move, the Bengal Partition of
1905 was annulled. Through this strategy, the administration hoped to
placate bhadralok outrage over the bifurcation and take the wind out of the
sails of the ‘extremist’ opposition. The same year witnessed the formation
of the Calcutta Improvement Trust (CIT), an official body controlled by the
government and guided by the interests of colonial capital.[51] By 1912, the
city was the abandoned capital of the Empire, smarting from a loss of
status, dubiously enjoyed since the eighteenth century. It was, once again,
the chief metropolis of a hastily reunited Bengal. Its urban spaces were
being formally prepared for drastic and extensive remodelling from the top.
The material circumstances of the urban poor, containing sizable Muslim
segments, further deteriorated between 1912 and 1914. Slum demolitions
by the CIT and other official bodies in prime neighbourhoods to acquire and
sell land to the upper echelons of society led to relocation and
homelessness. With the coming of the First World War, prices of essential
commodities spiraled out of the reach of common people.
Landed property acquired in Baman Basti, Kalingabazar and the Park
Street area through the intertwined process of eviction and demolition saw
the expulsion of mostly Muslim slum dwellers from the heart of the city.
The acquired property was sold to European and Indian (Marwari)
businessmen. The Muslim aristocratic loyalist leaders remained silent.[52]
The European officialdom and private investors at the top of the urban
social pyramid combined the rhetoric of ‘improvement’ with indifference
and loathing.[53] The massive disruptions caused in the lives of ordinary
people were noted in the Bengali Muslim press. The otherwise loyalist
Moslem Hitaishi (The Moslem Well-Wisher) observed the implications of
reorganized urban spaces in 1912, combining sarcasm with a sense of loss:
‘the rapid demolition of bustees in Calcutta during the last year has greatly
reduced the Mussalman population of the city and enormously increased
that of the suburbs, such as Maniktala, Beliaghata, Entally, Beniapukur, and
Ballygunj’.[54] By 1914, when the anti-colonial Mohammadi remarked that
the Muslims had lost everything except for a few mosques, the tone was
one of mourning.[55]
The ‘new’ Islam of the early 1910s, in its populist political form, took
shape in the backdrop of the ‘new’ plan to sharply alter the physiognomy of
the city, the Balkan Wars as a ‘prelude’ to the First World War, and the
emergence of a new set of preacher-leaders known for their radical rejection
of loyalist positions.[56] One of the aims of pan-Islamist campaigners was to
protect Islamic shrines and monuments in the Ottoman Empire, under
jeopardy in the climate of Balkan Wars. These efforts by a segment of the
intelligentsia resonated, stirring empathetic response among the masses.
The immediate material context of this identification was the aggressive
and invasive implementation of colonial construction plans that had
disturbed conurbations from Kanpur to Calcutta. Though public protests in
Calcutta revolved around the issue of mosque demolitions by the
authorities, the submerged feelings at a popular level reflected social
anxieties and anger over looming evictions. The anti-demolition meetings,
including those directed against the Port Trust authorities in Khidirpur, saw
large participation of cooks, waiters and small traders.[57] The protestors
experienced and envisaged uprooted neighbourhoods, destroyed settlements
and forcible expulsions from their dwellings. In the backdrop of such a
large-scale offensive from the top, pan-Islam and popular protests interacted
and forged political combinations.[58] With the coming of a major conflict,
and British declaration of war against Turkey, the pan-Islamist support for
the Ottoman Caliphate came to be echoed in mosques and bazaars, in
prayers and conversations and in the texture of everyday life.[59]
The Swadeshi and the post-Swadeshi years (1905-10) were significant
for the emergence of Muslim leaders linked with the Indian National
Congress, based in Calcutta. After having worked with moderate leaders,
namely Surendranath Banerjee, they turned to the militant currents of
‘extremism’ within nationalism and pan-Islamist positions, which gained
ground between 1907 and 1912. Representing a challenge to loyalist
positions, they were demonized in government reports as paid agents of
Hindus, ineffective self-seekers and failed individuals frustrated with
colonial rule.[60] The Swadeshi Muslim campaigners linked with Calcutta
were the forerunners of the anti-colonial programmes and opinions that
emerged in the city during the 1910s. By adding powerful material and
democratic dimension to anti-colonial political Islam, they addressed
certain desperate social needs of the poor which many of their militant
contemporaries, especially those of bhadralok stock, failed to notice or
ignored.
 The revolutionary branches and figures Naren associated with, had little
or nothing to do with Muslims.
The revolutionary network operated in mixed neighbourhoods adjacent
to College Street, the university precinct, the Khidirpur dock area and
Circular Road, one of the principle thoroughfares connected with Sealdah
Station, the main railway junction of the city; there is no indication that the
revolutionaries were aware of the populist anti-colonial mobilizations
among Muslim traders and intellectuals in their immediate vicinity.[61] They
were oblivious to these campaigns. While Urdu-speaking preachers were
leading militant figures among the Muslims, Bengalis such as Akram Khan,
a Swadeshi campaigner and the editor of Mohammadi was also a well-
known opponent of the colonial regime. The Mohammadi office was
located on Circular Road, where Naren lived in a lodging house for a while
in the early 1910s.[62] The early Anushilan centre had been set up there as
well as National College and Bengal Technical Institute, which Naren had
attended as a student.[63] No evidence exists that he evinced any interest in
the activities of Muslim anti-colonial activists. Communal and class-caste
prejudice as well as the cellular structure of the revolutionary groups
precluded interactions. With the onset of war, some pan-Islamists tried to
replicate the revolutionary model as was evident from the activities of Abul
Kalam Azad. Azad was in touch with extremist leaders and met Jugantar
revolutionaries who distrusted him on religious grounds.[64] Yet, in his
closed-door lectures before select followers on the need to wage a ‘lesser
jihad’ he held up the example of Hindu revolutionaries as ethical ‘warriors
of faith’; by fighting the British they were fighting a ‘holy war’ against the
enemies of Turkey.[65] The jihadi leaflets circulated in Calcutta appealed to
the Muslims working as coachmen, stable boys, cooks and waiters to rise
against colonial rule alongside the revolutionary ‘Hindu brothers’ who
possessed firepower.[66] Though some Jugantar leaders were in touch with
militant pan-Islamists, such as Azad, during this period, the connections
were superficial and only worried the colonial officialdom. The
revolutionary leaders took an instrumentalist view of the call for a lesser
jihad to defend Turkey.[67] Unlike Azad, they never identified their ‘Dharma
Juddha’ (Holy War), derived from the Gita, with its contemporary Islamic
version. No serious effort was ever made by the bhadralok groups to recruit
Muslims, not even the middle-class youth increasingly drawn towards
militant action.[68] Neither did they or any other branch of anti-colonial
activists contemplate a mass movement against price-rise which intensified
hardship of the poor and the lower middle-classes. Though inflation gave
rise to starving conditions and was a source of growing social worry and
outrage in the urban public sphere, no attempt was made to launch a war or
a campaign against the state on the concrete issue of material deprivations.
[69]

EXIT AS DEPARTURE

From 1911 to 1915, Calcutta was Naren’s semi-permanent base. The

previous connections with the urban space became closer as friends and
relatives drifted in and out of the city, forming circles of social familiarity
and practical support. This was also a period when regional currents and
international developments, influenced the twists and turns within local
revolutionary politics. A rift over strategy continued within Jugantar. The
line of instant action advocated by Barin Ghosh was challenged by ‘Tiger’
Jatin Mukherjee and Jadugopal Mukherjee’s emphasis on planned
insurrection. The latter line led to mobilization of funds, arms, recruits and
connections with Indian revolutionaries active in East Asia, North America
and Europe, culminating in the war-time Indo-German conspiracy.[70] Till
the eve of First World War, the revolutionaries, while navigating their way
above and under the ground, were directionless. The aimlessness was
evident in the daily wanderings of the younger recruits. Stretches of
inactivity were punctuated by sudden endeavours. At the crossroads of life,
they were often gripped by desperation and penury. Without a defined
manifesto of revolutionary action and unable to cling to abstract, general
ideas of spiritual nationalism, they occasionally looked elsewhere for
inspiration. While taking clandestine orders from the elders, they combined
hidden plans with public initiatives.
Naren’s situation when he was released from prison may serve as an
example. Hounded by police agents, he was one of the numerous targets of
‘a special surveillance scheme’ introduced in anticipation of the Royal visit
during late 1911. The aim was to watch leading revolutionary terrorists day
and night, preventing them from engaging in a major conspiracy against the
state and its highest dignitaries.[71] In the course of August, the Intelligence
Branch happily noted that ‘progress’ continued to be made under the new
scheme. Nineteen of ‘the worst suspects’ were under close watch in the
districts and their numbers soon rose to twenty-four. Some ‘trouble’ was
experienced when the watchers became over-zealous. An agent shadowed
Jogesh Mitra, an ‘acquitted accused’, ‘foolishly’ trespassing into the house
of J.N. Roy, well-known nationalist barrister of Calcutta with extremist
sympathies. Jogesh had come to consult him that afternoon, to find a way of
being freed from ‘irksome surveillance’. Roy promptly called the police and
made them arrest the watcher. The barrister complained that the agent, upon
entering his house uninvited had made himself comfortable in the office-
room bench. He did not fail to add that similar complaints of harassment
had reached him from other clients such as ‘Tiger’ Jatin Mukherjee, who
had been acquitted in Howrah Conspiracy Case. Though he ultimately
decided not to press charges, on the basis of Roy’s complaint, the inept
agent was removed from surveillance duties.
At regular intervals, the targets of surveillance were observed visiting
houses of barristers, to challenge the legality of being kept under
continuous watch. One of them complained he was about to lose his job.
Another claimed that the surveillance scheme will not have any effect since
the previous cases brought by the police had been dismissed in court.[72] In
the face of mounting criticism, it was felt that the ‘discretion’ in selecting
suspects in Calcutta should be extended as a model to be emulated in the
districts. However, even the ‘discreet’ police agents in the metropolis,
instructed not to ‘annoy’ those being followed, was deplored in the public
sphere of print. In late August, Sanjivani published a letter of protest and in
early September, Amrita Bazar Patrika focused on police intimidation
through special surveillance.
At the end of August, a Bengali letter from Naren Bhattacharji was
forwarded by his Calcutta barrister to the police authorities. Though the
police claimed that Naren had exaggerated the effect of ‘close surveillance’
and merely acknowledged receiving the complaint to Naren’s counsel, they
were compelled to internally review the method being followed to shadow
him. Naren’s letter claimed,
Since my release from jail almost always one or two policemen are after me. One or two C.I.D.
officers come to my house almost daily to take information . . . and secretly watch me. Some
 days passed in this way . . . the local S.I. Birendra Nath Mukherji used to see me twice or thrice a
week. Birendra Babu asked me once to keep him informed of my movements. I wanted to know
the reasons and to see the orders, to which he replied that though there was no such written order
. . . he had orders . . . I told him ‘Very well, do as you please but I am not prepared to comply’. I
considered myself insulted and told him not to ask . . . without orders from . . . superior officers.

Naren accused the Sub-Inspector, his old antagonist from the Howrah
Conspiracy Case of persistently asking invasive and objectionable
questions: enquiring of Naren’s whereabouts on specific dates, whom he
visited, when he returned, where did he go in Calcutta, why he did not
return home one night, at whose house he was staying and so on. A few
days later, he asked Naren for a detailed biographical account after leaving
school. Naren insisted that the unwelcome attention of the law made people
afraid and avoid him,
Under such circumstances, I find it impossible to secure any service or work. They think it their
duty to throw obstacles in my way of getting work. Stranger still is that they ask me how I
maintain myself, though I am unemployed . . . Biren Babu asked me how I maintained myself or
who supported me and what he was to report. I have taken some land under Sir Daniel Hamilton
at the Sundarbans for cultivation, and there too 2 or 3 officers visited me and put the same sort of
question, and one of them showed me an order on the Canning Police from the S.P. 24 Parganas
to keep a secret watch on me. What is the meaning of this? Why should they keep me under
surveillance? Then I am not innocent in the eyes of the police. The Judgment of the highest
Tribunal of the land is not binding upon the police or reliable to them. Under what law could the
police behave with me in this way after my discharge? This is not all but there is something more
serious. Some 8 or 10 C.I.D. men have been moving about in the village for the last 4 or 5 days.
All these . . . are illiterate upcountry men who live in batches of 2 or 3 in the village. Four always
remain present, 2 in front and 2 in the back of the house. They do not move even when asked.
They say they are on duty. When I come out of the house they follow me 2 on the sides and back,
and they do not leave me . . . Two sit by me when I travel by . . . train. When I go to a
gentleman’s house, they follow me and inform the people about me and the order. The result can .
. . be imagined. Everyone avoids me, far from helping me in securing . . . an appointment. I am
also pointed out to other police to keep watch. On the whole, I am worse off at present than when
I was in the jail. What is the reason? If they so desire, they can imprison me kicking on the High
Court Judgment of the Chief Justice, and I am prepared for it. It is better to remain in jail than to
be in the company of the low police. I could not see you as I am going to the Abad on urgent
business. Please do what you think best. They are giving me immense trouble and something
should be done.
 In early September the police reported that Naren Bhattacharji, ‘the 24
parganas suspect’ was living at Gosaba in Sundarban at Sir Daniel
Hamilton’s estate. Nalini Chandra Mitra of Arbelia, Naren’s neighbour from
the country and Sir Daniel’s manager, was claiming that J.N. Roy was
raising funds to petition the Secretary of State for India against the new
system of surveillance on political suspects. Though the information was
unverified, the police became nervously apprehensive of such a move and
considered training the watchers to be unobtrusive. Resistance to the
scheme from the targets stirred official anxiety. In October, the government
decided to tone down surveillance anticipating ‘civil suits’. Next month, the
police felt that Bengal’s Lieutenant Governor-in-Council was in a position
to declare that ‘favourable progress’ had been made in Calcutta and the
districts with the introduction of the special surveillance. The self-
congratulatory observation was accompanied by a defensive tone. It was
noted that the scheme’s success depended on the intelligence of the
watchers and only trained men were being assigned to perform this duty.
Even then, the targets and the native quarters which they frequented posed a
problem, specifically in the treacherous architecture of ‘native’ quarters:
‘Instances have, however, recently occurred which tend to show that in spite
of the most close observation it is possible for suspects to elude their
watchers. That is particularly the case in Calcutta where the numerous exits
to Indian houses render escape so easy, but every effort is being made to
render the system as perfect as is possible before the visit of their imperial
majesties to Calcutta’. After the royal visit, open surveillance was restricted
even if ‘sentinel’ duties continued.[73]
Naren was also ‘destitute’ after his release. His precarious
circumstances made him materially dependent on others. This also meant
exploring several routes to come out of hardship, and harbouring multiple
utopian and practical ideas. During 1911, the short-lived ambition of
becoming a gentleman farmer was combined with armed rebellion. Led by
Naren’s childhood friend, Harikumar Chakraborty, members of the
Changripota group had set up a co-operative and credit society at Gosaba in
Sundarban, South 24 Parganas; they utilized their village-level connections
with the manager who was clearly sympathetic to them and purchased a
zamindary (land-holding) at the Hamilton estate. The police regarded the
project as a cover for terrorist intrigues.[74] The isolated location of
Sundarban was indeed used for such purposes. The Changripota group later
started shooting practice at Sundarban. Masterminded by Naren, they
executed a daring motor-cab robbery at Garden Reach in 1915. Their trail
led from the suburbs of Calcutta to Sundarban. Naren was also active in
trying to import German arms by SS Maverick to Sundarban during the
same year. Though the ship did not arrive, local arrangements were made to
receive the consignment.[75]
Despite these political connections, an instrumentalist reading is
inadequate to grasp the social aspirations which motivated the younger
recruits of revolutionary nationalism to make their way to the tropical
jungles of south Bengal, bordering the sea. As sons of declining gentry, they
were attracted to agrarian entrepreneurship. Naren harboured ‘particular
enthusiasm’ for crops growing in abundance in his native Sonarpur-
Changripota region over which the locals had no claim. He had already
learnt methods of cultivation from the peasants.[76] The model of giving up
low-paid middle-class civil professions, reviled as ‘chakuri’ (wage-
servitude), and to return to the world of rural landownership based on
embourgeoisment was becoming popular as ‘improvement ideology’ in the
post-Swadeshi era. For instance, Krisak (The Farmer), published from
Calcutta by the Indian Gardening Association, held that the bhadralok
should not aspire for an urban life; instead, he should turn his gaze back to
the countryside. The periodical advocated starting commercial agricultural
farms in Sundarban where land was comparatively cheap and plentiful.
Pursuit of modern cultivation in Sundarban was projected as the only
avenue of middle-class prosperity and model landholding.[77] The Hamilton
estate represented this proprietor ideal.[78]
Proprietor anxieties and aspirations were also evident in the projection
of the United States of America as a utopian destination offering technical
education and fortune to Indian middle-class youth.[79] As well as an
overseas base for military training and arms, America was seen as a land of
hard-working and well-to-do farmers with modern techniques at their
disposal, in contrast to the technologically challenged rural conditions in
India.[80] By 1914, an Indo-American Club had started in Calcutta with the
purpose of sending students to America to gain admission at the ‘best
colleges’. It was to serve as an information bureau to assist students.[81] At
some point during 1912, Naren, Bholanath Chatterjee and Phanindranath
Chakraborty were in the grips of the ‘American idea’. They were so
‘fascinated’ by the prospect that they put off a fellow terrorist, Sashanka
Sekhar Hazra, who had ‘appeared on the scene’; Sashanka had proposed
making and planting bombs during a spell of inactivity following the
‘Howrah Gang Case arrests’.[82] Having failed to motivate their group, he
was caught while asleep with tobacco tins, clamps and discs, allegedly used
as raw material for manufacturing explosives, from a room in Upper
Circular Road. He was sentenced to 15 years’ transportation in the
Andaman prison island.[83] As for the three friends, they had decided to sail
to America for ‘military training, and to learn some trade’. Upon return to
India, they hoped to train others while earning their livelihood on the basis
of their vocational education. Since they lacked necessary funds to travel
abroad, they entertained the thought of robbery. As the American plan was
‘maturing’, Phani embarked on a love affair. Bhola and Naren encouraged
him; they hoped he would succeed in marrying the girl and ‘get sufficient
dowry’ to transport them to America. It is impossible to know if they were
being frivolous or serious. Then the event unfolded as a melodrama ending
in tragedy. The girl’s father refused to accept Phani’s suit, Phani’s seriously
ill father wanted him to make a different match and the girl committed
suicide.[84] The police also kept a tight watch on the group, convinced that
they will engage in ‘dacoities’.[85] The interest in America assumed a wider
dimension in 1914 when Sikh and Bengali revolutionaries, along with
German government agents connected with them. They hoped the Bengalis
in America would arrange a successful passage of arms.[86] Though the plan
did not materialize, Naren embarked on a journey through the eastern seas
which ultimately took him to America. Bhola could not accompany him
though Phani travelled part of the way.
Between 1911 and 1915, daily life was entwined with attempts to re-
galvanize the revolutionary underground. This involved facing uncertainties
prevalent in middle-class youth circles, exposure to serious and casual
interactions with people and places, moving through gendered spaces, and
evading the law. Immediately after his release, Naren had no fixed address,
his family having lost its possessions and owning no land. Between May
and September 1911, he stayed in Kodalia, Calcutta and Gosaba. None of
his relatives were rich. His brother-in-law was employed at a dispensary on
Cornwallis Street. His cousin Abinash, convicted in the Alipur Bomb Case,
was serving a sentence of seven years’ transportation.[87] Naren depended on
material support from his eldest brother Sushil and occasionally staying
with him at 6, Mirzapur Street. Naren continued to use the rented lodging as
a ‘den’ for the Changripota group after Sushil had shifted to Puri as a
railway ‘booking clerk’ in Orissa. It seems Naren also moved from one
temporary appointment to the next after his stint in jail. He worked as an
insurance agent for ‘India Equitable Assurance Company’ and a bill
collector of a rice mill and timber works at Beliaghata.[88] An understanding
of the working of the latter may have encouraged some of his friends to rob
such a premise in 1915.[89] He briefly transformed himself into a sanyasi
(monk), as an unsuccessful ‘cover’ to evade police attention, travelling in
major pilgrimage centres of north India.[90] By 1912, he was again ‘classed
as dangerous’.[91] He had returned to Calcutta and frequented ‘New India
Agency’, a shop located at 1, Circular Road, managed by Saileswar and
owned by his elder brother; this was their informal meeting point followed
by similar spaces once the enterprise permanently closed down. Naren was
occasionally supported by Phani, his cousin and friend. Phani came from a
similar though better-off family of brahmin gentry-turned-professionals
who had combined Sanskrit scholarship with landholding. Phani’s father
and grandfather, Dwarkanath Bidyabhushan, Professor of Sanskrit College,
had also purchased plots at Sundarban. Soon, Naren opened a refreshment
stall at Clive Street, a busy commercial area, where he cooked ‘special
dishes’ for the customers, befriending soldiers and sailors, probably to
secure arms. It was an ‘adda’ (den) visited by all his revolutionary
associates, including their leader ‘Tiger’ Jatin.[92]
During his stay in Calcutta, especially between 1912 and 1914, Naren
frequented lodging houses, student hostels, shops, rented accommodations,
public squares, parks and open spaces where casual and serious discussions
were held among students and youth, unformed schemes were made and
discarded. He rubbed shoulders with postgraduate chemistry and physics
students of Calcutta University who later became famous scientists, at least
one impoverished artist and an exceedingly ‘well-dressed’, elegant
gentleman, and fellow political conspirators.[93]
The younger revolutionaries often suffered from indecision and feeling
intensely listless in their surroundings, were gripped by wanderlust. Around
1913, Naren, Bhola and Phani again thought of ‘leaving India as nothing
was to be done here’ and they ‘wished to have some profession’.[94] Unlike
Naren and Saileswar’s elder brothers, Bhola’s brother was unsupportive and
objected to Bhola’s stay in his house. Bhola went away and returned from
Siam, having worked as a labourer, saved money for the revolutionary
underground and cultivated some contact with revolutionaries in South East
Asia.[95] Phani later claimed that during their heated discussions on
revolutionary strategy, he disagreed with Naren and believed political
robberies alienated the general population and individual assassinations led
to replacement of one British official by another. Naren upheld ‘terror’ as
necessary to impress upon the government that the situation could only get
worse. The other members of the Changripota group either took Phani’s
side or remained silent: ‘Saileswar used to support my ideas. Hari did not
appear to want to do anything. Bhola Nath said little, having no ideas.
Shyam Sundar was too young to enter into our discussions’.[96]
Life of the rank-and-file revolutionaries was confined among their
social sort: bhadralok youth cast adrift in the big city. Arrests, trials,
custodial torture, the fumes of bombs marking the canvas of revolutionary
terror were tempered by everyday life of prosaic survival. During the
second half of 1914, Phani whiled away long hours, from evening till night,
with other young men, listening to stories, gossiping, and playing music.
Baidyanath Biswas, an accused who was out on bail, attended this ‘adda’
and talked about his case.[97] In a city where most men lived without family,
they traversed predominantly male spaces, familiar with and ensconced in
the gendered distribution of social inequalities. From the cook of a lodging
house to the dada, their mileu was overwhelmed by the presence of men.
The women Naren knew remained semi-invisible figures relegated to the
background: Saralabala Sarkar, a poet from a nationalist family who treated
him like a close relative, his elder sister who remained nameless in every
account or the dead girl with whom he nearly arranged Phani’s marriage,
the love object who escaped passivity by killing herself. Their interactions
with him, whether long-term or incidental, resembled half-done sketches
and featureless brush-strokes.
Though Jatindranath and other leaders discouraged the recruits from
marrying and developing family ties, Naren and some of his friends in the
underground network were not averse to these institutions of settled
patriarchy. Naren was willing to enter into matrimony and encouraged
others. Without property or profession and stamped by political notoriety,
he could not have been considered a prospective groom easily. Naren
claimed marriage, business ventures, casual jobs and even monkhood were
useful ‘covers’ to carry on revolutionary activities in secret;[98] the position
indicates he wished to maintain connections, increasingly tenuous, with
routes to middle-class life and social acceptance. He ‘worked hard’ to help
Phani marry and was upset when the latter retreated. Phani subsequently
married another girl chosen by his parents and lived with her in his family’s
Calcutta residence. His place, close to the mesh of lodging houses
frequented by Naren, soon became a ‘post-box’ used by Jugantar members
for secret communications and exchange of revolutionary funds. Jatin
believed Phani, a family man, was no longer keen to take risks; to win back
Jatin’s approval, Phani offered to murder Lalitmohan Chakraborty, a
relative and former revolutionary-turned-informer; he was wisely dissuaded
by Jatin.[99]
The climate of war in 1914 activated the revolutionary underground.
Securing funds and ammunitions became a priority, in the backdrop of a
wider plan to overthrow British rule through a synchronized insurrection
with German armaments, from Lahore to Singapore, in consultation with
Ghadar, pan-Islamist, bhadralok and other revolutionaries in India and
abroad. Jugantar revolutionary cells carried out several robberies to acquire
arms and ammunitions, and forcibly collect funds. The groups were
interested in a militaristic uprising and united under the leadership of Jatin
Mukherjee.[100] Towards the end of the year, Phani claimed, his house
became a centre where Naren and other members of the group met. The
idea of an armed uprising entered their conversations.[101] In September
1914, Naren engineered a trick on R.L. Jenks, Chemical Examiner to the
Customs and Excise Departments, residing at 3 Landsdowne Road; Jenks
had advertised the intention to sell his revolver in The Statesman, a leading
European daily, on 4 October. Three days later, one R.N. Bhattacharji sent a
clerk to his address and purchased the weapon. The next day, Jenks reported
the transaction to Captain Wodehouse of Calcutta Police who became
characteristically suspicious. A telegraph sent to Rajendranath Bhattacharji,
Honourary Magistrate of Rajpur, 24 Parganas, enquiring whether he had
acquired the weapon yielded a negative reply. It was also learnt that 133,
Lower Circular Road, the address given by the so-called clerk, was a
boarding house where no one by the name of R.N. Bhattacharji resided. It
was used as a rented accommodation and frequented by prominent
members of the revolutionary underground. Wodehouse also dryly observed
‘Narendra Bhattacharji of Kodalia, 24 Parganas . . . is part-owner of these
premises . . . The coincidence is significant to say the least of it’. Jenks
described the clerk who took delivery, as quite tall and slender, about 30,
well-versed in English, light in complexion with a thin beard, and quiet,
sedate, respectful manners.[102] Naren’s dossier decribed him as tall, with
medium complexion and build, a slight moustache and no beard, large eyes
and feet, a man who took long strides while walking, stood upright, baring
his upper set of teeth when he spoke.[103] Since the specifics of the ‘clerk’
did not exactly match that of Naren, he could not be pinned down. The gun
in question, a .450 bore nickel-plated 5-chambered revolver, by George
Gibbs, British gun-makers, landed Jenks in troubled waters. For being
negligent at war-time and allowing the ‘frauduent purchase of a revolver by
a Bengali’ the police charged him under Section 22 of Arms Act. The
accused claimed trial as a British subject at Alipur Court and was let off
lightly with a stiff fine of Rs. 50.[104] Jenks ended up spending more than he
had earned (Rs. 40) from the bungled sale he had cause to regret.
The Changripota group combined with the Faridpur group, led by Purna
Das, to carry out several ‘taxi-cab’ robberies in early 1915. Naren chalked
out one of the first ‘motor dacoities’ in the Calcutta suburb of Garden
Reach.[105] The plan involved Sikh taxi-drivers, inspired by the Ghadar
tendency. The resistance of Punjabi working-class migrants carried by
Komagata Maru who were massacred by British armed forces at the Budge
Budge railway station in September 1914, followed by massive colonial
repression on the surviving passengers and Sikh migrants returning from
North America and Eastern Asia, motivated them to join the bhadralok
revolutionaries. The bhadralok groups did not harbour the level of disdain
or suspicion which they directed at Muslim anti-colonial activists towards
the tiny Sikh diaspora, accommodating them within the greater Hindu
fraternity. The popular mood in Calcutta at the beginning of the war was
also informally ‘pro-German’ or at least expectant of a resounding British
defeat. The poor and the middle-classes among both Hindus and Muslims
wanted the British Empire to collapse as prices of essential commodities
skyrocketed and the German warship Emden wreaked havoc in Bay of
Bengal, disrupting British shipping and commercial interests. Apocalyptic
rumours were accompanied by public speeches labeling the war as a
conflagration of inter-imperial rivalry and pan-Islamist, Ghadar and
Jugantar pamphlets calling for an immediate overthrow of the British
Empire in India with German assistance.[106]
Motor traffic, leading to numerous accidents and causing panic among
the public, was on the rise in the city from 1914.[107] Taking advantage of the
ongoing transport revolution, Naren and his friends successfully carried out
a novel day-light robbery. On 12 February 1915 at 2 p.m., when three
employees of Bird & Co., a monopolistic British business firm of Calcutta,
were delivering Rs.18,000 in a horse-drawn carriage to a factory, they were
stopped in Garden Reach by four armed Bengalis in a taxi. At gun-point,
they were made to hand over the cash; the dacoits speedily left the scene,
throwing out the driver from the car. The Sikh chauffer was arrested, having
turned out to be an accomplice. The rest ran away to Sundarban and were
later rounded up in Calcutta. A spate of hold-ups with the aid of
automobiles worried the authorities. To prevent them, alarms and barriers in
‘suitable areas’ and ‘patrols’ by armed police motor cars were introduced
for the first time.[108] Naren was among the accused in the Garden Reach
Case but released when Radhacharan Pramanik, a member of the Faridpur
group took the blame on his behalf. Jatin considered Naren to be
indispensable and arranged this with Purna Das’ help. Naren absconded and
started operating from a hideout in Khidirpur.[109] The dock area of
Khidirpur was considered a congenial working environment; the
revolutionaries could easily procure arms through local denizens of the
underworld. A Kabuli gangster later claimed he cooked for a group of
bhadralok revolutionaries living in the area and hoarded arms on their
behalf.[110] The congested conditions facilitated anonymity. Phani recalled
visiting Naren at a house situated on an ‘extremely narrow lane’ through
which ‘hardly two people could pass abreast’.[111] The revolutionaries in
Khidirpur, however, had nothing to do with and were probably oblivious to
the anti-colonial positions being openly expressed in the meetings of
Muslim factory-workers, sailors, cooks and waiters in an area notable for its
predominantly working-class slum-dwelling population.[112] Their direct
connection with the Muslim poor was confined to figures who served them,
such as Nur Mohammad, who supplied arms and repaired guns.[113] As was
their political thinking and practice, they kept themselves socially and
communally isolated and the secretive cellular structure of their
organization disallowed the entry of the masses.
In April, Naren was sent to secure German assistance in Batavia, as
Martin, business representative of Harry and Sons, a cover for underground
activities run by his friend Harikumar from 41 Clive Street; a secret jocular
connection can be read in the pun inherent in the concern’s anglicized name
and that of its Bengali proprietor.[114] Naren met the German Consul and the
brothers Helfferich; the eldest brother, a German agent posing as an affluent
businessman in the neutral Dutch East Indies, transferred a large amount of
money to Calcutta for the proposed insurrection. After his return, Naren
visited Jatin in Orissa, to seek advice and report his activities. Phani
travelled with him by train and on bicycles supplied by Saileswar,
conveniently running a cycle-repair shop, yet another ‘cover’ to assist the
secret base in Orissa. According to Phani, Jatin from his underground
hideout and Naren, after they came back to Calcutta, convinced him to visit
Batavia and deliver a letter to the German Consul. Since he was reluctant to
go alone, Naren accompanied him, travelling to Indonesia for the second
time as a seasoned guide. They left the city in August. Their revolutionary
wanderlust was now realized. They were still wearing Bengali clothes when
they departed from Calcutta. On their way to Madras, they changed into
‘European dress’. The voyage began in style; hiding behind their assumed
identities, Naren and Phani found unexpected sources of amusement:
We arrived at Madras and stopped at the Commercial Hotel. We stopped there (for) three or four
days and left by the Golconda for Penang. We were examined by a police officer, a Madrassi
Deputy Superintendent who told us that young Indians were going to Java to see the Germans.
We told him that we came from Allahabad and were going to see Penang. The police officer
never asked us for any papers, but on seeing that we had some Sherlock Holmes’ stories he
started to tell us how he had investigated similar cases.

They had a first-class cabin to themselves and mostly avoided other

people’s company. They stayed in luxurious accommodations associated
with European travellers making their way in colonial Asia: Commercial
Hotel in Madras, Runnymede Hotel in Penang, Grand Hotel in Java. Along
the way they visited places, met and conversed with people, including
revolutionary and German contacts. The Germans refused further help,
dismissing Naren’s proposal to send consignments by a land route as
‘impossible’, refusing to risk another ship and citing the unsynchronized
character of the Indian rebels and the failure of the first plan, leaked out
from within, during early 1915. The two friends started having arguments.
Phani questioned the efficacy of rising with German arms without popular
support and questioned the motives of imperial Germany. Naren held that
even if the plan failed, he was not going to return empty-handed. If
necessary he would stay outside India for ten or fifteen years, secure
armaments and return to assist the revolution. He was angry with Phani for
having wasted funds meant for underground activity by coming all the way
to South East Asia and then refusing to go any further. Phani had again
backed out from a scheme with serious repercussions. According to Phani,
the two finally parted ways and Naren instructed him to meet the German
Consul in Shanghai before trying to return to India. Phani was befriended
by a Dutch traveller who sensed he was a revolutionary and informed him
of newspaper reports regarding the failure of the Indo-German plot to
convey arms to India. He also made friends with and was accompanied, at
least part of the way by W.S. Paley, a ‘Chinese half-breed from Singapore’.
On the way to Shanghai, Phani spent almost all of the 800 Gilders given to
him by Naren, putting up at Delmonico’s Hotel in Manila with Paley and
Hotel de France in the French settlement at Shanghai. He was broke, hoping
to receive some money from Paley and the German Consul, and then write
to his mother for assistance. His taste for adventure to escape the bonds of
his surroundings in Bengal was coming to a pathetic end.
Arrested by the French police in a destitute condition, having failed to
meet the German Consul, Phani was handed over to the British authorities.
They transported him to the detention barracks in Singapore. While cooling
his heels during 1916, he offered statements riddled with discrepancies,
which did not convince his jailors. They believed he was obfuscating his
personal role in the plot by deliberately projecting himself as an uninformed
sympathizer from the fringes of the underground. From his ‘confession’, it
seems he was indeed covering up his tracks and connections, trying to
protect some of the minor figures in his journey from India to China,
including his cousin Harikumar and his new friend, Paley. Prodded by his
interrogators, he also recalled his adolescence and youth, with occasional
vivid glimpses of his close relationship with Naren Bhattacharji.[115] Except
in the police dossiers where his statement as a detainee in Singapore was
recorded in detail, he was only to be mentioned in passing once or twice in
official or insiders’ accounts, and absent in the recollections of M.N. Roy.
[116]

Naren, as usual, through a set of accidental circumstances, remained

one step ahead of the British authorities. His point of exit from the
revolutionary underground in Bengal served as the point of departure from
the political and social concerns that had dominated his life so far. The
grounds for leaving had been almost unselfconsciously prepared and
expressed through certain tendencies, shrouded by and nestling within his
prior revolutionary and less adventurous daily activities. They were
conveyed in the brief ambition to become an agrarian entrepreneur and
embracing the American dream; the latter triumphed briefly as he landed in
US, already taken with the popular image of escaping to a country of
unlimited opportunities for ‘embourgeoisement’. He ignored, for the time
being, the history of genocide, slavery and sharp divide between the rich
and poor, which underlined the mammoth projects of big capital. So he left.
Ostensibly to procure arms, he was propelled by the necessity to evade
capture by British authorities across Asia, learning of Tiger ‘Jatin’s death in
an encounter with the police in Orissa, and meeting strangers, including Sun
Yat-Sen.[117] One of his pursuers left also, never to return. A.P. Wodehouse
died at Mesopotamia in November while fighting for the empire.[118] The
Asian sojourn ended in California where he became Manabendra Nath Roy.
[119]
He was no longer Naren Bhattacharji. Yet the embryo of this new
identity was present in his earlier interactions while travelling through
South East Asia in April and August. On the train from Calcutta to Madras,
Naren had asked Phani to address him as ‘Roe, which is like Rae or Rai’,
and named Phani ‘Payne because it is like the Bengali name Pyne’. The two
were probably unaware of the weight of carrying their respective noms de
guerre: considerable pain, after some thrilling moments, awaited
Phanindranath Chakraborty as William Arthur Payne and a new persona, in
more ways than one, for his companion. The younger Helfferich, upon
setting eyes on Naren during his second and final trip to Batavia, had
apparently called out from the verandah: ‘Hello Roe, Martin, Naren
Bhattacharji’.[120]
FROM NAREN BHATTACHARJI TO
MANABENDRA NATH ROY

The transition from Naren Bhattacharji to M.N. Roy meant parting

ways, not just with the former milieu and its morals, but also from the
ideology of nationalist revolution to internationalism from below. Though
‘Narendranath’ and ‘Manabendranath’ carried the same meaning in a literal
sense (Lord of Kings/God), the second had a wider universalist
philosophical connotation. Return to the old ways was impossible since the
revolutionary network was suppressed with utmost zeal by the British
authorities following ‘Tiger’ Jatin’s death in September 1915 and the
consolidation of war-time repressive apparatus purged of pre-war ‘liberal’
constraints. Overwhelmed by an orientalist rhetoric of vindication, a British
police official claimed that the ‘law of Manu’ visited the bhadralok
revolutionaries in 1916 for refusing to obey the colonial overlords and
engaging in the sacrilegious murder of brahmin informers and policemen.
[121]
Naren’s old circle disintegrated like a house of cards as death, suicide,
executions and long-term imprisonment overtook them. Bholanath
Chatterjee died under torture in 1916; the same end was met by
Radhacharan Pramanik. Saileswar Bose and Harikumar Chakraborty were
sentenced to long years in prison. Naren met them again when he came
back to India.[122] He was to undertake a long journey after his acrimonious
expulsion from the Third International in the late 1920s: return and
imprisonment in India following a gap of 16 years without the arms he had
promised to secure as a ‘naïve’ youth to ‘Tiger’ Jatin and Phani; the failure
of the negotiations to re-enter the Comintern; donning of the Gandhi cap in
the late 1930s; the final shift to Radical Humanism, based on enlightenment
liberalism and rejection of communism, pronounced from the mid-1940s.
The last turn involved a philosophical negation of ‘class’ as a political-
intellectual category and entry to the centre of an intellectual circle aligned
with the Congress for Cultural Freedom, the cultural Cold War in Asia and
‘soft’ Zionism.[123]
It was among the New York skyscrapers that the possibility of
transcending the political boundaries and social content of nationalism had
suddenly flashed in his brain like a ‘light bulb’.[124] The irreverence towards
private property, living with risks and implacable opposition to the colonial
state, elements present in his former existence, were now reconfigured to
declare a war on the rule of property and empires of capital everywhere on
behalf of the dispossessed. As he reached Soviet Turkestan via Mexico, he
shed a form of anti-colonialism upholding combined hegemonies of class,
caste and patriarchy and mixed with those who were not of his social
background, the recruits for a new revolution. This aspect of abandoning
proprietor values is impossible to miss, constituting a sharp contrast with
his previous life. The contrast becomes more focused if one compares him
with one of his underground ‘elders’, Aurobindo Ghosh. Ghosh was
paradoxically influenced by and reacted to the kind of restricted imperial
cosmopolitanism which allowed loyalty to the empire or a turn to spiritual
nationalism, rather than internationalism of the disinherited. Roy connected
with radical men and women from America to Asia; towards the end of the
civil war following the Bolshevik Revolution, his circuitous
transcontinental route brought him to young Muhajir fugitives from British
India. With these former pan-Islamist radicals, he established the émigré
communist party at Tashkent in 1920.
In 1921-22, he re-kindled contact with old associates in Bengal; they
had waited for Naren Bhattacharji and found he had mutated into M.N. Roy.
Having picked up ingredients of self-transformation in the broad highway
of the post-1917 world, he no longer advocated anarchist methods or
recycled orientalist ideas. They did not respond sympathetically to his
Marxist-Leninist politics. He also discovered an obscure Bengali Muslim
journalist, two years younger than him. They had never met during his stay
in Calcutta during 1913-15 while roaming the same neighbourhoods and
struggling, as migrants in the big city, with impoverished lower middle-
class conditions. His correspondence with Muzaffar Ahmad, which landed
the latter in jail, revealed a tone of developing political intimacy and mutual
respect despite geographic distance.[125] Though Roy was the leader, they
were equals. This association was a break from his old revolutionary
training and practice, the panorama of state repression and retail counter-
violence, the cellular secret societies driven by the elite logic of unleashing
revolution from above, exclusive male collectives stamped by the heroic
model of idealistic self-sacrifice, obsessions and petty jealousies. Equipped
with a different perspective of revolution, Naren Bhattacharji as M.N. Roy
was turning to those whom he never attempted to understand while making
his way through the pavements, alleys, markets and buildings of Calcutta in
the early 1910s. A decade later, with the assistance of Muzaffar and others,
and travelling as an exile from one European country to another, he was
reaching out to the masses of India.

[1]
Weekly Reports of the Bengal Intelligence Branch 1910. These reports were compiled on a
weekly basis as confidential bulletins for officials engaged with colonial surveillance. They
supplemented Intelligence Branch dossiers on individuals, organizations and movements.
[2]
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Complete Stories and Poems of Lewis
Carroll, New Lanark: Geddes & Grosset, 2002, p. 30.
[3]
Weekly Reports of the Bengal Intelligence Branch 1910.
[4]
L.N. Bird, ‘History Sheet No. 687 of Narendranath Bhattacharji (no. 1)’ in Sibnarayan Ray (ed.),
Philosopher Revolutionary. An International Symposium and Selection of Documents with a
Detailed Chronology of Roy’s Career, Calcutta: Renaissance Publishers, 1959, Second Edition,
1984, p. 18 (henceforth Philosopher Revolutionary).
[5]
IB 689/1919. IB stands for Intelligence Branch of Bengal Police.
[6]
Bird, ‘History Sheet No. 687 of Narendranath Bhattacharji (no. 1)’ in Philosopher
Revolutionary, p. 15.
[7]
Amales Tripathy, The Extremist Challenge: India between 1890 and 1910, Calcutta: Orient
Longman, 1967.
[8]
Sumit Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903-1908, Ranikhet: Permanent Black, 2010.
[9]
Tripathy, The Extremist Challenge, pp. 1-107, 141-144.
[10]
Amales Tripathy, Trade and Finance in the Bengal Presidency 1793-1833, Calcutta: OUP,
1979, p. 180.
[11]
For a theoretically rich and detailed understanding of colonial pedagogy as ideology in the
nineteenth century, see Sibaji Bandopadhyay, Gopal-Rakhal Dwandasamas: Uponibeshbad O
Bangla Shishu-Sahitya, Papyrus: Calcutta, 1991 (The Gopal-Rakhal Dialectic: Colonialism and
Children’s Literature in Bengal, Tulika: New Delhi, 2015).
[12]
See A.K. Bagchi, Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital, Delhi,
2006.
[13]
Tripathy, The Extremist Challenge, p. 117.
[14]
Sumit Sarkar, Modern India 1885-1947, Delhi: MacMillan, 1983, pp. 358-59 and Tripathy, The
Extremist Challenge, p.145.
[15]
For an analysis of the Gita as the vehicle of Brahmanical ideology, see Sukumari Bhattacharji,
Gita kano? (Why the Gita?), Calcutta: Camp, 2010. An interpretation of the Gita by Bankim
Chandra Chattopadhyay, celebrated novelist and late nineteenth century ideologue of Hindu
‘revivalism’, influenced and was watered down by the spiritual elders of the revolutionary
movement. The chief thrust was on preaching the decline of ‘Dharma’ (Brahmanical religion)
and its recovery through militant action. For an understanding of Chattopadhyay, see Hans
Harder, Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay’s Srimadbhagabadgita: Translation and Analysis, Delhi:
Manohar, 2001. For the Gita as a source of inspiration to recruits of Anushilan Samiti, see
Samaren Roy, The Restless Brahmin: Early Life of M.N. Roy, Calcutta: Allied Publishers, 1970,
p. 26 (henceforth Restless Brahmin). Also Shukla Sanyal, Revolutionary Pamphlets, Propaganda
and Political Culture in Colonial Bengal, Delhi: Cambridge University, 2014, pp. 75-76.
[16]
Muzaffar Ahmad, Amar Jiban o Bharater Communist Party (My Life and the Communist Party
of India), Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1969, Fifth Edition 1996, pp. 27-28.
[17]
Tripathy, The Extremist Challenge, pp. 117, 144.
[18]
J. C. Curry, The Indian Police, London: Faber & Faber, 1932, p. 291.
[19]
Sarkar, Modern India, p. 21.
[20]
Tripathy, The Extremist Challenge, p. 144.
[21]
The ideological content of extremism and revolutionary terrorism drew on Hindu revivalism.
For a historical treatment of revivalism as a negation of liberal self-reformist endeavours of the
bhadralok intelligentsia, see Amiya P. Sen, Hindu Revivalism in Bengal, 1872–1905: Some
Essays in Interpretation, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993. Also Asok Sen, Iswar
Chandra Vidyasagar and his Elusive Milestones, Calcutta: Riddhi-India, 1977, p. 103. Sen traced
the decline of the reform movement in Bengal, overtaken and discarded by a constructed Hindu
chauvinist, neo-traditional, neo-conservative ideological drive in the late nineteenth century. This
surge, though new, drew on a usable, concocted past and was labeled as ‘Hindu revival’. For a
colonial perspective on Russian anarchists who inspired the methods of bhadralok terrorists, see
Curry, The Indian Police, p. 290. Also Restless Brahmin, p. 24. Samaren Roy has observed
Italian, French and Irish nationalists directly influenced the early revolutionaries from Bengal.
[22]
Tripathy, The Extremist Challenge, p. 143.
[23]
Subodh Chandra Sengupta and Anjali Basu, Sansad Bangali Charitabhidhan (Dictionary of
Bengali Biography), Vol.1, Calcutta: Sahitya Sansad, 1994, pp. 413-14. Restless Brahmin, pp. 16-
18, 19, 33-34. IB 398/16.
[24]
Restless Brahmin, pp. 33-34.
[25]
Restless Brahmin, pp. 21-22. Bird, ‘History Sheet No. 687 of Narendranath Bhattacharji (no.1)’
in Philosopher Revolutionary, pp. 15-16.
[26]
Sengupta and Basu, Sansad Bangali Charitabhidhan, Vol.1, pp. 413-414.
[27]
Bird, ‘History Sheet No. 687 of Narendranath Bhattacharji (no.1)’ in Philosopher
Revolutionary, pp. 15-16.
[28]
Restless Brahmin, pp. 9-12.
[29]
Sarkar, Modern India 1885-1947, pp. 119-121.
[30]
Rajat Ray, ‘Revolutionaries, Pan-Islamists and Bolsheviks: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and the
Political Underworld in Calcutta, 1905-1925’, Mushirul Hasan (ed.), Communal and Pan-Islamic
Trends in Colonial India, Manohar: Delhi, 1985, p. 105.
[31]
Restless Brahmin, pp. 9-12, 21-22.
[32]
Sibnarayan Ray, ‘M.N. Roy: A Biographical Chronology’ in Philosopher Revolutionary, p. 222.
[33]
Restless Brahmin, pp. 25-27.
[34]
Sibnarayan Ray, ‘M.N. Roy: A Biographical Chronology’ in Philosopher Revolutionary, p. 222.
[35]
Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, p. 144.
[36]
Bird, ‘History Sheet No. 687 of Narendranath Bhattacharji (no. 1)’, Philosopher Revolutionary,
p. 13.
[37]
Sarkar, Modern India, p.123.
[38]
Bird, ‘History Sheet No. 687 of Narendranath Bhattacharji (no. 1)’, Philosopher Revolutionary,
p. 15.
[39]
Restless Brahmin, p. 27.
[40]
Amarendranath Chattopadhyay, ‘My reminiscences of Naren’ in Philosopher Revolutionary, p.
37.
[41]
Restless Brahmin, pp. 28-29, 38-39.
[42]
Ibid., pp. 38-39, 42-43, 46, 48, 53.
[43]
Saralabala Sarkar, ‘My Recollections of Young Naren’ in Philosopher Revolutionary, pp. 24-
25, 27.
[44]
Bird, ‘History Sheet No. 687 of Narendranath Bhattacharji (no. 1)’ in Philosopher
Revolutionary, p. 16.
[45]
Sengupta and Basu, Sansad Bangali Charitabhidhan, Vol. 1, pp. 34-35, 333, 432.
[46]
V.I. Lenin, ‘The Career of a Russian Terrorist’, Collected Works, Vol. 17, Moscow: Progress
Publishers, 1974, pp. 46-48.
[47]
Tripathy, The Extremist Challenge, p. 115.
[48]
Sarkar, Modern India, p. 66.
[49]
Saralabala Sarkar, ‘My Recollections of Young Naren’ in Philosopher Revolutionary, p. 27.
[50]
Restless Brahmin, p. 61. Bird, ‘History Sheet No. 687 of Narendranath Bhattacharji (no. 1)’ in
Philosopher Revolutionary, p. 15. Saralabala Sarkar, ‘My Recollections of Young Naren’ in
Philosopher Revolutionary, p. 27.
[51]
See Rajat Ray, Urban Roots of Indian Nationalism: Pressure Groups and Conflict of Interests
in Calcutta City Politics, 1875-1939, Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1979, pp. 69-71.
[52]
Ray, Urban Roots, 58-59.
[53]
Montague Massey, Recollections of Calcutta for Over Half a Century, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink
& Co., 1918.
[54]
Report on Native Press (Home Department, Govt. of Bengal), 1912.
[55]
Report on Native Press (Home Department, Govt. of Bengal), 1913.
[56]
Richard C. Hall, The Balkan Wars 1912-13: Prelude to the First World War, London & New
York: Routledge, 2000.
[57]
Weekly Reports of the Bengal Intelligence Branch 1914-15.
[58]
For a recent discussion on civic transformations, see Partho Datta, Planning the City:
Urbanization and Reform in Calcutta c.1800-c.1940, Delhi: Tulika Books, 2012. For a
conceptual framework on ‘accumulation by dispossession’, derived from Rosa Luxemburg’s
writings on imperialism, see David Harvey, The New Imperialism, Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003.
[59]
Weekly Reports of the Bengal Intelligence Branch 1914-15. Upendra Narayan Chakraborty,
Indian Nationalism and the First World War (1914-1918), Calcutta, 1997. Chakraborty has
treated war-time price-rise, cloth shortage and related social protests from below in Bengal. Also,
Suchetana Chattopadhyay, An Early Communist: Muzaffar Ahmad in Calcutta, New Delhi:
Tulika, 2011, pp. 18-43.
[60]
Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, pp. 364-67.
[61]
For details on anti-demolition and pro-Caliphate campaigns in the Muslim enclaves of North-
Central Calcutta and the docks, see Weekly Reports of the Bengal Intelligence Branch 1914-15.
For an official perspective on increasing anti-colonial feelings among all classes of Muslims, see
Bengal Home Political 66/1913 (6-8).
[62]
Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, pp. 364-67; Ranabir Samaddar, ‘Leaders and
Publics: Stories in the time of transition’, The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 37
(4): 2000, p. 450; Weekly Reports of the Bengal Intelligence Branch 1914.
[63]
Restless Brahmin, p. 31.
[64]
Samik Bandopadhyay and Debasis Bose (eds.), Kolikata Street Directory 1915, Calcutta: P.M.
Bagchi, (reprinted with notes) 2015, p.18. Bengal Technical Institute later developed into
Jadavpur University (1955-56).
[65]
IB 428/1916 (136/16).
[66]
IB 2171/1916.
[67]
Rajat Ray, ‘Revolutionaries, Pan-Islamists and Bolsheviks: Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and the
Political Underworld in Calcutta, 1905-1925’, in Mushirul Hasan (ed.), Communal and Pan-
Islamic Trends in Colonial India, pp. 86-88, 94-96.
[68]
For a growing attraction among Muslim students and youth towards militant anti-colonial
action, especially after Britain declared war on Turkey, see Weekly Reports of the Bengal
Intelligence Branch 1914-15.
[69]
Weekly Reports of the Bengal Intelligence Branch 1914-15. Report on Native Press (Home
Department, Govt. of Bengal), 1914.
[70]
Sarkar, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, pp. 415-16.
[71]
Bengal Home Political 150/1911.
[72]
Weekly Reports of the Bengal Intelligence Branch 1911.
[73]
Bengal Home Political 263/1911. ‘Abad’ denotes land for tilling.
[74]
Sengupta & Basu, Sansad Bangali Charitabhidhan, Vol.1, p. 613.
[75]
Restless Brahmin, p. 34. IB 689/1919. Also, Annual Report of the Police Administration of the
Town of Calcutta and its Suburbs for the Year 1915. IB 398/1916.
[76]
Saralabala Sarkar, ‘My Recollections of Young Naren’ in Philosopher Revolutionary, pp. 27,
24-25.
[77]
Krisak (Bhadra 1320/ August-September 1913), 14, 2, p. 60. Krisak (Joisthya 1321/ May-June
1914)15, 2, pp. 59-60.
[78]
Anup Motilal, ‘Introduction’, Alapan Bandopadhyay and Anup Motilal (eds.), The
Philosophers’ Stone: Speeches and Writings of Sir Daniel Hamilton, Gosaba: Sir Daniel
Hamilton Estate Trust, 2003, pp. 2, 15. Sir Daniel MacKinnon Hamilton, a Scottish entrepreneur
connected with the managing agency house of Mackinnon Mackenzie through family ties,
purchased large tracts of land at Sundarban. Motivated by Utilitarianism, he introduced
agricultural co-operatives to improve rural conditions. Concerned with rising unemployment and
social frustration among the young bhadralok intelligentsia, he encouraged them to take up model
farming in his estate. Also, Ellen Meiksins Wood, ‘Modernity, Postmodernity or Capitalism?’ in
Robert W. McChesney, Ellen Meiksins Wood and John Bellamy Foster (eds.), Capitalism and the
Information Age: The Political Economy of the Global Communication Revolution, New York:
Monthly Review Press, 1997. Meiksins Wood argues that a model of agrarian capitalism emerged
in Britain which found expression in a distinctive ideology of improvement.
[79]
See Sarangadhar Das, ‘Why must we emigrate to the United States of America’, Modern
Review, July 1911.
[80]
Krisak (Joisthya 1321/ May-June 1914) 15, 2, pp. 54-55.
[81]
Weekly Reports of the Bengal Intelligence Branch 1914.
[82]
IB 689/1919.
[83]
Indian Sedition Committee Report, 1918, p. 224. Sengupta & Basu, Sansad Bangali
Charitabhidhan, Vol.1, p. 514.
[84]
IB 689/1919.
[85]
Bird, ‘History Sheet No. 687 of Narendranath Bhattacharji (no. 1)’ in Philosopher
Revolutionary, p. 19.
[86]
IB 689/1919.
[87]
Bird, ‘History Sheet No. 687 of Narendranath Bhattacharji (no.1)’ in Philosopher
Revolutionary, pp. 13, 18.
[88]
IB 398/1916. Restless Brahmin, p. 53. Bird, ‘History Sheet No.687 of Narendranath
Bhattacharji (no. 1)’ in Philosopher Revolutionary, p.13.
[89]
IB 307/1915. IB 689/1919.
[90]
IB 689/1919.
[91]
Bird, ‘History Sheet No. 687 of Narendranath Bhattacharji (no.1)’ in Philosopher
Revolutionary, p. 16.
[92]
IB 398/1916. IB 689/1919. Restless Brahmin, p. 61.
[93]
IB 689/1919. IB 398/1916. Restless Brahmin, pp. 53, 57.
[94]
IB 398/1916. Restless Brahmin, p. 54.
[95]
Sengupta & Basu, Sansad Bangali Charitabhidhan, Vol. 1, p. 384. IB 398/1916. Restless
Brahmin, p. 54.
[96]
IB 398/1916.
[97]
IB 398/1916.
[98]
IB 398/1916. IB 689/1919. Restless Brahmin, pp. 52, 56. Saralabala Sarkar, ‘My Recollections
of Young Naren’ in Philosopher Revolutionary, pp. 24-27. For a Feminist-Marxist understanding
of class, patriarchy and the bhadralok social milieu, see Himani Bannerji, ‘The Mirror of Class’
in Himani Bannerji, The Mirror of Class: Essays on Bengali Theatre, Calcutta: Papyrus, 1998.
[99]
IB 398/1916.
[100]
Restless Brahmin, pp. 56-62.
[101]
IB 689/1919.
[102]
Weekly Reports of the Bengal Intelligence Branch 1914.
[103]
IB 689/1919.
[104]
Weekly Reports of the Bengal Intelligence Branch 1914.
[105]
Restless Brahmin, pp.65-66. IB 689/1919.
[106]
Weekly Reports of the Bengal Intelligence Branch 1914 & 1915.
[107]
Report on Native Press, 1914. Annual Report of the Police Administration of the Town of
Calcutta and its Suburbs for the Year 1915.
[108]
Annual Report of the Police Administration of the Town of Calcutta and its Suburbs for the
Year 1915.
[109]
Restless Brahmin, pp. 67, 77. IB 398/1916.
[110]
IB 307/1915.
[111]
IB 398/1916.
[112]
Weekly Reports of the Bengal Intelligence Branch 1914 & 1915.
[113]
Restless Brahmin, p. 34.
[114]
Ibid, p. 71.
[115]
IB 398/1916. IB 689/1919.
[116]
For the absence in the police dossiers, see James Campbell Ker, ‘C.A. Martin and the Batavia
Plot (1915)’ Chronology in Philosopher Revolutionary, p. 34. Surprisingly left unexplored so far
by those who have written on Roy’s early life, including his admiring biographers, the statements
 of Phanindra Nath Chakraborty (alias William Arthur Payne) forms one of the key sources in my
understanding of Naren Bhattacharji. Much of its content can be found in Prithwindranath
Mukhopadhyay, Sadhak biplabi Jatindranath (Jatindranath: Saint and Revolutionary), Calcutta:
West Bengal State Book Board (2nd edition), 2012, pp. 424-60.
[117]
Restless Brahmin, pp. 80, 87.
[118]
Annual Report on the Police Administration of the Town of Calcutta and its Suburbs for the
year 1915.
[119]
Restless Brahmin, p. 93.
[120]
IB 398/1916.
[121]
Restless Brahmin, pp. 90-91. Prithwindranath Mukhopadhyay and Pabitrakumar Gupta (eds.),
Samasamayiker Chokhe Bagha Jatin (‘Tiger’ Jatin in the eyes of his contemporaries), Calcutta:
Sahitya Sansad: 2014. Curry, The Indian Police, p. 294. Sarkar, Modern India, pp. 138, 149.
[122]
Sengupta and Basu, Sansad Bangali Charitabhidhan, Vol.1, pp. 384, 413-414, 432, 531-532,
613.
[123]
M.N. Roy, Memoirs, Calcutta: Allied Publishers, 1964, p. 4. For attempted rapprochement
with Comintern, see Samaren Roy, M.N. Roy: A Political Biography, Delhi: Orient Longman,
1997, pp. 87-92. For a concise factual account of the various twists and turns in Roy’s life,
Sibnarayan Ray, ‘M.N. Roy: A Biographical Chronology’ in Philosopher Revolutionary, pp. 220-
48. The other contributions on Roy from his followers in this rich anthology also illuminate his
late path.
[124]
Roy, Memoirs, pp. 26-28.
[125]
Chattopadhyay, An Early Communist, pp.18-43, 105-09, 124-25, 129-32. For a recent
discussion on the early Soviet Union and colonial Asia, see Hari Vasudevan, ‘Asiatic Orientations
of Early Soviet Socialism: A Perspective on the Life and Times of Maulana Azad’, Indian
Historical Review (2014), 41, 2, pp. 271-95.
Fredrik Petersson
The ‘Colonial Conference’ and Dilemma
of the Comintern’s Colonial Work, 1928-
29

It must be admitted that, up till now, not all the parties in the Communist International have fully
grasped the decisive importance which the establishment of close, regular and unbroken relations
with the national revolutionary movements in the colonies has in affording these movements
active and practical help.
Otto W. Kuusinen, Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in Colonial and Semi-Colonial
Countries, adopted by the
Sixth Comintern Congress, Moscow, 1/9-1928.

Following on from the visit of a member of the Eastern Secretariat to you, and on his discussion
with you of the possibility of holding a conference of Western European parties on Colonial
work, [. . .] for the purpose of reviewing the work of the parties and putting into operation the
decisions of the Congresses of the CI on colonial questions.
Robin Page Arnot to the Secretariat of the Communist Party of France, Paris, 25/3-1929.

In 1929, the European communist parties faced a crisis in their ‘colonial

work’. In Paris, the British communist Robin Page Arnot met Pierre
Semard, the secretary of the Communist Party of France (CPF) on 4
February, to discuss the party’s colonial work. Leaving the meeting Arnot
concluded that something had to be done to ‘put into operation’ the
decisions of the Communist International (Comintern, 1919-43) on the
colonial work. The reason for Arnot’s visit to the French capital involved a
sanctioned mission on behalf of the Comintern to travel and discuss with
representatives of Western European communist parties. The main item on
the agenda was the complexity of colonial work, as well as the challenge of
getting this line of activity operational and effective. At Comintern
headquarters in Moscow, various departments and individuals had been
involved in formulating the purpose for Arnot’s mission in Western Europe.
This was an issue that engaged the inner apparatus of the Comintern, having
numerous individuals and institutional bodies sharing an interest in making
colonial work effective and functional for international communism as a
movement at the turn of the 1920s. For the Comintern in 1929, the central
objective was to examine how means and methods constructively could
solve past and present predicaments of colonial work. Arnot conceded, after
meeting Semard, that the holding of a ‘Colonial Conference’ somewhere in
Europe, preferably in Berlin or Cologne in Germany, was essential if the
dilemma of colonial work in the communist parties could reach a
constructive solution. The meeting had to address ‘reports on past work,
examination of difficulties, future tasks and practical steps to their
realization’.[1] The ‘Colonial Conference’ as a concept mirrored the poor
state of affairs in the Western European communist parties in their conduct
of colonial work. For the Comintern, the colonial question had continuously
haunted the ‘world party’ since its inauguration and congress in Moscow on
2-6 March 1919.[2] In concrete terms, this was a question that involved
intertwined relations, unresolved questions and aims, successful
undertakings and disappointments, and interconnected transnational
movements against oppression.[3] The dilemma of the complex colonial
work became abundantly clear at the Sixth International Comintern
Congress in Moscow (17 July-1 August 1928). Thus, ten years after its
inauguration in 1919, measures were initiated to solve the conundrum, but
how had it come to this?
The Comintern’s colonial complex consisted of several dimensions and
questions in 1929. My aim here is first to unfold this complex system as
interlocked and relational, and second, to show how the Comintern’s anti-
imperialist ambition evolved into a conflicted situation vis-à-vis the
sections, i.e. the national communist parties. To this equation we must add
the frequent relational glitches between the Comintern and the communist
mass and sympathising organizations, which represented an intricate part in
the networks of international communism as a global movement between
the wars. Comintern headquarters in Moscow frequently delivered
administrative instructions and ideological guidance to the national parties.
On the issue of colonial work, malpractice and friction defined the
relationship between the Comintern headquarters and the national parties.
In the beginning of 1929, as shall be shown here, the Comintern’s colonial
work existed merely on paper. This is why the ‘Colonial Conference’
assumes a central role in the narrative of the much desired ambition of the
‘world party’ to assume global proportions in a period of possibilities and
limitations at the turn of the 1920s. Further, the discussions around the
‘Colonial Conference’ tells us about the interconnected relation of
international communism (the Comintern, the sections, and the mass and
sympathising organizations) and anti-colonialism/imperialism as
demanding and utopian movements between the wars.
One fundamental explanation to the conference’s initiation as an idea is
primarily connected to the continual doctrinal policy shifts of the
Comintern. In 1928, Nikolai Bukharin initiated the harsh radicalism of the
Comintern’s ‘new line’ at the Sixth International Comintern Congress. The
policy shifted from the ‘united front’ strategy, which advocated for
collaboration outside the communist movement, to the ‘class against class’
doctrine, which suggested that such collaboration was superfluous. Two
accounts mirrors the confusion of this doctrinal shift. First, Andreu Nín
(1892–1937), the Catalan trade unionist and functionary of the Profintern
(Red International of Labour Unions; RILU) witnessed the ‘epileptic
zigzags of the ‘world party’. Nín then bluntly pointed out that this would
leave the communists in ‘complete disarray’.[4] The experiences of the
Indian nationalist revolutionary and communist Manabendra Nath Roy’s
(1887–1954) on the impact of ‘the new line’ offers a similar account to
Nín’s. Roy was not present at the congress. When he contacted Arnot in
December 1928, before he lost his position in the Comintern, Roy said that
despite feeling like ‘an outcast’, he wondered if ‘the International
[Comintern] has become insane’ by approving ‘the new line’.[5]
The ‘Colonial Conference’ belongs to the narrative on how the
international communist movement reacted to the Comintern’s ‘new line’,
especially within the European communist parties. Moreover, it is a history
that has remained concealed, ambiguous and interlocked with other
developments over the course of less than a year (1928-29), enacted in the
ideological breach between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ in the Comintern’s
organizational milieu. To understand the reactions and adaptation of ‘the
new line’ on the colonial work; the chronology of the ‘Colonial Conference’
is distinctly defined as much as it remains ambiguous. A crucial element for
the contextualization of the above is to explore how some of the individuals
and institutions linked explicitly to Comintern headquarters in Moscow
perceived the colonial work in the ‘imperialist centres’ of the Western
European communist parties.
Documents located in the files of the Comintern Archive in Moscow
disclose a particular piece of communist history that has to take into
consideration the distinction between theory and practice. Crucial to this
was the institutional body, namely the Eastern Secretariat at Comintern
headquarters, a department devoted to dealing with and supervising the
colonial work. According to a general observation on the current situation
on 29 March 1929, the Deputy Head of the department, the Hungarian
communist Ludwig Magyar (real name: Lajos Milgorf; 1891–1937)
concluded that there existed serious problems within the Western European
communist parties to conduct ‘colonial routine work’, a misdemeanor that
explicitly constituted a serious breach in acting ‘truly Bolshevik’.[6]
Magyar’s opinion is essential here, especially as it summarized the reason
for why the ‘Colonial Conference’ was perceived as the solution to a grave
structural problem within the communist movement in Europe. What, first,
may seem as a typical Eurocentric narrative of the Comintern’s inherent
colonial complex, stretches beyond the European continent and connects a
transnational narrative that discloses the snags and hitches in making the
colonial work turn into a real and effective undertaking.
The ‘Colonial Conference’ exposes the perilous efforts of the ‘world
party’ and its headquarters in Moscow to maintain contacts with vital
colonial hubs in Western Europe – the metropolitan and cosmopolitan
centres – crucial geographical and administrative nodes for the international
communist movement since Europe was the gateway to the colonies
between the wars. The establishment of sympathising organizations for a
particular cause was crucial for the Comintern in order to advance the
colonial work as a political project and objective. In 1926, Otto W.
Kuusinen (1881–1961), a Finnish communist émigré and leading secretary
in the Comintern, urged the Comintern to support the establishment of ‘not
only communist organizations, but other organizations as well’ capable of
conducting communist influence ‘over the masses’. What Kuusinen was
thinking of was the creation of ‘a Solar System of organizations and smaller
committees around the Communist Party . . . under the influence of our
Party [Comintern]’. In the context of movements against colonialism and
imperialism, Kuusinen stipulated the need to form ‘organizations against
colonial atrocities and oppression of Eastern peoples’.[7] One of the most
successful undertakings of the Comintern was the establishment of the
League against Imperialism and for National Independence (LAI; 1927–
1937) in Brussels at the ‘First International Congress against Colonialism
and Imperialism’ on 10-14 February 1929.[8]
In February 1929, the ‘Solar System’ Arnot witnessed in Paris and other
European cities highlighted a structure under rigorous pressure. The work
with the ‘Colonial Conference’ existed parallel to the preparatory process
for the LAI’s second international congress, scheduled to convene in Paris
on 21-30 July 1929. The congress was forced to relocate to Frankfurt am
Main in Germany after the French security service Sûreté refused to give its
approval of the event. At first, the two events can be interpreted as one and
the same, however, a close scrutiny of the documents makes it evident that
we are talking of two different events with different political characteristics
and motifs. On the other hand, several ideas and discussions emanating
from the preparatory process of the ‘Colonial Conference’ had an
everlasting effect on the political agenda of the LAI’s second congress.[9]
The ‘Colonial Conference’ is an inexplicable feature in the narrative of the
Comintern’s colonial complex as it offers us several challenges: first, is it
possible to determine when the preparations for the ‘Colonial Conference’
commenced, and what does the process disclose about the Comintern’s
colonial work? And second, did the conference convene in 1929? It is not
possible to answer these questions if we do not begin at the Sixth
International Comintern Congress in Moscow (17 July–1 September 1928),
a critical moment that not only explicates the dilemma of the colonial
question, but sheds light on why and how international communism evolved
as it did in 1929 in the aftermath of the congress.

MOSCOW 1928: THE EMBEDDED PROBLEM OF COMINTERN’S COLONIAL POLICY

The Sixth International Comintern Congress in Moscow (17 July–1

September 1928) was the ideological divide of the international communist
movement between the wars. Four years after the last congress in 1924, and
two years late by its own statutes, leaders and delegates of communist
parties – 515 delegates representing 58 parties – gathered at the ‘Palace of
Labour’ of the Soviet trade unions in Moscow. The congress was the ‘scene
of a muted, but nonetheless real, struggle’ that celebrated the coming of ‘the
third period’, i.e. ‘the new line’. The congress displayed visible conflicts or
euphoric appraisals and was not a harmonious event. In the former case, it
witnessed the initiation of the personal conflict between Nikolai Bukharin
and Stalin. Bukharin’s introductory note at the congress initiated a public
critique of the New Economic Policy (NEP), as he declared on the need of
making ‘the transition from reconstruction to the expanded reproduction of
the entire technical basis of the country’s production, the proletariat of the
Soviet Union faces new tasks’.[10] In a second step, this overtly exposed the
close moral supportive ties of the ‘world party’ to the state sanctioned
policy of the Bolshevik regime for endorsing the building of socialism in
the Soviet Union, i.e. the leap into the collectivization and industrialization
of Soviet society. The event served as an opportunity to disavow the New
Economic Policy (NEP). For the Comintern, the public rebuking of NEP
implied in turn how close the ‘world party’ was in its support of the
Bolshevik regime for endorsing the building of socialism in the Soviet
Union, i.e. the leap into the collectivization and industrialization of Soviet
society. If we examine the policy and aim of ‘the new line’ closely, it aimed
at functioning as an ideological panorama that confirmed the inherent
strength of communism to act and exist as an independent political entity
and movement.
Moreover, communism as an ideology and movement had to, above all,
detach itself from any kind of contacts with or influence from social
democracy. With the introduction of ‘the new line’, the Comintern aspired
to turn itself and the national sections into the genuine and true radical
representatives of a working-class party. It had been Bukharin who
conceptualized the theoretical framework of ‘the new line’, which, in its
quintessence, aimed at foreseeing the coming of a global capitalist crisis.
To avoid any confusion of the terminology connected to ‘the new line’,
Bukharin wanted to distinguish a historical trajectory of communism since
the Bolsheviks’ seized power in Russia 1917. Thus, what Bukharin called
‘the third period’ constituted, by definition, the coming of the eagerly
awaited global capitalist crisis which would give the Comintern and the
international communist movement an opportunity to capitalize on the
coming of a ‘second wave’ of international revolutionary activity.
According to the lingua franca of the Comintern at this point, the first wave
of revolutionary activity petered out gradually with the miscalculations of
the revolutionary attempts in Hungary and Germany in 1919, and failed
embarrassingly with the incident of the poorly conducted German October
1923 under the leadership of the Communist Party of Germany (CPG).
Hence, the disappointment of the ‘first wave’ had shown the Comintern that
the working-class, in its struggle for political and economic equality and
just social reforms, did not perceive the radicalism of communism as the
solution. ‘The new line’ sanctioned a policy of antagonism vis-à-vis the
social democrats, for example the Labour and Socialist International (LSI),
as much as it refuted the activities of colonial nationalist reformist
movements such as Mahatma Gandhi’s Indian National Congress (INC) and
W.E.B. Du Bois’ National Association for the Advancement of Coloured
Peoples (NAACP). At the Sixth Comintern Congress, the reformist nature
of colonial adversaries – as the ones mentioned above – were categorized
by the Comintern as ‘agents of imperialism’, while social democrats were
brusquely classified as ‘social fascists’. This witnessed the end of the
‘united front’ as a way for the Comintern to mobilize support among
political groups outside of the communist movement, favouring instead
collaborations ‘from below’ with worker and peasant movements.[11]
Otto W. Kuusinen submitted the ‘Theses on the Revolutionary
Movement in Colonial and Semi-Colonial Countries’ at the congress, a
document that re-defined the political and organizational trajectory on the
colonial work for the communist parties and sympathizing organizations
such as the LAI.[12] Kuusinen had written the ‘theses’. In his presentation of
the ‘theses’ at the congress, Kuusinen criticized the colonial work of the
Comintern and the sections, admitting that the expectations had been too
high. In China, the debacle of 1927 subverted the Comintern’s intentions to
gain a foothold in that country – the Kuomintang putsch against the
communists in April was followed in November by the bloody uprising and
embarrassment of the ‘Canton Commune’. Kuusinen saw India’s national
revolutionary movement as more promising for the Comintern. While India
constituted a significant part of the colonial work, Kuusinen noted that
nothing would be accomplished if the communist parties did not find ‘lively
[anti-colonial] connections’ in Western ‘metropolitan countries’ with
‘corresponding organizations’ in the colonies. Kuusinen claimed that this
line of activity had been largely neglected and inadequately performed, and
evidently, colonial work represented ‘one of the weakest sides of Comintern
activity’. Reflecting on the development of colonial work since the
Comintern’s inauguration in 1919, Kuusinen’s central critique showed that
the parties either intentionally ignored it completely or considered it to be a
complete waste of time. The parties did have colonial commissions as sub-
departments (for example, the Colonial Commission of the Communist
Party of Great Britain and the Colonial Committee of the Communist Party
of France). Nonetheless, the parties were reluctant to perform this kind of
organizational work in ‘the imperialist countries’ (Europe and the USA). If
they did not act, the chances of finding contacts to establish or support
communist parties in the colonies were minimal.[13]
The colonial ‘theses’ were essentially a product of Stalin’s active
involvement in the Comintern. On July 12, Kuusinen sent two drafts to
Stalin’s office in the Kremlin, asking for advice and comments. It was not
until 21 August, however, that Stalin sent Kuusinen his reply on the
material, apologising that he was ‘sorry for replying late’. What major
issues did Stalin address? First, the material was too general, resembling
more of a commentary than ‘theses’. Stalin instructed Kuusinen to
differentiate between ‘typical colonies’ (India, Indonesia), semi-colonies
(China, Egypt) and dependent states (Mexico and Persia). Second, the
‘theses’ had to include a clear class perspective.[14]
The ‘theses’ caused a rift between the delegates on the colonial
question. Russia’s B.A. Wassiljew, Great Britain’s Shapurji Saklatvala and
India’s Shaukat Usmani sided with Kuusinen in his criticism of the apparent
lack of interest in the communist parties in the ‘imperialist nations’ to
support anti-colonial movements in the colonial and semi-colonial
countries. As this only served as arguments to corroborate the ‘theses’,
however, a second issue stirred up a heated debate, namely, the discussion
on the level of decolonization and what this implied for the colonies.
Embedded in a discussion that unfolded existing tensions between the
communist parties in the metropolitan countries and in the colonies, the
focal point of the debate was on whether the ‘metropolitan country’
promoted or retarded the development of industrialization in the colonies.
The majority of the British delegation, fronted by Andrew Rothstein and
David Petrovsky, stated that Britain was industrializing India as it was
taking advantage of the cheap labour force. However, the statement invoked
an ensuing debate that included the voices of Bukharin, Kuusinen and
Usmani. According to Bukharin, there existed no leverage for the
‘decolonization theory’, followed by Kuusinen’s astonished remark that
‘[I]f it were true . . . we should have to revise our entire conception of the
nature of [British] imperialist colonial policy’. Rallying in support of
Bukharin and Kuusinen, Usmani declared that this ‘nonsensical theory’
could only have been fabricated by people who had lost contact with India.
Robin Page Arnot and Jack Murphy of the British delegation accused
Rothstein and Petrovsky of delivering pure nonsense, which, according to
Kuusinen, was ‘nothing but an imperialist lie’. Some nonetheless chose to
confront Kuusinen, for example, Andrew Rothstein and David Petrovsky of
the CPGB delegation who argued that the ‘theses’ had completely ignored
discussing the level of industrialization in the colonies.[15] The Sixth
Congress was filled with such disputes – it was certainly not a ‘formal
affair’ that merely delegated some pre-conceived line.
A pivotal person in the creation and maintenance of the communist
‘Solar System’ in Europe was the German communist Willi Münzenberg
(1889–1940). Münzenberg was the General Secretary of the proletarian
mass organization Internationale Arbeiterhilfe (IAH, Workers’ International
Relief, 1921-35). He took charge of the League Against Imperialism in
1927 and was the Comintern’s leading propagandist in Western Europe
between the wars. Münzenberg initiated the formation of various
committees, associations, and organizations under the auspice of anti-
colonialism/imperialism, anti-fascism, and the war threat, undertakings that
united a string of activists and intellectuals across political and cultural
borders.
The author Arthur Koestler of Hungarian origin and known for his
communist sympathies, worked as a journalist in Münzenberg’s publishing
enterprises in the 1930s. Koestler rightly observed in the ‘Vorwort’ to
Babette Gross’ biography on Münzenberg that Willi was never a politician
and theoretician, but a propagandist and activist.[16] In Moscow at the
congress, this came to the forefront in the discussions of Münzenberg’s
mass and sympathising organizations and their practical use for
international communism. According to some of the delegates, the
‘abundance of such subsidiary organizations’ added ‘a heavy burden on
small [communist] parties’. Münzenberg nonetheless stated that ‘the
general neglect of work in non-party organizations’ in the Comintern and
the parties would lead to the development of political opportunism. The
parties, he noted, had failed to understand that the primary purpose with this
line of activity was to ‘awaken the apathetic, to build bridges to non-party
people’ who were reluctant to join the communist party, but still expressed
sympathy towards the Soviet Union. The existence and use of organizations
such as the Friends of the Soviet Union, the Red Front Fighters and the LAI
were crucial for the international communist movement as they
counteracted social democratic influence, and got hold of recruits for
communism, Münzenberg concluded. On 30 July, Bukharin tried to
summarize the debate on the mass and sympathising organizations, stating
that the Comintern did not ‘see these kind of organizations as surrogates for
communist parties; they are supportive instruments for the continued
building of influence among the masses’.[17]

IMPLICATIONS OF ‘CLASS AGAINST CLASS’ ON INTERNATIONAL COMMUNISM AS A

MOVEMENT

Between 1928 and 1933, the Comintern’s sectarian line pushed it to

tendencies of isolation. The Sixth Comintern Congress had a long-term
impact on the ideological understanding and organizational work of the
communist ‘Solar System’ across Europe. The Communist Party of Great
Britain, for instance, interpreted the ‘new line’ in terms of consolidation of
forces ‘from below’ – namely, to create linkages with working-class
organizations and progressive platforms. Nonetheless, the practical imprint
of the ‘class against class’ line led to frustration and chaos. In Germany, the
Communist Party understood the process, directed by the Comintern in
Moscow, toward the consolidation of internal control over the party. This,
suggests historian Bert Hoppe, is the practical consequence of
centralization. This came with a rationale. The logic of the ‘new line’
should be understood, as Kevin McDermott and Jeremy Agnew show in
their survey of the Comintern, as part of a full sense of the complex
interplay of socio-economic analysis, internal factional struggles in the
USSR, Soviet foreign policy concerns and the concrete experiences of the
communist parties themselves’.[18] Generally speaking then, the higher
principle of ‘class against class’, as it was implemented by the Comintern,
was to bring the international communist movement under the hegemony of
the Soviet Union. This narrowed the ability of communists around the
world to articulate their own agendas clearly.
Despite this, the Comintern was one of the few genuine anti-imperialist
forums in the interwar years, and, as Robert J.C. Young writes, its existence
‘dramatically changed the dynamics of anti-imperialist politics in the
colonies’.[19] This general observation stands in juxtaposition to the dilemma
of transference, i.e. the problems experienced on how to put theory into
practice. The fractious debate over Kuusinen’s theses at the Sixth
Comintern Congress shows us not only the political differences, but also the
inherent difficulties in putting into practice even a logical and convincing
plan for the colonial work in Western Europe.
The Sixth Comintern Congress distinctly shows us why and how the
relations between the centre in Moscow (Comintern headquarters) and the
peripheries (Western Europe/Berlin/the colonial and semi-colonial
countries) were put under severe strain. Kuusinen noted in his speech that
the central problem lay in the communist parties, since they had not ‘fully
grasped’ the important task of colonial work. The idea of the ‘Colonial
Conference’ was, therefore, conceived at Comintern headquarters from the
first. It was designed to drive a new phase of activity, directed from
Moscow.
Robin Page Arnot emerged in this context as the key to aid ‘one of the
weakest sides of Comintern activity’. As shown above, Arnot’s zealous
defence of ‘the new line’ by ridiculing the defenders (Rothstein and
Petrovsky) and their ‘false so-called Theory of Decolonization’ at the Sixth
Congress earned him a place in the Comintern hierarchy after the congress.
In 1937, Arnot wrote an ‘Autobiographical Note’ for his personal file in the
Comintern Archive. In it he went over his background in the British
socialist movement, which led him to the communist party. During his party
years, Arnot was appointed as secretary of the Labour Research Department
– run by the communists – in London from 1920 to 1928. After the Sixth
Congress, he was instructed to remain in Moscow and to take up the
position of ‘Vice-Chairman of Eastern Secretariat’.[20] Arnot found himself
located at the centre of the Comintern’s colonial complex, and even more,
he slowly appeared as the one who would try solving the disorder of the
colonial work. Central to the conundrum at the center was the
organizational dimension of the Comintern’s apparatus, and the decision to
re-organize its entire structure after the 6th congress.

ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES FOR COLONIAL WORK

In Moscow, the Comintern commenced with a reorganization of its

departmental structure in September 1928. This was a process that involved,
for example, rerouting the administrative links between Moscow and the
operative centres of mass and sympathising organizations such as the IAH
and LAI in Berlin. The authority of the Small Commission at Comintern
headquarters sanctioned the decision on 24 September to appoint one of its
standing members, Kuusinen, as liaison for the LAI and to ‘revise the
practical connections’ [administrative and political support] going from
Moscow to the LAI’s International Secretariat in Berlin.[21] Another section
with similar authoritative functions at Comintern headquarters was the
Political Secretariat, which recommended the need for a reorganization of
the Comintern apparatus so that it would strengthen the contacts with the
national sections, and increase the level of communications flowing from
the sections back to Moscow. It was considered by the Political Secretariat
that with the formation of eight ‘Länder-Sekretariats’ (Regional
Secretariats), this would decisively enhance the chances to improve the
relations. The existing structure and composition of the secretariat had to be
revised. The Eastern Secretariat was split into three sections. The new
secretaries of the Secretariat included Kuusinen, Pavel Mif (former vice-
rector of the Sun Yat-sen Chinese University in Moscow), Joel Shubin, Chü
Chiu-pai (‘Strakhov’) and Arnot.[22]
The establishment of the ‘Länder-Sekretariats’ did, however, not
improve the relations flowing from Moscow to the sections, and in January
1929, the Comintern’s Organizational Department (Orgotdel) assessed the
insufficient system of sending instructions from Moscow. For example,
messages from Moscow had not improved the level of work among the
European parties on the colonial question. According to its ‘Plan of Work’,
the Organizational Department stated that the colonial work should be seen
as one of the ‘most important tasks’ for the parties, emphasising the urgency
to conduct ‘organizational work among foreign workers, especially among
the workers from the colonial and semi-colonial countries’ in Europe.
Apparently, this was a dilemma connected to the disorder that had
developed in the Eastern Secretariat after its reorganization, which,
according to the Organizational Department, should begin formulating
‘concrete organizational directives’ pertaining to the communist parties in
‘China, India, Egypt, Japan, [and] Indonesia’.[23] The implicit critique of the
Organizational Department was, in fact, a continuation of what Kuusinen
had pointed toward at the Comintern Congress, i.e. the lack of interest and
practical support of the Western European communist parties of getting
involved in the colonial work.
By December 1928, the importance of colonial work took center stage
at the Comintern headquarters. This meant that the Comintern had to find
someone willing and capable of doing the practical work to investigate the
colonial dilemma and its complexities. Arnot, who was influential as
secretary of the Eastern Secretariat and had contacts in Europe, must
therefore have appeared as one of the few candidates capable of the job
considering his chances of being able to avoid the attention of border
control authorities in Europe. However, it was not from the beginning a
clear-cut decision that the ‘Colonial Conference’ would aid in correcting the
colonial work, or that Arnot should travel across Western Europe to visit the
parties. It began with Arnot being requested to do some work in Great
Britain, and enjoy his holiday.
On 1 December, Arnot met Osip Piatnitsky to talk about his residency
in Moscow. Piatnitsky was the Russian communist who was in charge of
approving secret missions at the Comintern headquarters (a line of activity
linked to the highly secretive body ‘Department for International
Communications’, in Russian: Otdel mezhdunarodnoi svyazi; OMS). Arnot
reported that at the end of September, the Comintern had asked him to
remain in Moscow and ‘work in the Eastern Secretariat’ and to do
‘necessary work’ – with Kuusinen – to coordinate LAI activities. Arnot
wished to go to Great Britain to sort out the ‘necessary arrangements for my
longer stay’ in Moscow. Arnot told Piatnitsky that Kuusinen had agreed
with him regarding this journey.[24] It seems as if this opened up the option
of getting Arnot to execute a far more intricate mission than merely a visit
London. On 8 December, the Small Commission suggested that Arnot
should combine business with leisure, i.e. on the one hand act as
representative of the Executive Committee of the Communist International
(ECCI) at the CPGB’s party congress in January, while on the other hand
take some time off and have a shorter vacation.[25] This suggestion would,
however, change in a couple of days.
The Political Secretariat in Moscow had been involved in assessing the
complexities connected to the colonial question. The Black liberation
struggle in Africa and the USA had been on the agenda of the Comintern
since its foundation in 1919. After 1928, two separate directions unfolded.
First, the Profintern proposed to establish an organization to attract
radical and militant African and Afro-American anti-colonialists in Europe
and the United States. This organization was to be based on class rather
than race – the principle of the pan-Africanist movement. The Comintern
delegated James W. Ford (1893-1957) to take this initiative further. Ford, a
Black communist from the United States, was a member of the Profintern’s
Executive Committee. On 7 July 1930, under Ford’s leadership, the
International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW) was
formed at a conference in Hamburg.[26]
Second, the ECCI wished to create a ‘Negro Bureau’ as a sub-section of
the Eastern Secretariat. On 10 December 1928, the Political Secretariat
examined the plan of the Eastern Secretariat of the ‘Negro Bureau’, and
how it would link together the ‘Negro situation in North America, South
and North Africa, and other countries’ with the international communist
movement. According to the plan, the ‘Negro Bureau’ should consist of five
individuals, and partly function as a ‘Negro commission of the Anglo-
American Secretariat’. Arnot was nominated to lead the bureau.
Arnot was drawn closer to the inner circle of the Comintern’s colonial
work. On the day that the Political Secretariat discussed the ‘Negro
Bureau’, Arnot sent a confidential letter to Münzenberg in Berlin. In this
letter, Arnot informed Münzenberg that he was now the ‘main
correspondent’ [liaison] for the LAI at Comintern headquarters in Moscow.
Arnot was interested in hearing Münzenberg’s opinion on when he wanted
to hold the second international LAI congress in 1929. He wanted to find
out more of the general situation in the LAI considering its coming meeting
with the LAI Executive Committee in Cologne on 15-16 January. Arnot
also wanted to know about the lack of information among the LAI’s
contacts with nationalists inIndia and South Africa. He informed
Münzenberg about the attention the ‘small Amanullah of Arabia’ Ibn Saud
had received in the British press by organising an ‘Islamic Conference’.[27]
That Arnot defended ‘the new line’ on colonial work most likely led to his
appointment at the Negro Bureau and as the LAI liaison from the
Comintern. He had earned the trust of the high-ranking decision makers at
the Comintern headquarters, namely, Kuusinen, the Ukrainian communist
Dimitri Manuilsky, Vyacheslav Molotov and Osip Piatnitsky.
On 29 December, the Small Commission told Arnot about his final
mission – to help with the ‘Colonial Conference’. Arnot would have to
gather ‘information on the organization of colonial work in the communist
parties in France, Holland, Belgium, and hold discussions on the eventual
holding of a colonial conference with these parties together with the
CPGB’.[28] On 30 December, Arnot left Moscow and travelled to Germany.
LEAVING MOSCOW FOR COLONIAL METROPOLISES
IN WESTERN EUROPE

The mission to Western Europe was an intense experience for Arnot. He

went to various cities on his Comintern tour: Frankfurt am Main, Cologne,
London, Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam, returning back to Moscow in mid-
February.[29] What happened during the journey, and what kind of
understanding on the colonial work did Arnot bring back to Moscow? And,
was the ‘Colonial Conference’ the solution that would save the colonial
work in Western Europe?
Arnot most likely travelled to Berlin, the Weimar capital and
‘Comintern village’, and on 3 January, he was in Frankfurt am Main for a
meeting with Münzenberg to discuss ‘Liga [LAI] questions’. Evidently,
Arnot had been instructed to send frequent reports back to Kuusinen in
Moscow during his mission. According to his first report after meeting
Münzenberg (written ‘in all haste’), Arnot observed how Münzenberg had
no intention of deviating from the idea of holding the LAI congress in Paris
in July. The issue of the ‘Colonial Conference’ was perceived completely
different by Münzenberg, stating that such an event included ‘difficulties’
which he, however, refused to divulge to Arnot. He only said that ‘neither
Comrade would find it possible to work along with the other in joint
executive form’.[30] It may be that Münzenberg was worried about what the
‘Colonial Conference’ could expose, and ultimately lead to, for the LAI.
Arnot experienced some of the worries Münzenberg had expressed in
connection with the LAI Executive Committee meeting in Cologne on 15-
16 January, where the debate on the attitude of European trade unions on
colonialism and imperialism caused a split between the communist and
non-communist members. The LAI Executive meeting showed Arnot that
the colonial question was a far more complex issue than expected and, it
showed that the LAI was an isolated entity in the European communist
movement. According to Arnot’s reports to Kuusinen of the Cologne
meeting, the LAI had to counteract the resilience among its non-communist
members by adopting a stricter attitude, ‘[W]ith regard to our work, . . .
specially to the criticism of the Indian National Congress and the
Independent Labour Party attitude of words not deeds against British and
Dutch Imperialism it will be possible to carry this on in an effective
manner’.
As a delegate of the Profintern, John W. Ford attended the meeting
where he declared that ‘the League faces a new period, the second period, a
period not of demonstration and betrayal on the part of certain elements, . . .
in the second phase of the second period of the League we must be for
militant struggle against imperialism’.[31] The advocacy of militancy and
stricter attitude divided the former ‘united front’ of the LAI into two distinct
political camps, and in the discussion on the ‘relation of LAI to the trade
unions on an international scale and in semi-colonial and colonial
countries’; this confirmed a rift among the communist and non-communist
delegates. Trying to calm everyone down Münzenberg declared that the
LAI was neither communist, socialist nor social democratic. Participation,
he said, was based entirely on supporting the LAI’s political agenda.[32]
Arnot witnessed the frail nature of the LAI and the eruption of an
internal conflict. Kuusinen, meanwhile, had arranged for Arnot to have a
‘mandate to meet the French, Belgian and Dutch parties’.[33] Before that
would happen, Arnot left Cologne and travelled to London to attend the
Tenth Party Congress of the CPGB on 19-22 January as the accredited
delegate of the ECCI.
LONDON: ‘THE COLONIAL DISCUSSION
. . . WAS TOO SHORT’
 Arnot arrived in London determined to show his service to the
Comintern’s ‘new line’. He was later proud of the fact that he had ‘before
and at January Congress CPGB fought against Right opportunist majority
of Central Committee’.[34] Arnot’s report depicted a ‘good congress judging
by the spirit displayed by the delegates’. Arnot had succeeded in convincing
the CPGB Central Committee to accept ‘without demand the [proposals] of
the Comintern’, meaning, to continue to ‘carry out the task of [the]
ideological strengthening of the Party’. At the same time, Arnot conceded to
Kuusinen that the CPGB’s leadership seemed to experience difficulties in
understanding the implications of ‘the new line’. Arnot promised that this
problem would be sorted out if the party acted patiently and would ‘take
some time and much vigilance to weed out the Rightist tendencies that have
shown themselves’ after ‘the errors of the past years’. This is an observation
that on the one hand summarized, and on the other hand, corresponds to the
strains within the CPGB’s leadership in adjusting to ‘the new line’.
Historian Matthew Worley observes, the Comintern’s policy change
‘plunged [the CPGB] . . . into a period of communist civil war’ in 1929. In
comparison to the conundrum of the party to adjust itself to ‘the new line’,
Arnot concluded that the colonial work was even worse off, and had only
appeared on the last day of the congress and ‘was too short’.
In his examination of the British LAI section, Arnot was left with the
impression that it was nothing more than a ‘mere committee’ in London,
regardless of the promising opportunities in the British capital of finding
contacts with ‘proletarian organizations . . . [and] colonial people’. While it
seemed difficult ‘to get intellectuals’ engaged in the LAI, and if the section
could ‘utilize intellectuals’, this was nonetheless not an ‘important
question’. Arnot’s report from London discloses the remaining travel
schedule: ‘this week I leave for Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam: but I do
not expect to be finished with these parties until about the 8th [February]’.[35]

PARIS: ‘THAT VEXED QUESTION. . .’

On 5 February, Arnot hoped ‘to have a meeting on the colonial work

with some members’ at the secretariat of the Communist Party of France
(CPF) in Paris. The low level of interest in colonial work in the CPGB irked
Arnot. In Paris, he would experience the secretive milieu of the CPF, which
was more difficult. In his report to Kuusinen, Arnot wrote that it had been
impossible ‘to wait for a meeting of the Politburo, . . . because it meets
illegally’. The reason for this was the constant surveillance and infiltration
by the French security service Sûreté of the French communist and anti-
colonial movement in Paris. The secretary of the PCF Secretariat, Pierre
Semard, had, however, managed to arrange a meeting with Arnot. The two
of them evaluated the colonial work in France, the idea of the ‘Colonial
Conference’, and the relations between the party and the anti-imperialist
organizations in France, for example the LAI and the Paris based Ligue de
Défense de la Race Négre (LDRN).
After the meeting, Arnot concluded that there ‘have to be considered
difficulties’ in the CPF’s colonial work. Semard noted that the relationship
with the LAI was ‘a very sore point’. The reference to the LAI and the
difficulties for the CPF emerged in plain light at the LAI Executive meeting
in Cologne on 15-16 January. The resolution that emerged out of the
meeting harshly pointed out that the French LAI did not have a ‘real anti-
imperialist programme’. This resolution was authored by Auguste Herclet, a
member of the LAI Executive Committee and member of the communist
Confédération Générale du Travail Unitaire (CGTU). He further wrote that
the French LAI section had no consistent contacts with North Africans,
Indo-Chinese, Chinese or African workers. It did not act, as it should, to
carry forward an ‘uncompromising anti-imperialist struggle against French
imperialism’.[36]
Semard told Arnot that the poor relation between CPF and the LAI
embodied the characteristics of ‘that vexed question’, i.e. the colonial work.
It was in this context that Arnot mentioned the ‘Colonial Conference’ to
Semard as a possible solution to the dilemma. Colonial work in France had
suffered from lack of supervision of the ‘auxiliary organizations’, such as
the one hundred and eighty Chinese communists who were poorly
organized, the disparate Indo-Chinese left groups that needed direction in
Paris and the connections between Europe and Africa through the ‘Negro
work’. Arnot wrote that it seemed as if ‘Africa itself is still almost
unexplored’, whereas fragmentary contacts existed between the CPF and
the North African communist movement.[37]
Arnot’s Paris report aligns with the experiences of Ngyuen Ai Quoc/Ho
Chi Minh during his period in the French capital doing work for the CPF.
William Duiker’s biography of Ho Chi Minh describes the indolent attitude
of the CPF vis-à-vis colonial work, concluding that it existed only ‘on
paper’. The CPF’s Colonial Commission did regularly authorize ‘a budget
for colonial operations’, but nonetheless Ho Chi Minh complained to the
Eastern Secretariat that there was no money at their disposal to develop
such operations when ‘the box [money] was empty’. To make the
connection even stronger between Arnot’s and Quoc/Minh’s experience, the
Eastern Secretariat was aware of the situation, and at some point in 1928,
Ho Chi Minh demanded that the Eastern Secretariat investigate why the
CPF always had no money to organize its colonial work, and why the party
did not submit any reports to ‘other comrades on its operations and plans’.
[38]

The Paris report was the first detailed outline of the ‘Colonial
Conference’. It seemed to have been developed by Arnot through his
discussion with Semard. Arnot’s note to Kuusinen suggests that the main
topics for the Conference would not be ideological but organizational –
namely how to improve colonial work of the communist parties. He noted
the importance of ‘three main items: reports on past work, examination of
difficulties, future tasks and practical steps to their realization’. Other minor
topics, for example, the ‘question of liaison with the Comintern’, and how
to ‘supply personnel for colonial work’, had to be included in the
discussion.[39] Arnot left Paris and proceeded to Brussels and Amsterdam
(any reports from these meetings has not been found). By mid-February, he
was back in Moscow, convinced that Kuusinen had been right in his
assessment at the Sixth Comintern Congress, i.e. the colonial work was one
of the Comintern’s weakest points. The ‘Colonial Conference’ was, at this
stage, seen by the leadership as a means to salvage the European communist
parties’ colonial work.

UNDERSTANDING THE COLONIAL WORK IN

WESTERN EUROPE

In Moscow, Arnot went to work producing a report of his mission –

‘Report on the Parties’. This report drew largely from his January-February
accounts for Kuusinen where Arnot provided an abridged survey of the
deteriorated state of colonial work in the communist parties of Europe. The
primary purpose of the report was to guide the decision-making process at
Comintern headquarters on the ‘Colonial Conference’. What does Arnot’s
‘Report on the Parties’ convey? It describes how the parties in Great
Britain, France, Belgium and the Netherlands shared the dilemma of not
being able to carry out the simplest of tasks, e.g. finding colonial contacts.
‘At the moment’, wrote Arnot, ‘not much is being done’. Neither the
Belgian nor the Dutch parties had functional or reliable connections with
their colonies, the Congo Free State and Indonesia. Intra-party problems
had ended relations with the LAI. New information on the CPF was added
to the report. For example, the party only had one existing contact to a
colonial region, namely, the nationalist revolutionary party Étolie Nord-
Africaine in North Africa. How had it come to this? Arnot suspected that the
death of the Senegalese Lamine Senghor, the leader of the Ligue de Défense
de la Race Négre, in 1927, had served a decisive blow to anti-colonial
networks in France and Africa.[40] Arnot hoped that the newly established
ECCI Negro Bureau in Moscow could prove to be the solution for the
French colonial conundrum. The Bureau could assist the CPF in ‘re-
commencing work amongst the Negroes’ and ‘Negro sailors’ in the ports of
Paris, Havre, Marseilles and Bordeaux, something that hopefully would
lead to new contacts with Equatorial Africa.[41]
Arnot had nothing positive to say about the CPGB’s colonial work. The
party work was inefficient and unproductive. Additionally, the party had
failed to understand the global range of British imperialism, and to lead a
campaign against it. Yet, Arnot acknowledged that the CPGB was ‘an
extremely small party’, faced with the challenge of covering a world – in
other words, the empire. It had been divided into sections: India, the ‘so-
called White Dominions’ [South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada,
and Ireland], Egypt and the Near East, Africa and the Caribbean ‘Crown
Colonies’, as well as the semi-colonial countries in Latin America and
China. London, one of ‘the shipping centres of the world’, provided the
CPGB with an immense opportunity. But it had not taken advantage of its
location. Like the CPF, the CPGB experienced difficulties in its relationship
to the ‘auxiliary bodies’. These bodies included the LAI committee and the
Labour Research Department as well as ‘all kinds of associations of
colonial races in London and [. . .] Christian and philanthropic [sic]
agencies’.
 For Arnot, the ‘Colonial Conference’ emerged as one of few solutions
left that could solve a majority of the problems connected to colonial work
among the communist parties. The report ended with the optimistic
conclusion that the concept of the ‘Colonial Conference’ had been well
received among the parties. However, the challenge of turning the idea into
practice relied extensively on the parties to send detailed reports on colonial
work to Arnot in Moscow.[42]
CONSENT AND ADAPTATION
OF THE ‘COLONIAL CONFERENCE’ IN MOSCOW
The ‘Report on the Parties’ exposed the ruthless criticism of Arnot on
the incompetent manner in which the Western European communist parties
carried out colonial work. What the report indicates is the beginning of a
protracted process – at Comintern headquarters in Moscow - that lasted for
a couple of months. Tentative discussions began on these matters in
Moscow in December 1928, which resulted in Arnot’s mission around
Europe in January-February 1929. These discussions continued to June
1929, taking place alongside preparations for the Tenth ECCI Plenum held
in Moscow in July and the ‘Second International Congress against
Colonialism and Imperialism’ held in Frankfurt am Main on 21 July.
The ‘Colonial Conference’ was not merely an event. It was a process
that adjusted itself over the course of turbulent times for the Soviet Union
and the world communist movement. The process revealed limitations of
anti-imperialist politics, of trust and belief amongst the communists,
overwhelming administrative obligations and petty restrictions, as well as
the eternal problem of funds.
Arnot’s ‘Report on the Parties’ was the first concrete step toward the
‘Colonial Conference’. Negotiations within the collegium of the Eastern
Secretariat took place to narrow the range of the conference. These
discussions happened before Arnot could introduce the idea to the Political
Secretariat. On 4 March, the Eastern Secretariat produced a note –
‘Proposed Colonial Conference of Western European Parties’ – that was an
edited version of Arnot’s 5 February report to Kuusinen from Paris. How
did the Eastern Secretariat view the ‘Colonial Conference’? The main thrust
of the Eastern Secretariat’s report was that the Colonial Conference should
primarily put into operation the decisions of the Comintern on colonial
questions.[43] To do so, the Eastern Secretariat hoped to hold ‘as small a
conference as possible for obvious reasons’ and to have the delegates be
‘political bureau members, specialists in colonial work and colonials’.
The Political Secretariat received the proposal and invited Arnot to
come to a meeting on 19 March to provide a full survey of the plan. Arnot
said that the ‘Colonial Conference’ would provide the European communist
parties with the opportunity to ‘report on past work’ and examine past
difficulties while pondering on ‘future tasks and practical steps in their
realization’. Central to this was Arnot’s own understanding of the matter,
which implied that the communist parties seemed incapable or unwilling to
find contacts from the colonies within their own countries. But how was
this explained to the Political Secretariat?
Arnot observed that the gap between the Comintern and the parties
affected the flow of intelligence and administrative documents. Even the
publication of legal and illegal documents on the colonial questions was not
shared. Arnot wanted the parties to accept the expertise and service of
colonial students who currently were pursuing academic studies at the
Communist University for Eastern Workers’ (also known by its acronym:
KUTV, Kommunisticheskii universitet trudiashchikhsia Vostoka) in
Moscow. These students could contribute to the theoretical and practical
understanding of the character of the anti-colonial work in Europe. Arnot
hoped that the conference would open up the opportunity to link the
colonial question with the Comintern’s anti-war campaign.
Pressures of time and expectations of success hung over the discussions
about the conference. It was suggested that the conference be convened
soon, ‘either [in] Berlin or Cologne and the time should, if possible, be the
middle of April’. Arnot felt it should ‘be held in Berlin at the beginning of
May’. This would ensure full attendance of delegates from the Dutch,
French, British, Belgian, Italian, Portuguese and German communist
parties, special representatives of the Comintern and the Communist Youth
International (CYI), the LAI, the Comintern’s monitoring agency in
Western Europe the West European Bureau (WEB), OMS, the ECCI Negro
Bureau, and ‘technical workers’.[44] The ensuing discussion after Arnot’s
presentation at the Political Secretariat, involved Kuusinen together with
David Petrovsky, B.A. Wassiljew and Bertram D. Wolfe of the Communist
Party of the USA. Everyone approved of the proposal ‘in principle’; they
awaited the final decision of the Small Commission.[45]
Rather than wait for the Small Commission, the Standing Commission
invited Arnot to a meeting on 20 March. They told him that the
‘Commission Appointed to Prepare Conference on Colonial Work of
Western European Parties’ (‘Commission on Colonial Conference’) would
lead the preparations for the event and send letters of invitation to the
communist parties on the ‘Colonial Conference’. The ‘Commission on
Colonial Conference’ had been established at the meeting of the Political
Secretariat the previous day, and the Standing Commission expected the
commission to compile a budget for the event, and retrieve intelligence
reports from the parties on colonial work. The last issue was of particular
relevance since it determined if and when it could be possible to hold the
‘Colonial Conference’.[46]
Arnot was appointed to lead the ‘Commission on Colonial Conference’,
working together with Kuusinen’s deputy at the Eastern Secretariat, the
Hungarian communist Ludwig Magyar, the German communist Arthur
Ewert, Freyer [first name unknown], the émigré communist from Finland
and functionary at Comintern headquarters Niilo Virtanen and Obuhov of
the CYI. At the inaugural meeting, the Commission proposed to ‘send wires
to the French, British, Belgian and Dutch Parties’, while the Communist
Party of Italy ‘should be communicated through Comrade Serra’ [real name:
Angelo Tasca] on the question of ‘asking them to send reports [on colonial
work] by 31 March’. The preparatory work was divided amongst the
members of the commission. For example, Arnot and Ewert would write
and send the letters to the parties; Magyar would write political information
and organizational guidelines; administrative questions and budget were
under Virtanen’s and Ewert’s jurisdiction, having Ewert in charge of
evaluating the incoming reports from the parties; Freyer would prepare
‘Agitprop’ [agitation and propaganda] material; and Obuhov would
examine the colonial work in the communist youth movement.[47] On March
20, Virtanen completed the ‘estimated budget’ for the conference, which, at
expected sum of $1,956, would cover travel arrangements and ‘living costs’
for the delegates in Berlin, salaries for the ‘technical workers’, and pay for
rent for a conference room and ‘other expenses’.[48]
 It did not take long before the main challenge of the ‘Commission on
Colonial Conference’ materialized itself, i.e. getting the parties to send
reports on the colonial work. This tells us that the entire project was a
rushed affair, in which the commission expected more than was achievable.
On 25 March, Arnot and Ewert circulated the letters of invitation to the
parties, which mentioned that the reports on the colonial work were
expected in the hands of the ‘Commission on Colonial Conference’ not later
than on 31 March. According to the introductory note in the letters, the
parties were reminded that,
Following the visit of a member of the Eastern Secretariat [Arnot] to you and his discussion with
you of the possibility of holding a conference of Western European parties on Colonial work, it
has now been decided to hold such a conference [. . .] Reports of parties, not only on work since
the VIth Congress but on all sections of work on all colonial territories hitherto not dealt with. [. .
.] With regard to this report, we have already sent a telegram asking that the report which was
already discussed with the vice-chairman of the Eastern Secretariat [Ludwig Magyar] should be
despatched to us by 31 March. [. . .] If you can suggest other items which should come up for
discussion, please put them into your report, or indicate where they should go on the Agenda
outlined above. [. . .] The conference should not last more than three days, but its shortness will
depend exactly on the extent to which all participants prepare beforehand.[49]

The letters of invitation clarified what the Comintern anticipated of

colonial work in the parties. It noted that the reports would add substance to
the work of the ‘Commission on Colonial Conference’. According to Arnot
and Ewert, there existed the possibility for the parties to ‘suggest other
items which should come up for discussion’ at the conference, aside from
broader issues related to,
[S]tructure, personnel of colonial departments at Party centre . . . work in the colonies in general .
. . work amongst the party members. Work amongst the colonial resident in metropolitan
countries particularly amongst seamen on the one hand and students on the other. Colonial work
in the trade unions. Colonial work in the party press. Survey of the position and work in each
colonial and semi-colonial land. Notes on special difficulties, especially in auxiliary and other
colonial organizations, e.g. League against Imperialism. Under each of the above . . . the
organizational points that arise. Question of liaisons with Comintern and with brother parties.[50]

For the ‘Commission on Colonial Conference’, it was essential that the

parties understood that India ‘is the most important matter in the colonial
world at present’. Why was this so? In Kuusinen’s colonial and semi-
colonial ‘theses’ at the 1928 Sixth Comintern Congress, he noted that after
the Comintern’s failure in China, India’s national revolutionary movement
was the new target. Furthermore, the Eastern Secretariat was on the verge of
launching an ‘International Indian campaign’ in March/April. Arnot and
Ewert welcomed ‘any report’ on the results of the campaign in Europe.
What campaign did the letters of invitation refer to? This was the
inauguration of the ‘Meerut conspiracy trial’ campaign, a protest movement
which lasted from 1929 to 1933, and had its background in the arrest of
thirty-one leaders of the labour movement in India in March, accused of
committing conspiracy against the King. The imperial state arrested the
communists for good reason – they had been leading a strike in the Indian
cotton mill industry, which lasted for six months prior to March 1929. The
Millowners’ Association in Bombay and Calcutta appealed to the British
government ‘to rid them of the nuisance’ caused by the strike.[51] In London,
the secretary of the British LAI section Reginald Orlando Bridgeman
(1884–1968), a socialist and devoted anti-colonialist, contacted
Münzenberg on 23 March to inform him that the section had addressed the
Meerut arrests at a special session, and intended to publish a public protest
in the British leftist press.[52] Münzenberg passed on Bridgeman’s letter to
Kuusinen on 25 March, with the promise that the LAI aimed at establishing
‘a large campaign’ in Europe ‘in support of the arrested’ and using London
as the centre for the ‘Meerut conspiracy trial’. Meanwhile, the Standing
Commission at Comintern headquarters had already approved of the
Eastern Secretariat’s plan for creating a ‘mass campaign’ to support the
‘workers and peasants’ organizations’ in India on 23 March.[53]
Each party received specific topics that demanded attention in the
reports, requests that more or less resemble direct instructions to collect
intelligence on foreign relations and policy making in the colonies. The
letter to Serra/Tasca and the Communist Party of Italy suggested a deeper
survey of Italian Somaliland and the minor strip of land in eastern Africa
Jubaland (in Italian: Oltre Giuba). It also asked the Italians to ‘touch upon
the penetration of Italian Fascist influence into Abyssinia and the Near
East’. Arnot and Ewert further wanted to know if Fascism as a political
movement had undermined British influence on the Arabic peninsula and in
Egypt.[54] The letter to the CPF had a broader scope, suggesting that the
party should give information and details on the work done in ‘the various
colonies of France’, e.g. Northern Africa, Syria, Equatorial Africa
(including Madagascar), the West Indies and Caribbean, Indo-China and the
Pacific. These were all ‘vexed questions’ that deserved ‘adequate
treatment’, including a discussion on the relations with the LAI and what
kind of ‘contacts the party possesses or may possess’ with national
reformist or ‘philanthropic bourgeois colonial organizations’. It was
particularly relevant for the CPF to remember that everything had to be
done to break the influence these kinds of political groups had over colonial
émigré groups in France.[55] In the letter to the secretariat of the Communist
Party of Belgium in Brussels, Arnot and Ewert expected a full ‘economic
and social analysis’ of Belgian Congo, and a survey over ‘what elements of
sailors or returned Europeans and native Congolians are at present’ in the
country. If any of the above could be identified, and if any of them showed
any interest towards communism or were ‘susceptible to revolutionary
propaganda’ regardless of the perilous situation of the Belgian LAI section,
this could be used as pretence of revitalising the section into a vibrant anti-
imperialist centre.[56] The letter to the CPGB wanted to take into
consideration the magnitude of the British Empire, and while India had
been explicated as the central focus for every party in Western Europe, the
British party should examine the ‘inter-relations’ of British colonialism with
Dutch imperialism at Papua New Guinea, and the current state of the
Samoan native Mau organization. The ‘Commission on Colonial
Conference’ was anxious to recieve a detailed report that included
information on South Africa, the Near East and Arabic countries, Equatorial
Africa, and the West Indies and Caribbean, whereas the party could ‘lightly
touch upon’ the British colonies in the Far East and South America.[57]
The letters of invitation were sent by wire on 25 March (the letter to the
Communist Party of Holland has not been found). While the ‘Commission
on Colonial Conference’ waited to receive the reports, Arnot depended on
the theoretical authority of Magyar to adapt and adjust the ‘lines of political
information’ for the ‘Colonial Conference’.

‘COLONIAL ROUTINE WORK’

 On 19 March, Magyar argued in an article published in the Comintern’s
weekly paper International Press Correspondence (Inprecorr) that the
central task for the Comintern and the colonial question was to increase ‘the
struggle against imperialism’. According to Magyar, the world was divided
along Lenin’s tripartite division of the world: the ‘imperialist countries’, the
Soviet Union, and the colonial and semi-colonial countries. The article was
a reappraisal of the Comintern’s official attitude towards the colonial
question and Kuusinen’s theses of the Sixth Comintern Congress in 1928,
which emphasized how anti-imperialist movements in the colonial countries
had increasingly been radicalized after the Comintern Congress.[58] While
Magyar wanted to depict anti-imperialist movements as global and
interconnected, the article only reflects the political antagonism of
international communism vis-à-vis socialism and its main representative,
the Labour and Socialist International.
The ‘lines of political information’ was something different and offered
Magyar an opportunity to criticize the organizational dimension of the
colonial work in the Western communist parties, and to prove the
correctness of the Comintern’s policy and attitude towards the colonial
complex. The ‘lines of political information’ were highly confidential
(described here as ‘the Magyar thesis’), and had as its focal point to
examine and expose why the colonial work was in such a poor state in the
European communist parties. Most importantly, ‘the Magyar thesis’ is a
testimony to how a leading official at Comintern headquarters interpreted
and envisioned how the colonial work should be carried out in practice after
the Sixth Comintern Congress. Magyar completed his analysis, ‘The
Organization of the Colonial Work of the European Communist Parties’, on
29 March. In the opening statement, Magyar conceded,
It is very difficult to organize the practical work in the colonies – insofar as it must be done from
the outside – directly through the ECCI [in Moscow]. With regard to most of the colonial
countries the ECCI is mainly dependent in the field of practical work and application of
instructions, etc., on the activities . . . of the Communist Parties in the corresponding imperialist
countries.[59]

‘The Magyar thesis’ is the continuation of Kuusinen’s theses from 1928.

Magyar enhanced Kuusinen’s criticism of the failure of the parties in the
imperialist countries to carry out ‘the most important task’, namely, the
establishment of direct contacts between the parties and the ‘revolutionary
trade union organizations’ in the home countries with ‘revolutionary
organizations’ in the colonies. In 1929, with only few exceptions, colonial
work had been ‘very much neglected’ in the parties. It was necessary to
closely scrutinize the reasons for what was lacking in the practical
execution of ‘colonial routine work’, Magyar stated. ‘The Magyar thesis’
introduced the parties to new working methods toward the gathering of
intelligence on the anti-colonial movement in Europe, a line of duty that
constituted an essential part for the decision-making process at Comintern
headquarters in Moscow. The ‘white terror’ against the international
communist movement in the ‘third period’ had increased on a global scale.
This, suggested ‘The Magyar thesis’, had forced the Comintern and its
sections to organize every campaign in ‘a very vigorous manner’.
First and foremost, the parties had to change their attitude towards
responsibilities and obligations in this line of work. Rather than depending
on the services of the Comintern’s liaison agency – OMS – to sort out every
practical detail, each party had to adopt Lenin’s idea of going ‘into the beer
houses where the plain people are to be found’. It was nonetheless not
enough to use this strategy, and as Magyar concluded, practical and
concrete measures were needed to ‘guarantee success in colonial routine
work’. What were these measures? Accordingly, the parties should devote
energy to developing activity along five particular topics. The first two
suggested that the parties must organize a liaison system for the distribution
of political literature from Europe to the colonies, and to ensure that
correspondence from Europe arrived in the hands of revolutionary parties,
associations, organizations and individuals in the colonies. The third issue
was to get European communists to accept the duty of travelling to the
colonies, acting as ‘emigrants’ and not as ‘representatives’ or ‘emissaries’ of
the Comintern. Once on location, the comrades were requested to blend in
with the everyday life of the workers by carrying out manual labour,
something that most likely would result in contacts with political activists at
the grass root level. The fourth topic addressed the urgency for the parties to
establish contacts with sailors, workers, soldiers and students from colonial
countries who lived in the ‘big cities of the capitalist countries’, and were
known for their commitment of getting in colonial work. Once contact had
been established, the communists should ‘penetrate into the ranks’ of the
colonial communities in the metropolitan cities and exert ‘Communist
influence [. . .] among them’. The final challenge focused on the apparent
failure of the central committees in the communist parties to comply with
the task of organising ‘colonial routine work’. According to Magyar, a
fundamental error was the neglect of the colonial commissions in the parties
of passing on information to the ECCI in Moscow, which ‘amounts to
absolutely nothing’ at Comintern headquarters. Consequently, the European
parties had to find anti-colonial activists and begin giving ‘much more
attention to the activity, composition and structure of the colonial
commission than it has done up to the present time’. The central role, which
the colonial commissions were expected to play, were pivotal in advancing
‘colonial routine work’ to the level of ‘ceaseless activity in the
organizational field’ by functioning as hubs for the Comintern’s
administrative and intelligence operations in Europe. This would, in turn,
improve the poor relations to anti-imperialist organizations such as the LAI.
[60]

‘The Magyar thesis’ reflects the ideological belief, strength,

commitment and obedience within the international communist movement
towards its interpretation and adaptation of the Comintern’s ‘new line’. The
criticism Magyar had of colonial work stands, however, in juxtaposition to
the development of conflicted situations in several communist parties after
the Sixth Comintern Congress in 1928. While the CPGB and CPF
encountered intra-party struggles, and as the CPG entered on the road of
centralization, the CPSUSA was on the verge of devouring itself due to
fractional struggles. This situation affected the preparations for the
‘Colonial Conference’ regardless of Magyar’s authoritative position in
formulating ‘lines of political information’ on ‘colonial routine work’.

GRADUAL TRANSFORMATION AND UNCERTAINTIES

The pressure and timeline of the preparatory work for the ‘Colonial
Conference’ gradually transformed the initial ambition and aims of the idea
to hold ‘a conference of Western European parties on colonial work’.
Uncertainty blocked the path. Reports did not come from the parties in a
timely fashion. The deadline of 31 March could not be met for these
reports. On 9 April, Virtanen informed the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Holland (CPH) that for ‘various reasons’ it had been
decided to postpone the ‘Colonial Conference’. The organizers needed more
time. Virtanen acknowledged that the problem lay in the failure of sending
reports ‘as soon as possible’.[61] Virtanen’s remark to the CPH coincided
with Arnot’s apparent irritation about the parties’ neglect and continued
indifference. He sent out telegrams to remind the French, Belgian, British
and Dutch parties to send their reports.
On 26 April, Pieter Bergsma of the CPH Colonial Commission sent
their report to Moscow. This turned out to be merely a factual report on
colonial work.[62] According to the CPH Colonial Commission, the colonial
question had been adequately addressed in ‘our press’ (Tribune) in the
Netherlands, with emphasis on the national liberation struggle in Indonesia.
It was through the Dutch LAI section that the party had access to the
Indonesian student community. Since 1928, the section, however, had been
increasingly under pressure after the intra-party struggles in the CPH, and
depended solely on the work of the Indonesian communist Raden Darsono
to maintain the contacts with the students. Yet, there existed a tangible
relation of getting access to colonial seamen through the International
Seamen’s Club in Rotterdam, an enterprise organized and coordinated by
the Profintern.[63]
The Colonial Committee of the CPGB reacted to Arnot’s letter of
invitation at its meeting of 15 April. It considered the publication of a
‘special Colonial monthly organ’. The Committee had doubts about whether
the ‘Colonial Conference’ would be constructive if a delegation from the
USA was not invited. Aside from this concern, the Committee felt that the
Comintern should seriously address the lack of attention and assistance
coming from the Profintern to support colonial work.
These two accounts are the only traces of some kind of reaction from
the parties on the conference. Or as Virtanen concluded on 22 June, ‘up
until now the Dutch Party is the only one who has reacted to the letters from
the Eastern Secretariat’.[64]
At the second meeting of the ‘Commission on Colonial Conference’ at
Comintern headquarters on 27 April, Arnot highlighted the issue of the non-
existing reports, stating that ‘[N]o Party except the Dutch Party had sent
any reports in spite of repeated telegrams, but reports are now expected
from the British Party within a few days and from the French Party later’.[65]
The lack of reports seemed to have a profound effect on Arnot’s work
towards the ‘Colonial Conference’. At the meeting the commission decided
to postpone the conference in Berlin again, and for it to convene on ‘June 7,
8, 9, 10 and 11’, depending on the completion of ‘all materials’ not later
than on 20 May. Furthermore, the Commission wanted the ‘Magyar thesis’
to be enlarged. Rather than wait for it to be delivered at the ‘Colonial
Conference’, the Commission suggested that it be used as ‘political
information’ for Comintern delegates who were going for the ‘Second
International Congress against Colonialism and Imperialism’ in Paris on 21-
31 July (the venue for the LAI congress later changed to Frankfurt am
Main, Germany, and was held between 21-27 July).[66] Arnot handed over
confidential instructions on ‘suggested changes’ to Magyar after the
meeting, which mentioned that the ‘political information’ should include
expansive sections on the economic situation in China and India, on the
work amongst women in colonial countries, an extensive survey on
Indonesia, while the Middle East deserved attention since the Comintern
had not issued a resolution on this region in the last ‘two years’. Moreover,
Arnot expected Magyar to expound fully ‘the role of . . . the Kemalist
Government’ in Turkey and the ‘economic position and war preparations’ in
Egypt, whereas ‘under the heading of the Negro question’, he should focus
on Kenya and South Africa and give others space to contribute with
material on North Africa and the West Indies.[67]
The final result of ‘the Magyar thesis’ remains unsolved. Bits and
pieces of its outcome have been traced to other related forums. The ‘Negro
question’ and the issue of ‘the emancipation of the Negroes’ in Kenya and
South Africa was transferred by Arnot to James W. Ford and the American
communist Harry Haywood as a way of completing ‘political information’
for the ‘Colonial Conference’. In the end, however, their involvement and
contribution on the ‘Negro question’ ended up on the LAI’s political agenda
for the Second Congress of the LAI in Frankfurt am Main. Ford acted as
leader of the Profintern’s ‘Negro delegation’ at the LAI Congress, and in his
speech on ‘the tendencies hostile to the Negro liberation movement’ on 26
July, he declared that the African liberation struggle depended on making
the decisive distinction between race and class, where the later was the
pivotal source of inspiration for the ‘emancipation of the Negro’. Further,
the LAI Congress served as a forum for Ford to hold informal meetings
towards the prospect of organising the founding conference of the radical
militant association the International Trade Union Committee of Negro
Workers’ (ITUCNW, the inaugural conference was held in Hamburg on 7
July, 1930).[68]
Through February and March, the Comintern headquarters in Moscow
worked on both the ‘Colonial Conference’ and the Second LAI Congress.
The ‘Commission on Colonial Conference’ worked simultaneously with the
‘Eastern Secretariat Commission on the LAI’. Arnot worked on both
Commissions. After the second meeting of the ‘Commission on the
Colonial Conference’, Arnot contacted his comrades involved in the
preparation of the LAI Congress – such as the Russian Pyotr Kitaigorodsky,
the Chinese Chü Chiu-pai (‘Strakhov’), the Russian Joel Schubin, and the
French communist Henri Barbé. He asked for their active help to bring the
‘Colonial Conference’ to fruition since the parties in Western Europe
showed no interest in contributing to the work.[69] In early May, Arnot spoke
to Barbé, who then promised to write the CPF’s ‘draft thesis of political
information’ on North Africa and other French colonies in Africa and Asia,
and to complete everything not later than on 20 May. Arnot wanted Barbé
to finish this ‘much sooner’.[70]
As if into thin air, Arnot then vanished from any involvement in either
the ‘Colonial Conference’ or the LAI congress.
GOING TO THE USA, AND ‘THE REASONS FOR PRESSING AHEAD AND PUSHING
OTHERS AHEAD AS WELL’

On 18 May, Arnot sent a detailed letter to Virtanen. He asked him to

‘please deal with the following points’, namely to inform the parties that no
definite date had been set for the conference, and the reports were expected
in time for the 10th Plenum of the ECCI in Moscow in July. Arnot wanted
Virtanen to understand ‘the reasons for pressing ahead and pushing others
ahead’ in order to make the event happen. This is the last sign of Arnot’s
involvement with the ‘Colonial Conference’. What were the reasons for his
sudden disappearance?
Arnot asked Virtanen to ‘ask Comrade Kuusinen’ to see that Alexander
Bittelman (1890–1982), member of the Communist Party of the USA
(CPUSA) and functionary at the ECCI Anglo-American Secretariat in
Moscow in 1929, assume Arnot’s post as liaison between Moscow and the
LAI’s International Secretariat in Berlin. Bittelman, in addition, ‘must be
detached from his natural pre-occupation about America’.[71] Arnot does not
explain why he effectively resigned in his ambiguous note. It would have a
major impact on the outcome of the ‘Colonial Conference’. The note
suggests the fractious struggle within the CPUSA in 1929, to which Arnot
would be delegated to fix. Why was Arnot moved from the centre of the
Comintern work to its periphery?
The CPUSA shared the problems facing every communist party after
the Comintern introduced its ‘new line’ in 1928. It had to take a radical
position against its non-communist allies and declare its unconditional
loyalty to Moscow. In Chicago, for instance, the communist community
between 1928 and 1935 had to learn party discipline, remove weak
elements and loyally ‘follow party policy’.[72] The CPUSA had to bend to
the Comintern pressure so that it would be ‘better able to fulfill the goals
laid down for it by the Comintern’.[73] This led to ‘factional wars fought out
within its own ranks’ throughout the 1920s. Internal conflicts due to ‘the
new line’ led to factional disputes that questioned the party’s leadership.
Arnot wrote to ‘Max’ (David Petrovsky) on 14 May 1929, informing him
that the CPUSA had failed to solve two crucial tasks: to mobilize the party
‘against the danger of the Right and to liquidate factionalism’. What had
become known as the ‘American business’ at Comintern headquarters had
in turn, Arnot stated, paralyzed every level at the Comintern apparatus in
Moscow since it was ‘taking up everybody’s time’.[74] How was the
‘American business’ sorted out at Comintern headquarters? The ‘American
Commission’ took up the matter. It was designed to coerce the members to
end their fractional struggle. This struggle centered supposedly around the
deviations of some CPUSA leaders (Jay Lovestone and Bertram D. Wolfe),
who had failed to adopt ‘the new line’ and continued to support Bukharin
against Stalin.[75]
The ‘American Commission’ summoned the CPUSA leadership (Foster,
Lovestone, Wolfe and Bittelman) to Moscow in May to settle the disputes.
Stalin actively participated in the deliberations. The conclusive meeting of
the commission took place either on 13 or 14 May, which, according to
Arnot was tedious and nerve-wracking. At one particular moment Stalin
asked if the US leadership understood what it meant to be ‘a communist’
and member of the Comintern,
That a fundamental question, which even a party candidate could answer, had been put to them:
will you accept the discipline of the CI and carry it through? He [Stalin] said: I would be
offended if I were asked such a question and if you [Wolfe] here cannot answer it, I wonder what
sort of Communist you are.[76]
The ‘American Commission’ removed Wolfe and Lovestone from the
leadership. Lovestone was named as the leader of the ‘Rightist Opposition’
in the CPUSA, and his followers – namely those who disagreed with the
new line – became cast out as ‘Lovestoneites’.[77] Wolfe, in disappointment,
saw himself ‘been released from work as representative of the American
party [in the ECCI at Comintern headquarters in Moscow] and [became]
head of the Latin American Secretariat’. What Wolfe wished for – above all
else – was to secure the proper visas so he could return back home to the
USA together with his wife Ella G. Wolfe.[78]
How did Arnot become involved in this fractional interplay? He was
aware of the impact and scope the ‘American business’ had caused on the
Comintern’s daily routine work. What needs to be established is that Arnot’s
involvement is typical of the hierarchical relations at play within the
Comintern. The rationale behind the decision to revoke Arnot from any
involvement in guiding the preparations for the ‘Colonial Conference’
seems at first, rash and illogical. However, he was never in the position to
question the authority of Piatnitsky and the ECCI Standing Commission.
On 15 May, Piatnitsky informed the Standing Commission to give Arnot
‘confidential and full powers’ to ‘work in the CPUSA as the plenipotentiary
representative of the ECCI with all rights as set out in Section 22 of the CI
statutes (See Section 22 of the CI statutes as adopted at the Sixth Comintern
Congress) Moscow 15 May 1929’. This implies that Arnot immediately left
Moscow and travelled to the USA as soon as possible, but only after
passing on his final assessment on the ‘Colonial Conference’ to Virtanen on
18 May. In the USA, Arnot fulfilled his duties as an agent of the
Comintern’s ‘new line’, and in the capacity as plenipotentiary of the ECCI,
he only answered to the ECCI and not the Central Committee of the
CPUSA.[79]
 Later, in 1937, Arnot recalled the mission in the USA, writing that in
May 1929 he – taking his orders from the ECCI Presidium – ‘went to USA
as representative of Comintern with responsibility for carrying out the
struggle against Lovestone and Cannon groups (Right opportunists and
‘Left’ Trotskyists) on basis of CI decisions’. Arnot returned to Great Britain
in December 1929, where he participated in the CPGB’s December
congress and effectively ‘routed [the] Right opportunist majority’.[80] The
narrative of Arnot’s sudden departure from Moscow adds to the ambiguous
nature of what actually happened with the ‘Colonial Conference’. However,
this was not the end.

‘IS IT EVEN POSSIBLE OR EXPEDIENT TO HOLD THE CONFERENCE IN ITS PRESENT

FORM?’

The gravitational centre for the ‘Colonial Conference’ was Arnot and
the Eastern Secretariat. After Arnot’s sudden resignation the members of the
‘Commission on Colonial Conference’ continued to function as the focal
point in preparing the conference. Bittelman faced the challenge of
replacing Arnot’s omnipotent role as coordinator of two colonial projects at
Comintern headquarters, i. e. the ‘Colonial Conference’ and the Second LAI
Congress. In the latter case, Bittelman contacted Münzenberg in Berlin to
inform him that ‘I have been placed in charge of the League work in place
of Page’, though, he avoided mentioning how the preparations for the
‘Colonial Conference’ were progressing in Moscow.[81] Bittelman’s
appointment as LAI liaison and coordinator of the ‘Colonial Conference’ as
well as the LAI Congress implied a distinct division of responsibilities and
obligations. According to the Standing Commission, Bittelman no longer
had any authority over or could get involved with the ‘American work’, and
he was prohibited from uttering a single word to his ‘American comrades’
about his current work with the LAI. Bittelman earned access further up the
Comintern’s hierarchical structure; i.e., he was allowed to attend the
meetings of the ECCI Presidium and Political Secretariat.[82]
In the midst of this organizational confusion, how did the work with the
‘Colonial Conference’ progress? It seems as if Bittelman was dismissed
from completing the necessary preparations of the conference. As the
protocols and discussions related to his assignment suggests, focus was
entirely on guiding the preparatory work related to the Second LAI
Congress with emphasis on supervising Münzenberg and the LAI in Berlin.
Concurrently, once Arnot left Moscow for the USA, events indicate that
Virtanen was the coordinator of the ‘Colonial Conference’, a project that
was becoming difficult to complete.
Arnot had suggested to Virtanen that there existed the possibility of
postponing the ‘Colonial Conference’ to mid-July, and for it to be part of
the plenary discussions at the Tenth ECCI Plenum in Moscow on 3-19 July.
The reason for why Arnot suggested this as an option was solely based in
the lack of reports from the communist parties.[83] How did Virtanen
understand Arnot’s observation? On 22 May, Virtanen summarized his
impressions of the organising endeavours and tentative character of the
conference in a report ‘on the Colonial Conference of the Western European
Communist Parties’. The purpose and aim of the report partly answered
Arnot’s observation on the indispensable need to postpone the conference,
and partly, Virtanen added his own reflections for why it was necessary to
hold the conference. The recipient of the report remains unknown; however,
it most likely ended up at the Political Secretariat and the Small
Commission at Comintern headquarters. Aside from providing a short
chronological survey on how everything had progressed since December
1928, Virtanen mentioned how the meeting of the Standing Commission on
20 May confirmed Arnot’s recommendation, i.e. that the ‘Colonial
Conference’ had to convene in mid-July. For the ‘Commission on Colonial
Conference’, the Eastern Secretariat, and the parties, this was enough time
to complete all material and preparations, and it would be sufficient to
assess the guidelines on the LAI and its congress in July. Virtanen
deliberated over the fact that despite the repeated demands sent from
Moscow to the parties to send the reports, the only one who had done so
was the Dutch party. Regardless of the inept attitude and serious breach in
discipline of the parties, they had to submit to the understanding that the
‘Colonial Conference’ was an opportunity to provide ‘political information’
from the ECCI on the ‘situation in the colonies and the work of the Eastern
Secretariat’ (‘the Magyar thesis’), discuss the Indian work and examine the
reports of the Western parties on the work in the colonies after the Sixth
Comintern Congress. What Magyar had addressed as ‘colonial routine
work’ was a central issue, according to Virtanen, particularly when one
choses to see how the parties had solved ‘practical tasks’ in the past. In
relation to this, the question of how the parties administered and maintained
the relations to the LAI and other anti-imperialist organizations was crucial
in solving the Comintern’s colonial dilemma.
Virtanen’s report should be seen as an estimation of a vision. His doubts
come out clearly in his report – ‘[I]s it even possible or expedient to hold
the conference in its present form?’ It now appeared utopian to gather
twenty-seven delegates to Berlin for a four to five day intensive conference.
The ECCI Plenum and the LAI Congress – both in July – made it
inexpedient to hold the conference then. Arnot and the Standing
Committee’s predictions came true, namely that it would be prudent to hold
the conference in tandem with the plenum. Comrades could then travel
from there to the LAI Congress. He wanted the ‘Colonial Conference’ to be
held before the opening of the LAI Congress on 21 July.[84]
Virtanen’s report sets the ‘Colonial Conference’ on the road to
obscurity. By May it had become clear that the conference was a difficult
project. On 25 May Virtanent, backed by the Standing Committee, sent out
a round of telegrams for the postponement of the conference to the CPGB,
CPH and CPB, and the leader of the West European Bureau in Berlin
‘Felix’ (pseudonym used by the Ukrainian communist Dmitri Manuilsky).
The message of the telegrams speaks for itself and illustrates the dilemma
of the ‘Colonial Conference’:
Dear Comrades. As the colonial conference is to serve as an important preparation for the
Congress of the Anti-Imperialist League, it has been decided to postpone it once more, and to
hold it just before the Congress of the League [LAI], i.e. about the middle of July. In this
connection, we remind you that we are still minus a report on the colonial work of your Party and
proposals in regard to the conference. We beg of you to let us have your reports and proposals not
later than the [Tenth] Plenum of the ECCI. This will give us an opportunity to discuss them with
your representative during the Plenum.[85]

The Tenth ECCI Plenum did not take up the question of the conference.
People who had been part of the team to organize the conference –
Piatnitsky, Kuusinen, Manuilsky, Ford and Bittelman – were at the Plenum.
[86]
Some would later leave Moscow for the LAI Congress in Frankfurt am
Main – Bittelman, Ford, and Chü Chiu-pai.[87] None would raise the issue
of the ‘Colonial Conference’ at either Moscow or Frankurt am Main. To
reach some level of understanding on this enigma, we must begin at the
‘Second International Congress against Colonialism and Imperialism’ in
Frankfurt am Main on 21-27 July 1929.

POSTSCRIPT: LOOSE ENDS . . .

It is worth noting that Virtanen was somewhat right in his prediction

that the LAI Congress was not the right place for the ‘Colonial Conference’.
According to Bittelman in his report after the LAI Congress, ‘a serious
defect’ was the poor organization of fractional meetings and how
‘Communist delegates were not made use of sufficiently’.[88] The LAI
Congress turned into a malicious and polarized event where the communist
and non-communist delegates verbally attacked each other in fierce debates.
The communists attacked the non-communists for being ‘agents of
imperialism’ and national reformists. They demanded that the LAI ‘cleanse
its ranks’ of them. The non-communists withdrew in disappointment. For
them, the attack confirmed their suspicion that this was a communist
organization and not a wider platform of work. The LAI went into crisis as
a consequence of this fractiousness.[89] The Comintern had intended to
demonstrate their strength in the LAI. The final meetings at the Comintern
headquarters to prepare for the LAI Congress show this directly. On 27 July,
the Political Secretariat endorsed the strategy that ‘the new General Council
and the LAI Executive Committee shall be put together in such a way that a
communist majority is secured’, while on 6 July, the Standing Commission
stated that ‘the ECCI delegation has to control the progression of the
Congress’ from the beginning to its end.[90]
No ‘Colonial Conference’ could have been held alongside the LAI
Congress. The conflicts consumed every inch of the attention of the
delegates. So where does this leave us while trying to understand the
enigma of the ‘Colonial Conference’? Are there any palpable traces of the
conference, or did it just evaporate in the blur of other events such as the
Tenth ECCI Plenum in Moscow and the Second LAI Congress in Frankfurt
am Main in 1929? It seems at first that the protracted undertakings of Arnot
and the ‘Commission on Colonial Conference’, which lasted from
December 1928 to June 1929, ended in unresolved illusions. Neither
Bittleman nor Virtanen ever managed to assume the same authority as
Arnot. The Comintern was both a fragile and rigid system – unable to deal
with its organizational weakness and its ideological overconfidence.
Kuusinen had chastised the colonial question as ‘one of the weakest
sides of Comintern activity’ at the Sixth Comintern Congress in Moscow
1928. The shift of approach from the united front strategy to the ‘class
against class’ line shifted attention of the Comintern from the question of
colonial work to intraparty struggles and conflicts between the Comintern
and the national parties, as well as the debates within the LAI. Did the
Comintern feel that the conference would not have by itself been sufficient
to solve the deficiencies of colonial work? One episode from 1930
corroborates such an assumption. The ensuing crisis of the LAI after the
Frankfurt Congress reintroduced the concept of a ‘Colonial Conference’ as
part of the solution to assist both the LAI and the colonial work in the
national communist parties. The leader of the Comintern’s West European
Bureau in Berlin, the Bulgarian communist Georgi Dimitrov (‘Helmut’) and
later distinguished chairman of the Comintern, suggested to the ECCI in
Moscow on 13 January 1930, that they hold a ‘Colonial Conference’.
Dimitrov pointed out that the delegates from the European parties would
help to revise the relationship between communism and anti-imperialism.
The Political Commission at Comintern headquarters reviewed
Dimitrov/‘Helmut’s’ proposal and concluded that this would be an
‘inappropriate step’ since there existed no adequate documentation on the
issue.[91] And, any indication of a ‘Colonial Conference’ did not surface at
Comintern headquarters in the aftermath of the tentative discussion in 1930.

[1]
Russian State Archive for Social and Political History (RGASPI, Moscow) 542/1/30, 10-16,
(Secret) Letter from Robin Page Arnot, Paris, to Otto W. Kuusinen, Moscow, 5/2-1929. A note on
the following text: this is an edited and expanded version of the subchapter ‘The Arnot
Connection: Evaluation of the Colonial Work and the Colonial Conference’, included in my
doctoral thesis and book on the sympathising organization the League against Imperialism and
for National Independence (LAI, 1927–1937), ‘We Are Neither Visionaries Nor Utopian
Dreamers’. Willi Münzenberg, the League against Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925–1933,
Åbo Akademi University, 2013, published by Lewiston: Queenston Press, Vol. I-II, 2013.
[2]
For the establishment of the Comintern and its first ‘international’ congress, see Alexander
Vatlin, Die Komintern. Gründung, Programmatik, Akteure, Berlin: Karl Dietz Verlag, 2009, pp.
11-39.
[3]
I address these questions in my doctoral dissertation and book (see note 1 above; henceforth
Petersson 2013); see also Robert J.C. Young, Postcolonialism. An Historical Introduction,
 Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2001.
[4]
Jane Degras, The Communist International, 1919-1943: Documents – Volume II, London:
Oxford University Press, 1960, p. 652; Reiner Tosstorff, ‘Andreu Nín und Joaquín Maurín. Vom
revolutionären Syndikalismus zum antistalinistsichen Kommunismus’, in Ketzer im
Kommunismus, Bergmann/Kessler (Hrsg.) (Hamburg: VSA-Verlag, 2000), pp. 218-41.
[5]
RGASPI 495/215/18, 167, Letter from M.N. Roy, Berlin, to R.P. Arnot, Moscow, 17/12-1928;
Petersson 2013, pp. 374-75. The ‘demontage’ of Roy’s status in the Comintern was initiated in
the beginning of 1928, and on 23 November 1929, the Presidium of the Executive Committee of
the Communist International (ECCI) endorsed Roy’s expulsion from the Comintern.
[6]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 49-55, (Confidential) Resolution: The Organization of the Colonial Work
of the European Communist Parties, author: Ludwig Magyar, Moscow, 29/3-1929.
[7]
‘Resolution on the Development of Methods and Forms of the Organization of Masses under the
Influence of the Communist Parties’, in International Press Correspondence (Inprecorr), Vol. 6,
No. 40, 13/5-1926, pp. 649-50.
[8]
Petersson 2013.
[9]
Typical of this kind of empirical ‘confusion’ can be related to what Hakim Adi concludes in his
book Pan-Africanism and Communism. The Communist International, Africa and the Diaspora,
1919-1939, Trenton: Africa World Press, 2013: the Eastern Secretariat ‘announced’ the plan of
organize ‘its own conference on colonial questions’ in March 1929 (pp. 92-93). However, as shall
be shown here, the concept of the ‘Colonial Conference’ was mooted already in December 1928,
in an active interplay between several actors at Comintern headquarters, for example, Kuusinen,
the Eastern Secretariat and the Comintern’s Organizational Department (Orgotdel).
[10]
Degras, The Communist International, p. 510.
[11]
‘Class against class’, as a concept, surfaced first when the Communist Party of France had been
evaluating the results of its electoral tactics in 1927, and was coined by the Swiss communist
Jules Humbert-Droz. After the Tenth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist
International (ECCI) in July 1929, the term ‘social fascism/fascist’ was the norm and political
lingua franca used by the Comintern to denounce its opponents. See, for example, Theodore
Draper, American Communism and Soviet Russia, Transaction Publishers, 2003, p. 300; Kevin
McDermott and Jeremy Agnew, The Comintern. A History of International Communism,
Houndmills: Macmillan Press, 1996, p. 67, 72-77; ‘Programme of the Communist International
Adopted at its Sixth Congress’, Protokoll, vi, 4, September 1, p. 45; Degras, The Communist
International, pp. 471-526. For total number of delegates and represented countries, see fol.
RGASPI 495/94/44.
[12]
Petersson 2013.
[13]
‘The Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in Colonial and Semi-Colonial Countries
Adopted by the Sixth Comintern Congress’, Degras, The Communist International, pp. 526, 537-
47.
[14]
Documents on how Kuusinen prepared the colonial ‘theses’, and then corrected by Stalin are
filed in RGASPI 82/2/221, 11, 119-63.
[15]
‘The Theses on the Revolutionary Movement in Colonial and Semi-Colonial Countries
Adopted by the Sixth Congress’, Degras, The Communist International, pp. 526-47.
[16]
Arthur Koestler, ‘Vorwort’, in Babette Gross, Willi Münzenberg. Eine politische Biographie,
Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1967, p. 9; for Münzenberg and the IAH, see Kasper
Braskén, The International Workers’ Relief, Communism, and Transnational Solidarity,
Houndsmill: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015; Petersson 2013.
[17]
Degras, The Communist International, p. 465; Protokoll des VI. Weltkongresses der
Kommunistichen Internationale. Erster Band, Hamburg/Berlin: Verlag Carl Hoym Nachfolger,
1928, p. 540.
[18]
‘The third period’ is covered in several scholarly studies and interpreted en masse, and one has
to recognize and understand that the congress resulted in a new structural setting and ideological
point of departure for the Comintern and international communism as a movement. This is, above
all, related to the formal and official end to the principle of democratic centralism, or as noted in
the paragraphs of the ‘General Rules’ adopted at the congress, which ‘stressed the necessity of
observing strict party discipline and immediately carrying out the Comintern’s decisions’, see
‘Statutes of the Communist International Adopted at its Sixth Congress’, Degras, The Communist
International, pp. 464-70; Grant Adibekov and Eleonora Shakhnazarova, ‘Reconstructions of the
Comintern Organizational Structure’, in Mikhail Narinsky and Jürgen Rojahn (eds.), Centre and
Periphery. The History of the Comintern in the Light of New Documents, Amsterdam:
International Institute of Social History, 1996, p. 69; Matthew Worley, Class Against Class. The
Communist Party in Britain Between the Wars, London: I.B. Tauris, 2002, pp. 1-20; Bert Hoppe,
In Stalins Gefolgschaft. Moskau und die KPD 1928-1933, München: Oldenburg
Wissenschaftsverlag, 2007, p. 33; McDermott and Agnew, The Comintern, p. 68.
[19]
Young, Postcolonialism, pp. 153-54.
[20]
RGASPI 495/198/13, 158-161, Autobiographical Note, author: R.P. Arnot, Moscow, 19/10-
1937. The CPGB’s Central Committee did not appreciate Arnot’s appointment at Comintern
headquarters in Moscow. However, the CPGB could not protest or interfere in the organizational
routine involving the ‘interchange of personnel between headquarters and national sections’, see
further in Andrew Thorpe, ‘Comintern “Control” of the Communist Party of Great Britain’, in
The English Historical Review, 113, 452, Oxford: Oxford University Press, Jun. 1998, p. 645.
[21]
RGASPI 495/6/16, 28-29, Protokoll Nr.7 der Sitzung der Engeren Kommission, Moscow, 24/9-
1928.
[22]
RGASPI 495/6/16, 30, Vorschlag an das Polit-Sekretariat für die Zusammensetzung der
Länder-Sekretariat, Moscow, September, 1928. For the ‘Länder Sekretariats’, see Adibekov and
Shakhnazarova, ‘Reconstructions of the Comintern Organizational Structure’, p. 68.
[23]
RGASPI 495/25/129, 39-43, Plan of work of the Organizational Department, December-
February 1929, 1/1-1929.
[24]
RGASPI 495/6/18, 9, Letter from Arnot, Moscow, to Piatnitsky, Moscow, 1/12-1928.
[25]
RGASPI 495/6/18, 2, Protokoll Nr. 16 der Sitzung der Engeren Kommission des
Politsekretariats des EKKI, Moskau, 8/12-1928.
[26]
For the ITUCNW, see Holger Weiss, Framing a Radical African Atlantic. African American
Agency, West African Intellectuals and the International Trade Union Committee of Negro
Workers, Leiden: Brill, 2014.
[27]
RGASPI 542/1/25, 71-72, Letter from Arnot, Moscow, to Münzenberg, Berlin, 10/12-1928.
[28]
RGASPI 495/6/18, 191, Sondermappe. Geschrieben in 1.Exemplar, Protokoll Nr. 20 der
Sitzung der Engkommission des Sekretariats des EKKI, Moskau, 29/12-1928.
[29]
Arnot told Kuusinen that he probably would be finished on 8 February, but ‘if you wish me to
return, and not to wait for C.C. [meeting of the Central Committee of the CPGB], will you please
telegraph to that effect?’, RGASPI 542/1/30, 5-7, Handwritten letter from R. Page Arnot,
London, to Otto Kuusinen in Moscow, 29/1-1929.
[30]
RGASPI 542/1/30, 1, [Handwritten] letter from Robin Page Arnot, Frankfurt a/M, to Kuusinen,
Moscow, 3/1-1929.
[31]
RGASPI 542/1/32, 18, Letter from R. P. Arnot, Cologne, to Kuusinen, Moscow, 16/1-1929;
RGASPI 495/155/70, 62-68, Report from J. W. Ford to the ECCI, Moscow, January 1929. The
purpose of Ford’s visit to Europe was to prepare the founding conference of the ITUCNW.
[32]
For the outcome of the Cologne meeting and the ‘trade union’ debate, see Petersson 2013, pp.
245-52.
[33]
RGASPI 542/1/32, 18, Letter from R.P. Arnot, Cologne, to Kuusinen, Moscow, 16/1-1929.
[34]
RGASPI 495/198/13, 158-61, Autobiographical Note, author: R.P. Arnot, Moscow, 19/10-1937.
[35]
The CPGB was around this time ‘plagued by internal conflict and [. . .] political stupefaction’,
RGASPI 542/1/30, 5-7, Handwritten letter from R. Page Arnot, London, to Otto Kuusinen in
Moscow, 29/1-1929; Worley 2002, p. 116.
[36]
RGASPI 542/1/15, 17-18, Resolution über die Liga gegen Imperialismus in Frankreich, author:
A. Herclet, January 1929.
[37]
RGASPI 542/1/30, 10-16, [Handwritten] Letter from Arnot, Paris, to Kuusinen, Moscow, 5/2-
1929.
[38]
William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, New York: Hyperion, 2000, pp. 148-50. Quotes taken from
RGASPI 495/154/556.
[39]
RGASPI 542/1/30, 10-16, [Handwritten] Letter from Arnot, Paris, to Kuusinen, Moscow, 5/2-
1929.
[40]
Senghor, who had been a delegate at the first League Against Imperialism meeting, was
arrested by the French. He died in the Fréjus (France) prison. Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations:
A People’s History of the Third World, New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2007, p. 39.
[41]
RGASPI 495/154/364, 52-54, Report on the Parties, Arnot, February 1929.
[42]
RGASPI 495/154/364, 52-54, Report on the Parties, Arnot, February 1929.
[43]
RGASPI 495/154/406, 1-2, [Eastern Secretariat] Proposed Colonial Conference of Western
European Parties, 4/3-1929.
[44]
RGASPI 495/154/406, 1-2, Proposed Colonial Conference of Western European Parties,
[Eastern Secretariat], Moscow, 4/3-1929; RGASPI 495/18/670, 6-7, [Edited version] Proposed
Colonial Conference of West European Parties, Moscow, 19/3-1929. This document includes
Arnot’s handwritten notes, added during his presentation at the meeting with the Political
Secretariat.
[45]
RGASPI 495/3/95, 66, Protokoll No.27 der Sitzung des Politsekretariat des EKKI, Moscow,
19/3-1929.
[46]
RGASPI 495/7/7, 37, Protokoll No.34 der Sitzung der ständigen Kommission des Sekretariats,
Moscow, 20/3-1929.
[47]
Further details about the planned evaluation process tells that Arnot and Freyer would evaluate
the CPGB, Virtanen (CPF), Ducrot (the Communist Party of Belgium), and Resema (the
Communist Party of Holland), RGASPI 495/18/670, 1-2, Minutes of ‘Commission on Colonial
Conference’, Moscow, 19/3-1929.
[48]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 14, Estimated budget for [Colonial] Conference from Virtanen to the
Small Commission, Moscow, 20/3-1929. The Small Commission concluded, however, that the
budget was too high. Arnot and Ewert revised the costs, reducing the overall cost by $718,
ending with a final estimated cost of $1,238, see RGASPI 495/18/670, 23, Revised budget for
conference, Moscow, April/May.
[49]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 30-32, Letter from Arnot, Moscow, to Communist Party of Italy [through
Serra/Tasca], Rome, 25/3-1929.
[50]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 30-32, Letter from Arnot, Moscow, to Communist Party of Italy [through
Serra/Tasca], Rome, 25/3-1929.
[51]
For the Meerut trial, see Milton Israel, Communications and Power. Propaganda and the Press
in the Indian Nationalist Struggle, 1920-1947, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994, p.
261. See also Carolien Stolte, ‘Trade Unions on Trial: The Meerut Conspiracy Case and Trade
Union Internationalism, 1929-32’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle
East, vol. 33, no. 3, 2013 as well as Michele Louro, ‘“Where National Revolutionary Ends and
Communism Begins”: The League Against Imperialism and the Meerut Conspiracy Case’, ibid.
[52]
RGASPI 542/1/33, 6, Letter from Bridgeman, London, to Münzenberg, Berlin, 23/3-1929.
[53]
RGASPI 542/1/30, 25-6, Letter from Münzenberg, Berlin, to Kuusinen, Moscow, 25/3-1929;
RGASPI 495/7/7, 89, Protokoll No. 35 der Sitzung der ständigen Kommission, Moscow, 23/3-
1929.
[54]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 30-2, Letter from ‘Commission on Colonial Conference’, Moscow, to
Serra/Tasca and Communist Party of Italy, Rome, 25/3-1929.
[55]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 33-5, Letter from ‘Commission on Colonial Conference’, Moscow, to
CPF, Paris, 25/3-1929.
[56]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 39-41, Letter from ‘Commission on Colonial Conference’, Moscow, to
Communist Party of Belgium, Brussels, 25/3-1929.
[57]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 111-14, Arnot and Ewert, Moscow, to CPGB, London, 25/3-1929.
[58]
Ludwig Magyar, ‘Zehn Jahre Kommunistische Internationale. Die Kommunistische
Internationale und die Kolonialfrage’, in Inprecorr, Nr. 26, 1929, pp. 585-86.
[59]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 49-55, (Confidential) The Organization of the Colonial Work of the
European Parties, author: L. Magyar, Moscow, 29/3-1929. Noted on top of the first page: ‘File.
Col. Conf.’.
[60]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 49-55, (Confidential) The Organization of the Colonial Work of the
European Parties, author: L. Magyar, Moscow, 29/3-1929.
[61]
RGASPI 495/154/407, 248, Letter from Virtanen, Moscow, to the CC of the CP of Holland,
Amsterdam, 9/4-1929.
[62]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 59-60, 91-92, Telegrams from and to CPGB, CPF, CPB, and CPH, April
1929.
[63]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 97-8, Colonial Committee CPGB, Minutes of meeting, London, 15/4-
1929; RGASPI 495/18/670, 93, Zweiter Rapport für die Kolonial-Konferenz, K. P. Hollands,
Amsterdam, to the ‘Commission on Colonial Conference, Moscow, 26/4-1929.
[64]
495/18/670, 105-07, Ueber die Kolonialkonferenz der westeuropäischen Kommunistischen
Parteien, author: N. Virtanen, Moscow, 22/6-1929.
[65]
For the CPH report, see fol. RGASPI 495/18/670, 93-94, Report from the Communist Party of
Holland/Colonial Commission, Amsterdam, to Arnot, Moscow, 26/4-1929. Members of the
Colonial Commission of the CPH were van Munster, de Visser, de Vries, Bergsma and Bykstra.
Any record of how Arnot reacted remains unknown; see fol. RGASPI 495/18/670, 27-28,
Minutes, second meeting of Commission on Colonial Conference, Moscow, 29/4-1929.
[66]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 27-28, Minutes, second meeting of the Commission on Colonial
Conference, Moscow, 29/4-1929. The minutes were compiled on 29 April, hence the date; for the
LAI and the Frankfurt Congress, see Petersson (2013).
[67]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 22, (Confidential) Letter and instructions from Arnot, Moscow, to
Magyar, Moscow, 29/4-1929.
[68]
Petersson 2013, pp. 299-300, 332; for the ITUCNW, see Weiss (2014).
[69]
See RGASPI 495/18/670, 82-90, 29/4-1929.
[70]
RGASPI 495/154/407, 224, Letter from Arnot, Moscow, to Barbé, Moscow, 8/5-1929.
[71]
RGASPI 495/154/407, 53-4, Letter from Arnot, Moscow, to Virtanen, Moscow, 18/5-1929.
[72]
Randi Storch, ‘Chicago’s Foreign Language-Speaking Communists 1928-35’, in Norman
Laporte, Kevin Morgan and Matthew Worley (eds.), Bolshevism, Stalinism and the Comintern.
Perspectives on Stalinization, 1917-53, Houndmills: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008, pp. 264-65.
[73]
Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes, and Fridrikh Igorevich Firsov (eds.), The Secret World of
American Communism, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, p. 72.
[74]
RGASPI 495/18/740, 32-33, Letter from Arnot, Moscow, to ‘Max’/Petrovsky, Moscow, 14/5-
1929.
[75]
In this respect, the Political Secretariat perceived Foster as a more suitable candidate to lead the
party and curb the turbulence within the CPUSA leadership. It therefore endorsed the formation
of the ‘American Commission’ as a means to deal with the consuming fractional struggle, see
Edward P. Johanningsmeier, Forging American Communism. The Life of William Z. Foster,
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 245-47. See further in Draper (2003); Max
Eastman, Love and Revolution: My Journey Through an Epoch, New York: Random House,
1964; Benjamin Gitlow, The Whole of Their Lives, New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1948; and
Harry Haywood, Black Bolshevik, Chicago: Liberator Press, 1978.
[76]
RGASPI 495/18/740, 32-33, Letter from Arnot, Moscow, to ‘Max’/Petrovsky, Moscow, 14/5-
1929. Kuusinen, Bela Kun, Wolfe, Molotov, Gitlow, Pepper, Stalin, Arnot and Ford attended the
final meeting of the ‘American Commission’. The on-going debates of the ‘American
Commission’ affected the members of the CPUSA who were working at Comintern headquarters
in Moscow, for example, they had ‘reduced Williams to a shadow of his former self, Violet to a
jibbering [sic] scarecrow and the other stenographer (Kathleen), though with a lighter task, has
already been in bed for several days’, Arnot wrote.
[77]
For Lovestone and ‘Lovestoneites’ see Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas (eds.),
Encyclopedia of the American Left, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992, pp. 435-37;
Branko Lazitch and Milorad M. Drachkovitch, Biographical Dictionary of the Comintern. New,
Revised and Expanded Edition, Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1986, pp. 277-78.
[78]
RGASPI 495/7/9, 70, Letter from B. G. Wolfe, Moscow, to Piatnitsky and Heimo, Moscow,
20/5-1929.
[79]
Arnot’s mission was administered via the ECCI Presidium and the ECCI Standing Commission,
see fol. RGASPI 495/7/9, 62, Short note re. Arnot, Piatnitsky, Moscow, 15/5-1929. Section 22 in
the statutes, adopted at the Sixth Comintern Congress in 1928, reads, ‘The ECCI and its
presidium have the right to send representatives to the various sections of the Communist
International. Such representatives receive their instructions from the ECCI and are responsible
to it for their activities. The plenipotentiaries of the ECCI have the right to participate in meetings
of the central party bodies as well as of the local organizations of the sections to which they are
sent. They may, however, act in opposition to the central committee of the given section at
congresses and conferences of that section, if the policy of the central committee in question
diverges from the instructions of the ECCI. Representatives of the ECCI are obliged in particular
to supervise the execution of the decisions of the world congresses and of the ECCI. The ECCI
and its presidium also have the right to send instructors to the sections of the Communist
International. The powers and duties of instructors are determined by the ECCI, to whom the
instructors are responsible’, see ‘General Rules’, Degras 1960, p. 469.
[80]
RGASPI 495/198/13, 158-161, Autobiographical Note, author: R. P. Arnot, Moscow, 19/10-
1937.
[81]
RGASPI 542/1/30, 47, Letter from Bittelman, Moscow, to Münzenberg, Berlin, 22/5-1929.
[82]
RGASPI 495/7/9, 96-98, Protokoll N.45 der Sitzung der ständigen Kommission des Sekrt. des
EKKI, Moscow, 1/6-1929.
[83]
RGASPI 495/154/407, 53-4, Letter from Arnot, Moscow, to Virtanen, Moscow, 18/5-1929.
[84]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 105-7, Report: Über die Kolonialkonferenz der westeuropäischen
Kommunistischen Parteien, author: N. Virtanen, Moscow, 22/5-1929.
[85]
RGASPI 495/18/670, 100, Letter from the Eastern Secretariat, Moscow, to WEB/‘Felix’
[Manuilsky], Berlin, 25/5-1929; RGASPI 495/18/670, 101, Letter from the Eastern Secretariat,
Moscow, to the Central Committee of the CPGB, London, 25/5-1929.
[86]
Documents on the Tenth ECCI Plenum are filed in fond and opis RGASPI 495/168.
[87]
Petersson 2013, p. 318.
[88]
RGASPI 495/20/722, 100-05, (Confidential) Draft Resolution on Results of the II World
Congress of the League against Imperialism and its Direct Immediate Tasks, author: A.
Bittelman, Moscow, August 1929. On 27 August, the Eastern Secretariat passed the resolution.
[89]
For the LAI congress in Frankfurt am Main on 21-27 July 1929, and the ensuing crisis in 1929-
30, see Petersson 2013, pp. 319-38, 339-94.
[90]
RGASPI 495/60/134a, 55, Confidential directives from the Political Secretariat to the
‘Commission on the LAI’, Moscow, 27/6-1929; RGASPI 495/7/10, 96, (Sondermappe/Special
File) (streng vertraulich) Protokoll No. [Illegible] der Sitzungen der ständigen Kommission,
Moscow, 6/7-1929.
[91]
Petersson 2013, pp. 365-6.
Margaret Stevens
Cuba and the Red International, 1934

The chief interest and ultimate security of the United States lies in the loyal friendship of the
Western Hemisphere.
Sumner Welles, Assistant Secretary of State, 1934

There is a Scottsboro in every country.

Diego Rivera, 1933

‘On the earthen floor of the house of the poet of Realengo 18’, reported
Josephine Herbst in 1935, ‘one man draws with a stick a map of Cuba. He
shapes the island and we stare at its smallness that is now being related to
the world. Outlines of the United States take shape roughly. There is an
ocean, Europe and a sudden great bulge of the stick moved by an inspired
curve makes the Soviet Union. Everyone in the room smiles’. Herbst was a
writer and a member of the Communist Party of the United States
(CPUSA). She was herself inspired by these Black Cuban peasants. ‘We are
very high on top of the world in Realengo. We are in the midst of steep
cultivated mountains with banana and tobacco growing in regular rows.
Around these cultivated patches virgin forest bristles in tough area . . . its
difficult trails are too narrow for the artillery of an army’. Realengo 18 – or
Commune 18 – was the Cuban Soviet.[1]
Realengo 18 was formed in 1926, when the peasants of the eastern
Oriente province created their own constitution. By 1934, the state’s
attempt to dislodge the realengo had been futile. In August, airplanes
‘whirled overhead looking for places to drop bombs’ on the ‘squatters’, as
they were referred to by the US State Department. In the meantime
Communist-led workers in surrounding districts of the realengo and also in
Havana staged protests explicitly in support of the peasants’ struggle to
retain their land. Hence, in the daily lives of these guerilla warriors of all
ages in Realengo 18, the necessity for class warfare was always already
present. ‘Agents from the big sugar mills below penetrate Realengo 18 on
horseback wearing very white starched clothes, riding haughtily with whips
in their hands and guns on their hips’, wrote Herbst, bringing about an
atmosphere wherein ‘contempt is thick in the air as the invader disappears’.
Cuban peasants and proletarians in town and country, alongside and
sometimes under the banner of the Red International, were determined not
to cower before the government-sponsored coercion in the aftermath of
Cuba’s ‘September 4th Revolution’ of 1933.[2]
The peasants ‘own struggle to hold the land to which they have given
so much labour’, Herbst wrote, had laid the basis for their ‘fight for
freedom’. This local struggle for freedom was organically rooted in the long
history of the 19th Century Cuban independence struggle from Spanish
colonial domination. Then in 1912, the Afro-Cuban movement for civil and
economic rights in the eastern Oriente province heightened the level of
militancy within the peasantry in this part of the island against both native
Cuban and foreign American ruling elites. Rising communism found fertile
soil in this region, as Herbst found,
The district of Realengo is small in comparison to Cuba and Cuba is only a tiny island but no one
in Realengo feels alone in the fight for freedom. They talk too much of what is going on in the
world . . . Soon it was too dark to make maps and we began singing, first the Marseillaise and
then the Internationale. Everyone knows that since that time much blood has been shed in Cuba;
the iron military rule has tried to crush strikes, stifle protests. Neither jail nor guns can
completely silence such singing.[3]

The peasants ended their evening singing the Communist Internationale

and began their day with the struggle to keep Canadian bankers off their
land. What, then, did it mean for these peasants to defend the Soviet Union
while based in the ‘Black Belt of Oriente’ in 1934? Reciprocally, what did it
mean for Reds elsewhere to defend the cause of these Black peasants in
Realengo 18? As seen through the eyes of an obscure Cuban fascist named
Pepin Rivero, this Black peasants’ commune signified a coming new world
order which could potentially challenge the traditional tenets of white
colonial domination not only in Cuba’s Oriente province but possibly all
over the world. This perception might well have been within the range of
possibilities given the political conditions of the Red International in 1934,
particularly in this tiny outpost of the western hemisphere.[4]
During the period from 1930 to 1934, Communists in New York City
(henceforth NYC) – black and white alike – such as leading figure James
Ford had been instrumental in laying the practical and ideological
groundwork to make such militant challenges to capitalist rule a historical
reality in Cuba. In an effort to consolidate the political gains that had been
made among Black labourers in Cuba’s ‘Black Belt’ of Oriente, Ford
attended a labour congress in Cuba in February of 1934 to promote the
cause of Communist-led ‘revolutionary’ trade unions rather than ‘counter-
revolutionary’ unions that were aligned with various branches of Cuba’s
ruling elite parties. On Cuban soil, Ford vowed, ‘The Congress pledges to
develop further the activities of the youth’ and ‘to develop the movement
for the special demands of the Negroes for the right of self-determination
for the Negroes of the Black Belt of Oriente’. Weeks later Ford returned to
his NYC political nest where he was currently heading the Harlem Section
of the CPUSA, only to declare that Harlem, the so-called ‘Negro Mecca’,
was in fact the center of international and national reformism. That is, Ford
had presumably seen in Cuba a level of Black working class radicalism that
displaced Harlem as the genuine center of anti-racist activism for Black
people around the world – or at least in the hemisphere.
The Communist movement in Cuba that was then unfolding under
intense conditions of tyranny at the hands of President Carlos Mendieta,
who replaced President Gerardo Machado in the aftermath of the coup
d’état of 1933, must have deeply put the prospects for revolutionary change
in general – and the ‘Negro’ and ‘colonial’ questions in particular – into
perspective for Communists like Ford. That same specter of Black-led
militant workers’ control that haunted the fascist Pepin Rivero and inspired
James Ford, sadly, never came to pass.
THE 1930 COMINTERN ANTI-COLONIAL MANDATE
IN NYC-CUBAN-MEXICAN CONTEXT

The origin of Cuba’s peasant Soviet in the ‘Black Belt’ of Oriente was
complex. The struggle underway at Realengo 18 should not exclusively be
understood in terms of the forces reflecting Cuba’s war for independence
from Spain at the turn of the century compounded by the subsequent Black
peasants’ uprising against Cuban racial exploitation which was bitterly
repressed. Rather, it must be understood more proximately in terms of the
campaign led by the Comintern in 1930 with a mandate for ‘Colonial
parties’ to establish and strengthen Communist movements in the colonies
and semi-colonies, with Cuba at the helm. This policy objectively forced
the convergence of anticolonialism and antiracism, characterized as the
‘Negro question’, since racist super-exploitation of people of colour in the
US and across the hemisphere was a cornerstone of capitalism. This essay
focuses on the relationship between the Comintern mandate in 1930 and the
actual work of the CPUSA, Cuban Communist Party [PCP] and Mexican
Communist Party [PCM] and their attendant organizations – particularly the
Anti-Imperialist League [AIL] and International Labour Defence [ILD] – in
the US, Mexico and Cuba that put this anti-colonialist and anti-racist
objective into practice. Advocating for the workers’ right to self-
determination in the ‘Black Belt’ of the US and Cuba formed a critical
component of Communist praxis against US imperial power and Cuban
elites during the Third Period of Communist policy, beginning in 1928 and
ending in 1934.
During the years from 1930 to 1934, states of emergency became the
modus operandi for democratic governments in the western hemisphere,
namely in semi-colonies of the United States like Mexico and Cuba where
Communist parties were fast growing. The assassination of the Cuban
Communist Julio Antonio Mella in Mexico by local authorities in collusion
with the United States in 1929 opened the door to a new wave of hostility,
terror, repression, and arguably fascism in the region, such that the
repressive and pro-US Mexican government formally severed ties with the
Soviet Union in 1930 – earning what Assistant Secretary of State Welles
considered the ‘loyal friendship’ of the US while being castigated by the
Red International as an example of ‘social fascism’. But this repression
only worked to strengthen a Communist militant base for class struggle
around the ‘Colonial question’ in these two countries along with the United
States until the onset of the Popular Front strategy of 1935 offset the Third
Period approach.[5]
Adhering to the call for self-determination among oppressed ethnic,
racial and colonial populations then suffering from imperial rule during the
Third Period, the Red International had determined in 1928 that the Black
Belt of the US South also faced a state of emergency. But a truth little
known and even less explicated is that this strategy was also extended to the
Black Belt of Cuba’s eastern province of Oriente. Hence, when in 1931,
nine innocent young Black men in Scottsboro, Alabama, affably referred to
as the Scottsboro Boys, were falsely accused of raping two white girls and
summarily condemned to execution, this brash act of racist terror fomented
a movement against Jim Crow racism in not just the US, but worldwide,
forcing a unity of interests in the plight of Black and Latino workers in the
US, Cuba and Mexico – and beyond. Therefore, the Mexican revolutionary
Diego Rivera’s notion that ‘there is a Scottsboro in every country’ was born
in this historical matrix of political tyranny and economic depression
wherein Communists were a leading force in challenging outright the brutal
super-exploitation and degradation of working class people of colour not
only in the US South but also, as we will see, in Mexico and Cuba.
Four years before 1934, when the pinnacle of multiracial class
solidarity embodied by Realengo 18 had been realized, Communists at the
local and global levels had begun to organize transnational movements
between parties in the US and those in the colonies and semi-colonies like
Cuba. After several revisions, the Comintern in Moscow submitted in
March 1930 a mandate to the Communist parties of the United States,
France, Great Britain, and Holland, with special instructions on how to
build working-class led parties in the Caribbean. Notably, this mandate was
submitted as a result of ‘recent mass movements which have taken place in
the principal islands of the Antilles’, namely in ‘Haiti, Santo Domingo,
Guadeloupe [and] Cuba’. Such rebellions as were under way in the
republics and colonies of the western hemisphere – particularly in the West
Indies – had offered the pretext for Red infiltration. The significance of this
observation lies in the fact that labourers in the so-called periphery were
often in the leadership, or vanguard, of class struggle in the hemisphere and
particularly in relationship to the parties such as the CPUSA.
The Comintern noted that such revolutionary fervor had been first
evinced in Central America with the ‘resistance of the Sandino supporters in
Nicaragua’. Moreover, the strategic importance of the Caribbean basin and
Central America was seen by the Comintern to lie in its abundance of oil, a
natural resource that was not only the lifeblood of contemporary capitalism
but also a necessary geopolitical leveraging force for hopeful aspiring
Communist states as well. The geopolitical importance of the oil wealth
based in Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico and Trinidad meant that ‘one of the
essential tasks of the Communist Parties and revolutionary trade unions in
imperialist countries is to devote greater attention than in the past to the
colonial and semi-colonial countries and work effectively to bring together
the revolutionary elements, to organize them and to educate them’. In this
context the Comintern offered an important self-criticism that Communists
in the ‘imperialist countries’ had been hitherto inattentive to and therefore
remiss in carrying out such internationalist praxis. Still even as it sought to
‘correct’ this negligence, the mandate of 1930 itself pointed toward
chauvinistic tendencies that were embedded in the Red International’s own
political agenda of unilaterally educating rather than reciprocally learning
from those based in subaltern locales in the Caribbean.[6]
Without a doubt, this mandate issued by the Politburo was an
indispensable component of the radical upsurge that the Red International
helped to foment in the Caribbean for the duration of the Third Period. At
the same time, however, it carried with it continuing remnants of the elitist
and even prejudiced notions that vanguard party organization ought to be
‘directed’ from western metropolises such as NYC. The Comintern
headquarters in Moscow had charged the Communist parties in western
metropolises with the task of selecting from ‘among the best, most active
and most devoted workers . . . the elements to form the nucleus of the
Communist movement’. Such a mandate was akin to the manner in which
General Secretary C.E. Ruthenburg and Manual Gomez had acted as
gatekeepers to the theoretical and practical development of struggles led by
their counterparts in Puerto Rico and Mexico, respectively, in the decade
prior.[7]
Above and beyond the obvious pretensions associated with carefully
‘selecting’ rather than openly welcoming in mass the support of labourers
whose proletarian character was often coloured with myriad shades of
agrarian populism, the mandate then went on to mechanically delineate –
along colonial lines – which parties were assigned to their corresponding
colonies as follows,
 It is up to the Communist Party of the United States to develop the work already begun in
Jamaica, and to take the initiative of this work in Porto Rico, Santo Domingo and Haiti. For
Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana, it is up to the French Communist Party to carry on
this work and to assist in the work in Haiti where the population speaks French. The Dutch party
must take over the work in Curacao and Dutch Guiana. It is up to the British Party first of all to
carry on the work in Trinidad, British Guiana and British Honduras, and come to an agreement
with the US Party regarding work in Jamaica.[8]

The Politburo had essentially carved out a political programme in a

spatial pattern that re-inscribed the colonial boundaries of language and
geography that were maintained by the rulers to whom Communists were
opposed. In order to see how Reds carried out this mandate, it is necessary
to focus attention on the specific context of Communist organizations and
parties in Cuba and Mexico relative to developments in NYC, the
metropole of Wall Street empire and the contemporaneous headquarters of
Red political organization in the hemisphere.
RED REORGANIZATION AND THE BIRTH OF
NYC-BASED ORGANIZATION

The intensification of Comintern activity in the Caribbean beginning in

1930 was accompanied by shifts in the organizational structure and
objectives of CPUSA mass organizations, changes that were seen as more
conducive to promoting this new initiative of party-building in the
Caribbean. The All-American Anti-Imperialist League [AIL] and
International Labour Defence [ILD] underwent significant restructuring to
position themselves more squarely in the work of challenging colonialism
in the hemisphere – particularly in the Caribbean Black Belt islands of the
Antilles. In addition, the American Negro Labour Congress was disbanded
in 1930 and replaced by the League of Struggle for Negro Rights (LSNR)
which in turn paved the way for certain new initiatives in the Caribbean.
Most relevant to radical activity in the British West Indies, the West Indies
Sub-Committee of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro
Workers was formed in 1933 and headquartered in Harlem.
As the world depression intensified and unemployment mounted in the
United States, the CPUSA embarked on a massive campaign to place the
struggle for jobs more centrally. In February 1930 it was announced that the
‘immediate issue before the Party is to mobilize all its forces for the
broadest possible unemployment campaign, culminating in the International
Unemployment Day, February 26’. Subsequent reports in 1930 indicated
that there were 14,000 members of the CPUSA with over 1,250,000
labourers in the country marching under its leadership at the
Unemployment Day parade in March. Moreover, as a result of a recruiting
drive nine hundred of the new members were Black. On 1 August, the
Comintern-initiated annual holiday called International Red Day, the Daily
Worker reported that Reds in NYC led a protest of over 30,000 labourers
and unemployed from the metropolitan area ‘under a sea of banners
pledging defence of the Soviet Union and Soviet China, war on imperialist
war, demanding that all war funds be given to unemployed relief, calling on
workers to join the CP, the YCL [Young Communist League], the
revolutionary unions of the TUUL [Trade Union Unity League]’.[9]
The International Labour Defence’s self-assessment in 1930 was that
while Haiti and Mexico were at present its areas of concentration, there was
a need to expand into the rest of the West Indies and Caribbean. This
decision on the part of ILD leadership converged with an increasing
emphasis on struggling against the lynch law and anti-Black racism that
were especially prevalent in the Black Belt of the US South. Therefore,
beginning in 1930, the ILD became another important Red-led conduit
whereby the struggles of African Americans in the United States were
ideologically linked with radical anti-colonial struggles in the even deeper
south based in the Caribbean and, in this instance, Cuba.
Following the movement to defend the Haitian uprising in December
1929, a memorandum in January 1930 mandated that ‘every district of the
ILD must immediately begin a campaign for popularizing the revolutionary
traditions of the Negroes among the Negro workers’. The ILD instructed
that ‘the birthday or the anniversary of the death of such Negro
revolutionists as Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Toussaint L’Ouverture, etc.
must be used for holding large mass meetings among the Negro workers,
and for organizational purposes. A list of names and dates of Negro
revolutionists will be sent to all districts’. No extant records reveal the
intellectual substance or demographic composition of these meetings –
assuming that they even took place. Yet it was significant that the ILD had
chosen to take such a cross-border, cross-linguistic approach to conjoining
the history of anti-colonial and anti-racist struggles led by Black workers in
the hemisphere. Moreover, the use of grassroots, intimate gatherings to
cultivate the political consciousness ‘among the Negro workers’ who were
affiliated with the ILD in the United States – particularly in an era of wider
rebellions emanating from the periphery in the Antilles – was singular for
its time.[10]
Concurrent with the ideological lessons in Black revolutionary
traditions in the United States and the Caribbean, the ILD formed a
Caribbean Secretariat that – at the behest of the Mexican comrades based in
Mexico City – was removed from Mexico and headquartered in NYC. The
intense political repression in Mexico had forced Mexican radicals involved
in Red circuits of organization to make the decision that such a shift in
organizational headquarters was necessary. By 1930, then, NYC officially
became what Communists themselves described as the ‘imperial metropole’
from which to guide the Communist parties and their affiliates in the
Caribbean.
The Caribbean Secretariat has been the object of persecution especially for the last few months in
Mexico City . . . In view of the jailings, deportations and assassinations of workers in Mexico by
the Mexican government, and especially against the leading comrades in the Caribbean
Secretariat, the work of the ILD almost came to a standstill and for the last few months the
Caribbean Secretariat has been working illegally and this was one of the reasons for the decision
asking the MOPR to give its approval for bringing the Secretariat to New York.[11]

The ILD Secretariat in New York was to give support to work in Cuba.
They would publish Mella, the newspapers of the Defensa Obrera
Internacional [DOI], its Cuban section. This paper would then be sent to
Cuba. The Caribbean Secretariat was to work in New York and help to
‘organize the Anti-Fascist Alliance in Caribbean countries’. Toward the end
of 1930, it became clear that the New York district of the ILD had ‘adopted
Cuba for patronage’ whereas Chicago had done the same for combating
‘white terror’ in Mexico.[12] Cuba – not Mexico – became the focus of the
ILD’s Caribbean activity. The internal repression faced by Mexican
comrades against native elites forced the shift in location of the
headquarters in 1930; it did not come as a dictate from Moscow.[13]
 The US section of the Anti-Imperialist League (AIL) also went through
reorganization in 1930. The CPUSA pushed the League to increase its focus
on militant class uprisings in Haiti, Nicaragua and the Philippines. In an
attempt to get financial and political support from longtime ‘friends’ of the
AIL, leaders such as Earl Browder, Albert Moreau and Roger Baldwin – the
former two being leading members of the CPUSA – found a new set of
difficulties – namely, the intense militancy emanating from the Caribbean.
On obscure fellow traveler, Wilbur Thomas, opposed the militancy,
As you know I am deeply in sympathy with the AIL in practically all of its work. I am however
quite out of sympathy with the thoughts expressed in the recent news release and in the
resolutions concerning Haiti and the Philippines. This sentiment finds expression in such
statements as ‘by any means at hand to the point of armed revolution.’ . . . I am sorry if this puts
me out of the fellowship of the League, but I cannot be party to revolution ‘by any means’.
Clearly, US Communists would have to seek allies outside of the country if they sought support
for militant, direct action. Cuba and Mexico were indeed sources of such an alliance rather than
liberal American whites.[14]

People like Wilbur felt uncomfortable with the Communist view that
revolutionary change would occur by ‘any means at hand’ – including
violence. Militant struggles in the Caribbean and developments in Mexico
pushed the Communists based in NYC to restructure their organization.
Center to all this was Sandalio Junco, Black Cuban labour leader and
Communist fellow traveler.
MEXICO: ON THE FOREFRONT OF THE COMMUNIST ‘THIRD PERIOD’ SHIFT LEFTWARD

Early in 1930, Sandalio Junco was apparently about to meet a fate

similar to that met by his radical compatriot Antonio Mella. After fleeing to
Mexico from Cuba, he was apprehended. Mexico was going to extradite
him to the jaws of President Machado’s Cuban executioners. Unlike Mella,
Junco had organized his hemispheric defence, according to Negro
Champion, the primary voice for anti-racist, pro-Communist advocacy
buttressed by the ANLC, ILD and AAAIL. Together these groups with their
attendant newspaper sparked a regional campaign to defend Junco, the
Afro-Cuban labour leader. In the face of such international opposition the
Mexican government demurred. Junco fled. However, this tactical retreat
was followed by much larger acts of violence and political reprisal against
Communists within Mexico and without, bringing about even greater acts
of resistance on the part of Mexican radicals.[15]
Several major schisms and realignments took place within the Mexican
Red movement and with respect to Moscow, Nicaragua and the US in 1930.
Early in the year, the Mexican government formally ruptured its long-held
ties to the Soviet Union. The decision was warmly received by Washington
officials even though US Consulate representatives stationed in Mexico
were subsequently derided by local Mexican radicals in Vera Cruz and
Tampico. This diplomatic initiative was purportedly based on claims from
General Enrique Estrada of the Mexican government that ‘pernicious
elements of Russian origin’ were found in Mexico. Communists went on the
offensive in the streets of Tampico and NYC and also in the pages of the
Daily Worker. A February article in the newspaper decried the accusations
on the part of General Estrada, with counterevidence coming from one
leader named Jorge Paz (he seems to have been a Cuban Communist who
was deported to Mexico and later moved to NYC), ‘. . . in raiding their
houses documents have been found proving that they were directed from
Moscow! I am one of those politicals deported from Mexico. Upon me they
have found no documents from the Soviet Union, neither from the Red
International of Labour Unions. But on the other hand the Mexican police
have robbed $275,000 from me that belonged to the periodical The Latin-
American Worker, organ of the Latin-American Trade Union Confederation
in its Mexican branch’.[16]
At the hemispheric level, Reds used newspapers like the Daily Worker
to argue that the repressive house raids and deportations visited upon labour
leaders like Jorge Paz were far from neighbourly or peaceful gestures
toward radical dissidents on the part of Mexican rulers. At the international
level, Communists even more aggressively mounted an attack in the pages
of International Press Correspondence, charging the ‘Portes Oil
government’ with underhand attempts to further the interests of America’s
Standard Oil Company that also had outposts in Mexico by blunting the
force of the mounting labour movement led, in part, by radicals like Jorge
Paz.
Propaganda for the transnational solidarity in support of Mexican
radicalism that was put forward in the Daily Worker also reflected a shifting
notion of ‘America’ within the paper itself. The ‘American proletariat’ from
places as geographically disparate as Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Los
Angeles, Cleveland, Detroit, and Washington DC were also involved in
protests to challenge US oil conglomerates in Mexico. For example, a
Mexican official named Senor Rubio who had reported ties to American oil
wealth received the ‘horrified apologies of Detroit authorities’ after he was
met with hundreds of angry protesters in this city. Days later he found that
in ‘New York some 3,000 workers protesting against the crimes of Yankee
imperialism both in Mexico and Hayti, fought the police for two hours
under the slogan Down with the white terror in Mexico!’ Purportedly, within
twenty-four hours of his return to Mexico, the Mexican government had
severed ties with Soviet Russia.[17]
Efforts to reorganize the Communist Party of Mexico, the AIL and the
ILD, brought about an explicit recognition on the part of Communists in the
United States that both US and Mexican parties had suffered from a
political problem of ‘provincialism’. The US branch of the ILD helped to
pave the way for correcting this problem. Leaflets in both Spanish and
English would be created for dissemination within the US to mount a
propaganda campaign against ‘white terror’ in Cuba and Mexico. While this
might have been only a minor advance in overcoming the language barriers
that the CPUSA had acknowledged earlier in the year, it was important
nonetheless and part of a much larger process of combating barriers of
nation, race, and culture that the criticism of ‘provincialism’ was supposed
to address.[18]
The clearest breakthroughs in the battle against chauvinism, or
provincialism, between Reds in Mexico and the United States manifested in
an overturning of the previously negative conception of peasant radicalism
that the Mexican Communist Party’s industrial-based leadership had put
forward since the party’s founding. In 1930, the Mexican Reds, who were
generally concentrated in the cities, began to soften their own ethnic and
political prejudices toward the Indian peasantry in places like Vera Cruz.
They saw anew the political significance of the spontaneous yet militant
outcry of resistance that was being led by peasants who were facing ever
more harsh land expropriations by the Mexican government. Copies of a
report from the Comintern that were reviewed in the US State Department
pointed to this development in relationship to the Mexican peasants of Vera
Cruz,
Here we can observe some success won by the Communist party in establishing contact with the
Indian masses through the regional peasant organizations which it has created (one of these, in
the State of Vera Cruz, has 3,000 Indians peasants). This success serves as a pledge of the actual
about-face of the Communist Party toward the nationally oppressed Indian masses. Nevertheless,
the revolutionary movement of the Indians which took place this year, passed by the Communist
Party, without its participation and leadership, spontaneously. Such was the revolt of the
survivors of the Hucheticos tribe in the state of Oaxaca, in April-May 1931, occasioned by the
refusal of the state authorities to confirm the election by the Indians of their municipal council,
and by the attempt to impose upon them the henchmen of the local landlords.[19]

Gone were the days, it would seem, of referring to these heroic Indians
as disorganized ‘peons’ lacking in Bolshevik consciousness. Communists
who were reporting on these events underway in Mexico were also seeing
through a new lens the importance of the uprisings led by Indians in
Mexico. In fact, Communists in Mexico and the US now admitted to
negligence in not being led by the peasants’ militant challenge to the
government. While the Comintern had commissioned Communists in 1930
in countries like the US to oversee and ‘educate’ the masses in regions such
as Vera Cruz, the political conditions were such that ‘tribes’ like the
Hucheticos were presently giving leadership to the parties in Mexico and
the US alike. They led militant direct action against eviction from the
homes and lands. Certainly the US State Department felt their wrath.
Indeed, the much-lauded anti-eviction campaigns from Harlem to Trinidad
throughout the 1930s were not the first or most radical signs of resistance to
brutal landlords in the region. Mexico set forth a most militant viable
template in this regard.
Still, the militancy from these peasants was acknowledged and
reciprocated, and Communists in the US were indeed critical to helping
push forward the movement in Mexico. The Mexican AIL, ‘which had
ceased to exist, has again revived’ and organized a meeting in Mexico City
subsequent to the peasant rebellion in Oaxaca, ‘at which 1,000 persons were
present’. ‘In recent months, local organizations of the League have been
established, and groups of students, professors at universities, and others
have founded the League’. The AIL’s recent progress in the academic
community of Mexico City which was in turn motivated by a peasant
rebellion in Oaxaca was seen by Communists in the US and Mexico as an
important advance in the struggle against American imperialism and
Mexico’s plutocratic elite.[20]
The convergence of the fight against racism and US imperialism is
demonstrated in the Mexican Communist experiment in this period. As the
Communists struggled against ‘provincialism’ with respect to Mexican/US
radical solidarity, a greater hemispheric interest in the fight against Jim
Crow racism in the US was manifesting in Mexico. Mexican support for the
‘9 Jovenes Negros’, or the Scottsboro Boys, began in this context. One
petition was submitted to US authorities in Mexico to protest the execution
of the Scottsboro Boys from Tampico, the same city where only several
years before there had been a protest of over thousand people in defence of
Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti who were later executed. Another
report from J. Reuben Clark to the Secretary of State also indicated that the
Syndicate of Workers in Tile and Other Similar Factories of Monterrey,
Nuevo Leon, Mexico were incensed at having ‘learned of the cruel and
infamous execution which the Supreme Court of America proposes to carry
out on May 13th [of 1932] next’. There is no evidence that the AIL or ILD
gave direct leadership to either of the protests emerging from Tampico and
Nuevo Leon respectively; however, the boundaries of nation and culture
were being overcome in an attempt to thwart Jim Crow injustices in the US
South. Such solidarity, clearly in line with Red International strategy around
the ‘Negro Question’, raised concern about an incipient transnational civil
rights movement for US officials at the time.[21]
Diego Rivera made a landmark trip to a Harlem headquarters of the
Urban League in 1933 to make one point clear, ‘There is a Scottsboro in
every country’. In Rivera’s view the same systematic denial of basic
liberties and exploitation that was carried out by the government of Mexico
was also essentially proven to exist in the US South where the African
American population was most densely concentrated. The Chicago
Defender covered the story of Diego Rivera’s trip to NYC during which
time he stopped in Harlem. While the article in the paper played down the
class content of Rivera’s provocative statement, regarding him as a famed
artist with a ‘pretty little wife, wearing her native costume’, it described
how Rivera had descended on the Harlem political scene at a local branch
of the Urban League to demonstrate that the ‘race problem’ was ‘universal’.
The article offered a timely interpretation of Rivera’s linkage of racist
oppression in Mexico and the United States. It stated that Rivera ‘feels that
the Caribbean Race man and the American Race man should unite not as
unto themselves, but in the world movement against capitalistic abuses’.
Rivera and his ‘pretty little wife’ – that is, the formidable Frida Kahlo –
were hardly the quintessential ‘race’ couple that abided by traditional
gender roles characterized by a strong husband and a trophy wife. However,
the overall summation of the racial plight that linked Caribbean –
presumably meant to include Mexico in this article – with African American
people was profound and accurate. Still, Rivera’s own words were indeed
much more solidly anti-capitalist than was the article’s analysis, ‘The Race
problem was never solved by a capitalistic nation . . . The true persecution
is economic as well as social. It is indeed, fundamentally economic’. It
might have been more accurate for Chicago Defender’s headline to read,
‘Racist Economic Problem is Universal’. Radical, intermittently
Communist, artists like Diego Rivera helped to bring the antiracist
movement embodied by the Scottsboro case into international popular
consciousness.[22]
Nearly one year subsequent to Rivera’s visit to Harlem, the Black and
Brown movements linking the American ‘Negro question’ with the plight of
Mexican labourers had become even more interpenetrated, paving the way
for a greater convergence of forces between the Afro and Latin movements
between Mexico, the Caribbean and the United States. A new organization
with significant Communist influence in the United States, one that
eventually functioned to eclipse the political activism of the AAAIL,
emerged in 1934 called the American League Against War and Fascism. It
sponsored a Paris conference in which four African-American women
delegates were described as having put forward an analysis that represented
their class solidarity with labourers in Mexico who were then suffering in
the throes of world depression. Similar cross-border, cross-race, intra-class
solidarity was reciprocated only several months later in 1934 when the US
Consulate in Tampico received local petitions from the ILD in Mexico
against the latest measures to execute the Scottsboro boys. In this way, the
same anti-racist spectre that haunted the Jim Crow South was also
apparently haunting the US Consul at Tampico, Mexico, owing in no small
part to the conscientious efforts of the Red International in the days,
months, and years past.

BLACK WORKERS IN CUBA:

A VANGUARD IN THE CLASS STRUGGLE

But if the specter of anti-racist unity in defence of the Scottsboro boys

had disturbed Tampico in November 1934, then it had outright haunted
Cuba by 30 November of this same year, to the point where young white
Communists in the Cuban Young Communist League [YCL] were being
murdered in cold blood for defending the Scottsboro Nine. Radical Cubans
in the Communist-led YCL, ILD and Committee for Negro Rights
(presumably a Cuban offshoot of the American branch of the League of
Struggle for Negro Rights) were assembled in Havana at a protest in which
police had fired on and successfully executed one brave YCL youth – a
white twenty-three year old named Domingo Ferrer. Even more notably, at
least to Reds at the time, ‘many prominent persons’ such as the proud
nephew and namesake of Antonio Maceo, seminal Black Cuban
independence leader, also addressed the crowd at this protest. Indeed, the
convergence of the Communist-led slogan in defence of the ‘Scottsboro
Boys’ with the decades-old, Cuban independence symbol of Antonio
Maceo, personified by Maceo’s nephew, symbolized the interpenetration of
forces both foreign and domestic that were underpinning Cuba’s radical
experiment. But this was not accidental. As we have seen, by the close of
1934, Black peasants in Realengo 18 who were also the descendents of
veterans for Cuban independence were running a peasant commune on the
other side of the island in the hills of Oriente province outside of
Guantanamo Bay with the active support of Communists.[23]
The National office of the ILD in the United States, then located in
lower Manhattan’s East Village, immediately issued a cable to US Secretary
of State Cordell Hull in response to Ferrer’s death. Anna Damon, acting
leader of the ILD at the time, presumably knew that no cable could begin to
express in practical terms the level of militant solidarity that would indeed
be necessary to bridge the political movements under way in Cuba and
United States. However, the cable aggressively denounced the ‘murderous
assault of the Cuban government on workers peacefully demonstrating their
protests against . . . nine innocent Scottsboro boys’, which ‘resulted in the
wounding of scores and the death of at least one worker’ – attributing
Ferrer’s death to the ‘direct outcome of the intervention policy of the
American Government in Cuba’. Moreover, the ‘latest act of terror of the
Mendieta Government’, said to have been ‘installed and manipulated by the
US State Department’ in order to ‘protect Wall Street investment in Cuba
and preserve the island as an integral part of US imperialism’s war
machine’ was then conjoined with the struggles of African Americans.[24]
The ILD’s cable asserted that the intensified ‘oppression of the Negro
people in the US’ made them ‘victims of the same imperialism that enslaves
Cuba’, all of which was ‘symbolized by the Scottsboro case’. Insisting upon
the ‘immediate evacuation of Guantanamo Naval Base’, which hunkered
down ominously below the mountain-based peasant commune at Realengo
18, was therefore a practical demand that demonstrated the manner in
which the Red International was attempting to overturn geographic
boundaries of nation in the common struggle against American empire’s
racially prejudiced core. There was an origin to this antiracist solidarity that
extended roughly back to the year 1930.[25]
The New Year of 1930 caused a certain degree of consternation for US
and Cuban authorities alike as the question arose, where in the world is
Sandalio Junco? While Junco’s fate and exact whereabouts were presently
unknown, as he fled imminent repatriation back to Cuba at the hands of the
Mexican government, Cuban authorities were much more squarely
positioned to contain – or at least attempt to contain – the political influence
that the Jamaican pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey was also having on Black
labourers in the island at the onset of 1930, which coincided with the onset,
more importantly, of the sugar harvesting season. Black unrest in Cuba was
incited by renegade leaders who were both foreign and domestic, and
Garvey’s power lay in the fact that his mass base was both foreign and
domestic – not unlike Communists in this same period.
Garvey was ideally positioned to connect with everyday Black people
unlike almost any other radical figure in the Diaspora in 1930, perhaps even
more so than the Afro-Cuban labour leader Junco himself. Garvey’s work in
the United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), based in Jamaica, put
him front and center as labour representative in the islands. He had
maintained a political base of influence among not only Black labourers
who identified with the context of Anglophone British West Indian affairs,
many of whom were migrants in Cuba at the time, but also in Cuba’s Afro-
Latin population, many of whom found themselves working alongside
migrant Jamaican and Haitian labourers in gruesome labour conditions.
Garvey rallied these labourers around the common goal of race unity in
opposition to white-owned private enterprise in the sugar industry in 1930.
The cane fields on the island quickly went up in smoke, quite literally, in a
manner reminiscent of the slave rebellions that ripped through the
Caribbean in the days of colonial enslavement. It was in this context that
the Red International – and even nationalist – forces became more
aggressive, indirectly taking leadership from the Black sugar workers’
uprising that Garvey had inspired. Garvey’s deportation from the island of
Cuba by President Machado in early 1930 was characterized by the US
authorities as a political phenomenon falling under the category of
‘miscellaneous Communist activities’. Relative to developments in the
labouring population on the island of Cuba, the Cuban Secretary of the
Interior had blurred the distinctions between Garveyism and Bolshevism for
what seem to have been quite understandable reasons.[26]
Garvey and the Communists were deemed unpatriotic, foreign menaces
in the eyes of Cuba’s Secretary of the Interior. A US official at the time said,
‘the deportation of Marcus Garvey, therefore, has been a measure taken by
the Government for the general benefit of Cuban society and in accordance
with ideals of patriotism’. Days later, the Liberator reported that President
Machado had banned the right of all workers to meet during the sugar
grinding season,
Acting more and more openly as the bloody agent of US imperialism in its virtual exploitation of
the Cuban masses, dictator Machado, president of Cuba, issued an order yesterday through his
Secretary of the Interior, prohibiting all workers meetings and affairs during the sugar
manufacturing and sugar cane harvesting season. The measure is taken to stifle any efforts of the
workers for better conditions and wages and has roused the workers to a high state of resentment.
Many Cuban Negroes and Haitians are involved.[27]

Inspired presumably by two forces – Garvey’s calls for race unity

against oppressive white sugar oligarchs and Communist agitation for the
overthrow of Machado – Black labourers in Cuba, both foreign and
domestic, rose up in January 1930.
THE ANATOMY OF A COUP –
COMMUNISM AT THE HEART

On the heels of the island’s deportation of Garvey and crackdown on

Black sugar workers’ organization, Communists increased their lead in
workers’ general strikes and uprisings across the island. In turn, this radical
upsurge drew increased repression at the hands of the fast toppling Cuban
state, then headed by President Machado. That is, Black Cuban workers’
radical protest, and its attendant repression, propelled forward the spread of
labour rebellion on the island and, in turn, violent suppression.
Furthermore, class struggle in Cuba forced to a head Communist
international support – albeit flawed in many instances – from the United
States.
A fundamental measure of revolutionary success is the extent of
political backlash that revolutionaries face at the hands of the state. The
Cuban AIL and ILD were declared illegal – again – in 1930 just as Reds in
NYC were reorganising the official headquarters of these Comintern
organizations in the hemisphere. At the level of appearance, this would
suggest that in Cuba both the AIL and ILD were in political retreat given
their decisions to operate clandestinely rather than openly. In essence,
however, these Cuban Reds were helping to lay the basis for a massive
workers’ counter-offensive only several years later that would culminate in
the Revolution of 4 September 1933, which, tragically, would ultimately
play into the hands of proto-fascist forces of a new, social-democratic
stripe.
There is support for the case that Reds played a considerable role in the
mounting protest movement against Machado’s government and ‘Yankee
imperialism’ in 1930 during the general strike that began on 20 March
1930, the Comintern’s International Unemployment Day. On this day in
NYC, thousands had gathered in the streets for the general cause of
combating unemployment under the banner of proletarian internationalism.
On the eve of the corresponding protest in Cuba, US Ambassador Harry
Guggenheim to Cuba from 1929 to 1933, a pivotal figure in the formulation
of US foreign policy relative to Cuba during the years leading up to the
1933 Revolution, noted that President Machado was ‘somewhat concerned’
about this strike. For not only had it been ‘ordered’ by the Comintern, but it
was expected to receive support from several labour unions along with the
non-Red Union Nacionalista.
Not only had the Comintern helped to initiate this strike from points far
to the north and east, but Black Reds like James Ford were also on the
scene from the ‘Colossus to the North’ as early as 1930 and poised to
promote greater support from the United States for the movement led by
their Cuban counterparts. The ‘Negro question’, on Ford’s account, was a
fundamental basis for building this transnational Red solidarity. He used the
pages of the Daily Worker to initiate an intense campaign of political
education about the history of Black labourers on the island, noting that the
‘influx of Haitians and Jamaican Negroes has increased considerably since
the inception of this slave traffic in 1912. In 1912 there were 700 Jamaicans
and 233 Haitians in Cuba; the number rose to 27,088 Jamaicans and 35,971
Haitians in 1921’. Fast-forwarding to the uprising under way in Haiti by
1929 and attendant popular support generated by the CPUSA for this
rebellion, particularly in NYC, Ford noted that in Cuba, ‘Only a few months
ago Junco, a native Negro labour leader, barely escaped from the country
with his life’. Ford was essentially attempting to broaden the antiracist
struggle and appreciation for the militancy of Black workers’ unrest by
creating narratives that located the struggles of Haitian militants and Black
Cuban leaders like Junco at the heart of his articles about world socialist
revolution in the wake of the world depression.[28]
There was a discrepancy between the rhetorical politics of solidarity
represented in the pages of Daily Worker and the actual organizational
support that materialized. In May 1930, as the AIL in lower Manhattan
began the process of headquartering the entire AAAIL in NYC, the Cuban
leaders of the AIL petitioned to the League Against Imperialism’s center in
Berlin, Germany for additional funds and political support. The reason for
their operational and logistical problems was, on their account, due to fact
that their more affluent US comrades were in dereliction of their fiduciary
duty. While it is not entirely clear why the US AIL headquarters had not
been generating adequate funds and support for the Cuban branch, we can
assume that such monetary problems were only secondary causes of the
Cuban AIL.[29]
In 1930, Cuban AIL members were still dealing with the effects of
heightened political dictatorship under President Machado that resulted in
the aftermath of the Red-led general strike of March 20. On the one hand,
the March 20 strike had heightened the radical impulse on the island and, in
turn, quickening the feverish pulse of the rulers and causing ‘uneasiness
among the small bourgeoisie’. The strike foreshadowed the ‘prospect of a
railroad strike against the United Railways Enterprise . . . [and] Cuban
Telephone Company’, which were run by British and US finance capital on
the island, respectively. On the other hand, this strike also formed the
pretext for the Cuban government crackdown on Communism, with the AIL
declared illegal by the Machado government. Luigi Viondi of the Cuban
AIL petitioned the Berlin headquarters, suggesting, ‘we will have to give it
another name in order to legalize it’. No amount of money from the AIL in
the US could eliminate the Cuban AIL’s fundamentally political problems
associated with having been driven into illegality under a proto-fascist
regime backed by United States and British imperial interests.[30]
In the face of being driven underground, Viondi’s petition to the Berlin
headquarters of the AAAIL charged the US counterparts with insufficient
support. According to Viondi, having ‘established contact with the
organization in the United States, which has sent us a copy of its by-laws
and some theses or resolutions of the Congress of Frankfurt’, it remained
problematic to Viondi that ‘it is not sufficient for us’. By Viondi’s account,
formalities and procedural matters like by-laws and conference reports
would not pass muster. What was needed were boots on the ground. Due to
these apparent weaknesses of the US affiliate, Berlin became the focus of
the Cuban Red ‘orientation of the Anti-Imperialistic work’. It would appear
that the AIL headquarters in the NYC evinced traces of the same
insufficient support for their counterparts in the Caribbean that
characterized Workers’ [Communist] Party relations with the Communist
nucleus in Puerto Rico several years before – i.e. sending start-up materials
to their Caribbean affiliates with the expectation that such support was a
sufficient show of internationalism.[31]
The number of Communists on the island who were affiliated with the
Communist Party of Cuba [PCC] continued to increase in the face of
heightened repression under President Machado. August 1930 brought
another government raid similar to that carried out in 1925 on the
Communist office headquarters of the PCC. The more recent raid, though,
had purportedly turned out a list of over 2,000 Communists in Cuba in
contradistinction to the list of 200 names only several years before. In due
course, a large section of anti-government forces, led in part by Cuban
military leaders Carlos Mendieta and Fulgencio Batista, would ultimately
seize the reins of this movement against President Machado. But the road to
this revolutionary coup d’état was paved by the efforts of singular Reds like
Viondi in the AIL and longtime African diasporic radicals like Marcus
Garvey who helped incite workers’ uprisings at the point of production. The
list of 2,000 names in Cuba also implicated US comrades based in NYC
with government agents purporting to find ‘receipts for remittances of
money sent to Communists here from New York’. In short, Communist
influence in Cuba was giving rise to a ‘Red menace’ on the island, which, in
turn, augured a new era of coercive US foreign policy to thwart this
movement under the auspices of Ambassador Guggenheim.[32]
In the period from 1930 to 1934, the foreign hand of US military and
economic rule played an increasingly direct role in the domestic matters
under way in Cuba – though this was not often acknowledged in the public
discourse of purportedly progressive ‘New Deal’ civil society in the United
States under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Ambassador
Guggenheim was well aware of the importance of maintaining a liberal
appearance of US diplomacy in Cuba even though in private consort with
the Secretary of State he frankly acknowledged the need to assist Cuban
authorities in their suppression of Communism in Cuba when the threat of
radical upheaval directly infringed upon US business interests on the island.
In response to intelligence relayed by one Cuban official relative to the
recent raid on the PCC office in August, Guggenheim wrote,
I said I thought he could count on our cooperation in carrying out any investigations which
circumstances might indicate as being in the interests of both countries . . . I did not know how
real or extensive the Communist menace in Cuba might be, but that arrests on a large scale would
be likely to cause a good deal of uneasiness and might provoke unfavorable comment in the
foreign labour press. Unless actual danger to life and property would result from allowing the
 suspected persons to remain at large, it might be preferable to keep them under close
surveillance.[33]
That only the infringement on ‘life and property’ of US businessmen
would warrant direct American military intervention in Cuba’s affairs
uncovers the deep-seated roots of US imperialism. The Cuban authorities
under President Machado were much more apprehensive about the
precarious nature of their own control of the state and therefore sought US
support where they felt it was wanting. Once US enterprises came under
direct attack from labour and political unrest, led in large part by
Communists, US warships were fast on the scene.
The New York Times opportunistically and quite disingenuously seized
the situation of mounting unrest and repression in Cuba to contrast the
Cuban dictatorship with the supposed tolerant, democratic civil society in
the United States. In mid-August 1930, days after the raid on Communist
offices in Cuba, the Times announced that Reds in the US freely expressed
their radicalism by publicly ‘cheering Seven Spanish Communists, deported
from Cuba because of their activities’. These seven Spanish Communists
arrived at the port of Manhattan on a steamship named, quite appropriately,
Cristobol Colon (Christopher Colombus). While ‘no arrests were made’ at
this protest of less than 100 people in NYC, speeches delivered in both
Spanish and English demonstrate the manner in which linguistic boundaries
did not hinder this solidarity protest. The US branch of the ILD in NYC was
a leading voice at this rally to defend the seven deportees who were
supposedly members of the Cuban Confederation of Labour, or CNOC.
Such demonstrations of internationalist unity as this one helped to lay the
basis for a greater network of collusion of Red forces despite the challenges
that Viondi had outlined with respect to the Anti-Imperialist League.[34]
Just as the US section of the ILD was edging toward increasing its
support for the labour struggles of CNOC in Cuba, the CPUSA had begun
to offer what it considered ‘fraternal counsel’ rather than paternalistic dicta
to the Communist Party of Cuba. An open letter from the CPUSA to the
PCC in the pages of The Communist published in November 1930 was very
telling. It stated that the ‘CPUSA by no means intends to substitute for the
directives of the CI [Comintern], but only to give what assistance our
opinions may be to you in concretizing the CI directives, and to carry out
the tasks of fraternal counsel which are the duty of one brother Party to
another’. Presumably, the CPUSA praxis perceived itself as the ‘big
brother’ to the Cuban section.[35]
The ‘fraternal counsel’ in the form of an open letter quickly
degenerated, however, into an open indictment of the PCC’s leadership
during the March 20 protest. It asserted that ‘the Communist Party of Cuba
failed at that time to fully understand the fact that although 200,000 workers
had answered its call to strike on March 20, this was only because the
March 20 movement was for the masses a struggle for bread for the
unemployed’. The CPUSA report continued its criticism with the
observation that ‘for the masses the question of legality of the trade unions
did not represent that burning, immediate issue of daily life which the most
backward workers could understand’. This might well have been the case,
and perhaps the Cuban Communists were more concerned with legality and
financial support than pushing the workers’ demands to the forefront – but
the US counterparts were not exactly in an equivalent position. Their offices
were functional and their operation was, for all intense and purpose, legal.
What is more, these ‘forward’ thinking US Reds had also retained the
controversial notion of ‘backward’ masses in the Caribbean periphery.[36]
The CPUSA charged the PCC with the task to ‘energetically penetrate
the masses with its own slogans and demands, expressing the immediate
needs of these masses’. The US Communists were obviously attempting to
offer what they considered to have been honest leadership in bringing about
socially, politically and economically fundamental change in Cuba. And if
Cuban comrades were chagrined, President Machado was panicked. He
interpreted this solidarity as expressed in The Communist – however flawed
– as an affront to his leadership, which it was. He answered the CPUSA’s
call for concrete ‘slogans and demands’ at the end of 1930 with a direct,
nationwide attack on Communism in a speech delivered in January 1931.
Months later, he followed this public statement with an official Presidential
declaration of a state of siege on the island. Agrecion comunista implacable,
or implacable communist aggression, was the ideological rationale for
President Machado’s declaration of a state of siege in Spring 1931.[37]
While Machado was quite opportunistically ringing the anti-communist
alarm in order to encourage greater US direct military muscle on his behalf,
the truth was that Communists had dismissed much of the anti-Machado
movement as riddled with petit-bourgeois students and intellectuals and,
even worse, reactionary elites who wanted Cuba under their own thumb.
Therefore, in the months and years leading up to Machado’s forced removal
from office, Communists in Cuba were not content to surrender the
revolutionary impulse of the working masses to the leadership of bourgeois
Cuban opposition forces like Mendieta and Fulgencio Batista. Even though
mass uprisings in districts like Santa Clara were partially under the
leadership of renegade military forces, Communists noted that there was
also evidence of independent radical struggle from below led, notably, by
courageous working-class women who needed to feed their children
without shoes. For example, in 1931, ‘a hunger revolt took place. 3,000
people, the majority of them women, stormed the offices of the Minister of
the Interior in order to demand food for their starving families. The police
were unable to hold the crowds in check. The nervousness of the Cuban
authorities spread quickly to the United States Department of Justice’. The
‘nervousness’ also spread quickly to the State Department.[38]
The class struggle then underway in Cuba during the months leading up
to the revolt of 1933, led in part by the PCC, was significant on a local and
even on a global scale. ‘Up with Communism’ was the Red slogan at the
May Day celebration in Havana in 1931. Weeks later, ‘Down with America’
was the heading of Albert Einstein’s cable to the US president upon word of
the imminent ‘execution of the eight negroes of Scottsboro’. The US rulers
had multiple reasons for nervousness caused not only by radical uprisings in
Cuba but also by the growing anti-racist solidarity for the Scottsboro case
that took on global proportions.[39]
Above and beyond Einstein’s cable ‘in the name of humanity and
justice’ sent from Berlin, Germany, it was also reported by US Consulate
officials in Berlin that ‘during the night June 30 one plate glass window of
the Consulate General and glass panel of entrance as well as two windows
Wetheim tea room right of entrance broken by stones thrown by group
young men’. This same tactic of defacing the US Consulate would be a
preferred protest tactic for incensed Cuban radicals on a number of
important questions implicating US socio-economic control in the
Caribbean for the duration of the interwar period. In the case of Germany,
however, these young men had apparently wrapped the stones in paper that
‘contained protest of young Communist organization against condemnation
of eight negroes Alabama’. From Calcutta, India to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
to Cologne, Germany, there were people storming US Consulate
headquarters located quite literally only a stone’s throw away from their
protests against the arrest and expected execution of the ‘nine Negro boys’.
[40]

The Scottsboro campaign arrived on the scene in Cuba and the Cuban
CP declared its allegiance to this cause on the Fourth of July in 1931, the
day that the US celebrates its independence from Britain. The historical
conjuncture of massive unemployment in Santa Clara along with the global
opposition to the imminent execution in Scottsboro gave rise to a
reinvigorated ILD in Cuba; quite appropriately, it based itself in the Black
Belt of Oriente. In short, the Communist movement in Cuba was strongest
in terms of class struggle and working-class leverage over the bourgeois
state where its organization alongside and among Black workers – both
Cuban and non-Cuban – was strongest. And the Scottsboro case helped
bring about this upsurge in strength. Maintaining an ILD headquarters in
what was most likely Santiago was presumably quite different from one
based on the west of the island, toward the industrially ‘advanced’ labouring
demographic of Havana. Again, the Scottsboro case offered a convenient
yet potent trope through which to enact this process.[41]
Yet the MOPR’s [i.e. ILD] struggle to defend the Scottsboro boys,
which had reverberations in the Black Belt of Oriente, was only one aspect
of the way racial politics played into the Red International’s transnational
circuit between the US and Cuba. The other aspect of the circuit was the
relatively negligent manner in which the Caribbean Bureau of the
Comintern addressed the concrete matter of consolidating a large base of
Black labourers in Cuba to actually join and take leadership within the
burgeoning Communist movement on the island. That is, the Caribbean
Bureau of the Comintern did not offer any practical methods for how the
Communist Party of Cuba could augment its demographic representation
among people of African origin even as the Scottsboro campaign became
more popular within the Cuban movement. ‘While the Party membership is
growing (500 members at present compared with about 300 a year ago)’,
noted one report, it also stated that ‘the composition of the membership
continues to suffer in three essential respects’. Among the ‘essential
respects’ was the lack of ‘native-born Cubans’ and ‘very few Negro
workers, though one-third of the population is Negro’, defects which were
‘especially strong in the Havana organization’. The PCC was in a difficult
position precisely because the epicenter of Communist organization
remained in Havana even though the anti-racist struggle, if it sought to be
successful on a large scale, would necessarily have to include and even base
itself in the eastern portion of the island – the portion considered by Reds to
have been more ‘backward’ than the proletarian base in Havana. Ironically,
or perhaps to the point, by 1934, the peasants of Realengo 18 were indeed
in the forefront of Cuba’s Soviet movement even though party headquarters
was on the other side of the island.[42]
In spite of the relatively weak base of leadership within the Black
population in Cuba in 1932, Reds in NYC, Harlem in particular, were
instrumental in helping to bridge the gaps between Black and Red in Cuba.
When a Cuban labour leader in the Cuban National Confederation of
Labour named Ermando Grau was disappeared in August of 1932, marking
only the most recent in a rash of strange ‘disappearances’ of radical – often
Red – Cuban native leaders, the ILD based from its headquarters in lower
Manhattan was the first organization on the scene, issuing a resolution
against this labour and political persecution. The resolution notably
conjoined the demand for Grau’s release with the freedom for the
Scottsboro young men as well as US-based Communist labour leader Tom
Mooney. Days later, an alliance of forces in Harlem including a local
branch of the Cuban YCL, a local Puerto Rican branch of the AIL, and the
local Harlem branch of the CP, united for a protest of over 1,000 persons
through Harlem on behalf of Grau San Martin and persecuted radicals in
Cuba.[43]
In order to garner local support for the rally, Communists announced in
the Daily Worker the route of the protest, ‘The demonstration will start at
4pm at 124th Street and Lenox Ave and proceed along the following route:
Down Lenox to 116th St, east to Madison Ave, down Madison to 114th St,
west through 114th St, past the Porto Rican Anti-Imperialist Association
headquarters to Lenox Ave, down to 110th St where a meeting will take
place’. Among the scheduled speakers was ‘Sanchez for the Anti-
Imperialist League, Carl Hecker for the International Labour Defence, and
Shepard for the Communist Party’. The route and the speakers tell us a
great deal about the politics of the period and place. Harlem was much
more than a ‘Negro Mecca’ and cultural ‘renaissance’ capital for the
duration of the interwar period. Even though in 1934 James Ford
determined that Harlem was a ‘petit-bourgeois’ center of Black leadership
rather than a ‘Negro Mecca’, the CPUSA leadership in Harlem in 1932 was
helping to bring about the collusion of Black, Latino and white workers –
many from the US, and many from the British West Indies, Haiti, Cuba and
Puerto Rico. In turn, this circuit of leadership coming from upper
Manhattan gave rise to an ever expanding network of people and
organizations to include Puerto Rican radicals in lower Harlem.[44]
Albert Sanchez and Henry Shepard were Communists of Puerto Rican
and African-American origin, whose Red political activism in Harlem
would physically lead them to building the Communist movement on
distant shores in the islands of Puerto Rico and Cuba. That the protest ended
on 110th Street precisely where the Park Palace Casino was located, the
premier Red locale in the ensuing period for Cuban and Puerto Rican
solidarity campaigns, only demonstrates further the degree to which the
circuit taken reflected a hemispheric strategy toward building multiracial,
cross-border solidarity under the Red banner.

CLOSE BUT NO CUBAN CIGAR:

CUBA’S COUP AND COMMUNISM’S TRAGIC CLIMAX

Cuba’s ‘September 4th Revolution’ which began, to be precise, in

August of 1933, fundamentally heightened the material significance of the
‘Negro Question’ in the hemisphere for Communists as disparate as Cuba
and NYC. ‘Negroes with guns’ had became a real problem again for US and
Cuban rulers whose political and economic wealth was concentrated in the
Black Belt of Oriente, especially once these African Diasporic labourers in
town and country began to speak of Soviets and act as Red guards. The
period of militant and political upheaval from August 1933 through the rise
of Realengo 18 in late 1934 marks a phenomenal if brief era of progress for
the Red movement within Cuba and beyond, with the leadership of Black
labourers loosely or directly affiliated with Communists being at the core of
this progression. In addition, the movement underway in Cuba strengthened
and intensified the commitment of Communists in the United States – and
particularly in NYC – to the movement under way in Cuba.
 The manner in which US Communists responded to the Cuban revolt is
similar to how they reacted upon word of the Haitian uprising in 1929. As
soon as news spread to Communists in NYC that their fellow class brethren
in Cuba had been shot down at a protest in early August of 1933 by
President Machado’s fast-eroding state apparatus, a demonstration called
jointly by the LSNR, ILD and AIL was scheduled to take place in Harlem.
President Machado’s days were numbered, as were the days of American
Ambassador Sumner Welles, successor to Guggenheim, whose own early
retirement would take place in mid-September. While the numbers of
unknown deaths at the hands of Cuban police mounted, the Daily Worker
offered an expose of the plight of Cuban labourers implicated in this
massive general strike and ensuing coup which was then under way in
Cuba, particularly highlighting the growth of the Communist movement led
by the PCC and YCL and based in the industrial region surrounding
Havana. Even before the seizure of power from the Grau regime on 4
September 1933, the Daily Worker reported,
The decision to go to work was reached last night . . . at a packed meeting of over 700 bus
workers in the Trade Union Center of the Confederacion Nacional Obrera de Cuba [CNOC]. The
attitude of the workers was clearly shown when after a speech by one of the active strikers, a
member of the Young Communist League, over 50 young bus workers signed application cards
for the YCL . . . Many sections of the Communist Party and Young Communist League opened
legal headquarters yesterday. In the central section, the police arrested all comrades but later
released them. The police said they would inquire whether the Communist were legal or not,
since they hear that ‘this government was a government of all save the Communists’.[45]

That ‘this government was a government of all save the Communists’

could not have been a more profoundly accurate understanding on the part
of Cuban police – at least until Fidel Castro’s successful revolution in 1959,
which, even then, was not explicitly linked with Communism per se at the
outset of seizing power. However, the presence of such proletarian support
for the CPC and YCL primarily through the active organization of the
CNOC based among such critical sectors like transportation workers
demonstrates the degree to which the ‘Red menace’ was indeed poised to
help cripple if not entirely shut down the socio-economic apparatus of Cuba
at the onset of the general strike.
 A question is raised as to how ‘advanced’ the Communists were during
the initial days of the strike. That is, the strike was based in the industrial
districts closer to Havana rather than on the opposite side of the island to
the east where there were more sugar-based labourers. This problem had
remained the Achilles Heel of the Communists. Very quickly, United Fruit
Company suffered the blows of a fierce backlash within the sugar sector
once over 2,000 of its employees went on strike. Upon hearing of ‘rumours
of an uprising, the manager demanded protection’, and the Government was
forced to meet with eight strikers who put forward such demands as
‘recognition of labour unions; eight-hour day with double pay for overtime;
one dollar a day for unskilled labour’. Behind the strike were not only the
CNOC, predictably, but also the entire Latin American radical labour
community that united under the banner of the CNOC. A protest held on 27
August 1933, involving over 2,000 labourers at one Macabi sugar mill left
the mill ‘paralyzed’ since labourers shut down the electric lights and
telephone systems. Only 17 Cuban soldiers were reportedly on the scene.
Clearly, the labourers were in control.[46]
As Grau San Martin prepared to seize the reins of the movement on 4
September through popular approval from the labouring sectors,
intellectuals, students and military junta forces, it became clear that he, too,
would have to willingly promote the use of military force against the Reds.
After all, Cuban Reds had even gone so far as to challenge the liberal
policies of the San Martin forces as well as to decry American business and
military intervention that was most pronounced near Guantanamo Bay, on
the eastern side of the island. In short, in the days and weeks ahead, radical
labourers, often led by Communists, became increasingly engaged in sit-
down strikes and political agitation as evinced in Macabi, entirely
undermining the conciliatory efforts of San Martin to increase workers’
rights without granting full ownership of production to the workers
themselves. Hence, the revolutionary process that Communists were
attempting to establish was considered too much of a menace for the self-
proclaimed radical forces that were temporarily at the helm of the coup
d’état, i.e. San Martin.
Partially motivated by the desire to appease US businessmen such as
those managing United Fruit, the various parties and organizations then
contending for state power – apart from the Reds – made a tacit recognition
of the fact that the Cuban military would, in any case, be used to thwart
labour uprisings that could not be contained by the political movements
controlled by the competing elite forces. Communists and Black labourers –
only a small fraction of whom were Red – suffered the brunt of this political
concession. In other words, there was a consensus among the leading
sectors of the movement – as Communists were still a minority, though
powerful minority – that the goal of ousting Machado and later the interim
President Cespedes was not to implement a system of socialism from
below. Such a system would inevitably require that Cuban and American
capitalists would be entirely expropriated, placing control of the means of
production in the hands of the state which, in turn, would then supposedly
lay the basis for the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.
Days after Grau San Martin took leadership of the republic on 4
September, Ambassador Welles, in the final days of his office, began a
series of almost daily correspondences with Secretary of State Sumner
Welles as well as President Roosevelt in order to determine the extent to
which the US ought to intervene directly since the military overthrow of the
pro-American Cespedes Government. Insofar as Welles had surmised –
perhaps apocryphally – that ‘the army mutiny was originally engineered by
a few Communist leaders in Habana under the guidance of Martinez
Villena’, Welles concluded that the ‘secretly semi-Communist programme’
of even the Grau regime was too close to Moscow for America’s comfort.
Hence, he calculated,
If this government continues much longer and no counter revolt is successfully staged by the
conservative groups it will be replaced by a soldier workman which will last until a concerted
revolt of the majority takes place . . . we should take no action which would permit the creation
of the belief that any Cuban Government was installed by us . . . we would not be ‘favoring one
faction out of many’, but lending friendly assistance.[47]

‘Friendly assistance’ to whom, one might wonder. Surely no friendly

assistance was granted to the Communists in Santiago. There, in the heart of
Cuba’s Black majority, the situation was considered ‘grave’ by Welles yet
probably an ‘opportunity’ for the Reds – in spite of the blood they were
shedding in order to attack ‘members of the present revolutionary group in
control’ and also the recent arrival of America’s naval destroyer called
Sturtevart which was stationed in Guantanamo Bay.
In Santiago, the heart of the Oriente Black Belt, for the days and weeks
after the purportedly progressive San Martin’s seizure of power,
Communists were astir. Reports to Welles from the US Consul stationed
therein indicated ‘five persons having been killed in the city jail with
crowds running through the streets and considerable shooting’. Moreover, it
did not help that Communists were ‘meeting before the army barracks and
Communist speeches over the radio’ were heard across the island, calling
the American military’s bluff, only kilometers from the naval destroyer
called the McFarland which was anchored directly outside of Santiago.
Though the ‘commanding officer [did] not come ashore’ initially, Welles
noted with some assurance that the presence of destroyers on both sides of
the islands had indeed helped to intimidate this most radical wing of
opposition. But Welles’s confidence was only partially well-founded, as the
recent death of one Cuban YCL member named August Torre in Oriente
had led to a protest of 15,000 Cubans who in turn stormed the American
garrison at Guantanamo Bay and demanded to no avail the immediate
ouster of the officer responsible for Torre’s untimely demise.[48]
Bourgeois US newspapers such as the Daily News and Chicago
Tribune, in contradistinction to the Daily Worker, cast the September events
in Cuba and particularly in the Black stronghold based in Santiago, in terms
of anarchy that necessitated America’s intervention. The trepidation evinced
by US media was certainly understandable insofar as the Communists in
Cuba had maintained their uncompromising anti-collaborationist slogan of
‘Down with San Martin’, despite the fact that he had proclaimed to
represent a political agenda that was sympathetic to workers’
empowerment. What is more, they had conjoined this demand with the
slogan ‘Down with the United States’. Ignoring in total the violent
aggression against radical protesters primarily at the hands of Cuban police
and military authorities – probably with US assistance – the Daily News
was aghast at the militancy of the workers, noting ‘machine guns were fired
over the heads of the crowds while the cavalry attacked the communists
with their machetes. Later communists swarmed through the streets
screaming that Sergeant Hernandez Soler, who commanded the soldiers,
would be executed’. Panic in the US most assuredly mounted once the
Chicago Tribune corroborated such news toward the end of September,
reporting that in Santiago, ‘sugar labourers, now syndicalized, are offering
strong resistance, with the threats to kill managers and their families now
prisoners in the mills they have taken’ such that ‘sugar labourers and
communists are running wild’. But what was developing in Oriente
province and throughout Cuba for that matter was hardly anarchy led by
aimless ‘sugar labourers and communists’ who were ‘running wild’.[49]
Actually, Communists had gone on the political offensive for the time
being, buttressed by the valiant efforts of labourers concentrated in the
sugar sector, many of whom were Black. However, the arms of the state
were much more violent and deadly than the arms of the radicals. In the
heat of the September 1933 insurrections across Oriente with US warships
in clear view of Santiago, Reds had gone so far as to physically present the
remains of slain martyr and Red revolutionary hero Julio Antonio Mella to
remind one another that the lives of those lost had remained the lifeblood of
the present struggle. While US officials ordered more war ships to
intimidate the seemingly fearless rebels based in Oriente, deemed too
physically proximate to Guantanamo and too politically loyal to ‘Viva,
Moscow’, Cuban Reds evoked the symbolic representation of leaders like
Mella to further their cause of workers’ power on the island and beyond.[50]
Though the PCC was cabling Comintern headquarters in Moscow with
a ‘request’ for the ‘international support of the proletariat’, their proletarian
international muscle was not to be found in Moscow, or NYC for that
matter, but rather was actually hidden in plain sight, in the form of the
Black migrant labourers amassed in the Black Belt. One report to the State
Department noted that in the district of La Gloria outside of Santiago,
Communists had gained sufficient strength in the interior such that self-
determined Jamaican migrant labourers were acting as Red guards to
prevent the US fruit owners from entering their – i.e. the labourers’ – mills.
In this way, the proletarian muscle and international support at the time of
insurrection in Cuba took the form of inter-Caribbean solidarity
incorporating into its network such obscure Jamaican labourers as these,
‘patrolling all the roads and refusing to permit the owners to work on their
own properties’. The report from La Gloria went on to say that ‘an
American woman was prevented from milking a cow on her own farm by a
group of five labourers who insulted her and wrenched her arm’. Old racial
tropes of Black men threatening white women saturated the coverage. It
was the pretext for US intervention.[51]
In response to the mounting revolutionary unrest emanating from
Oriente province, the Cuban government, which by October of 1933 had
successfully all but removed the San Martin regime, was under the
leadership of military commander Fulgencio Batista. Batista had pledged to
protect US enterprise at all costs, while San Martin waffled on the subject,
and Batista enacted a most vicious backlash against the migrant labourers
on the island such as those Jamaican Red guards in La Gloria. Beginning in
November of 1933, mass deportations of Jamaican and Haitian labourers
concentrated in the sugar sector of Oriente – the very demographic that had
helped to lay the foundation for Communist aggression on the island in
1930 – marked the beginning of a long period of intensified political and
economic repression under Batista, as Communists would indeed attest.
Moreover, he had the explicit though underhanded approval of the US State
Department and, by translation, President Roosevelt.[52]
Not only did President Batista’s counter-revolutionary Cuban
government have the consent of US rulers in their extreme and racially
prejudiced repression of the labouring population, but also, they had the
support of proto-fascist Dominican President Rafael Trujillo, the single
most racist dictator in the Caribbean, in carrying out their military
intervention in Cuba. Many Haitian migrant labourers who faced
deportation from Cuba in a series of concentration-camp style detentions
subsequently left to work in places like the Dominican Republic. History
records their fate: 30,000 slaughtered by machete in 1937. As early as 11
September 1933, Trujillo had offered his assistance to the US military in
thwarting the Cuban uprising. One representative of the US Legation in
Santo Domingo relayed a message to US Secretary of State Hull that the
Dominican Minister of Foreign Affairs ‘called on me this morning by
direction of the President of the Republic, to inform me that in view of the
confidence of the Dominican Government in the ‘purity and justice’ of the
policy of the President of the United States with regard to the Cuban
Situation’, the Dominican Republic would readily offer its ‘loyal
friendship’.
Though the US declined the offer, the US-originated Ku Klux Klan had
also gone transnational, emerging in Cuba in 1934 and openly terrorizing
Black islanders. By March 1934, the Cuban Ku Klux Klan strengthened
itself and became openly violent, lynching one young Black Cuban named
Jose M. Proveyor, a ‘Negro student [who] was lynched in one of the main
streets of Trinidad [Cuba]’.[53]
The Red International endured in the face of this increased repression
against Communists and radicals in general and most sharply against
labourers of African descent, particularly those of non-Cuban origin. Black
Communists in Harlem, such as Henry Shepard, responded to the racist
upsurge in the aftermath of Cuba’s 4th September coup d’état. Shepard was
on the scene formally representing the League of Struggle for Negro Rights
only months after James Ford’s monumental trip to Cuba declaring the right
to self-determination in the Black Belt in January 1934. Shepard’s visit was
not simply in response to Proveyor’s death; rather, a rash of lynching,
presumably enacted by the Cuban KKK, had recently taken place in the
context of ‘skirmishes between the Negro workers and white lynch gangs . .
. in Trinidad, Manzanilla, Aliquizar, Kuira de Milaro, and other parts of the
island’. To underscore the point, the ‘Negro question’ was not simply a US
domestic matter for the Red International, and particularly not where lynch
law was concerned.[54]
Above and beyond the explicit presence of anti-black racism as
represented by the lynching Cuban Klansmen, proof of anti-Black
aggression in Cuba that ensued after the Batista-Mendieta regime seized
power at the tail end of 1933 into 1934 was found in the wave of beatings
and gang violence that were documented in the Harlem Liberator. This
newspaper, having been resurrected after a publication hiatus, noted the
following occurrences relative to Cuba’s Black population,
A lynch gang composed of members of the ABC and the police force marched through the streets
shouting ‘Down with Negroes’. They raided and destroyed many shops and stores owned by
Negroes. The Wall Street puppet government, the Mendieta regime, appears to have extensively
prepared these brutal attacks against the Negro masses. Before the lynch drive opened, many
Negroes were discharged from the police force and militant Negro leaders were arrested on
orders of the military officials and threatened with death if they did not cease their activity. The
lynch wave indicates the growing fear of the Wall Street Cuban government of the increasing
militancy of the Negro and white workers and is an attempt on the part of the lackey government
to smash the unity of the Negro and white toilers of Cuba.[55]
 Indeed it was the case that the class unity of ‘Negro and white workers’
as evidenced in Oriente only months before was a formidable threat to
Cuba’s stability in the wake of the 1933 coup. Moreover, the leadership
given to this multiracial unity could only have arisen from class conscious
organizers like Communists who had proven, time and again, that the
‘Negro question’ would not simply be relegated to a concern for Black
labourers alone. The Harlem Liberator’s analysis – and Red International’s
response – was valid yet far from sufficient. The call for Black and white
unity alone could never cure the illnesses of decades old, if not centuries
old, racial systems of domination to which Cuba had never been immune.
It was true that open racists in the Cuban KKK, military and police
force had led the charge against Black people on the island, making no
distinctions in class or ethnic origin. Even more dangerously, however, they
had paved the way for a popular and indeed pervasive sense of nativist
Cubanismo, which, in turn, relegated the interests of the non-native Black
labourers – or ‘foreigners’ – to the periphery. Cuban radicals – Black and
white – might have been able to unity for common economic interests, but
if pro-Cuban nationalism remained a core principle in their unity, even if
class based, it left them open to castigating their migrant labouring allies to
the periphery for a common Cuban patriotic agenda. In short, Black
labourers such as the valiant Jamaican Red Guards who seized control of
US sugar estates would inevitably have been determined as foreigners in
this context. Moreover, the Communist movement’s advances during this
period of upheaval from 1933 to 1934 were still relatively weak in terms of
consolidating a long-term commitment to anti-racism in the Cuban
progressive movement. Therefore, the relationship between the Red
International and Black Caribbean relative to Cuba would soon meet new
challenges. Grau San Martin, the deposed leader who would soon join
forces with the Red International for a Popular Front against what was
called the ‘fascist’ Mendieta regime, had propagated a racially prejudiced
‘fifty percent’ law that Communists themselves would support by 1935 –
with reservations no doubt, but support nonetheless.

[1]
Reportage, ‘A Passport from Realengo 18’, New Masses, 16 July 1935, pp. 155-56.
[2]
Ibid, p. 157
[3]
Ibid., p. 159.
[4]
‘Cuban Government Held at Bay Before Embattled Peasants’, Daily Worker, 4 December 1934,
p. 2.
[5]
‘Cuban Revolutionary Trade Unions Have Achieved Unity, Lead Workers’, 12 February 1934,
Daily Worker, p. 6.
[6]
From Political Secretariat to Communist Parties of the United States, France, Great Britain, and
Holland, 29 March 1930, Digitized Comintern files, F. 495, Inv 3, File 161, p.48, European
Reading Room, Library of Congress.
[7]
Ibid.
[8]
Ibid., p. 51.
[9]
‘Strengthen Our Party’, The Party Organizer [February 1930]; Organizational Practicant of
CPUSA – on Organization Condition of the CPUSA, 28 April 1930, opus 1, fond 515, delo 1859,
reel 141: CPUSA.
[10]
International Labour Defence: 1929-1930, 23 January 1930, Earl Browder Papers.
[11]
ILD Report from the Caribbean Secretariat, 13 March 1930, opus 1, fond 515, delo 2174, reel
164; Minutes of the National Executive Committee of the ILD, 12 June 1930, opus 1, fond 515,
delo 2174, reel 164, CPUSA Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
[12]
The term ‘white terror’ denoted fascist aggression. However, it was also understood to mean
terror inflicted by white people on people of colour.
[13]
Minutes of National Executive Committee of the ILD, 21 August 1930, CPUSA Papers,
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
[14]
Letter to ‘Friends’ from Browder, Dun, Baldwin Moreau and Nearing, 8 February 1930, opus 1,
fond 515, delo 2202, reel 165, CPUSA Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
[15]
‘Mass Protest Saves Lives of Junco and Other Leaders; DePriest Has ANLC Man Arrested,
Porto Ricans Join Fight on Imperialism’, Negro Champion, 13 January 1930, p. 3.
[16]
‘Mexico Before and After the Break with the Soviet Union’, International Press
Correspondence, vol. 10, no.12, p. 203; ‘Rupture of Relations Between Mexico and the USSR’,
Daily Worker, 4 February 1930, p. 3.
[17]
‘Mexico Before and After the Break with the Soviet Union’, p. 203.
[18]
‘Problems of the Communist Party of Mexico’, The Communist, [May 1930], vol. 9, no. 5:
445; Minutes of the National Executive Committee of the ILD, 12 June 1930, opus 1, fond 515,
delo 2174, reel 164, CPUSA Papers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress.
[19]
Document 812.00B/272, 5 February 1932, ‘The Economic Crisis and the Revival of the
Revolutionary Movement in Mexico’, Communist International, 20 December 1931, M1370,
Reel 22, RG 59, US National Archives.
[20]
From the Politburo to the Communist Parties of the United States, France, Great Britain and
Holland’, p. 50; ‘The Economic Crisis and the Revival of the Revolutionary Movement in
Mexico’, Communist International, 20 December 1931, M1370, Reel 22, RG 59, U.S. National
Archives.
[21]
Document 811.4066-Scottsboro/189, RG 59, US National Archives; Document 812.00B/276,
Reel 22, RG 59, US National Archives.
[22]
‘The Tasks of the CP of Mexico in the Conditions of the End of Capitalist Stability’, The
Communist, 12, 5: 470; ‘Race Problem Universal, Says Famous Artist – Painter Tells New York
Group that Every Country has its Scottsboro Case, Eastern Stirred by Speech of Diego Rivera in
Harlem’, Chicago Defender, 2 September 1933.
[23]
‘Cuban Worker Killed When Police Fire on Scottsboro Demonstration’, Harlem Liberator, 8
December 1934.
[24]
From Anna Damon, International Labour Defence to Secretary of State Hull, 3 December 1934,
RG 59, US National Archives.
[25]
Ibid.
[26]
Document 800.00B-Junco, Sandalio/1, 3 January 1930, Box 4731, RG 59, US National
Archives.
[27]
Document 837.00B, 13 February 1930, Box 5920, RG 59, US National Archives; ‘Machado
Bans Workers’ Meetings’, 15 February 1930, p. 2.
[28]
‘The Rising Revolt of Cuba: Some Tasks for US Workers’, Daily Worker, 17 April 1930, p. 4.
[29]
Document 837.00b/30, 29 May 1930, box 5920-2, RG 59, US National Archives.
[30]
Ibid.
[31]
Ibid.
[32]
Document 837.00B/28, 13 February 1930, Box 5920, RG 59, US National Archives.
[33]
Ibid.
[34]
‘Communist Groups Cheers Cuban Reds’, New York Times, 17 August 1930.
[35]
‘Letter of the Central Committee of the CPUSA to the Central Committee of the CP of Cuba’,
The Communist [October 1931]: 66.
[36]
Ibid.
[37]
Document 837.00B/37, 3 February 1930, Box 55920, RG 59, US National Archives.
[38]
Ibid; ‘The Events in Cuba’, International Press Correspondence, vol. 11 no. 44, p. 811.
[39]
Document 800.00B-International Red Day/80, 22 May 1931, Box 4509, RG 59, US National
Archives.
[40]
Ibid.
[41]
‘Cuban Communist Party Hits Legal Lynching of Nine’, Liberator, 4 July 1931, p. 2.
[42]
‘Our Present Tasks in Cuba’, The Communist, 10, 6, p. 516.
[43]
Document 837.00/3331, 24 August 1932, Box 5902, RG 59, US National Archives.
[44]
‘Protest Cuban Terror Today: Parade in Harlem to Save Union Leader’, 27 August 1932, p. 1.
[45]
‘Communist Party Grows Through Leadership of Cuban Workers in Fight’, Daily Worker, 21
August 1933, p. 6.
[46]
Document 800.00B-Anti-Imperialist League/3791; Box 5904, RG 59, US National Archives.
[47]
Document 800.00B-Anti-Imperialist League/3758, 8 September 1933, Box 5904, RG 59, US
National Archives.
[48]
‘Fifteen Thousand Cubans Mass at Funeral of Young Communist’, Daily Worker, 7 September
1933, p. 3.
[49]
‘American Managers Flee Plantations’, Daily News, 7 September 1933; ‘Cuba is Terrorized
Anew: Troops Battle Rioting Mobs in Several Cities; Uprising Reported in Ranks of Army’,
Chicago Tribune, 21 September 1933.
[50]
‘“Down with US,” Cheer Moscow: Protestors Honor Slain Student’, Chicago Tribune, 26
September 1933.
[51]
Document 837.00B/5045, 30 September 1933, RG 59, US National Archives.
[52]
Document 2655-q-94, 25 November 1933, M1507, Reel 5, RG 165, US National Archives.
[53]
Document 837.00/3789, 11 September 1933, Box 5904, RG 59, US National Archives;
‘Negroes Terrorized and Lynched in Cuba’, Harlem Liberator, 10 March 1934, p. 6.
[54]
Ibid.
[55]
Ibid.
Elisabeth Armstrong
Indian Peasant Women’s Activism in a
Hot Cold War

The twentieth century pan-Asian women’s movement did not begin as a

peasant women’s movement, but by the 1940s it became one. Women who
gained their livelihood through agricultural labour brought energy,
relevance and an exhilarating unpredictability to the pan-Asian women’s
movement as a whole. They powerfully shaped the post-war women’s
movement in the Global South, and pressured both communist and anti-
communist international women’s movements in the Global North. As a
mass movement, peasant women formed the core of the leftist women’s
movement in the Global South. Yet the histories of the Cold War give little
space for peasant women’s activism in the mid-20th Century. The
bifurcation between the Euro-American West and the Soviet East in
standard narratives of the Cold War obscures the formative class struggles
that shaped anti-imperialist women’s activism in the Global South.
Mass movements of women in the Global South reveal two critical
facets that Cold War scholars of the 1940s and 1950s too often ignore. First,
local, national and regional class conflict rather than international arm-
twisting fueled the communism/anti-communism polarity in Asia. In the
context of India, that is, class-based political differences between peasant
women and elite women split the formerly unified nationalist women’s
movement, not Soviet or Western promises of support. Second, the Cold
War in Europe was a hot war across the continents of Asia and Africa.
Peasant women’s organising as a mass force emerged during the intensified
military repression against insurgent populations by colonial forces.[1] Anti-
imperialism integrally shaped these leftist women’s movements in the
Global South as a critical site for pan-Asian and Afro-Asian women’s
solidarity. They wielded this solidarity among colonial and postcolonial
nations in the international women’s forums re-energized at the end of the
war in Europe and Japan.
Scholars have documented varied pan-Asian movements against
imperialism that began in the 1920s, led by Sun Yat-sen in Japan, and the
Kuomindang in China, alongside communist parties in China and the
USSR.[2] In India, the nationalist movement recognized the importance of
mobilising the largest numbers of Indian people into its struggle for an
independent nation-state. The largest numbers of Indian people were
peasants — conceived widely to include artisans, small farmers, landless
agricultural workers, tenant farmers and fisher people. By the 1920s, they
were central to the widespread nationalist anti-colonial mobilizations across
the country.[3] As with peasant men, Indian peasant women’s activism
developed out of nationalist, communist, socialist, indigenous and anti-caste
peasant movements in the 1930s and 1940s.[4] Peasant groups, called kisan
sabhas, sought to build rural men’s leadership and to represent the demands
of dispossessed agricultural people. In India until 1945, peasant women
were peripheral to rural organising campaigns, holding no leadership
positions in the All India Kisan Sabha, the India-wide and multi-party
farmers’ organization that began in 1936. By 1945, separate meetings for
peasant women were structured into their national conferences.[5] Peasant
women’s activism also developed from the nationalist women’s movement,
particularly in the late 1930s and 1940s.
The All India Women’s Conference (AIWC) began in 1927 as a
nonsectarian, social reform organization to promote Indian women’s
education and health.[6] The AIWC was not directly linked to the nationalist
movement originally, nor did it espouse the cause of women’s activism. Its
members were from elite, princely families and the educated middle
classes, though these women espoused a wide range of political viewpoints
and affiliations. At its inception, at least, the AIWC seemed an unlikely
instigator of peasant, poor and working class women. Yet, as its name
attests, AIWC aspired to represent and lead all women of India under its
umbrella, regardless of their religion, language or political party affiliation.
By the early 1940s, not only did AIWC overtly support women’s activism
in the Indian independence movement, but it also sought to reach the
masses of rural, peasant Indian women.
 Sarojini Naidu was a leading figure in India’s nationalist feminism of
the mid-twentieth century. She joined the Indian freedom movement in
1905, spoke to Viceroy of India Lord Chelmsford and Secretary of State for
India Edwin Montagu in favor of women’s right to vote in 1917, and was
the Congress Party president in 1925. She led the AIWC as president in
1930. For nationalist members like Naidu, to describe AIWC as a ‘non-
political’ group meant an omni-political one. All women, they argued, were
welcome. In 1944, Naidu defended the right of communists and members
from the Muslim League to participate in the Indian National Congress. ‘In
times of great crisis’, she said, ‘humanity is greater than all political
parties.’[7] Addressing Congress Party members she added, ‘Why did you
not organize—ban or no ban – to give relief to the distressed? Why did you
leave the work of relief to the communists?’[8] Naidu pointed to the power
communists derived by their active relief work in the countryside and cities
during the Bengal famine that began in 1943. Others had not been as
involved. It meant that – in Bengal at least – their mass roots had not taken
hold. Nationalist feminists like leftist feminists sought to strengthen the
women’s movement by organising amongst rural peasant women. Their
methods of mobilizing rural, dispossessed women to support the Indian
independence movement, however, were not attuned to peasant women’s
demands or their methods of organising. Without addressing peasant
women’s daily needs for survival alongside the systemic injustice that made
their survival so precarious, nationalist feminist efforts fell short.
Leftist regional women’s groups, like the Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti
(MARS) in Bengal, and the Punjab Women’s Self-Defence League also
organized among working class and poor women in cities and peasant
women in rural areas. Leftist organizers allied (and often shared
membership) with the AIWC in these struggles over wages, fair working
conditions, and food distribution. During the Bengal famine in 1943 and
1944, the AIWC with other women’s groups set up and ran rehabilitation
centers for destitute women in the cities of Kolkata, Krishnanagar and
Barisal.[9] This mass-based work increased AIWC’s membership numbers
dramatically. By April 1944, AIWC’s membership had risen two and a half
times over one year, from 10,000 to 25,000 women.[10] The AIWC
convention resolutions from 1942 to 1946 reveal the political pressures of
holding together social reform feminism with nationalist feminism and
leftist feminism. AIWC conference resolutions show AIWC’s increasing
breadth of issues: in favor of food distribution ‘for the entire population’ in
1943 during the Bengal famine, against the ‘barbaric practice of whipping
of political and other prisoners’ also in 1943, against the Nizam of
Hyderabad’s sexual and physical violence against Andhra women in 1945,
and in favor of postal workers’ rights in 1946.[11] Its increasing radicalism
clashed with the entrenched interests of its powerful members and began to
tear at the seams of AIWC’s proclaimed ‘All India’ unity.
In 1946, the AIWC finally split over its restrictive membership policies
that charged dues too costly for most women to pay. The desire to lead
peasant women did not mean the desire to organize as equals alongside
them or to heed their demands. Nationalist feminists allied with social
reformist members to maintain the AIWC’s higher membership dues, thus
excluding the large numbers of working class and peasant women
radicalized by their rural activism. In December 1946, the AIWC
membership allowed local clubs to decide whether to reduce their fees to
four annas (a quarter of one rupee) from three rupees to allow more rural
and working class women to join. Without the explicit support for the fee
reduction at the national level, communist members lost the possibility of
transforming AIWC into a national women’s organization that represented
all Indian women. After this defeat, most of its left-wing members withdrew
from AIWC to concentrate their efforts organising a national, mass-based
women’s movement from the scattered regional leftist women’s groups.[12]
Importantly, communist and socialist women did not leave the AIWC
because of its anti-communism as such. Many nationalist leaders of AIWC
sought a unified group of women from all political parties, and wanted to
lead peasant women. Instead, leftist members left the one welcoming
national women’s organization to create a women’s movement substantively
shaped and led by peasant women. After 1946, leftist women’s groups gave
voice to increasingly radical demands at local and regional levels, since
they had no alternative national women’s organization. They sought to
overturn gendered caste hierarchies, rural power relations between the
landed and the land-poor, and women’s sexual norms as a unified class
politics, not niche demands for indigenous, Dalit and working class women
and men.[13] The anti-violence demands of the peasant women in India
confronted local patriarchal and casteist norms as well as the intertwined
character of European colonialism with regional feudal class relations.[14]
Leftist women’s groups also joined the fight by peasant groups for greater
rights to land and crops, for example, in the Tebhaga movement of Bengal
in 1946-1947. They worked alongside activists in the Communist Party of
India (CPI) and in communist and socialist unions, and student groups.
They developed a mass-based leftist women’s movement in India because
of the large numbers of women organized into women’s groups, but also in
the politics they espoused.
After 1945, Euro-American aligned organizations like the International
Alliance of Women actively wished to recruit Asian women’s groups into
their fold on anti-communist terms, and they sought to reach (and guide)
these masses. In no small part, peasant women’s militancy on class issues,
alongside their anti-imperialism, spurred Euro-American, anti-communist
interest in peeling away some nationalist and Third Worldist women from
the communist movement. On the pan-Asian level, peasant women’s
politics also shaped the Cold War discourse of the international women’s
movement. The Women’s International Democratic Federation gained
respect among leftist and nationalist women’s groups in Asia for adding a
forceful denunciation of colonialism to its anti-fascist programme.[15] Asian
and North African participants in the opening meeting of WIDF in
December 1945 successfully fought to widen their politics from one of
‘anti-fascism’ to one of ‘anti-imperialism’.

THE THREE STRANDS OF INDIAN FEMINISM

Before independence in 1947, the Indian women’s movement had three

distinct, yet often overlapping feminist ideologies: social reformist,
nationalist, and leftist.
Social reform feminism sought to allow women access to education and
other material benefits and fostered political subjectivities for women’s
activism in the private sphere. Social reformist feminism by the 1930s was
inter-communal. It linked women and men from different religions and
regions to push for wider resources for women and girls. Social reform
activists sought changes to restrictive norms for girls and women largely
from within the private spheres of the familial and the religious or ethnic
community.
 Nationalist feminism saw improvement of women’s education and
health as goals that could support women’s equal rights and their full
participation in public life. Mrinalini Sinha argues that nationalist feminism
supported an openly political and public subject bounded not by familial
community but by the patriarchal benevolence of the nation.[16] Through a
focus on legal reform, nationalist feminists in the AIWC and elsewhere
sought to make laws to support women’s rights to equal citizenship.
Women’s full citizenship also contested the legitimacy of the British
colonial order in India, since neither Indian women nor Indian men enjoyed
this status.
Leftist feminism shared with nationalist feminism a commitment to
anti-colonialism, and women’s legal and state-based inclusion into the
public sphere. However, leftist feminism was also anti-imperialist and anti-
capitalist. Leftist feminists organized towards a vision of women’s
emancipation that transformed class politics and the public sphere itself.
They envisioned a public that welcomed the full participation of all people
of India in its economic, cultural and political life.
These three stands of the Indian women’s movement – social
reformism, nationalism and leftism – jostled for space within the All India
Women’s Conference in the 1930s and 1940s. While they shared some
overlapping concerns, activists within AIWC did not fully agree on how to
pursue their founding goals of women’s education and rights. Nationalist
feminists within AIWC relied on a strong nation-state and the stability of
dominant social norms to transition to independent governance. Leftist
feminists sought to harness the possibilities for new emancipatory social
orders out of the mass mobilizations for independence. They sought to
dismantle old forms of social hierarchy in gender and caste and economic
hierarchies of class to produce more transformative changes for a
decolonized nation-state. The sexual politics of women’s activism in the
1940s, in no small part because of these political aspirations, exposed
critical differences between leftist and nationalist feminists within AIWC.
Even the most sincere appeals to a secular and cross-political unity could
not paper over these differences.

SOCIAL REFORM FEMINISM

 Indian social reform feminism began in the mid-19th Century when
Christian British colonial officials and men from the educated Muslim and
Hindu Indian elite challenged gendered, hierarchal religious practices and
social relations. Social reform movements focused predominantly on
improving the conditions of Indian women’s lives as wives, widows and
daughters. While often characterized simply as a means to justify colonial
rule through the British ‘civilizing mission’, social reformism could not
contain all Indian women’s issues. Historians like Padma Anagol caution us
to remember that even early in the social reform movement, Indian women
enthusiastically supported social reform campaigns.[17] Due to the active
participation of Indian women, by the twentieth century, social reform
feminism had gained significant traction as both an international and
national movement. Moreover, it began to undermine rather than shore up
the legitimacy of English rule over India.
Opposition to AIWC’s social reformist politics was fierce. The
heightened sexual politics of women’s education and health access dogged
its work. During the second year of the All India Women’s Conference, in
1928, the Begum of Bhopal agreed to take the post as president and
attended the organization’s meetings. The Begum had been hugely
influential in her support for women’s education during the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century, but the lessons she had learned about educated
women’s respectability sounded outmoded by the 1920s.[18] Kamaladevi
Chattopadhyay, a prominent nationalist activist, was the general secretary
who ran the AIWC alongside the Begum during its first four years. She
recounted members’ mischievous response to the Begum’s horror of dance
in an unpublished memoir. Chattopadhyay wrote, ‘We had been on the
significant role of dancing in education. When this was mentioned the
President interrupted sharply, raising her arm in protest. ‘I can’t have dance
in any form discussed or approved in this session while I preside’’.[19] At the
beginning of the twentieth century, social reformists including the Begum
of Bhopal, had to fight stereotypes of educated women as women without
honour or morals. Dancing, as the profession of courtesans and sex
workers, became the brush to tarnish early women’s schools like the
Women’s College of Aligarh Muslim University.[20] Thus, for the Begum,
dancing in women’s schools was a stereotype to be thoroughly shunned. For
the active members of AIWC in the 1920s however, fear of dancing was an
antiquated joke. In Chattopadhyay’s account,
The Begum’s objections did not impede the position of AIWC: Zimha Lazarus, Principal of
Women’s College in Bangalore was on her feet advocating this forbidden form. She was
charming and humorous with a very agile and resourceful brain. With hardly a pause, she nodded
acceptance of the Chair’s ruling, but went on with her speech advocating movements, rhythm,
music, speaking with speed and blurring occasionally over d-a-n-c-e, which only a discerning ear
could catch. So the resolution was passed, with small changes to make it less blatant and hurt the
old lady’s confirmed susceptibilities.[21]

In Chattopadhyay’s recounting, the political edge of AIWC’s agenda for

women’s social reform took precedence over the older gender order
represented by the Begum. Definitions within AIWC of acceptable politics
for a women’s organization faced new challenges in the 1930s with the
intensity of the anti-colonial movements—some non-violent, others violent
—all of which had prominent women activists. AIWC’s campaigns began to
widen the boundaries of a gender-mixed public sphere from women’s
education to women’s active involvement in governance and oppositional
politics.
NATIONALIST FEMINISM

Nationalist feminists within AIWC sought to make anti-colonial

activism an acceptable politics for women.[22] First, they lifted the ban on
members’ participation in politics in the early thirties.[23] Second, they
encouraged women from all political parties to join and participate in their
activities. Sinha discusses the Child Marriage Restraint Act, or Sarda Act
passed in 1929, as the turning point for the development of nationalist
feminism as distinct from social reform feminism.[24] In many ways, the
Sarda Act was a classic social reform law that raised women’s age of
consent for marriage. The Sarda Act was not embedded in any of the
religious personal laws, and was the first civil piece of legislation that
addressed women’s rights. Its civil and thus universal character marks a
radical break from other social reform campaigns. For opponents, it
undermined the power of religious personal laws that governed women by
their religious affiliation. As a civil law, it curbed the power of religious
authorities over legislation regarding marriage, women’s property rights,
among other issues considered familial in nature.
Sinha argues that the terrain for women’s activism shifted social reform
feminism itself because women were not only the objects to be protected by
law, but also its activist subjects fighting to protect themselves. She writes,
‘The unprecedented involvement of women and of women’s organizations
in the debates surrounding the Sarda Act underwrote a crucial political
development: the construction of women as both subjects and the objects of
social reform in India’.[25] The universalized category of ‘citizen’ that
included Indian women and Indian men allowed the emergence of a
distinctly nationalist feminism during the 20th century. But there were limits
to the nationalist feminist subject set by the nation-state. Gandhi invoked an
idea of the nation that placed all women into one political community; this
was a unity that took the place of, rather than eradicated, other community
strictures. Thus, the dominant Gandhian vision for nationalist feminism
imagined a community where the nation-state provided women the defining
location for their active citizenship. However, this protective and patriarchal
role of the postcolonial nation-state ‘trumped the recognition of women’s
autonomy’ as citizens or activists.[26]
LEFTIST FEMINISM

Through the AIWC, nationalists like Sarojini Naidu were allied to

women in revolutionary terrorist movements, such as Kalpana Datta Joshi,
who participated in the Chittagong Armory Raid in 1930.[27] Joshi gained
her fame as an anti-colonial terrorist in the Meerut Conspiracy Case in the
1930s. She also took an active role in organising working class women into
the nationalist movement. Joshi joined the Communist Party in the 1940s
after her release from prison and worked actively in MARS, the AIWC and
the CPI in the north-eastern city of Chittagong, one of India’s largest
military bases during World War II.[28] Both strands in the AIWC, the
nationalist feminist and the mass-based leftist women’s movement, actively
supported the reform of the Hindu personal laws and were fiercely anti-
colonial. However, their strategies for affecting this change were quite
different. Nationalist feminists sought to mobilize, educate and provide for
the masses of women. Leftist feminist sought to organize these peasant
masses to fight for their future. Communist advocates of a mass-based
women’s movement sought to create a movement led and peopled by rural,
peasant, working-class and middle class women.
Soma Marik offers a valuable insight about how communist women’s
activism differed from bourgeois nationalist women.[29] She describes the
CPI’s ‘stress on individualism’ for women comrades combined with an
equally strong emphasis on the collectivity of class politics.[30] Marik cites
her 2001 interview with the powerful communist leader, Bani Dasgupta,
who described her communist subjectivity in the following language, ‘We
were taught that first comes our independent existence. To retain your
independent existence you must learn to stand straight. You must learn to
fend for yourself, to take on social responsibilities’.[31] The leftist movement
provided the space for women to forge a political and social identity
separate from that given them by their family and by the state. It was this
independent identity that allowed women to be active participants in the
collectivity of class politics. In other words, class politics did not merely
subsume women; it relied on their independence that allowed them to act as
integral to these collectivities.
Dasgupta became a powerful force in the communist women’s
movement and traveled widely as the secretary of the Women’s
International Democratic Federation to support the Afro-Asian women’s
movement in the 1950s and 1960s. Dasgupta learned her independence and
gained the skills to shoulder ‘social responsibilities’, through the CPI.
Nationalist women, by and large, found their political identity located
within the patriarchal fold of the new nation. Communist women, on the
other hand, fought against the patriarchy of the state institutions. What did
self-reliance and standing straight mean for Bengali peasant women who
negotiated norms of respectability differently from middle class women in
rural towns and localities? Communist leaders in the Indian women’s
movement like Dasgupta, Manikuntala Sen and Renu Chakravartty all
provide personal narratives about joining the communist movement as
middle class or elite Bengali women. They describe the sexual politics of
renouncing respectable forms of women’s seclusion from public life in
order to become activists. For peasant women, their sexual politics revolved
around the right to live without sexual coercion and to claim their own
bodily autonomy in a regime where large landowners had the first and final
say over their sexual availability.
ORGANISING RURAL WOMEN AND THE BENGAL FAMINE

At least three and a half million people died of starvation and disease
during the Bengal famine between 1943 and 1945. Ten million people left
their land in search of food. Over 900,000 families sold off their land
holdings, and fifty to eighty percent of small landholders and sharecroppers
sold off their plough cattle. Potters, basket weavers and people from fishing
communities fared even worse and were the first to lose the tools of their
trades.[32] These losses to the rural poor meant that forty percent of the
population in rural areas became landless due to the famine. Middle and
large landholders (called jotedars and zamindars respectively) gained in all
of these transactions, with the jotedars – who lived in rural areas and also
acted as moneylenders – reaping the largest share of the spoils.[33] Even after
the immediate food shortage subsided in 1944, the devastation continued
for those people stripped of the tools of their livelihoods and their land.
During the famine, peasant women faced a complete reordering of daily
life as the ideologies of hierarchical care that supported the status quo in
rural areas lay in tatters.[34] The famine, in the context of the war and
heightened nationalist movement, also undermined women’s long-standing
social constraints like purdah and other forms of women’s seclusion from
public life. Men abandoned or migrated away from their families in search
of work. They were also among the first to die of malnutrition. Women who
lost their husbands and extended families had to seek food and work for
themselves and their children. During the war, the greatest call for women’s
work was sex work to service the men in the military along the India-Burma
front, and construction work to maintain roads and infrastructure for the
military.[35] Mostly poor Muslim and Dalit peasant women migrated to
cities, such as Comilla, Chittagong, and Kolkata and entered brothels or
worked off the streets. There is no record of whether any of these women
were able to return to their localities when the famine subsided two years
later. However, records of MARS and AIWC campaigns for dispossessed
women’s work training and homes documented the widespread
displacement of women from their original families well after the famine
ended.[36]
In May 1942, leftist women’s groups created the coalitional Mahila
Atma Raksha Samiti (MARS) as a mass-based women’s group to lead the
fight against fascism, colonialism and deprivation. In part, it formed in
response to a Soviet-led appeal in September 1941 to unite women
internationally against fascism.[37] Its members were largely middle class,
from a range of political parties and numbered roughly two thousand.
MARS activists had already begun organising among women in Kolkata’s
slums when the first famine victims reached the cities late in 1942. By early
1943, communist and non-communist members of MARS fanned out from
the cities of Bengal to provide food relief and build shelters for
dispossessed women and children in the countryside. By 1944, just two
years later, MARS had 43,500 members, including many rural women,
quickly becoming the largest peasant women’s group in India.[38] It led a
coalitional campaign that linked rural organising by communist and
nationalist women in a united effort to fight starvation and sex trafficking of
dispossessed women and girls. They investigated women’s reports of rape
in peasant insurgencies against Indian landlords and British colonial
officials. Additionally, they sought restitution of women into work and
homes to provide new lives for women pushed into unpaid or low paid sex
work by the famine. Their organising methods allowed leftist women’s
groups to build a mass movement of peasant and working poor women.
The name Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti, or the Women’s Self-Defence
Committee, held complicated echoes of anti-colonial and communal
movements of the early 20th century. ‘Self-defence’ in these movements
could signify religiously bigoted and sexist assumptions.[39] The targets of
violent forms of self-defence, in a Hindu nationalist world-view, were often
Muslims. Hindu men defended Hindu women’s honour from Muslim men.
A nationalist deployment of the idea of self-defence imagined an
independent India defended by its Indian citizens. For nationalist feminists,
Indian women were part of its citizenry to be defended. In the context of
leftist feminist groups of the early 1940s, ‘self defence’ had a nationalist
resonance, but included another meaning – women actively defending their
own rights and lives. Yet the complicated politics of honour in relation to
sexualized violence against women and self-defence by women instigated
the new political forms and strategies fostered by MARS during the famine
and after.
The Soviet internationalist call for women’s anti-fascist groups echoed
a demand for self-defence of women’s honour by women. The English
language pamphlet To Women the World Over carried speeches from the
Women’s Anti-Fascist conference held in Moscow, that were filled with
gruesome stories of German soldiers’ rape of girls and women in Germany
and on battlefronts in Hungary and the Soviet Union.[40] In the conference’s
pamphlet, Appeal to Women the World Over, conference speakers described
German soldiers’ actions using the terms of women’s sexual honour.
These villains have not only dishonoured hundreds of thousands of women and girls; they have
even infected them with foul diseases. How many Polish and Serbian women and girls they have
driven into brothels; how many lives they have ruined; for many suicides they have caused in
Poland, which they have drenched with blood![41]

The conference did not accept the stories in a passive way, their
language around rape as ‘dishonour’ marks the women raped rather than the
sexual aggressors. Their ‘self-defence’ ethos meant that they retold the
stories in terms of women’s defence of their own honour against rape and
sexual violence by a fascist enemy. Earlier masculinist echoes remain in the
call to action – of passive women ‘dishonoured’ by acts of wartime rape. To
be ‘dishonoured’ – a synonym for rape – puts the burden on the effect of the
rape on the women’s bodies. There is no ‘dishonour’ to the men who raped
the women. In the emphasis placed by the leftist conference, it is for the
women to seek justice for the abjection caused by rape and forced
prostitution.
Historian Soma Marik, drawing from the interviews with communist
women leaders of this period, suggests another dimension to the women’s
fight for social or class-based goals. ‘The demand for women’s self-defence
was posed as a part of the defence against fascism’, she writes. ‘As Bani
Dasgupta’s interview makes clear, women also had to learn to fend for
themselves and self-defence was linked to social goals. Notwithstanding
persistent talks about honour, the crucial shift was in the insistence that
women had to learn to fend for themselves and this defence was linked to
social (class) goals’.[42] Marik emphasizes a radical shift away from the
communalist defence of women and from a nationalist view that women
must be defended by the state. The former – the communalist – would
typically seek recourse for Hindu women from Muslim attack; the latter –
the nationalist – would seek recourse for all women from the state. The
Left’s approach to self-defence pushed for women to ‘stand straight’ – to
courageously fight for greater class and social goals.[43] For the
Communists, women’s independent political action for the greater ends of
class struggle defined the contours of self-defence.
Self-defence in MARS name – atmaraksha – was a call to action, not a
call for protection. MARS combined its internationalism and nationalism
with local campaigns for women’s self-defence. The backbone of MARS’
educational work amongst working-class and peasant women meant a
combination of anti-fascist solidarity with the nationalist campaign for the
release of imprisoned Indian freedom fighters and fights for relief and
survival. The international and even national goals came alongside local
reform work to better people’s daily lives. Without the latter, MARS would
not have gained traction amongst its base. In its first months, MARS
members focused their work in Kolkata to facilitate the fair distribution of
subsidized food and cloth. Manikuntala Sen, a member of the CPI since the
late 1930s, was a founding member of MARS. She recounted touring
Bengal at this time ‘(p)reaching anti-fascism, making speeches, and
establishing mahila samitis (women’s groups)’.[44] Most MARS members,
however, did not tour Bengal and had little contact with rural women. The
MARS groups established in the countryside were few and isolated, mainly
linked to locations in northern and eastern Bengal that had nari samitis
(women’s groups) which were part of active communist and peasant
organising efforts. The famine that spread across Bengal in the early months
of 1943 changed MARS completely.
In the first months after the formation of MARS, members like
Manikuntala Sen, Ela Reid and Renu Chakravartty ran self-defence and first
aid classes for middle class urban women to prepare for a military attack on
the city. Their international anti-fascist demand sought the defence of India
from attack by fascist military forces, a daunting task since the most highly
trained Indian troops were stationed in the Mediterranean, with troops in
Bengal almost wholly under-resourced by the British who feared an internal
uprising before a Japanese attack.[45] The war’s progress from the South
China Sea to Singapore and then up the Malaysian countryside altered
British calculations. Japanese troops occupied Burma in 1942, amassed
their forces along the border with Bengal. Japanese aircraft began bombing
raids on Kolkata and the Bengali countryside that same year. The Arakan
front, as the border between India and Burma was called, made Bengal the
station for hundreds of thousands of troops from Australia, England, North
Africa and India who had no modern weaponry and little training.[46] The
British fear of moving effective weapons to India from other theatres of war
took precedence over the threat of invasion by the Japanese.[47] American
and Chinese forces joined the battle after the Japanese successes in Burma,
and US troops built a military infrastructure within Bengal.
The spectrum of Indian political forces demanded that the British
imperialists release the imprisoned independence fighters. MARS took this
position as well. They argued that the national leaders and the political
activists would galvanize the anti-colonial movement against fascist
aggression. Heightened communal tension amidst the starvation and fear
drew from MARS a principled attempt to create unity amongst all Indian
forces. Manikuntala Sen recounted how MARS sought to unite ‘the Hindus
and the Muslims and people of all denominations, the Congress, the non-
Congress, for the prisoners’ release campaign’.[48] The campaign to release
political prisoners was used by MARS as a way to create a broad unity – the
unity of all Indians in what they imagined would be an independent and
united (secular) Indian nation.
By 1943, the famine had devastated Bengal. MARS’ objectives
changed. Renu Chakravartty, another communist founder of MARS,
defined the new objective as ‘defence of the people from starvation and
death’.[49] Manikuntala Sen described the work by MARS members in
Kolkata:
Dividing time into shifts, some of us would stay near the queues. Procurers from the sex trade
would hover around young women who had to be safeguarded. Some women would give birth
while they waited and they would have to be looked after. Sometimes a woman would remain in
the queue with a dead child in her lap, refusing to let go of her place; there were many such
incredible sights. Day and night, our workers didn’t have a spare moment.[50]
 Large landowners hoarded grain as prices for rice and wheat tripled and
quadrupled in the almost empty markets. The Japanese occupation of
Burma shut down the usual importation of rice from Burma and Thailand.
The British government bought up food staples at sharply higher prices to
feed its soldiers along the frontlines of India, and exported the rest to troops
around the world. In 1941, Bengal imported 296,000 tons of rice, yet by
1942 the flow had reversed to an exported 185,000 tons of rice.[51] The
famine finally gained international coverage by the summer of 1943, when
finally the British-controlled press began to report on the crisis. ‘Mass of
Walking Skeletons; Conditions in Rural Bengal’, read one early headline on
the front page of the Hindustan Times.[52] Still, Churchill turned down relief
food supplies offered from the United States, citing the dangers of the
waters in the Bay of Bengal. His response to a plea from the government in
Delhi for food supplies was to ask why Gandhi hadn’t died yet.[53]
Kanak Mukherjee, a communist and founding member of MARS,
traveled the breadth of rural Bengal and wrote frequently about peasant
women during the famine. In 1944, she raised the alarm when the paltry
government food and work relief ended almost as soon as it began.
Mukherjee’s article was titled, ‘Our Famine-Homeless Sisters’ Plight:
Bengal Government’s Work Houses Closing Down’.[54] Her article reported
that the government workhouses were merely food relief kitchens serving
food rather than providing work training to women. She emphasized the
real demand of jobs for the six and a half million displaced and starving
peasant women. Rural MARS groups took up the crises of the colonial
power’s exploitative and neglectful governance. They started canteens for
the starving and homes for destitute women and children. They provided
relief with their social reformist and nationalist feminist allies. MARS also
built the sinews for a rural mass movement of peasant women. They held
organising schools for middle-class and peasant women that lasted from a
week to a month to train new members about how to hold regular meetings,
form demands and run campaigns.[55]
During the famine, middle class MARS activists in the countryside saw
firsthand the long-standing sexual vulnerability of rural, landless, adivasi
and Dalit women at the hands of jotedar and zamindar landholders.[56]
Women had been trafficked as sex workers for the military, large
landholders and moneylenders. MARS led the fight against the trafficking
that had become commonplace in rural Bengal. Members of MARS held an
open rally in May 1944 that demanded ‘stringent measures for punishing
those who traded in women’s flesh and also measures for the rehabilitation
of such women in society’.[57] Anti-fascism among peasant women during
the war in Bengal and Burma along the Arakan front meant a fight against
the traffickers of women who were often land holders and money lenders,
as well as the hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers stationed in Bengal.
[58]

On 6 January 1945 MARS convened a coalitional meeting to end

women’s prostitution due to famine conditions. They partnered with the
AIWC and ten additional women’s organizations. On the one side, MARS
and AIWC (along with other women’s groups) wanted trafficking to be seen
as a criminal offense. On the other, MARS fought for the creation of jobs
and housing for trafficked women so that they could be come self-
sufficient.[59] Through these goals, MARS leaders sought to build self-
respect, economic self-sufficiency, and even social respect for trafficked
women. They countered the dominant terms of middle class charity and
short-term government relief. In the process, they created networks of rural
women organizers where few had existed before.
Nationalist feminists utilized starkly different language from leftist
feminists. Sarojini Naidu spoke to the 1945 meeting using the unambiguous
language of women’s honour. ‘As long as one woman is defiled, as long as
a man’s lust devours another woman, as long as the stronger sex has the
power to get hold of hundreds of shelterless women in their clutches, no
woman’s honour is safe’.[60] The strongly moral tones of women’s weakness
and vulnerability in Naidu’s speech framed common notions of women’s
honour by focusing on the actions of men who ‘defiled’ and ‘devoured’
women. Naidu sought to arouse national sympathy for women who turned
themselves and their children to sex work during the famine. She placed the
onus of shame on the men who exploited their vulnerability. Her
condemnation of starving women’s turn to sex work, however, still used the
dominant framework of shame and honour – and of the need for the state to
protect the women.
Leftist feminists deployed a language of a gendered political economy
to describe women’s famine-based sex work. In December 1945, at the
AIWC national conference, Renu Chakravartty submitted her report about
the new, endemic quality of trafficking in Bengal after the famine. She
listed ‘economic stress and food shortage’ as a primary reason for husbands
selling their wives to traffickers and women selling themselves. She added
two additional factors rarely mentioned in mainstream reports about the
vast increase in prostitution. ‘A large percentage of the peasantry sold their
lands and the poorest classes sold their implements of production, such as
fishing nets, handlooms etc. in order to buy food, and were therefore left
without any means or equipment for earning their livelihood’.[61] She
provided a materialist analysis of who turned to sex work for survival. Dalit
and adivasi women relied on fishing, handicrafts and sharecropping,
working in conditions of the greatest insecurity for the lowest wages. She
ends with her last explanation, ‘(t)he presence of a large army always tends
to encourage immoral traffic’.[62] She gives three suggestions for AIWC’s
future work: first, create places to rebuild the tools of trade, like looms and
fishing nets; second, gather information about and prosecute abuses in
government-run homes; third, demand the ‘enactment of a law by which
traffickers can be promptly and heavily punished’.[63] Strikingly, in this
report Chakravartty did not attempt to explain or excuse women’s actions,
but explained the social and political context for those actions. Even in her
use of ‘immoral traffic’, a common term about women’s sexual honour,
Chakravartty referred to sex trafficking of women rather than women’s sex
work. Women’s economic self-sufficiency was a key demand in the MARS
campaign against sex trafficking. They sought women’s access to paid work
other than sex work, primarily through home-based labour in the handicraft
industry.[64]
The Left activists in MARS played down the language of honour and
dishonour. This would not allow them to accomplish their main task – to
provide space to the working-class and peasant women to become
independent political actors for collective struggle. The barriers for women
to forge this road should not be underestimated. ‘Poor peasant women’,
wrote oral historian Adrienne Cooper, ‘were involved with MARS generally
as recipients of charity or mobilized to support the kisan sabhas in
demonstrations or at meetings . . . Most women faced opposition from
family, village or community for even minor involvement in such activities,
because in itself this challenged women’s traditional roles’.[65] To become
independent meant to break from the idea of ‘traditional roles’, a process
that required time and patience. The national movement allowed women to
enter the political domain, and it was this opening that allowed MARS to
draw rural women into their struggle. But MARS wanted more than merely
to suborn women to the national movement. They wanted women to have
no less than full participation. As the MARS 1944 conference statement put
it, ‘To stop the rot in society and to re-establish the shelterless and destitute
women in social life is one of the prime tasks in defence of the dignity of
the women of Bengal’.[66]
COMMUNISTS IN AIWC AND THE COLD WAR

The end of the Second World War in the colonies of Europe and Japan
did not ease the battle in the Asian sector. The British, Australian, North
African and American troops stationed in Bengal since 1942 mostly
departed by 1946. The ‘war’ now moved from one against the Japanese
fascists to against the imperialists. ‘Self-Defence’ groups shifted their focus
to the resistance against British colonialism. The British sensed that their
control over India was over. For a brief window, the communists and anti-
colonial nationalist women’s movement in India stood politically united.
This was the high-point of national unity. Disagreements over how active
women should be in the independent nation-state divided the bourgeois
nationalists from the leftists. The dominant Indian Congress Party and to a
lesser degree the Muslim League refused to cede meaningful power to the
largely illiterate rural masses of people or their demands. Abani Lahiri, a
Communist Party member, was a key peasant organizer during the Tebhaga
movement. He remarked in his memoir that, ‘the influence of feudal
elements on the national movement in our country not only failed to attract
the peasants to the common national platform, it pushed them away.’[67]
In 1945, British officials sent Indian troops into Burma and Malaysia to
suppress nationalist aspirations that manifested themselves throughout the
region (this mirrored the return of French troops into Indo-China and the
Dutch to Indonesia, on the other side of South-East Asia). Asian women’s
movements pushed back against this renewed imperialist thrust. That year,
the AIWC meeting denounced the use of Indian troops in Burma and
Malaya. The meeting also took a strong position against the use of Indian
troops to support the Dutch in Indonesia and the French in Vietnam.
AIWC’s roots in the anti-colonial struggle had been dug deep, and now
strengthened by their experience of organising a mass movement during the
war. The solidarity did not go in one direction. In 1946, AIWC’s journal
Roshni published an appeal for pan-Asian solidarity by the Singapore
Women’s Federation in their shared anti-colonial struggles. It began, ‘(t)he
people of India and Malaya have suffered severe oppression and are
fighting for the ideals of human dignity and political liberty. We have to
join hands together to break the chain of oppression and to be able to
effectuate our ideals on a brighter road’.[68] The Singapore Women’s
Federation, like AIWC, had been an important component of the Malaysian
national movement and – in late 1946 – would be a constituent of the All-
Malaya Council of Joint Action.
For the anti-fascist popular front of MARS and the leftist women’s
movement in Asia more widely, the pan-Asian women’s movement
strengthened their anti-imperialist alliance with women’s groups in Europe,
the United States, and the USSR through a common commitment to anti-
fascism.[69] Leftist and anti-colonial women’s groups celebrated the
inauguration of the WIDF in Paris, France at the end of 1945. Four women
from the Indian women’s movement attended this opening conference:
Vidya Kanuga (later known as Vidya Munsi), a member of the All India
Students Federation who later joined the Communist Party; Ela Reid, a
politically non-affiliated American woman who was a founding member of
MARS; Jai Kishore Handoo, a member of the Women’s Committee of India
League in London (affiliated to the Congress Party) authorized to represent
the AIWC; and Roshan Barber from the India League’s London Office.
Reid and Handoo particularly fought to widen the ethics of anti-fascism
at the meeting to include the ongoing struggles against colonialism. Handoo
addressed European women directly in the discussions. She wanted them
‘to mobilize public opinion in favour of freedom and democracy, and to
proclaim your desire to see established in all colonial countries, especially
in India . . . personally struggling, suffering imprisonment, machine gun fire
by air, whipping and other humiliations too numerous to enumerate here’.[70]
The fall of Germany, Italy and Japan in 1945, the Indian delegates argued,
did not herald the defeat of fascism. Fascism lived in the imperial
subjugation of peoples across the globe. After a debate among the
participants, WIDF members agreed to add a condemnation of imperialism
to their foundational principles.
Avabai Mehta celebrated WIDF’s embrace of anti-colonialism in her
Roshni article called ‘International Contacts of the AIWC’. She contrasted
the 1945 board meeting held by the International Alliance of Women (IAW)
to WIDF’s founding meeting unfavorably due to the former’s ‘timidity to
endorse the AIWC resolution for the liberation of all peoples of the world’.
[71]
Handoo was also AIWC’s representative at the IAW conference held in
Geneva, Switzerland. Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay wrote a letter that clearly
stated the AIWC position, namely that the ‘termination of the war will not
bring peace unless it leads to the abolition of imperialism and liberates all
enslaved countries including India’.[72] Yet even with Chattopadhyay’s
written statement to the IAW leadership, Handoo failed to gain an explicit
condemnation of colonialism. In the face of this intransience, the AIWC
still faced pressure from the IAW to repudiate leftist international groups,
particularly the WIDF.
The president of the IAW, Margaret Corbett Ashby, also attended the
founding conference of WIDF in 1945. In a typed note she judged the
conference ‘a disappointment because the communists over-played their
hand’.[73] She wrote a deeply unfavorable assessment of the conference, a
copy of which she sent to Hansa Mehta, the president of the AIWC. Ashby
argued that WIDF’s conference’s focus on anti-fascism produced a fleeting
popular front among the delegates from over 35 countries. ‘If you are
flattened under an immense weight, unable to move or speak and past
breathing, and then some large person removes the weight, grips your arm,
stands you on your feet and with still fast grip walks you along, you are
only conscious of freedom and release’.[74] She predicted a swift end to this
unity, which had been created by the fear of fascism’s resurgence, once their
gratitude to the Soviet Union’s Red Army had abated. To the IAW chapters
and groups affiliated with IAW, Ashby advocated a strategic solidarity. ‘I
suggest that the alliance must continue as a feminist organization on
friendly terms with this new organization which has reached masses of
women we failed to arouse’.[75] While not a mass organization, the AIWC
was one anti-colonial women’s group publicly unimpressed with the IAW
position on colonialism. Nevertheless, AIWC maintained old ties with the
Alliance, and also sent delegates to WIDF meetings for two years.
 Ashby waited less than a year after the 1945 Geneva board meeting to
invite Mehta to join IAW’s executive committee. Her goal was the same: to
reach out to, in her words, the ‘masses of women we failed to arouse’. In a
hand-written letter addressed to Mehta, Ashby wrote of Mehta’s importance
as IAW attempted to build a constellation of pan-Asian women’s groups.
Ashby knew that IAW would need the masses, but was politically averse to
the groups that had built mass memberships. Ashby needed Mehta to be
their representative in Asia, a continent that now seemed essential to IAW’s
aims. ‘We do need you badly to keep us in touch not only with India but
also with the other countries of Asia where the women are becoming
increasingly aware of their citizen responsibilities’.[76] If an Asian leader
came on board the IAW, it would give legitimacy to this largely Western
group. ‘We do feel it would be of far greater influence if you could sign
letters asking the women’s associations to join up’, Ashby wrote, ‘rather
than if they get only Dr. Rydh’s signature or mine’.[77] Ashby was British,
while Hanna Rydh, IAW’s Vice President, was Swedish. Hansa Mehta,
being Indian, would give IAW credibility in Asia.
Francesca De Haan has reminded scholars of the anti-communist stakes
of international organizations like the IAW in the Cold War.[78] The IAW
was not politically neutral. It saw its role as being a defender of the Western
(capitalist) world order. The enemy, for the IAW, was the communist threat.
The anti-communism within the AIWC, however, did not mirror the anti-
communism of IAW. What divided them was their understanding of
colonialism. AIWC took an anti-colonial position, while IAW was chary to
do so. Within the AIWC, as well, tensions remained between the communist
women and the bourgeois nationalists. Communist women pushed for a
more confrontational stance against the Indian state, while bourgeois
nationalists wanted a more generous attitude towards it. The conflict over
communism in the AIWC, however, was not simply about abstract
principles nor was it uniform. Communist members in the AIWC – such as
Romesh Perin Chandra in Punjab, Renu Chakravartty in Bengal and Hajrah
Begum in Uttar Pradesh – worked alongside their non-communist comrades
to create regional groups that had a left character but were formally popular
front groups. Bengal’s MARS and Punjab’s Women’s Self-Defence League
are good examples of the fruit of this joint work. At no point did the
communist women not try to organize women into AIWC and to push the
AIWC to relief work for those in acute distress. The work drew women of
all persuasions to support it – in 1944, Rameshwari Nehru – cousin of
Jawaharlal Nehru – supported the Punjab Women’s Defence League, when
its thousand working-class and peasant members merged with the AIWC.[79]
The character of the AIWC was far to the left, therefore, of that of the IAW.
Sometimes the activities of regional leftist women’s groups overlapped
with AIWC unhappily. During the early months of 1947, a flurry of
contentious letters by Kalpana Datta Joshi, a prominent member of the CPI,
and Nellie Sen Gupta, a powerful member of the Congress Party and first
president of MARS, were sent from Chittagong in the eastern part of
Bengal to Indira Maydeo, the general secretary of AIWC. The issue before
them was whether Joshi’s membership in the Communist Party soured her
work for AIWC. Between March and July of 1947, Joshi and Gupta debated
the status of Joshi’s membership in AIWC and the Communist Party –
could she remain a member of both?[80] By the end of the year, a letter from
Nellie Sen Gupta and Asoka Gupta settled the matter: Joshi was out. They
took over as the new AIWC leaders of the renamed branch Chattagram
Sahar Nari Sammelan.[81] Joshi left the AIWC soon afterwards to
concentrate on organising women into MARS, the CPI, and the peasant
movement.[82]
The debate over the role of communist women in the AIWC became
increasingly virulent as India’s independence neared. In January 1946, Kitty
Shiva Rao – an office holder and member of the AIWC Standing
Committee – wrote to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur – a Congress leader and
former president of the AIWC. Shiva Rao also sent the letter to AIWC’s
current president Hansa Mehta. ‘The reason why I am writing this letter to
you is, that I feel extremely disturbed and apprehensive with regard to the
trend of things in the Conference concerning the Communist problem’, she
wrote.[83] She described her particular discomfort with Hajrah Begum’s role
as editor of AIWC’s Hindi-Urdu magazine Roshni. ‘However many
promises these people may give, surely their first loyalty is to their party
and a magazine must be a sore temptation for propaganda purposes’.[84]
Women like Hajrah Begum who was a long-term office holder for
AIWC, and member of the Communist Party troubled the founding tenets
of AIWC as a social reform organization. Hajrah Begum and other
communist members pushed the AIWC to confront the abuses of power by
princely regimes like the Nizam of Hyderabad and large landholding
zamindars. They sought to sharpen AIWC’s class politics in favour of the
poor and working class, not simply to maintain its nationalist bona fides. As
editor of Roshni, Hajrah Begum published accounts of peasant and working
class campaigns against large landholders and princes in states like Andhra,
Maharashtra, Bengal and the Punjab. Reporting on these powerful struggles
led by peasants was not sufficient to depose Hajrah Begum from the
editor’s chair. It was Hajrah Begum’s open support and involvement in
these struggles that raised Shiva Rao’s hackles.
In AIWC, the dispute would take on a practical form. AIWC planned to
lower its membership dues so that all women could join the organization.
This would mean that more working-class and peasant women would join
the AIWC, and they might eventually be able to shape AIWC’s agenda and
stance. A test site for the problem of letting in communists and peasant
women was in the Guntur-Bezwada area of Andhra. Konda Parvati,
daughter of Congress leader Konda Venkatappaiah, prevented the local
communist women from entry into the Guntur Ladies Club. One of the
communists – Dr. K. Atchamamba – wrote to the AIWC a few weeks before
the dispute between Hajrah Begum and Shiva Rao. Dr. Atchamamba had
organized an AIWC club with 25,000 members in Bezwada – across two
hundred and fifty villages and seven large regions.[85] Konda Parvati did not
want these women to be affiliated to the AIWC. Atchamamba wrote to
AIWC’s General Secretary Kulsum Sayani about Konda Parvati’s refusal
(the letter was also sent to Hansa Mehta). ‘We appreciate what you say
regarding the enrollment of new members to our Sandham on the present
basis’, wrote Atchamamba, ‘but unfortunately there is no change in the
attitude of Srimati Konda Parvati. She is still of the view that our Sangham
is not affiliated in spite of the resolution of the S.C. [Standing Committee]’.
[86]
Konda Parvati, like Shiva Rao, worried that the new members enrolled
by the communists would threaten the old order within the AIWC. These
new members came with little literacy and from poverty – they were drawn
to the struggles through issues of exploitation of their labour and land. It
was the communists who drew them in. It was not that the AIWC leadership
did not want these women in the AIWC. They merely wanted them as
passive members, not – as the communists hoped – as leaders in their own
right.
 Atchamamba directly answered the anti-communism of Konda
Parvati’s refusal to admit the group into AIWC. ‘Our anxiety is not to
‘capture’ any organization, or even secure any positions or offices in any of
the committees’, she wrote. ‘We are anxious to work as a part of the All-
India and the Provincial organization which is necessary for building up a
strong all-India-wide women’s organization’. The Bezwada group,
Atchamamba wrote, is ‘eager to have organizational links with the AIWC,
so that we may enrich the AIWC with our work and support and get gained
(sic) by the guidance on the several problems concerning the women of
India’.[87] From the point of view of the communists, a secular popular front
for women was essential; this is what AIWC represented. Women such as
Atchamamba worked amongst working-class and peasant women to bring
them into the AIWC so as to widen its mission to include their issues.
Atchamamba and Hajrah Begum knew that drawing in large numbers of
peasant women and working-class women as leaders in the AIWC would
certainly change the character and content of the AIWC. This is what
worried Konda Parvati and Shiva Rao.
Shiva Rao’s observation about the membership fight in Guntur-
Bezwada avoided mention of the stark conditions that faced women in the
dominion of the Nizam of Hyderabad. The Telangana peasant uprising
began in 1946, while in the coastal regions of the state the 1948 scale
violence was previewed.[88] There is something bloodless about Shiva Rao’s
report, where she merely writes of the number of women who joined the
AIWC unit. ‘The first number mentioned, I believe, was 19,000, then it
came to 10,000 and when the Sural S.C. questioned this figure they finally
enrolled 2,500.’[89] Shiva Rao worried that the communists had taken over
the AIWC, not that the communists and other women tried to build the
AIWC in times of great turmoil in the region.
The fight against the communists in the AIWC led to an inevitable end
– the restriction of membership policies. This was the turning point for the
left inside the AIWC. Hajrah Begum remembered the conflict in blunt
terms. AIWC members, she said, ‘did not care for the common people’.[90]
Manikuntala Sen in her memoir gave another reason for the closed doors of
AIWC. ‘They thought that if we opened the association to ordinary women,
their leadership would be threatened, and were suspicious that perhaps we
would try to turn the association into a Communist one’.[91] The mass
politics of communism was embedded in debates about increasing or
limiting member numbers in the AIWC since its communist members
actively pushed for lower dues and more members. Those numbers, whether
of dues or members, implicitly raised much more substantive issues of poor,
rural and urban women’s politics. Fairer wages, childcare, access to
property, dowry eradication, and the right to better lives, were all
communist issues in the 1940s; they were also largely peasant women’s
issues.
Hansa Mehta’s measured response to Shiva Rao urged her to watch
Hajrah Begum’s actions as the Roshni editor, and only remove her from the
post if she put what Mehta called ‘objectionable materials’ into the
magazine. She also reiterated her commitment to an inclusive AIWC,
We must have faith in our colleagues until they have betrayed it. The AIWC is neither for the
Congress women nor for the Communists. We wish to unite all women on certain common issues
viz on problems that affect women, their status and position in society. I believe the time has
come when we must define it clearly. I would, therefore, not like the AIWC to be made into a
political cock-pit and forget the real issue.[92]

During the tumultuous year of her presidency, Mehta persevered in her

assessment. Her advice to the incoming president in her speech at the
AIWC conference held in December of 1946 reiterated her advice to the
incoming president, Dhavanti Rama Rao,
The duty of our movement is to unite the women of India, and through them the women of the
world . . . I hope our new President will see that our little boat does not founder on the rocks of
this party or that party, that it does not founder on the rocks of disunity; I hope this Conference
will remain a uniting force and show what the women of the world can do to bring about peace
and unity.[93]

The symbolic issue was the cost of AIWC membership—but the

symbolism held a real significance.[94] With more affordable dues, AIWC
could become a mass-based rather than an elite women’s organization. In
December 1945, at the Hyderabad conference, AIWC finally endorsed the
independence movement in India and anti-colonial movements around the
world.[95] State feminists and communist women gained a long-shared goal
in shifting the organization towards an overtly political stance. Yet the class
character of these politics was not wholly aligned. By early 1947, AIWC
decided to sever all ties to WIDF. Hajrah Begum described how AIWC’s
leadership worried that joining WIDF would ‘support world communist
women’s movement. So they did not agree, then we decided to affiliate on
our own’.[96] AIWC’s turn away from a mass-based, peasant women’s
movement was not absolute. In April 1947, Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay
published an article in Roshni that said AIWC must ‘build membership
among rural, peasant and poor women’, and ‘rebuild society, not focus on
preventive measures’.[97]
Anti-communism solidified within AIWC by 1948, though its own
assessment of this shift is ambivalent. An editorial in Roshni described the
turn somberly:
Three months ago provincial governments started the roundup of communist workers and
although some of them were our members we deliberately did not comment on the governments’
action as we were not aware of the full scope of their complicity in subversive actions, especially
these days when anything which threatens the stability of our administration has to be viewed
very seriously indeed.[98]

The alliance between leftist and nationalist members within the AIWC
faced an abrupt end even before India’s formal independence. The conflict
cannot be framed through an abstraction of communism versus nationalism
however. Instead, the coalitional politics within the big tent of the AIWC
shattered over the issue of admitting working class and peasant women as
activists on their own terms. The class politics of gender, rather than
capitalism versus socialism, split the organization’s cross-political unity.
Internationally, MARS joined the leftist internationalist group WIDF, and
AIWC ultimately joined the IAW. In international Cold War terms, their
politics were oppositional as communist/anti-communist, but their histories
of cross-membership and political collaboration in the anti-colonial
movement tell a more complicated story.

PEASANT WOMEN’S SUBJECTIVITY AND

THE TEBHAGA MOVEMENT 1946-7

The archival traces of peasant women’s organising in India are

relatively scant: eyewitness accounts by sympathizers and activists,
interviews, second-hand reports, movement songs, are the few visible traces
of their demands that remain in the public record. Peasant women’s
militancy in the eastern state of Bengal was only one epicenter of the
radical peasant women’s movement in India. The activism of Bengali
peasant women gained coherence and visibility during the Tebhaga fight (a
name that translates to ‘Two-Thirds’) that lasted for a little over two years
between 1946 and 1948.[99] The Tebhaga movement refers to the farmers’
central demand: that sharecroppers and tenant farmers should own a greater
share of their crops, that is, two-thirds instead of the customary one-half (or
less). Peasant women from Tebhaga struggles across Bengal are
remembered as the most daring activists, who were frequently shot, beaten
or raped for their militancy.[100] In the autonomous, peasant-controlled zones
of Bengal that emerged during Tebhaga, these women also sought equality
within their relationships with peasant men through demands for shared
access to land, wages and crops harvested, and the right to familial
relationships free from violence.[101] As yet we have no histories that explore
how peasant women’s activism in Bengal shifted so radically over the ten
years between 1936 and 1946. We do have testimonies about the social
changes towards greater gender equity wrought by their activism during
Tebhaga.[102]
In Bengal, the AIWC-supported, and MARS-run campaign against sex
trafficking in the context of the Bengal famine portended the ripple effects
in cultural and political movements to come. Perhaps most well known in
the radical politics of postwar Bengal, the Tebhaga or Two-Thirds
movement from 1946 to 1947 emerged on the heels of the Bengal famine.
Pro-communist peasant activists, large numbers of them women, fought to
keep two-thirds of the grain crop for tenants and sharecroppers who worked
the land rather than only half the crop. One enthusiastic observer, a Kolkata
university student named Somnath Hore (later a famous sculptor),
recounted a speech he listened to by a peasant organizer named Dinesha.
No use creeping into your shells like tortoises every time you see a rich man. Start walking with
your heads held high. The rich say that we are dancing like whores to the refrains of tebhaga.
What I want to know is, who made whores of us anyway? And having turned us into whores,
why does it hurt them to see us dance? Let the rich say what they want, we are going to harvest
the rice and have the tebhaga.[103]
 The peasant organizer Dinesha’s speech rejects the usual language of a
woman’s and her community’s dishonour embodied by the whore. Instead,
the whore embodies a consequence of power relations that beggars the
many in the interests of the powerful few. Dinesha’s speech usurps the
image of the dance girl’s performance as a prostituted form of
entertainment, one bought and paid for by rich men. ‘Why’, he asks
rhetorically, ‘does it hurt them to see us dance?’ He turns the common
sexualized and misogynist slur of feminising anti-communism on its head.
The peasants’ dance is the dance of revolutionary change, one that tramples
on traditions of rural power. Rather than accept the normative relations of
hierarchy and control, the dance girl is the peasant rebel who must dance in
order to change the system. Dishonour and the embodied vulnerability of
womanhood could now be configured as a weapon for the Tebhaga
movement rather than solely a source of shame or dishonour for women and
their communities.
The story about a speech given during the Tebhaga movement, in
Dinajpur, one of its most militant localities of Bengal allows a glimpse into
the radical changes of social mores for women’s behaviour after the end of
the Second World War, after the abatement of the Bengal famine and on the
cusp of the Cold War. In the 1980s, Adrienne Cooper collected an
impressive number of interviews with women and men active in the
Tebhaga movement. She noted a sea change in peasant women’s organising
before and after the famine—from a relative passivity in MARS campaigns
to the frontline electricity of the Tebhaga struggle. ‘At tebhaga meetings,
women were encouraged to participate in the movement . . . Poor peasant
women participated in meetings and demonstrations, were in delegations to
landlords and occasionally members of tebhaga committees . . . However
women’s militancy was remembered mostly because of their actions to
resist arrests, when they displayed incredible courage, initiative and
heroism in rescuing people’.[104] In this context, the demands by women
active in autonomously-run peasant zones called tebhaga elaka that
emerged from tebhaga anti-landlord struggles gain clarity. Women used
social boycotts to punish violent men, and demand equal shares to their
crops.
A leading communist organizer in the peasant movement, Abani Lahiri
recounted in his memoir that the most active women during the Tebhaga
movement came from adivasi (indigenous) and Dalit households—the same
landless households hardest hit by the Bengal famine, the same women and
girls most likely to be trafficked into the war-fueled sex industry.[105] Yet
they were not alone as leaders. Even some women from peasant families
who owned small amounts of land participated actively in Tebhaga. Peasant
women practiced courage in their fight against landowners and their home-
grown armies. They became integral forces in a collectivity unsegregated
by gender with other landless sharecroppers, tenants, and small landowning
farmers, a radical formation in itself since it overturned respectability norms
for women. That women’s roles have emerged in the record of Tebhaga,
particularly their demands within their localities’ gendered social orders and
intimate relationships, is also remarkable. For peasant women’s actions to
gain historical visibility requires a cross-gender examination of normative
gendered roles of leadership, honour, hierarchy and respect. For peasant
women, famine was not the precondition for their activism. Mass starvation
itself did not foster the communist insistence on women’s independent
ability, in Dasgupta’s words, to ‘stand straight’. Instead, peasant women’s
self-defence against the political and social orders that produced and fueled
the famine provided that necessary lesson.
Peasant women successfully resisted the British practices of punitive
taxation on grain and land. They combatted landowners’ total control over
landless and land-poor people’s lives. They refused to cede their sexual and
bodily autonomy to upper caste men or their families. Marik notes a related
transformation for middle class activist women in MARS, ‘the mass
recruitment during the famine and the transformation of the girls from
women who had come forward for social welfare work into militant
cadres’.[106] Peasant women’s activism did not mirror middle class, urban
women’s experiences exactly. Their fight against sexual and economic
exploitation faced different contours of power and privilege than those
faced by middle class women. Their demands, most sharply articulated in
broader peasant movements, such as Tebhaga, became integral to
communist and left-wing women’s organising efforts across India.
Additionally, MARS learned its lesson well: internationalist aspirations and
national campaigns gained heft in rural areas through a sustained focus on
local issues of survival. One central precondition for the involvement of
peasant women in revolutionary politics was through securing their sexual
autonomy and control in their daily lives. Peasant women in the hot Cold
War of Asia and Africa exposed and contested the sexual politics of colonial
and feudal complicity in the colonies. They were also at the heart of the
emerging pan-Asian, anti-imperialist women’s movement and shared these
lessons to build women’s pan-Asian, anti-imperialist solidarity through their
collective refusal of these embodied systems of exploitation.

[1]
For regional examples, see Anthony Short, The Communist Insurrection in Malaya, 1948-1960,
New York: Crane, Russak & Company, 1975; Caroline Elkins, Imperial Ambitions: The Untold
Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya, New York: Henry Holt and Co., 2005.
[2]
Carolien Stolte, ‘“Enough of the Great Napoleans!” Raja Mahendra Pratap’s Pan-Asian projects
(1929-1939)’ Modern Asian Studies 46 (2) (2012), pp. 403-23; Anna Belagurova, ‘The Chinese
International of Nationalities: The Chinese Communist Party, the Comintern, and the foundation
of the Malayan National Communist Party, 1923-1939’, Journal of Global History 9 (2014), pp.
447-70.
[3]
Gyanendra Pandey, The Ascendancy of Congress in Uttar Pradesh: Class, Community and
Nation in Northern India, 1920-1940, London: Anthem Press, 1978; Ranajit Guha, Elementary
Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983;
David Hardiman, Peasant Nationalists of Gujarat, 1917-1934, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 1981.
[4]
In India, peasant women joined internationalist communist parties through anti-casteist
movements in the South and in Maharashtra, peasant movements in Andhra, Bengal and Punjab,
as well as leftist campaigns linked to the anti-colonial women’s movement.
[5]
See ‘Among Kisan Women’, People’s War, III (46), May 13, 1945, p. 2. This article detailed
peasant women’s participation in the AIKS conference in Netrakona, Bengal, April 7-9, 1945.
Their leadership in the All India Kisan Sabha and even in the Bengal Provincial Kisan Sabha,
however, was still negligible.
[6]
Aparna Basu and Bharati Ray, Women’s Struggle: A History of the All India Women’s
Conference, 1927-2002, New Delhi: Manohar, 2003.
[7]
Cited in Renu Chakravartty, Communists in Indian Women’s Movement, 1940-1950, New Delhi:
People’s Publishing House, 1980, p. 70.
[8]
Ibid.
[9]
‘Annual Report of the Member-in-charge of Social Section’, Hansa Mehta papers, Subject file
#7, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (hereafter NMML), New Delhi, India.
[10]
‘18th Conference in Hyderabad’, Roshni, 1, 1, February 1946, p. 21.
[11]
‘Resolutions Passed by the Standing Committee of the All-India Women’s Conference, at their
meeting in Bombay on the 29th and 30th May 1943’, Renuka Ray papers, folder #7, NMML.
[12]
Renu Chakravartty, Communists in Indian Women’s Movement, p. 200.
[13]
Adrienne Cooper, Sharecropping and Sharecroppers’ Struggles in Bengal, 1930-1950, Kolkata:
K.P. Bagchi and Co., 1988.
[14]
Peter Custers, Women in the Tebhaga Uprising: Rural Poor Women and Revolutionary
Leadership (1946-47), Kolkata: Naya Prokash, 1987, pp. 22-25.
[15]
Elisabeth Armstrong, ‘Before Bandung: The Anti-Imperialist Women’s Movement in Asia and
the Women’s International Democratic Federation’, Signs, 41, 2, Winter 2016.
[16]
Mrinalini Sinha, Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire, Durham
and London: Duke University Press, 2007.
[17]
Padma Anagol’s study of Indian women’s writing in Marathi journals show that ‘(n)ineteenth-
century Indian feminists embraced and utilized the rhetoric of the “civilizing mission” with
alacrity’. See ‘Feminist Inheritances and Foremothers: The Beginnings of Feminism in Modern
India’, Women’s History Review 19 (4), September 2010, p. 533.
[18]
In the founding of Aligarh’s premier women’s college, then called the Muslim Girls’ School
and Hostel, the fight to create a girl’s boarding school faced rumours that it taught music and
dance to produce nautch girls for men’s entertainment. See Rakhshanda Jalil, A Rebel and Her
Cause: the Life and Work of Rashid Jahan, New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2014, p. 17.
[19]
Kamala Chattopadhyay, ‘Some reminiscences of the 1929 European tour of the IAW in Berlin’,
n.d., Speeches and Writings, Kamala Chattopadhyay papers, NMML.
[20]
Jalil, A Rebel and Her Cause, p. 17.
[21]
Kamala Chattopadhyay, ‘Some reminiscences of the 1929 European tour of the IAW in Berlin’,
NMML.
[22]
Suruchi Thapar-Bjorkert, Women in the National Movement: Unseen Faces, Unheard Voices,
1930-42, New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2006.
[23]
Radha Kumar, The History of Doing: An Illustrated Account of Movements for Women’s Rights
and Feminism in India, 1800-1990, New York: Verso, 1993, pp. 68-69.
[24]
Sinha, Specters of Mother India.
[25]
Ibid., p. 155.
[26]
Ibid., p. 235.
[27]
For more on that raid, see Subodh Roy, Chittagong Armoury Raid: A Memoir, New Delhi:
LeftWord Books, 2015.
[28]
Geraldine Forbes, Women in Modern India, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Kalpana Datta Joshi joined MARS in 1943 and was also an officeholder of AIWC in the 1940s.
[29]
Soma Marik, ‘Breaking Through a Double Invisibility: The Communist Women of Bengal,
1939-1948’, Critical Asian Studies, 45 (1), 2013, pp. 79-118.
[30]
Marik, ‘Breaking Through’, p. 92.
[31]
Ibid.
[32]
Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India
during World War II, Chennai: Tranquebar Press, 2010, pp. 66-7.
[33]
Cooper, Sharecropping and Sharecroppers’ Struggles in Bengal, p. 133.
[34]
Asok Majumdar, The Tebhaga Movement: Politics of Peasant Protest in Bengal, 1946-1950,
New Delhi: Aakar Books, 2011, p. 225.
[35]
Yasmin Khan, ‘Sex in an Imperial War Zone: Transnational Encounters in Second World War
India’, History Workshop Journal, 73 (1), 2012, pp. 240-58.
[36]
Renu Chakravartty, Communists in Indian Women’s Movement.
[37]
Gargi Chakravartty, ‘Emergence of Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti in the Forties – Calcutta
Chapter’, in Tanika Sarkar and Sekhar Bandyopadhyay (eds.), Calcutta: The Stormy Decades,
New Delhi: Social Science Press, 2015, p. 179.
[38]
Ibid.
[39]
Samita Sen, ‘Honour and Resistance: Gender, community and class in Bengal, 1920-40’ in
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Ahijit Dasgupta, and Willem can Schendel (eds.), Bengal: Communities,
Development and States, Delhi: Manohar, 1994, pp. 209-54.
[40]
To Women the World Over! Report of the Women’s Anti-Fascist Meeting Held in Moscow on
September 7, 1941, Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1941.
[41]
Ibid., pp. 53-54.
[42]
Marik, ‘Breaking Through’, p. 103.
[43]
Ibid.
[44]
Manikuntala Sen, In Search of Freedom: An Unfinished Journey, Kolkata: Stree Press, 2001, p.
66.
[45]
Yasmin Khan, The Raj at War: A People’s History of India’s Second World War, Gurgaon,
Haryana: Random House India, 2015.
[46]
Ibid.
[47]
Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War, pp. 59-61.
[48]
Manikuntala Sen, In Search of Freedom, p. 77.
[49]
Renu Chakravartty, Communists in Indian Women’s Movement, p. 23.
[50]
Manikuntala Sen, In Search of Freedom, p. 71.
[51]
Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War, p. 68.
[52]
‘Mass of Walking Skeletons; Conditions in Rural Bengal’, The Hindustan Times, November 6,
1943.
[53]
Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War, p. 235.
[54]
Kanak Mukherjee, ‘Our Famine-Homeless Sisters’ Plight: Bengal Government’s Work Houses
Closing Down’, People’s War, September 1944, p. 9.
[55]
Sunil Sen, The Working Women and Popular Movements in Bengal from the Gandhi Era to the
Present Day, Kolkata: K.P. Bagchi & Co., 1945, pp. 31-33.
[56]
Majumdar, The Tebhaga Movement, p. 224.
[57]
Chakravartty, Communists in Indian Women’s Movement, p. 55.
[58]
Chakravartty, Communists in Indian Women’s Movement, 41.
[59]
Gargi Chakravarty, ‘Emergence of Mahila Atma Raksha Samiti in the Forties’, p. 192.
[60]
Quoted in Chakravartty, Communists in Indian Women’s Movement, p. 69.
[61]
AIWC, ‘Annual Report of Member-in-Charge of Social Section, 1945’, Hansa Mehta papers,
Subject file 7, NMML.
[62]
Ibid.
[63]
Ibid.
[64]
Cooper, Sharecropping and Sharecroppers’ Struggles in Bengal, pp. 270-72.
[65]
Ibid, p. 270.
[66]
Cited in Chakravartty, Communists in Indian Women’s Movement, p. 55.
[67]
Abani Lahiri, Postwar Revolt of the Rural Poor in Bengal: Memoirs of a Communist Activist,
Kolkata: Seagull Books, 2001, p. 78.
[68]
‘Singapore Women’s Federation’, Roshni 1 (5), June 1946, p. 55.
[69]
Armstrong, ‘Before Bandung’.
[70]
‘International Congress of Women founding meeting of WIDF, November 26-December 1,
1945’.
[71]
Avabai Mehta, ‘International Contacts of the AIWC’, Roshni 1 (3), April 1946, p. 49.
[72]
Quoted in the anonymous report, ‘18th Conference in Hyderabad’, Roshni 1 (1), February
1946, p. 28.
[73]
Margaret Corbett Ashby, ‘Report on Paris Conference, 26 November 1945’. Hansa Mehta
Papers, Subject File 7, NMML.
[74]
Ibid.
[75]
Ibid.
[76]
Letter to Hansa Mehta, Margaret Corbett Ashby, dated 7 September 1946, Hansa Mehta papers,
Subject file 6, NMML.
[77]
Ibid.
[78]
Francesca de Haan, ‘Continuing Cold War Paradigms in Western Historiography of
Transnational Women’s Organizations: The Case of the Women’s International Democratic
Women’s Association’. Women’s History Review 19 (4), 2010, pp. 547-73.
[79]
Ahmad interview, 1994, NMML.
[80]
Letters to Indira Maydeo, general secretary of AIWC, by both Nellie Sen Gupta and Kalpana
Joshi dated 15 March 1947, 26 July 1947 and 31 July 1947, AIWC Branch reports, file 65,
NMML.
[81]
Letter signed by Nellie Sen Gupta and Asoka Gupta, 22 December 1947, AIWC Branch reports,
file 65, NMML.
[82]
Tension between the Congress and the Communists goes back to the 1920s. This was a debate
that had a recurrent history. In 1944, the Communist leader P.C. Joshi and Congress leader
Mahatma Gandhi corresponded on just this dispute – whether CPI members could be relied upon
in the Congress. This was published in People’s War between August and October 1944 (and later
collected as Correspondence Between Mahatma Gandhi and P.C. Joshi, Bombay: People’s
Publishing House, 1945). Joshi assessed the debate in People’s War in November (later published
as a pamphlet – P.C. Joshi, Congress and Communists, Bombay: People’s Publishing House,
December 1944).
[83]
Letter to Raj Kumari by Kitty Shiva Rao, dated 3 January 1946, Hansa Mehta papers, Subject
File 6, NMML.
[84]
Ibid.
[85]
Report of the Commission of the Women’s International Democratic Federation Which Visited
the Countries in South-East Asia and Additions Presented in the Course of the Discussion of this
Report for the Preparatory Committee for the Conference of the Women of Asia at Budapest,
November 23rd to December 2nd, 1948, p. 25.
[86]
Letter to Kulsum Sayani, by K. Atchamamba, 16 June 1945, Hansa Mehta papers, Subject file
7, NMML.
[87]
Ibid.
[88]
Padmaja Naidu, Police Atrocities on Women in Hyderabad State, mimeograph, n.d., Hansa
Mehta papers, Subject file 6, NMML and P. Sundarayya, Telegana People’s Struggle and Its
Lessons, New Delhi: CPI-M, 1972.
[89]
Letter to Kulsum Sayani, by K. Atchamamba, 16 June 1945, Hansa Mehta papers, Subject file
7, NMML.
[90]
Hajrah Begum Ahmad interview, 1994, NMML.
[91]
Manikuntala Sen, In Search of Freedom, p. 56.
[92]
Letter to Kitty Shiva Rao, by Hansa Mehta, dated January 16, 1946, Hansa Mehta papers,
Subject File 6, NMML.
[93]
Hansa Mehta, ‘Address by Mrs. Hansa Mehta on handing over the post of President to Lady
Rama Rao at the opening session on Saturday, 28th December, 1946’, Hansa Mehta papers,
Second Installment, Speeches and Articles, #4, NMML.
[94]
Leftist members sought to lower dues from 3 rupees to 4 annas (one quarter of a rupee).
[95]
‘All India Women’s Conference Meets: Demands Immediate Indian Freedom’, People’s War 4
(31), 27 January 1946, pp. 10, 12.
[96]
Ahmad interview, 1994, NMML.
[97]
Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, ‘The Task Before the All India Women’s Conference’, Roshni 2
(3), April 1947, p. 52.
[98]
‘Civil Liberties in Danger’, Roshni 3 (6), July 1948, p. 3.
[99]
Custers, Women in the Tebhaga Uprising.
[100]
Lahiri, Postwar Revolt of the Rural Poor in Bengal.
[101]
Cooper, Sharecropping and Sharecroppers’ Struggles in Bengal, pp. 270-72; Majumdar, The
Tebhaga Movement, pp. 224-25.
[102]
Sen, The Working Women and Popular Movements in Bengal, p. 41.
[103]
Somnath Hore, Tebhaga: An Artist’s Diary and Sketchbook, Trans. Somnath Zutshi, Kolkata:
Seagull Books, 1990.
[104]
Cooper, Sharecropping and Sharecroppers’ Struggles in Bengal, pp. 270-71.
[105]
Lahiri, Postwar Revolt of the Rural Poor in Bengal.
[106]
Marik, ‘Breaking Through’, p. 98.
Archana Prasad
The Warli Movement and its Living
Histories

I wish that the work which my late husband and myself were dedicated to should be continued
after me . . .
Comrade Godavari Parulekar, ‘Will’, 16 January 1994

In 1944 Godavari Parulekar, the first and only woman president of the
All India Kisan Sabha, made her initial forays into the Dahanu Taluka of
what was then Thane District. The Warli Revolt (1945-52) that emerged in
the year after her arrival in Thane is now famous for its militancy and for its
achievements. Recounting her own struggle, Godavari Parulekar’s Adivasis
Revolt: The Story of the Awakening of the Warli describes the
transformation of the consciousness of the Warli peasants – ‘the hopes and
sentiments’ of what she described as the ‘otherwise docile Warlis’ was
transformed in this struggle. They became ‘courageous and determined
fighters’. Parulekar was pushed in this struggle to become a representative
of adivasi society. She asks, in language that pushes against the stereotypes
of her time, how ‘could the ignorant, simple-minded and cowardly Adivasis
change in so short a time’. Her book, published in 1975, is the first and only
documentation of the way in which the consciousness and leadership of
Warlis was developed through a process of struggle.[1] It neither takes the
Warli ‘consciousness’ as singular nor as a given; Parulekar shows how the
struggles of the Warlis transformed their consciousness as they fought to
change the conditions of their existence. The Warli Revolt of 1945-52 was
the beginning of a struggle that continues to this day.
This essay documents the memories of comrades who were centrally
involved in the Warli Revolt, as well as in the struggles that that revolt
inaugurated. These comrades emerged out of those struggles and helped to
build the left organization in the region. Much of the contemporary writings
on the adivasis ignores the legacy of these struggles and the left
organizations that they built as part of their efforts. The essay explores the
autobiographies of the Warlis through the narrative of Godavari Parulekar
(1975) as well as the narration of her confidants – L.P. Dhangar and Llahnu
Kom (interviewed between 2010 and 2012). These interviews are also
supplemented with other oral testimonies and histories of ordinary villagers
and comrades whose families have been important part of the struggles over
several decades. The documentation of the revolt allows the exploration of
the two overlapping dynamics of Warli social formation: between the
process of working-class formation and the articulation of political
identities. Evidence suggests that the political articulation of the
relationship between these two processes is neither automatic nor
spontaneous. It is neither automatic that the adivasi movement reflect the
class interests of the adivasi workers, nor that the adivasi political identity
mirror its class interests. Only a deliberate political intervention provides
the space for the positive overlap of these two processes.
The theoretical question posed in this paper concerns the relationship
between the constructions of the collective memories of the movement with
the continuous process of struggle. The act of history writing and narration
by leaders of the movement at particular points in time is in itself an
important part of the political task of organising the adivasis. By the same
measure the act of recording the history is also an active political task of
learning from the movements and building a usable past for the present. In
this sense the history-writing and the act of struggling become dialectically
related to each other and are therefore part of the same process of
negotiating the co-evolution of working class formation and communitarian
political identities.

THE ‘ADIVASI’ AS A POLITICAL CATEGORY

The term ‘adivasi’ is of recent political origin and has been used
interchangeably with the term ‘tribal’ in several scholarly studies. In recent
writings it is contended that the term ‘adivasi’ is more authentic because it
is a form of self-expression that denotes a community’s own cultural and
ethnic identity. The term ‘tribal’ is considered more pejorative as it implies
a certain incorporation of the tribal elites within the existing political
system.[2] These perspectives, however, treat non-class communitarian
identities as the basic forms of social organization that exist within the
contemporary political economy which developed from the late colonial
period onwards. In this way the scholarship largely ignores the changing
social basis and character of the adivasi political identity. This political
identity, a self-expression of protest, is neither static nor homogeneous in its
character. Rather the social basis and the forms of struggle determines its
diversity.
Two concurrent processes structure the contemporary history of the
formation of these adivasi identities. First, there are the processes of
primary accumulation where the alienation of social groups from their own
resources integrates them within the lower end of the capitalist labour
processes and strengthens the politics of difference.[3] Such a politics of
difference is the result of a continuous process of class formation, which
determines the social basis and the ideological character of this identity.
Therefore it is not possible to attribute identities in general, to any one form
of class or elite politics. The meaning of ‘being adivasi’ will be determined
by the class character of collective or individual agency that seeks to
organize these sections as agents of social transformation. In this sense it is
virtually impossible to have a static or an essentialist conception of adivasi
identity whose form changes with the changing character of capitalist
modernity.[4]
Second, state determined hegemonic tribal identities have emerged
through the institutionalization of affirmative and protective measures,
which have become an important feature of bourgeois politics.[5] Such
hegemonic structure has created its own opposition in the form of the
politics of ‘adivasi identity’, which is led by a stratum of educated tribal
elite. The adivasi identity politics of this kind is oppositional and non-class
in its orientation and has romantic neo-traditional influences and critiques
all forms modernity.[6] In this sense both ‘tribal’ and ‘adivasi’ represent the
generic forms of newly created political communities, which recreate their
own traditions at particular historical conjectures. This invention of
tradition is a legitimating factor in the creation of new communitarian and
national identities whose expressions will be different for different classes.
In this sense the formation of tribal and adivasi identities is a modern and
not necessarily a pre-class phenomenon that has influenced the struggles
and organization of the communist movement in the tribal regions.
Though the term adivasi was first popularized in the 1930s with the
Jharkhand movement, the post-Nehruvian period saw its growing influence.
Dominant movements largely created histories of non-class mobilizations
and often tended to ignore the class-based mobilizations amongst the
adivasi people. It must be remembered that the social basis of many
communist uprisings since the early 1940s lay in the peasants and workers
who described themselves as adivasis or were characterized as scheduled
tribes in the post-independence period. Some of these were the second stage
of the Telangana struggle where the Koya adivasis formed an important
support base of communist guerrilla warfare, or historic Warli struggle in
Maharashtra. Several narratives of surviving leaders from these movements
in the post-1970s period were an attempt to inscribe the collective memory
of these movements and also influence the political practice of their times.
However dominant historiographical narratives tended to treat the category
of the ‘adivasi’ as culturally essentialist and therefore a singular political
entity. This perception is however misinformed as it is based on an
exclusivist selection of certain movement as opposed to others. By
reconstructing the memories of alternative struggles the multiple forms of
articulations also reveal the different ideological dimensions of adivasi
politics. Such an understanding is essential to explore the paths not taken on
the one hand and the paths to be taken on the other hand. In this sense, it is
possible to state that the ‘adivasi’ political identity is dependent on the
changing character of the hegemonic structures, both in terms of state
institutions and also in terms of mainstream ideological apparatuses. The
problem of co-evolution of class position and communitarian identities also
needs to be seen in this context and the political responses to this
phenomenon need to be analyzed in this context.
In this essay I argue that Godavari Parulekar and L.P. Dhangar’s
narratives give us the window for looking at the formation of an adivasi
consciousness that was not culturally particular. Rather they reflect the
formation of an ‘adivasi’ political consciousness that was replicated and
whose character changed in the process of struggle. Therein also underlies
the difference in the two narratives. Written at the time of emergency,
Godavari Parulekar’s own narrative is about the process of politicization
and reflects the way in which the Warli could regain their self-respect and
dignity. Dhangar’s interview, taken almost forty years after the publication
of Adivasi Revolts however, reflects the mature articulation of an adivasi
consciousness that is linked to wider movements, but aware of its own
particular context. The process of recording oral histories reveals the
manner in which knowledge and methods of struggles have been transferred
to new generation of leaderships and helps in their ideological orientation.

WHO IS THE ADIVASI?

Marxist scholars and activists have largely seen the tribes as a pre-class
kinship based formation that needed to be modernized into a sedentary
cultivation peasant society, albeit on an egalitarian foundation.[7] Within this
framework, the term ‘adivasi’ has hardly been used. Rather the usage of the
term ‘tribal peasantry’ is more common as it implied two distinct processes
of acculturation and dispossession from the pre-colonial period onwards.[8]
Scholars like D.D. Kosambi emphasized the hegemonic role of the caste
Hindu peasantry.[9] Later analysis attributed the integration of tribes into
mainstream agrarian economies to the penetration of the market and the
extraction of surplus by the zamindars and princely chieftains who were
largely seen as collaborators of colonial capitalism. Therefore analysis of
the politics and work of the tribal people was done in association with other
exploited classes, namely the landless labourers and small farmers. Such an
understanding recognizes the class differentiation that has taken place
within the tribal peasantry thereby influencing multiple trajectories of
political mobilization.[10]
Within communist practice, the use of the term ‘adivasi’ is first seen in
the narrative of Godavari Parulekar who explains that the ‘adivasi’ identity
was formed through a process of dispossession, which based itself on pre-
capitalist forms of exploitation. The link between dispossession and the
extraction of surplus labour is also seen from the experience of the
Ganamukti Parishad of Tripura. This embeddedness of colonial capitalism
within pre-capitalist structures of zamindari exploitation meant that the
early communist struggles waged protracted struggles for the liberation of
bonded labourers and the peasants as a part of the larger programme of
social, economic and political emancipation in their peasant and agricultural
programme.[11] The early struggles of the Ganamukti Parishad in Tripura,
Warli struggles in Thane and the Telengana Movement of Andhra Pradesh
showed that opposition to unfree and unpaid labour was the first step in
raising political consciousness and extending the outreach of the
communists who organized the first tribal mass organization in the country.
Work began through a programme of social reform, which formed the basis
of a nascent class consciousness of adivasis as landless peasants through
organizations like the Andhra Mahasabha and Jan Shiksha Samiti in
Tripura.[12]
The second stage of the struggle was to ensure that these social groups
got access to their own means of production or land. The understanding of
the Left was that the organization and task of undertaking these struggles
would transform the ‘adivasi’ consciousness to a peasant consciousness,
which would form the basis of class unity amongst the working people.
This agrarian programme of these struggles was intrinsically different from
other community-based struggles that largely advocated the restoration of
customary rights. The slogans of the Communist led movements were
geared towards engineering the long-term redistribution of wealth and
assets. The demands of ‘land to the tiller’ and ‘equal wages’ were the main
slogans. They showed that the communists located the origins of their
struggles in social and economic inequality, rather than in ethnic questions.
Under communist leadership, the adivasi aspired to property in land and
wage labour on equal and fair terms. Struggles were organized through the
formation of elected local committees, which formed the basis of the Kisan
Sabha and the alliance between peasants (kisans), landless peasants and
agricultural workers (khet mazdoors) and other workers in the agrarian
sector.[13] Thus the ‘adivasi consciousness’ was one stage in the formation of
a larger movement for the rights of the landless peasants and the
crystallization of the peasant consciousness. But this confidence and
expectation was based on a misinterpretation of the agrarian situation,
where the ‘tribal’ and adivasi political identities were being shaped through
state-led affirmative action. The weakness in understanding this had wider
theoretical and practical implications for the communist political strategy.
One of the most important features of the accounts of these struggles is
the way in which they analyse and characterize the people who they
organized. It is interesting to note that the common understanding amongst
the organizers of these mass movements was that they were ‘peasant
struggles’. However ‘peasantry’ seems to be used as a generic term that was
used for the toiling labourers and the tillers of the land. It included all social
groups including the tribal people and scheduled castes that formed a large
part of the agrarian workforce. However the recognition of the differences
between these social groups by the accounts of communist-led movements
is done in a contextual way and on the basis of the material reality in whose
context the class formation takes place.
In her book Parulekar acknowledges the primary identity of the Warlis
as ‘adivasis’ and makes an attempt to differentiate between ‘adivasis’ and
the peasants. She writes,
Approximately one hundred years ago the Adivasis were owners of all land in this region. They
lived in the midst of the beautiful natural surroundings, a contented people, growing plenty of
food and eating their fill. With the advent of the British reign, however many outsiders, Hindus,
Muslims and Parsis infiltrated the region with the connivance of the British rulers. They were all
men of education, tradesmen and merchants. Taking advantage of the illiteracy, ignorance and
docility of the Adivasis, they systematically began to appropriate their lands . . . Though the
educated upper castes had taken possession of Adivasi lands, they still needed Adivasi labour for
the cultivation of these lands. The Adivasis, on the other hand, now landless, now needed work in
order to live and exist. This situation gave rise to evils of debt slavery, serfdom and forced labour
system which lay the Adivasis open to inhuman torture and harassment of the landlords. In order
to maintain hold over the Adivasis, the landlords after taking away all the Adivasi lands, offered
to give them certain plots of very poor land, if they were willing to enter into an agreement with
the landlords . . . In 1945, when I first saw the Adivasis at close quarters, they lived in their own
limited world of not more than a thousand square miles approximately 60 km away from
Bombay. These half naked Adivasis were ekeing out their starved existence in the jungles and
valleys of Umbergaon, Dahanu, and Palghar Talukas unaware of the world beyond their villages.
[14]

Parulekar’s portrayal recounts a familiar tale of the processes of

dispossession and marginalization. It also confirms some generic notions of
who the ‘adivasi’ was from the 1930s onwards. The first characteristic of
this is the creation of the myth of the ‘original inhabitant’ where ‘adivasis’
were declared as the owners of all land in order to legitimize their current
demands. This idea was skillfully employed by Parulekar to assert a
collective identity and structure the protests. The second feature employed
by Parulekar is also the trope of the ‘insider’/‘outsider’ which was common
for many tribal protests from the late nineteenth century onwards. This is
the first step towards the formation of the adivasi political consciousness
and its consolidation through the struggle.
The contemporary constructions of the adivasi in the Warli movement
have to be seen in the context of this foundational conception. In his
interview, Dhangar speaks of Godavari Parulekar’s initial forays in order to
understand the problems of the farmers and the quest to organize the first
Kisan Sabha meeting in Titwada near Umbergaon which is now in Gujarat.
But during the course of the meeting Parulekar realizes that there may be
farmers in the Umbergaon and Dahanu, but it was the Warlis who were the
most exploited slaves. It is interesting that Dhangar does not invoke the
same images as that of Parulekar in the construction of the adivasi. Rather,
the class position of the adivasi as worker is stressed through his narrative
and emphasizes the unity of cause between the adivasis and other workers,
both as grass cutters and forest wood cutters. As Dhangar explains in the
prelude to his interview, the export of timber by British companies was one
of the main sources of profit for the zamindars and therefore the
accumulation of surplus from non-agricultural work was a crucial
structuring force in the politics of the Warli adivasi worker. This
construction of the worker is set up against the contractor in Dhangar’s own
description of the Grass Cutting Movement of 1947.[15]
But this predominance of class-oriented articulation in Dhangar’s
narrative is not uniform in all memories. As another veteran activist of the
struggle, Llahnu Kom, states, ‘We cannot designate the struggles of 1945-
47 or after as “adivasi struggles”. It was mostly a Warli struggle and there
were several adivasis who were outside the ambit of struggle. But we
decided to call it an adivasi struggle to build a spectrum of broad unity for
the cause of the Warlis’.[16] This is an interesting observation as it reflects
the need to forge unity amongst all the agricultural and forest workers, even
though the movement was seen as an exclusively adivasi struggle. Many of
the later movements were based on this understanding. But the origins of
Kom’s work within the Kisan Sabha were located in the use of
‘dispossession’ to explain the position of the adivasis and the main agenda
of the work. The main incident narrated by him is quite different from
Dhangar’s emphasis and is based on the popular consciousness of the land
struggle as the main cornerstone of the Warli struggle. In comparison, it is
possible to reflect that this difference in emphasis may have arisen from a
different understanding of the nature of the leadership.

CONSTRUCTING OPPRESSION AS
TROPE OF ORGANIZATION

Through her story, Parulekar seeks to explain ‘the hopes and sentiments
that transformed the otherwise docile Warlis into courageous and
determined fighters’ and how she as a woman leader became a
representative of the ‘adivasi society’. She asks how ‘could the ignorant,
simple-minded and cowardly Adivasis change in so short a time’.[17] In this
sense she starts her narrative with a rather conservative assumption about
the characteristics that persist in the popular perception and images of the
tribal people. It is these images that seem to have guided Parulekar’s own
journey through the Warli struggle. Hence at the beginning of her narrative,
Parulekar counterposes the opulence and ‘glory’ of the landlords with the
austerity and exploitation of the Warlis. Of her first experience of a
landlord’s house she writes,
To one side stood a building of about 35 ft. broad and very long, say 150 to 200 ft. long. It was
divided into many rooms. Along the front ran a long spacious verandah. If you think that this
building had been built for the landlord’s poor tenants, you were completely mistaken. It was the
landlord’s granary . . . As the bungalow was on a raised ground standing at the back of the house,
one could see, far below in the valley, acres of rich land and orchards and flower gardens that
belonged to the landlord. Near these stood the Warli hovels lit up by the twinkling of hundreds of
wood fires. These hovels belonged to the landlord’s tenants and those who did forced labour.
Limitless wealth stood rubbing shoulders with abysmal poverty in that beautiful valley . . . This
sight affected the landlord’s guests in a different way. They marveled at the scenic beauty of the
place. They ate their fill of the landlord’s rich food, and went away singing paeans to the
landlord’s goodness and munificence . . . The Warli slaves walking around the house doing their
chores would hear such remarks and silently burn with rage.[18]

The imagery evoked in Parulekar’s text is instrumental of her theory of

the exploitation of Warli people, a principal reason for their transformation
and militancy. The methods of extraction are described in terms of the
‘mechanisms of torture’ and the symbolism associated with it. One such
symbol of oppression was the slave pole, which was passed around from
one house to another in order to determine which family was to do ‘unpaid
labour’ or slave labour for the landlord in a particular day. The pre-capitalist
character of this exploitation is further underscored by the treatment of
Warlis ‘like cattle’. Parulekar narrates one instance of such treatment,
Zhipper and eight or ten Warlis had been called by Mr. Nusserwanji’s foreman to tread slush his
field. All day long they had trod the soil to make the slush in his field. All day long they had trod
the soil to make the slush soft. They had not even been given time off at mid-day for a meal. If
they felt thirsty, they would slink off furtively to the nearby well for a drink of water. This had to
be done quickly, while the foreman was not looking, because if he caught one of them drinking
water he would start laying about them with his cane and shout abuse . . . At about 7 o’clock in
the evening the bullocks started straying out of the field. The foreman shouted at the Warlis to
turn the animals into the field and tread the slush properly. Zhipper said, ‘ How can we keep the
animals in the field when there are so many thorns there? Overhearing this answer another of the
landlord’s men went and reported it to the landlords mehta. The mehta came immediately to the
field and announced the punishment to be given to the Warlis for daring to talk. One plough was
being driven in the field. One of the two bullocks yolked to the plough was released and Zhipper
yolked in its place, and ordered to pull the plough with the bullock on one side. Tired after the
day’s uninterrupted labour Zhipper could barely plough. As punishment for this, the foreman
pierced him with a goad causing blood to spurt out. Even then Zhipper somehow managed to pull
the plough twice along the field.[19]
Parulekar’s account reflects how pre-capitalist relationships were the
bedrock of colonial capitalism in Thane and what extra-economic methods
were used to extract surplus and labour from the adivasi peasantry. But as if
mere torture was not enough, in many cases the ‘landlord’s also proceeded
to kill their victims’. Parulekar uses the reports of the Adivasi Sewa Mandal
to substantiate this claim, and shows the forest to be a place of both safe
haven as well as several hidden atrocities. The relationship between the
Warlis and the landlords is also described in those terms. Whereas the
Warlis were debased ‘like animals’ the landlord’s behaved ‘like beasts’.
Such treatment was even recognized by the Bombay Government in the
Symington report, thus giving these vivid descriptions a certain authenticity.
[20]
Yet Parulekar’s analysis is not limited to the Warli’s contradictions with
the landlord’s but also analyses the way in which the Warlis were integrated
into the larger system of colonial capitalism through forest labour. The
Warli were expected to leave their own lands and jobs to do unpaid work in
the jungles. The money that was meant to be their wages went into ‘the
pockets of the forest department officers’. In some cases they were only
paid a handful of salt for this work, and if the Warlis refused to work than
they would be harassed and many cases of illegal offences would pile up
against them.[21] Thus it was not only the practices of the landlord that were
pre-capitalist in character, but the colonial state itself used these means and
created a class of collaborators who had similar types of exploitative
practices. Hence the visible character of the colonial state was reflected in
the surplus extraction of both the landlords and the forest department. This
multiple contradiction structured the Warli struggle of 1947-52.
The awareness of new forms of exploitation was crucial in the early
years of the building of the Kisan Sabha. Communist activists and their
associates made early penetrations by organising small actions, filing
complaints and standing upto the landlords. They also stayed with the
Warlis and experienced their life. The Warlis had to face threats and more
severe oppression in return for their hospitality they offered to Parulekar
and her associates. This in itself made them more militant and it was
reflected in the character of the struggle and the awakening of the Warli.
This awakening was reflected in the participation of twenty-five to thirty
Warlis in the Maharashtra Kisan Sabha Conference in Titwalla (1944).
Parulekar recalls that those who attended the conference went back as
‘changed people’. They had never attended such a meeting before and they
had never been accorded so much respect previously. On the way home
they had picked up a few red flags and begun to look at the ‘Red Flag as a
friend and guide. Handing over their regular jobs to other people they
spontaneously went around from village to village shouting slogans and
propagating the aims of the Titwalla conference’. The slogan ‘Down with
forced labour’ started circulating and resounding in the villages of the
forests.[22] This campaign was so electrifying that five thousand Warli men
and five hundred women attended the peasant conference in May 1945,
which was held in Umbergaon taluka of Dahanu. From this conference the
Warlis launched a unified struggle against vethi begar or forced labour. The
landlords responded by refusing debts, but the Warli were determined and
continued to refuse vethi begar. At the same time they also began to do a
‘social boycott’ of dissenters who were not refusing veth begar’. In
Parulekar’s perception, the method of social boycott proved that the
‘culturally backward’ Warlis needed to be socialized into more modern
methods of politics namely ‘persuasion’.[23] This clearly showed that the
movement was seen not only as a way of liberation from the landlord’s
oppression but also a method of reforming the Warli society itself.
Dhangar narrates the history and states that the Kisan Sabha was
formed in Tilwada in 1945 and a resolution was taken to oppose and stop
slave labour. But this resolution itself ran the risk of becoming a way of
making a ‘non-adivasi’ leadership identify with the Warli cause. Of the
penetration of Godutai into the region Dhangar narrates the story of the first
meeting between the Warlis and Godutai Parulekar in a different way. He
says that when Godutai met 400 to 500 Warlis for the first time there was
also a revenue official deputed by the zamindar in the meeting. Godutai
enquired about his identity and then told him ‘who called you to come for
this meeting, why have you come here, do you want to get beaten up by the
people. He then replied that the Mamlidar had sent him for the meeting and
then ran away. Godutai told the Warlis that the official had run away not
because of people’s togetherness’.[24]
The formation of Warli Committees after the initial meetings reveal the
consciousness of an adivasi worker especially with the 1945 struggle of
abolishing Weth Begari. As Dhangar narrates, ‘Mrs Parulekar was asked by
the Warlis to come to their house by taking the Kalyan-Umbergaon bus and
getting down at the five banyan trees. The village was with 5,000-6,000
people and it was February or March. The meeting decided that nobody
should accept a wage of less than Rs. 1/- for eight hours of work and that
there should be one hour lunch break in the middle... The aim of the
movement was to give minimum wage to everybody and that the Khand
system should be abolished’. There was a resolution to not work free of cost
and get rid of the veth begar system. This along with the abolishing of the
Kul system and the movement on wages for Grass cutting are set up by
Dhangar as providing some of the main foundations of the contemporary
Warli movement. As one of the persons interviewed near Kainad stated, the
gains from the work done Kisan Sabha were not merely economic, but also
made the adivasi workers hold up their heads with dignity. ‘Earlier we used
to crouch before the landlord and get lathis. Now we learnt to stand straight
and pound our lathi at the doorstep of the landlord. The landlords are scared
of us.’
It is important to note that while a conventional Kisan Sabha struggle
articulated its aspirations in terms of land, Dhangar’s narrative is largely
focused on the class position of adivasis as workers even though land
struggle remained a very important part of the ongoing Warli movement.
This aspect has been more focused upon by Llahnu Kom when he described
his own involvement with the Warli cause. Being an adivasi landholder
Llahnu Kom describes the forest plot struggle of 1962 through which he
became a known face in three blocks of Dahanu. It is significant that
Llahnu Kom chooses this narrative at this time when the Forest Rights Act
has been passed. It is also significant that Llahnu stresses that even though
land struggles were launched the adivasi remained in the status of a worker
as not titles were given. Hence the idea of being a kisan was not associated
with just the act of farming but rather with the title of the land being
farmed. This aspect is important in the light of the ongoing struggles for the
proper implementation of the Forest Rights Act. Hence the contradictory
aspiration to become a kisan and also be a worker with dignity requires
some unpacking and further exploration.
PATRIARCHY AS A FORM OF CLASS OPPRESSION

Parulekar saw patriarchal violence as a form of class oppression by the

zamindars over the Warlis. As Parulekar writes,
I have already that the landlords’ considered their tenants wives and the wives of their debt-slaves
to be their own private property. They firmly beleived that they had the hereditary right to enjoy
these women whenever it pleased them to do so. It was a common thing for them to make
obscene remarks to the women who worked for them, to touch them, pinch them, push them, and
get them alone unto the corners to molest them . . . The landlords and the forest contractors
always used these women for their sexual lust. So common a feature were the illicit relations
between the landlords and the Adivasi women that a special name had come to be given to their
progeny. They were called the Watla, a special caste. This name was applied not only to the
progeny of non-Hindu landlords, but the Hindu landlords also made their numerous contributions
to this race of Watlas.[25]

The narrative tries to establish that assault and sexual abuse is not
particular to any one community but is rooted in the class oppression of its
times. That this oppression was not limited to the Parsi or Muslim
community (to which many landlords belonged) was emphasized because it
sought to underline the character of class oppression.
 In this context one of the most important struggles was to free the
marriage slaves, which was intimately connected to the emancipation of
women. Both husband and wife were to slave for the landlord from whom
they had taken debt for their marriage. The rates of interest charged from
the marriage slaves was exhorbitant and the ‘illiterate and ignorant’ Warlis
were to accept the landlords accounts as correct. No wages were ever paid
to the slave couple, and the couple was usually forced to live separately. By
doing this, the landlord could force the wives of the marriage slaves to
submit to their sexual assault and use her exactly like a ‘proprietor’ used
‘his property’. As soon as these slaves found a friend in the ‘Red Flag
hundreds of them rebelled against their masters and threw off the shackles
of the debassing life, and were liberated’. Parulekar recalls that when she
attended the meetings of these liberated slaves the women would recount
their horrors and the women would tell her that they ‘had escaped from
hell’.[26] This liberation also had led to certain social changes and
adjustments within Warli society. The Warlis decided that if they did not
have the money to go through the ritual of marriage, they would simply not
perform those rituals. All they gave the girl was a sari and a pair of bangles
and laid down the rule that if a boy and girl lived in the boy’s house, than
they would be considered man and wife. If a child was born out of such a
marriage it would be given the same status as a child born through wedlock.
After this the Warlis began to be paid for their work and started getting their
children married according to their customs.[27]
The role of women in the Warli struggle is not clearly elaborated in
Parulekar’s narrative, but better explained by Dhangar on a guided tour of
the area. Driving around the Hills separating Talasari and Dahanu Taluka he
explains the crucial role played by women during the ‘underground period’.
Once Godutai was externed from the district, the onus of taking the struggle
forward was on the Warli leadership. At this time Morarji Desai’s
government unleashed extreme repression on the Warlis. The police came
looking for all the Warli men. To escape them the Warlis escaped to the
dense forests in the highlands leaving their wives to face the police. The
action formed the basis of freeing the marriage slaves from debt and
bondage.
The heroism of the women was emancipatory in character and reveals
the underlying aspiration for freedom from serfdom in the Warli struggle.
As Ratni Sathvi of Zari village states, ‘I was 13-14 years old when Godutai
first came to the village. Along with the elders I too went to the Banyan
tree. She caught hold of my hand and said come lets go. We went around
the village and collected the women for the meeting.’ On being asked about
the impact of the struggle on her life she says, ‘Can’t you see the Warlis
now live in proper houses and produce for their own subsistence . . . Earlier
I could not open my mouth, but now I have been from here to Delhi and
beyond. I sit on a chair and I tell girls to hold their head high. The struggle
gave us that confidence to go and fight’.[28] This confidence to fight is
evident in the ongoing struggles of the Warlis. The women played a stellar
role in this process with several of the older women comrades now
deceased.
ANALYSING AND CONTEXTUALISING
WARLI ORAL HISTORIES

The tales told by Dhangar, Llahnu Kom and their comrades are many
and span the entire period between 1945 and the 1989. But these tales only
survive in the talukas of Dahanu, Talasari, Palghar and Jawahar where the
struggles still continue. In stark contrast, the Umbergaon taluk which was
the nerve centre of the 1944-46 rebellion has hardly any memories. As
Dhangar explains there is no surviving movement in the region since the
division of Maharashtra and perhaps therefore no one to contact from the
histories. From the process of recording it is clear that the memory itself is
created and survives through the network of political organization and
practice. The list of hundred informants is also based on this network where
every village and their ancestors participated in the struggle. Hence the first
tentative conclusion to be drawn through the Warli case is that the
formation and continuous transformation of collective memory is closely
connected to the process of struggle. By the same measure its replication
also has an impact on the character of the struggle and the political
organization of the movement.
But this does not necessarily lead to a simplified narrative of the
struggle. Rather the narratives of the struggle are themselves contextualized
in the politics of their own times. The narrative of Godavari Parulekar has
to be seen in this light. Written in the 1960s, the book was translated into
English in 1975 during the emergency. Its publication also coincided with
the second stage of the left revival after the Naxalbari movement. Thus
Parulekar’s main intent has been not only to tell the unknown story of the
struggle, but also reveal the hidden aspects of courage and glory. She is
only partly successful in this task and her diffidence in evaluating its role
for the Warli adivasi is therefore grounded in the lack of detail about the
organizational relationship between the adivasi identity and the material
basis of Warli life.
Did the Kisan Sabha foster the identity of the adivasi worker and give it
a conscious political shape? This question can only be answered by reading
the later narratives of the several movements conducted by the adivasis and
the contemporary history of Warli political action. As Llahnu Kom explains,
from the late 1970s Godutai stressed the need to construct a democratic
adivasi consciousness through education. Those interviewed recount many
struggles and discuss many dilemmas of the organization, but some
common elements can be gleaned to give a picture of what it means to be an
adivasi. One point that comes out the narrative is the consolidation of the
adivasi as a worker in both the rural and urban economy. Almost all the
narratives of Dhangar and his comrades confirm the view that despite tilling
the land, the adivasis continued to be workers. This consciousness is itself
not a new one and is based on the ongoing debates about the nature of
contradictions between the peasant and the agricultural worker as
acknowledged within the communist movement with the formation of the
All India Agricultural Worker Unions.
In this sense the narrative of L.P. Dhangar was a reflection of the
political articulation of an adivasi agricultural working class. What is more
significant is that this articulation was embedded in the Kisan Sabha and
not the agricultural workers’ union. Second the narratives also reflect the
dilemma of the persistent land struggles which are able to ensure the
occupation of lands by tiller but unable to consolidate their class positions
as peasants. In this sense the Warli is a kisan as also a mazdoor. This aspect
of the Warli identity gives us a window for analysing its multiple contextual
articulations. But such dilemmas seem to find some resolution in the wake
of the crisis of the last three decades in whose account the narrative also
reflects the increasing proletarianization of the adivasi farmer. The real life
evidence of this is found in the changing character of the struggles and the
need to defend the historical gains of the Warli movement. The collective
memory constructed through the autobiography of Godavari Parulekar and
the subsequent oral history reflects this reality.
WARLI STRUGGLES IN CONTEMPORARY HISTORY

The period from the mid 1940s to the early 1950s has been often
described as the ‘golden period’ of the Indian Communist Movement. This
period was characterized by three of the most famous peasant struggles in
contemporary India. These struggles – namely Telangana, Tebhaga and
Warli – laid the foundation for the ideological dominance and physical
expansion of the influence of the communist party. The All-India Kisan
Sabha, which mobilized peasants and workers for their socio-economic
rights, led these struggles. The fights had local grievances and histories, but
they were also linked to a much wider project of social and political
transformation that would result – it was hoped – in an egalitarian society.
The Warli struggles, therefore, emerged in a milieu that was politically
charged by the initial phase of the growth of the communist party.
Scholarly works on the Warli struggle have described the first Kisan
Sabha led movement of the Warlis (1945-52) as a militant struggle. While
there is a virtual consensus on the importance of the first Warli struggle
against veth begari, the post-1950s struggles are termed as non-militant in
character, especially after the Party began to contest elections in the Dahanu
and Talasari Talukas. The discussion in this essay shows that such a limited
perspective ignores the long history of struggles by the Warli leadership of
the Kisan Sabha. It also ensures that any history of the continuing Warli
struggles is erased from present-day memory. Hence the act of recovering
this history is a political task.
THE ORIGINS OF KISAN SABHA WORK IN
DAHANU AND TALASARI

Before the British took Thana district, the area had been ruled by the
Portuguese, the Mughals and the Marathas – all of whom placed land
revenue structures onto the peasantry. The unevenness of the land revenue
structures was a result of these successive rules with their own land tax
systems. Broadly speaking, the area was divided into two regions: Kunbi
farmers worked the land in the coastal region, whereas the Warlis lived in
the hilly areas of Dahanu taluka. The Kisan Sabha’s first struggle in the
region began with the farmers on the coastal belt in Kalyan in 1944. At that
time there was no Kisan Sabha in Maharashtra. As Comrade Dhangar
recalls, Shamrao Parulekar was working for the Party at Mumbai. Inspired
by the farmer-led revolution in China he asked the Party to give him
permission to go and work amongst the farmers. The Parulekar’s also said
that they would go to Thane, Murbad, Bhiwandi, Kalyan and Shahapur
talukas and will start work with farmers Godavari and Shamrao Parulekar
shifted to Kalyan, and the first farmers’ struggle leading to the formation of
the Maharashtra Rajya Krishak Sabha was organized in 1944 against the
wrong weighing system by merchants in the agricultural produce market.
Describing the struggle Com Dhangar says,
Two things were very important. The farmers who were living in the areas were small and
marginal farmers from the Agri and Kunbi communities and had started to cultivate their land
with vegetables like chillies and brinjals. After getting the rice crop, Vari, Nachani, Toor, Udid
and other cereals and pulses were sown in the fields. The crops produced were brought by the
farmers to the weekly market of Kalyan. Though there was the Act of Weights and Measures
during British rule, it was not implemented anywhere . . . Merchants were cheating the farmers
by using wrong weight system in the weekly market. The farmers told Godutai that it is a good
thing that we have come to get her on this issue, but the merchants are too powerful and we
cannot prevent them from these illegal activities . . . Godutai replied that there is a law for
preventing these illegal activities, the weight system used by the merchants was wrong, therefore
in the next weekly market the farmers were told that they should not sell their agricultural
products to the merchants till Godutai and her companions came to the weekly market. She also
promised that they will go to the Mamledar (Tehsildar) asking for justice against this unlawful
activity carried on by the merchants. The struggle which was carried out against the wrong
weighing system of agricultural produce was called as Weights Struggle for Agricultural Produce.
In the next weekly market, nearly 500 farmers were present with their families. They marched to
the Mamledar office and told him to raid the weighing system of the merchants and also decided
not to sell their agricultural products. The Mamledar and inspector were so far not taking this
issue seriously because they were indirectly supporting the merchants. But hundreds of farmers
started giving loud slogans and as a result of this the revenue department ordered the Mamledar
and Talathi (village level revenue officer) to confiscate all the wrong weights of the merchants
and they were ordered that without new and authorized weights they should not start their
transactions. Due to this the merchants started getting scared of these initiatives by the Kisan
Sabha. Shamrao Parulekar and Godavari Parulekar along with AISF students led the march with
the Red Flag. That flag of the Communist Party won the faith and trust of the farmers. And they
 started believing that this Party is the Party of the farmers and started sharing their joys and
sorrows. During that time the annual membership fee of the Kisan Sabha was only 6 paise (1
anna). The Kisan Sabha membership drive began after this struggle.
The formation of the Kisan Sabha in Thana also took shape around the
same period. Soon after the farmers’ struggle the Kisan Sabha Conference
was called in Titwala in 1945. The preparations for the meeting had started
in the end of 1944 when Shamrao Parulekar visited Thana for the first time
and persuaded the Warlis to send representatives for the Conference. Mahya
Dhangda from Zari village represented the Warlis and narrated the
experiences of inhuman torture by the landlord. Their experiences opened
the eyes of the Kisan Sabha leadership with respect to the slavery and
bonded labour that prevailed in the Dahanu Taluka. A resolution was passed
in the Kisan Sabha Conference for the abolition of slavery and bonded
labour. This was the first step towards the organization of the Warlis under
the Red Flag. As Comrade Dhangar remembers, at least four hundred to
five hundred Warlis attended the first meeting addressed by Godavari
Parulekar (or Godutai as Dhangar calls her). The landlords also sent their
representatives to this meeting. As Dhangar explains,
There was a clear difference in the dressing pattern of the Talathi and the tribals. So Godutai
asked who is this person, they replied this is Talathi. Godutai scolded him and asked who called
you for this meeting, why you came here, do you want to get beaten by the people? He replied
that the Tehsildar had sent him for the meeting and then due to Godutai’s reply he ran away from
the meeting. Godutai told the tribals that the Talathi had run away because there is strength in the
Party of the red flag and in peoples’ unity. She told them that he had run away, not because she
told him to get out but because of the gathering and strength off our hundred to five hundred
tribals. He must have thought that if every person slapped him, he would die and therefore he ran
away. And she said that this strength of togetherness should be used for the further movement.
Due to this incident, the tribals realized that if they came together they would be able to get their
rights and this helped to boost the confidence of the tribals.

As is evident from this explanation, the Red Flag gave the Warlis the
courage to rise against the exploitation of the landlords and organize
themselves. The historic meeting of 23 May 1945 took place under five
banyan trees in Zari village. As Dhangar recalls, around five thousand
Warlis from Dahanu and Talasari Taluka attended the meeting, which was
addressed by Godutai. They passed a resolution stating that they would
declare the abolition of slavery and bonded labour under the leadership of
the Red Flag.
Both the meetings at Titwala and Zari are important parts of the
collective memory of old Warli comrades. For example Ladkya Debal Minz
from Talasari recalled that he attended the first meeting at Zari and the
conference at Titwala. Ratni Ramji Sathvi from Karvandipada, Zari recalls
that she was very young when the meeting in Zari took place. She recalls
that the Comrade (Godutai) told her to go ahead and gather people as she
was with them at that moment. One of the oldest living comrades, Shivrao
Darmar Dhabare, from Aundhani Palghar, recalls that his father and uncle
had gone to Titwala, and brought the Red Flag to the village.[29] Jaish Salvi
from Udhwa recounts a similar story, ‘My grandfather went for the meeting
at Titwala. Some people also went with him after leaving the work of the
sahukar. The time was such that they have to bring the red flag by hiding
it’. These interviews show that almost every household has some familial
connection with the first struggle that established the Red Flag in the
region.
THE STRUGGLE AGAINST VETH BEGAR, 1945-52

Veth Begar or forced labour was a norm in the land of the Warlis, which
was dominated by Parsi, Muslim and other high caste Hindu landlords.
Forced and bonded labour took several forms that were documented by
Symington, the Governor of Bombay. Repeating his words in The People’s
Age, P.B. Ranganekar reported,
The conditions under which the jungle tribes work and live are wretched in the extreme and the
abuses to which they are subjected constitute a blot on the administration.
All jungle tract tenants who cultivate by the ‘khand’ are liable to be called upon to work for
their landlords.
If they refuse or procrastinate they are liable to assaults or beatings. These are common
occurrences and are usually carried out by the landlords’ local agent. I was told on credible
authority of men being tied to posts and whipped. Such occurrences I can vouch for. There are
also rumours of men in the past having been killed.
‘Veth (forced labour) is demanded for many days as are necessary for the landlords
requirements.
If the landlord is also a forest contractor, he will use his ‘tenants’ labour’ by veth for working
his coups.
 The maximum remuneration for veth that I could discover is one anna per diem.
Landlords will not scruple to use their power for other purposes, for instance the use of their
‘tenant’ womenfolk for fulfillment of their lust.[30]
The facts being reported by Symington are confirmed through the
memories of several comrades whose parents and grandparents did veth
begar. As Ramji Vignya Vithe (Saugaun, Patilpada) remembers,
The adivasis were being use in place of animals by landlords for ploughing the fields and other
work. They were being given food just once a day. I remember one incident told by my father.
One day he was very hungry, he ate one mango and kept it on the green paddy bundles. When the
landlord came to know this he removed all the involved people. My father pleaded with the
landlord, then he was taken back at work.

Other memories spell out the different aspects of oppression. Santhi

Vishnu Hadal (Kainad, Dahanu) explains, ‘These sahukars exploited us
terribly. We had to undergo severe hardships. The name of the sahukar was
Anil Chouradiya. If we refused to work, the sahukar would threaten to tie us
upside down’. Warlis had to give khand (i.e., a share of their produce) to the
Sahukar. They had to work on the lands of the sahukar instead of their own
lands even when they had work on the family farm. Given these conditions
the Zari meeting passed a resolution, ‘No Warli would work for less than
Rs. 1 for eight hours of work and would get one hour break for lunch in the
working day’. Godutai Parulekar and the rest of the Kisan Sabha leadership
moved with local people and built up a local leadership in order to
implement the resolution. The Warlis went on strike and refused to work for
the landlords if they were not paid properly.

THE GRASS CUTTING MOVEMENT AND THE

TALWADA FIRING, 1945

As Comrade Dhangar recalls, adivasis stopped grass cutting as a part of

a complete strike in Dahanu and Umbergaon talukas to achieve the
minimum wages. About fifteen thousand Adivasi workers stopped cutting
grass. This movement was led by Godutai and Shamrao; people had decided
to stop grass cutting till Godutai and Shamrao gave the order to start it
again. Since green grass was required for the cattle sheds in Bombay, the
Milk Commissioner of the Bombay State had organized a meeting by
convincing the Government to resolve this issue. A decision was taken to
raise the wages, but the landlords and traders were not willing to give the
rates decided at Rs 2.50. After this meeting Godutai and Shamrao
announced the decisions of the meeting to the people gathered near the
bungalow at Sanjan. They informed adivasis that unless they get the
decided rates of wages they should not start grass cutting. Facing a resilient
strike, the landlords decided to sabotage the movement.
Rumours flew about. People heard that the grass traders had raised
10,000 rupees to break the strike. Some of this money went to the police
and to government agents to act against the adivasis. It was said in Talwada
that the Portuguese authorities had arrested Godutai as she went by the
Daman Ganga River. People gathered their weapons (such as the kathya,
ladhya, bhala, and axe) and got ready to go rescue her. It took only an hour
or two for this message to spread around an area with a periphery of about
thirty to forty kilometres. Those who wanted to sabotage the movement
hoped that this armed mobilization would be arrested on the road to
Talwada. They had informed the police that agitators had begun to march
on the town in order to kill traders and landlords. The plan was to scare and
demoralize the Warlis and to break their affiliation with the Red Flag. But
the plan failed. People gathered in large groups at night and demanded that
Godutai be released to them. The police fired on the people, killing
Comrade Jethya Gangad. Five others also died and more than fifteen people
lay wounded. Despite this, the Warlis continued their bandh. They
demanded the release of Godutai. It was then that Comrade Kamlakar
Ranadive told the Warlis of the area that Godutai had been staying in
Kalyan. The rumour of her arrest was false. Only then did the Warli
comrades disperse. The police confiscated their weapons. The police
collected about one and a half to two truckloads of bamboo sticks, which
were displayed to show that the police had only acted in self-defence. But
this did not impress anyone. The plan to defeat the movement failed. The
police banned Godavari and Shamrao Parulekar from the district in 1946.
This did not disrupt the movement. By then, the Warlis had become active
leaders in their own struggle.
One year after the firing P.B. Ranganekar reported on the Warlis in the
People’s Age,
 Since last year a new Warli has come into being. This September, as soon as the work began, they
demanded a wage of Rs 1-4. The saukars and the contractors refused to accept their demands and
immediately fifteen thousand Warlis came out on strike under the Red Flag. Even where work
had already begun, the Warlis left their jobs and went back to their villages. The saukars, many of
them local Congress ‘leaders’, now rushed to the District Collector. They even wired, it is
reported, to Pandit Nehru and Premier Kher, asking them ‘to control the Communists’ . . . What
did they do to settle the dispute? Leaders of the Adivasi (aboriginal) Seva Mandal, immediately
supported the saukars. Two months ago when the Kisan Sabha leaders tried to arrange a joint
discussion between the saukars, the District Collector and the Kisan Sabha to settle the issue of
wages for hay cutting and timber cutting, some Provincial leaders of the Congress torpedoed the
move on the ground that it would give ‘recognition to the Communists’.[31]

The impact of the Talwada firing is etched in the memories of the

Warlis. Many of them have heard stories from their parents. Some of them
were very young and remember that their fathers and uncles had gone to
Talwada as a part of the mobilization. The firing also started a widespread
and long lasting struggle against slavery. The repression that accompanied
the struggle was evident not on the Talwada firing alone, but also the
Nanivelli firing. Shivrao Dhabare of Aundhani, Palghar remembers that two
of his family members died in the Nanivelli firing. He says that following
the firing the police arrested people in a random way without pre-text. This
was the first struggle against veth begar in his village.
FREEDOM FOR WOMEN AND MARRIAGE SLAVES
(LAGAN GHADI MOVEMENT), 1945

The initial movement against the landlords and sahukars met with
repression. But this did not stop the movement for the dignity and freedom
of the Warlis. One significant aspect of these struggles was their opposition
to patriarchal authority and practices of the landlords. The first concerns the
exploitation of women where several villagers vividly describe the fate of
both the Warli women as well as the poor slave labour who dared to speak
against them. Godavari Parulekar writes that landlords considered the wife
of their debt slaves to be their personal property. The ‘illicit’ relations
between the landlords and the adivasi women often resulted in the birth of
illegitimate children who were known by the name of the Watla caste.
Parulekar states that this ‘name was applied not only to the progeny of non-
Hindu landlords, but the Hindu landlords also made their numerous
contributions to this race of Watlas’.[32] Her description of the sexual
violence is carefully drawn. There is no attempt here to pin the violence on
any particular community – either Hindu, Parsi or Muslim landlords. The
violence is not communal, but it based on the class oppression of those
times. The system of lagna ghadi (loans paid at marriage) structured the
patriarchal authority and other forms of oppression. When a Warli man took
a loan from the sahukar or landlord for his marriage, both husband and wife
were forced to work for the landlords to pay off the loan. Further it was
agreed that the wife would spend the first few days with the landlord before
living with her husband. This arrangement ensured that the landlord
considered the wife of Warli as his own ‘property’. Freedom from lagna
ghadi became one of the important campaigns of the time. P.B. Rangnekar
records in the People’s Age an incident that took place on 6 August 1946,
Thousand warlis held a meeting in front of Behram Saukars house at Vasa who had ‘marriage
slaves’. ‘The coward threatened them with shooting if they stepped in. but the warlis were not to
be cowed down. They met a warli cart drive who himself was a ‘marriage slave’, freed him and
marched with him into the guarded precincts of Behrma’s estate. They freed all the ‘marriage
slaves’ there and came out amidst defeaning shouts of ‘Lal Bawta ki Jai’. Where was behram
with his gun? As he saw the mighty force rushing through, he had swiftly taken to his heels
through the back door. At Sankas, Saukar Homi Debiyerwala is also a Hon. Magistrate. And yet
no one in the neighbourhood sets the law more at naught than he at employing marriage slaves.
When the warlis went to his house to liberate their colleagues, the armed police ready to protect
him, leveled their guns and started abusing the ‘liberators’.[33]

The liberation of marriage slaves is alive in the memory of many

comrades interviewed for this project. As Shivrao Dhabare (Aundhani,
Palghar) explains, the lagna ghadi struggle has to be seen as a part of a
larger movement. He says that they started their struggles for freedom from
lagna ghadis because this struggle was a direct attack on the Irani Parsis,
Marwadis and Kunbis. The Kunbis had the maximum number of lagna
ghadis. Some of the protesters even carried the red flag, so they took out a
march from Talasari to Wada and surveyed the area for about 15 days. They
understood that the lagna ghadis had no proper clothes to wear, no food to
eat and no wages. They were only getting five kilos of rice, which was not
enough. So the freedom of the lagna ghadis was part of a strategy to initiate
a larger movement against forced labour and slavery.
 Comrade Dhangar says that the lagna ghadi tradition was a kind of
worst class based tradition existing in those days and this lagna ghadi
freedom movement was a strong movement against the upperclass/caste
people. It involved the physical entry into the landlords’ houses and the
freeing of the lagna ghadis. This was a remarkable movement of the last
hundred to a hundred and fifty years, which minimized injustice and unjust
social practices even though it did not fully eradicate the total money
lending system. More than fifteen thousand adivasi marriage slaves were
physically freed from the landlords’ houses through the action of the Kisan
Sabha. The movement also showed that the Warlis could organize
themselves despitethe absence of Shamrao and Godutai Parulekar because
of their externment by the police. Warli leaders themselves planned,
organized and successfully led the lagna ghadi movement. This made the
adivasis confident enough to go to the landlords’ houses and free their
brothers and sisters from their clutches.
LAND TAX MOVEMENT, 1950S-1960S

The initial struggles by the Warlis led to the enactment of the Kul
Kayda (tenancy law). The Warli-led Kisan Sabha had achieved a major
victory despite the repression. But the implementation of the law posed a
challenge. The 13th Session of the All India Kisan Sabha held at Dahanu in
1955 gave the slogan Kasel Tyanchi Jamin (Land to the Tiller), Rabel
Tyanche Rajya (those who work should rule).[34] Throughout the 1950s and
1960s the Warlis organized themselves under the lal bawta and struggled
for the implementation of the tenancy law. Land struggles became the order
of the day. As the late Comrade Rajya Mahe Dongarakar (Uplat, Talasari)
explains,
When Kul Kayaada was imposed in 1956, at the same time the workers were demanding their
rights in Mumbai. Godutai told us to start the struggle in the Jungle to support them and for our
own rights also for taking up the demand of land to tiller. Godutai said that if you want to bring
back the happy days you have to take the red flag which is coloured in blood from village to
village and house to house because people are angry with Sahukars and veth begar and even told
us to propagate that people should not work for low wages. When this law came the landlords
and Sahukars taunted us that ‘what will the adivasis and Warli do. The land is ours because we
have paid for it in Talati office. The land is not their forefathers.’ But we used to propogate that
 this land is our forefathers . . . They used to tell us that first you should work in our fields and
then your own. And if we did not agree they beat and torture us. We used to rally against this
with our red flag. Groups of 500-600 people used to march together in different places for this
demand. There were thousands of groups rallying for this demand. The demand was land and our
happy future. But the seth, sahukar and landlords had meeting of their own and resolved to keep
the low salaries and work for the abolition of this law. They even made their plan with
Malmatdars. After hearing this we stopped work and we went to the court against them and give
notice notifying that this land is of adivasis and only they will till it. The court ordered the
zamindars to identify adivasis and give land. Even I have got 20-25 acres through this land
struggle.[35]

This recollection by Comrade Dongarkar resonates in the voices of

many other comrades. Highlighting the struggle of the Kisan Sabha Laxman
Bhuyal (Aundhani, Belpada, Palghar) states,
Now there is no more oppression from the landlord, the forceful evictions have stopped and the
land is re-allotted to the people. According to the Kul Kayeda, the land which was allotted in the
name of the owner earlier, now came to be on our name. Earlier the landlord used to keep
whatever we used to cultivate in our land, the landlord used to keep with him. Many used to take
vehicles full of grains with them. It was only when some grains did not get sold we used to get
some grains; otherwise we used to work as hired labour in other farms. They used to pay us 0.75
paise per day. This is how we lived our life.[36]
Like others, Laxman Bhuyal too states that the red flag is responsible
for the changed conditions of the Warlis, especially with respect to land. It
is even more telling that younger comrades also express the same thoughts.
As Rajesh Karpade of Aamgaon says,
In our area the land question is important, and also the titles to forest plot. The party fights
against the land mafia. They come but we do not allow them to even stand here, we drive them
away. The agents try to use money to entice the adivasis. In aam gaon the seths have 450 acres of
land. But we keep struggling against them and drive away the dalals. But we tell the villagers that
the agent is going to come so you should get together and drive him away. One incident took
place after the assembly elections where 400-500 people came together to drive away the agents.

As Kharpade explains, the land question is still relevant for the Warlis
as most of the land that they cultivate is occupied land and they have no
titles to these lands. For the last sixty years, Warlis control the land they
cultivate, but few have pattas (land titles) and therefore they continue to
struggle. There is a unanimous opinion, ‘If the Red Flag weakens, our lands
will be taken away from us’. The Warlis realize that they are under the
threat of being dispossessed once again under the current neo-liberal
regimes.

SAMYUKTA MAHARASHTRA AND DADRA NAGAR HAVELI LIBERATION STRUGGLES

The Red Flag and its leaders built the political consciousness of the
Warlis. This was evident in the Kisan Sabha’s participation in two major
struggles: the struggle for Samyukta Maharashtra and for the liberation of
Dadra and Nagar Haveli. The mid-1950s saw an agitation for the creation of
Maharashtra out of all the Marathi speaking districts with Bombay city as
its capital. The Warlis participated in the movement under the leadership of
the Kisan Sabha led by Godutai and Shamrao Parulekar. The Samyukta
Maharashtra Chalwal demonstrated the unity between the poor people and
middle classes. According to Comrade Dhangar, the Congress largely
opposed this move because it was led by Morarji Desai, who had the
backing of Gujarati Capitalists. The Congress Government spread the
rumour that the Communists were spreading violence and thereby once
more externed Godutai and Shamrao Parulekar. At this time Comrade
Dhangar was underground and mobilizing mass support for the Samyukta
Maharshtra Movement. Maharashtra state was formed in 1955-56. But the
formation of the state had its own impact on political work of the Party and
the Kisan Sabha. As Rasila Dhondhi of Dongar Manpada explains,
After the division the communication between Maharashtra, Gujarat and Dadra Nagar Haveli got
broken. But at the same time in Dahanu area we remained united. Even now when BJP is strong
in all these areas they have to recognize that there is some part adjacent to Maharashtra border
where all this exploitation is being stopped, where adivasis and Warlis own their own lands. But
in Gujarat and Dadra Nagar Haveli the situation is different. People and government over there
havesold the land at very low prices and people are paying for this.

The crucial difference between Dahanu and Talasari and other areas
was in the way in which the adivasis defended their lands. As Rasila noted,
the political organization of the adivasis was intimately linked to the land
question.
 The question of land rights was even evident in the struggle for the
liberation of Dadra and Nagar Haveli in 1954. The Warlis invaded Lohari
village on 30 July 1954 and liberated 35 villages in the Damanganga region
from the control of the Portuguese. As Maheshdev Siddhar from Kochai
noted, ‘For the Dadra & Nagar Haveli struggle more than three thousand
people went from this area. More than 1-2 Lakh gathered over there so the
police could not do anything. We were in the jail for political reasons, not
petty thefts and crimes.’ Along with Comrade Dhangar, Roopji Kadu was
one of the main leaders of the movement. His son Ramaji Roopji Kadu says
that his father went to Dadra and Nagar Haveli in the night and was arrested
by the Police in Silvasa. But when the people from the neighbouring
villages in Maharashtra got to know this, they started streaming into the
area. The police fired at them near Vasu Naka. Mathu Lakhu Siddher from
Kochai recalls that he was 16 years old at that time and Godutai stayed at
his house when she came to lead the struggle. But here too, the rampant
industrialization of Dadra and Nagar Haveli had an impact on the work of
the Kisan Sabha. As Langda Dhakar from Modgaon says, ‘We tried to work
in the same way [as Talasari and Dahanu] in Gujarat and Nagar Haveli, but
somehow it did not work. For some time they were with us but later slipped
to Sena, BJP and Congress’. Hence the Warli participation in wider
movements widened their exposure but did not necessarily lead to the
expansion of the political organization.

THE STRUGGLE FOR WAGES AND

THE CONTINUING STRUGGLES FOR FOREST PLOTS

From 1946 onwards Godavari and Shamrao Parulekar were in the

process of surveying and understanding the conditions of work of forest
labour in the jungles of Dahanu and Manor areas. Based on this survey and
discussions that emerged through it, Godutai and Parulekar prepared a
demand not to the local administration for achieving the wages as well as a
piecework rate. Godutai initiated the case for a piecework rate in forest
wood-cutting. This demand was the first of its kind in India. On the basis of
her survey the rate was decided for cutting hundred trees based on the
diameter or circumference of a tree. They had prepared the charts for such
various kinds of work in tree cutting. The major contractors or vyaparis
were involved in wood-cutting in Dahanu, Palghar, Manor, Jawhar,
Mokhada and Sanjan area of forest. There were many of the small
contractors also engaged in this work. There was an association named
Jungle Cutting (Tod) Contractors Association, whose chairman was a
Congressman, Babubhai Ponda of Dahanu. The Kisan Sabha started
demanding a daily wage rate of Rs.2 for forest wood-cutting, with the rate
based on the circumference (Vedhi) of a tree. With this demand the
Association was told that unless these rates are paid to adivasi’s no forest
wood cutting would be done hence forth. The Contractors Association was
forced to agree with this demand because of the previous success of the red
flag led struggles.
The Contractors’ did not approve the new wages out of any sense of
good feeling toward the adivasi demands. The State, pushed by the
Contractors, repressed the struggles of the Kisan Sabha and the Communist
Party. But these organizations had the strength to resist the attack and to
support the demands of the adivasis. The government could not persist in its
repression due to the widespread nature of the revolt. The contractors
refused the government’s demand to keep wages low. They knew that if the
adivasis went on strike they would lose high profits and their business
would lose crores of rupees. Chief Minister Morarji Desai of the Congress
Party could not suppress the movement. His various strategies failed. The
government could not do anything against the adivasis, who had support
across the forest. Ultimately the Forest Cutting Contractors Association
accepted the adivasi demand of a minimum wage of Rs 3 per day. Their
Association delivered their resolution on the revised wage rates to the Kisan
Sabha, with copies sent to the Collector and the government.
Fights in the forest continued, whether over higher wages for cutting
forest timber or the 1970s struggles over the forest plots. These battles
brought many comrades into the movement. The most prominent of them is
Comrade Lahanu Kom, a teacher who became a communist. In 1962,
Comrade Kom took over a new party office at Ghol, where he would write
applications for forest plots. This went on for a year. Land struggles
germinated in the 1960s, as Warlis began to occupy forest land toward the
end of the decade. The Forest Satyagraha began formally on 1 August 1971,
remembers Comrade Dhangar. Under the leadership of Godutai a batch of
fifteen women volunteers went to plant rice seedlings in the forest of
Bharad village near the national highway. When the morcha reached the
Bharad forest there were twenty women constables present along with the
Deputy Superintendent of Police. They arrested Godutai and the women
volunteers. The protestors were produced before the Dahanu court, which
sentenced them to ten days in the Arthur Road jail in Mumbai. Throughout
August, batches of six and seven volunteers from Talasari Dahanu Palghar
Jawhar Mokhada Wada Shahapur and Vasai talukas held satyagrahas. In the
whole month more than five thousand six hundred volunteers, including
five hundred women, courted arrest. This satyagraha had a wide impact all
over the district. The government was forced to take note of it. The total
number of groups formed was around one hundred and fifty. There were
separate groups of women. The activists planned to march to the forest
lands and establish the right to cultivate by doing satyagraha. The members
of these groups would carry the seedling of rice plants in their hands as an
indication of farming requirement of the adivasis. Each day men and
women marched toward the forest, got arrested and went to jail in Arthur
Road Jail, Yerawada Jail and Kalyan Jail. ‘From Dahanu division a huge
number of adivasis were jailed for doing satyagraha’, says Comrade
Dhangar.
This movement was guided and controlled by me and others. The Deputy Superintendent of
Police was a good person who met me later also. He told me that he had no personal reason to be
against us. He wanted to say that the way you have organized this movement of Satyagrahais
very intellectually planned movement. Normally the people are afraid of jail. However, in this
movement people on their own are coming in groups with Lal Bavta and with slogans of the
party, they are joining the Satyagraha. They are also not simply worried about the jail. Thus this
movement continued everyday for the thirty days of August 1971. The maximum number of
people who were jailed were from Dahanu Talasari Jawhar Palghar Shahapur and Wada. The last
group or batch were arrested on 31 August. They were released on the same day. By 1971 about
three thousand adivasi men and two hundred adivasi women were arrested and jailed from seven
to twenty-one days for offering satyagraha on encroached forest plots. The main demand was for
the regularization of encroachments.[37]

By 1973-74, the government had distributed around seventeen thousand

acres of forest land to adivasis. This land was spread over five different
talukas. This land was made available by the process of deforestation i.e. as
per the forest rules, one cannot cut the small and medium trees but the
matured trees can be cut. Thus, deforested land was given especially in the
name of women –in the name of a wife or a mother and not in the name of
men because they were encroaching on the forest land.
Comrades remember this satyagraha with great passion. Bhikuji Ramaji
from Sutrakaar recalls that he too went to jail for five days during the forest
satyagraha. Laxman Bhuyal from Belpada, Palghar recalls,
During the forest satyagraha we used to help each other to harvest the crop before the forest
department came to destroy the crop. We did that on one field, but on the next day when we
reached another members’ field, we could not find him there. We sent a person to buy beedi and
there he heard that that person was already put in jail. The person we had sent was also arrested.
This happened to three people, and one lady came and told us ‘what are you doing three of your
persons have been arrested.’ So when me and my friend went to get them released we were also
arrested. This is the tactic that was followed by the Police and Forest Department to break our
satyagraha.
The struggle for forest plots has been an ongoing one and many of the
Warli leaders believe that the leadership that the Red Flag has provided to
this struggle has culminated with the enactment of the Forest Rights Act of
2006. But as Comrade Dhangar explains, the fight for legalization of
encroachment continues, as the people struggle now to implement the
Forest Rights Act.
WADI WORKERS’ STRUGGLES

The late 1970s to mid 1980s saw continuous struggles for legitimate
wages by wadi (orchard/plantation) workers. The wadis and chikoo gardens
were largely owned by the Irani Parsis who virtually employed forced
labour. They not only gave nominal wages, but also had abysmal conditions
of work. From the late 1970s the Kisan Sabha started organising the wadi
workers. The Chikoo Wadi Sangathana was formed in 1978. Their struggle
began from the early 1980s onwards.[38] As Comrade Dhangar recalls, the
struggle for Chikoo wadi workers began in the Saurauli area when six
chikoo wadi workers were dismissed from work as they had asked for one
days leave but returned to work only after two days. Though twenty-five to
thirty workers from the area had also returned to work late, only six were
dismissed. As Com Dhangar explains,
 These labourers were from SisnaVillage. This was at a distance of about 20 to 25 miles from the
working place i.e. wadi. And they used to go home only on Saturday, Sunday. It used to be like a
feudal system. The labourers used to stay at night on the same working place. Therefore, owner
used to ask them to work even at night according to need. They were not working for seven hours
a day and they were like slaves only. Therefore the labourers demand was that they didn’t want to
stay at the owners’ place. They wanted to move to their residential place so that no one could ask
them to work after working hours. This kind of capitalist working culture was there for the wage
labourers.

The workers were told by the Kisan Sabha that if six workers were not
taken back no one would go back to work in the wadis. Thus the workers
announced, ‘take all labourers to work otherwise all labourers will go to
strike’. As Edward Vartha (Asawali, Dahanu Taluk) states,
We started going from village to village and started finding out the common problems faced by
them [the wadi workers]. We started taking meetings and came to know about the problem of
water faced by them. They used to prepare a pit for using the water. So, in 1982, we had a
morcha on the water issue and we gave a memorandum to the tehsildar, as the panchayat samiti
was led by the Congress at that time. The next day of the march saw the wadi kamgaars being
thrown out of work. Then we started a struggle to get the jobs of wadi kamgaars. But the struggle
was not easy because there was a union formed by the owners of the wadis. Then after discussing
with the party we gave a call for strike and that too in the peak period of that season (Nov-Jan).
Even the various women joined us. Workers from 200 wadis and 200 chiku gardens were
involved in the strike, which lasted for 52 days and we started increasing our demands day by
day. One of the demands was to increase the wage from Rs 3 to Rs 8. Wadi owners were at great
loss so they started talking with administration, which intervened in the strike. Workers from
Vaapi were being called to break this strike. There was a fight with the workers imported from
outside. One of the owners’ sons started firing, so people got angry and blocked and break the
road. The same day we had a date in the court, and the owners started terrorising us in the court
campus. I started taking meetings in Jamshet, Dhangar in Vapi and Shankar Chavan in his own
village. One day when I was taking a meeting in Jamshet, Naatha Gujar an office bearer came
and told us that attack had begun. So I along with 100-150 youth went to the place which was 4
km from our meeting place. But there was no sign of attackers. So we started planning and
divided into groups. The State Reserve Police [SRP] was also there but we decided to do our
work and not interfere with them. After some time the vehicles of Congress and hired bhaiyas
came with soda and other broken bottles and started attacking us. Since we did not have any
weapon we made golas out of soil and counter attacked them. We even sent a team of women
workers to the river bank to get stones. They came back with stones quickly and we started stone
pelting. During this one of the owners’ sons set fire to the huts of villagers. After that SRP started
picking up Bhaiyas and Congressmen. This happened in 1983 and that was the first time that
 owners were put into the jail. From this point party got a boost and youth got attracted to the
party.[39]
Several comrades remember the struggles of the wadi workers. Since
women formed a good part of the work force, Santhi (from Kainad) recalls
that she went from door to door to mobilize women workers to support the
struggle and strike work. Kamal Laxman Vanale (Waki Mussalpada) was
another leader who emerged from the wadi workers’ struggle. Like Edward
Vartha, she explains that women wadi workers joined the strike in full force
and retaliated when the landlords and their ‘goondas’ beat them up. She
proudly proclaims that because of their action some of the landlords went to
jail. She tells the story of the bravery of her mother who was the prime
witness in the case against these goons at Nandara village. She says that
during the struggle,
We beat up an Irani landlord called Merwan and he was lying near nandara village. Seeing this
all the landlords united and started a counter attack. They destroyed our home and belongings
and beat all the people. For one month no one could return to the village. They went and stayed
in the houses of relatives in nearby villages. Since no one was in the village all their houses were
looted. My father was in jail and my elder brother had also run away to a relative’s house. My
mother and three younger siblings stayed back in the village. The police kept making rounds of
the village and questioned her about the whereabouts of other villagers. My mother refused to
give them any information and said that her husband was in jail and therefore she could not go
anywhere. She was sleeping in the open on the grass, and finally the police escorted her back to
her house. She was the only available eyewitness of the cases when it came up for hearing. My
mother identified her belongings from the looted property and also the Irani and his goons who
led the attack. Everyone praised her for this.

Similarly, her brother Dharma Waghi Kodya (Waki Mussalpada) says,

The struggle for wage increase for wadi workers from Rs. 4 to Rs. 6 was launched. A strike of the
wadi workers was organized. The Parsi landlords sent people to beat us. The drunken goondas
had been given liquor by them and had fed them chicken so that they beat us well. Since the
goondas were drunk they ran their car over the SRP. This angered the SRP who instigated lal
bawta workers to go after the Parsi and his hired goondas. The Parsi was driven away from that
place and then the city police came and put all of us in jail. An advocate was deployed and we
were released after 4-5 days.

The wadi workers struggle is a militant landmark struggle of workers

who displayed unity and leadership. It also showed that the Warlis had
become a confident political force through many years of struggle. As
Comrade Dhangar explains, the strike was the output ‘of our unity,
concentration and class-struggle that was systematically planned. We started
a long march after winning this battle. Near Dahanu’s coastline there is one
chickoo garden where we held a public meeting.’ As Edward Vartha
concludes, the wadi workers’ union was a strong force to contend with till
the 1990s, but due to lack of attention from the leadership after that the
union membership started declining. Also work in wadis declined. Earlier
each wadi had 50 workers, now it has 10-15 workers. But despite this
Vartha surmises that it is important to revive the union.
RECENT STRUGGLES AND THE LAND QUESTION TODAY

The struggles of the 1980s took place in an era of state capitalism,

which ended at the close of that decade. The struggles of the next took
decades took place in a neo-liberal context. The attacks on the left and
democratic movements grew, but the Warlis remained steadfast under their
leadership and the Red Flag. There is a general agreement that if the Red
Flag is weakened, the Warlis will lose heir land. The land struggle is seen as
integral to the defence of the Left. Chandrakanta Raghu Gorkhana (Waki
Zahrilipada) notes in his interview that his involvement with the Party
began with his own land struggle in 2002.
There was an issue on our own land and since no one was willing to take up the issue, I joined
the party and we ourselves came to the forefront and took up the issue in 2003. Four to five acres
of our land was taken away by the landlord (named Bari) forcibly. We became united and came
out on the streets. We took control of the fiveacres of our land. We united all the people against
the sahukar. This angered the sahukars and their goondas beat me with iron rod spades near the
Dahanu railway station and I was put in jail for fortydays. The landlord gave Rs 50,000 to the
police inspector to keep me in jail. No one except for Com Dhangar came to help me. He helped
me to get me a lawyer, Mr. Adhikari who fought my case in the Palghar court. With his help I
was released on bail. The Sahukar spread terror in the village and the police made rounds to
frighten the people. After I got justice I started working actively in the party and I started taking
the land issues of other people. We got certain old cases reopened. The same landlord ran an
illegal stone quarry nearby. We took up this issue and petitioned the sub-divisional officer against
it. We also approached the authorities in Konkan Bhavan and Mantralaya and now the landlord
was slapped with a fine of Rs. 1.75 crores. Now we are going to lodge a case against him in
Mumbai High Court and demand that he be penalized with a 10 crore fine. If we take up any
 issue in Dahanu and Waki, we will solve it completely. The land issues will be amongst the main
issues. As a party we will solve all other problems like water and electricity. Even if there are
attacks on the party we will remain with the party only. We also use the local media (newspaper
and channels) for disseminating information about the work of the party to the people. We
restored land of ten to twelve people after giving a memorandum to the officials. My parents
were with the party for a long time since the land struggle started. I do not recall the time. My
father used to prepare the food during meetings. My father was an activist who used to do any
work allotted to him in the meetings. We have everything because of the Red Flag.
The present struggles for land rights have taken different forms because
the patterns of land acquisition have also changed. One of the main issues
confronting the Warli farmers is the acquisition of land for a dam. Barkatya
Mangat, the current secretary of the Thane CPI (M), says,
After sixty to seventy years of struggle, land is still the main issue because industry and dams are
acquiring the lands without compensation. Even if a person goes out for work he will still need
land to live. Thus we have to struggle against the acquisition of land. If somebody comes for
taking our lands we have to fight against them. Just yesterday (18 March 2015) we had a fight
with one seth who has came to acquire a land in a nearby village. Around two hundred and fifty
people came and told him to go away because the land is in the possession of the red flag.

Comrade Mangat goes on to spell out the reasons why people keep
coming for land struggles to the Red Flag. He says that this largely because
people from BJP, Congress and Kashtakari Sangathana have become the
agents of the land mafia.
The questions of land, water and employment are some of the main
struggles launched by the Kisan Sabha in the contemporary times. A big
coordinated satyagraha was started in 2002 in front of the range, tehsil and
collectors’ offices in Thane. There was raasta rook in many places. About
77,000 people participated in this struggle which raised many issues
concerning water distribution of Madhubani dam and the Surya Project,
distribution of forest plots and land titles. The struggle also took up the
question of displacement due to construction of dams and creation of a
national sanctuary in the Shahpura. The question of displacement is also
linked to the migration of people for work. Edward Vartha notes that
normally people migrate from villages around Dahanu except Waki, Udhuwa, Jamshet and some
other 15-20 villages. We should try to build an organization of people where they are working.
People go to brick kilns Bhiwandi, Gujarat and other areas where we do not have organization.
 So we have to go over there and build an organization. We tried to build a union with Suhas
Samant and others but after that we were not able to do it. But now we have to do it so that we
can strengthen our villages.

This link between the organization of rural agricultural workers and

migrant non-agrarian labour is an important one and has been made by
some other comrades such as Barkatya Mangat.
The last decade and a half has seen the struggles for basic amenities
emerge as a serious issue. Elected panchayat members from the red flag
have been active and in the forefront of ensuring basic amenities. The main
struggles have been around the Public Distribution System, the creation of
good roads and ensuring a steady and clean water supply. As Hemlata Kom
says, ‘the main issues that women came with was scarcity of water as they
had to go long distances for water. We even took issues of domestic
violence and made the family understand about the problem. We also took
issues of PDS as people were not getting ration.’ She says that the proper
implementation of the rural relief through the Mahatma Gandhi National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act is taking place because of the
interventions by the red flag.

CONCLUSION

In sum, this essay has shown that there has been a history of continuous
struggles in Dahanu and Talasari districts since 1945. These struggles have
largely been unrecorded in mainstream sociological and historical writings.
Rather scholarly works have argued that Kisan Sabha was weakened after
the initial struggle of 1945-52. But the story told by this essay has contested
this conclusion and showed that the Kisan Sabha and the Party built up a
militant social base through sustained struggle. In fact it is this living
history of continuous struggles that has led to the building up of a strong
party base. In the process of doing the narrative presented here, I have
attempted to place the communist-led adivasi struggles in a
historiographical context and to provide those struggles with the scholarly
legitimacy that they deserve. In this sense the essay has highlighted the
urgent need of rewriting the historiography of adivasi struggles in this
context.
 Secondly, this essay also shows that the historiographical opposition
between community led and class struggle is based in the incorrect analysis
of the relationship between identity politics and class formation. The
practice and experiences of communist led struggles help to resolve this
theoretical problem through the fostering of non-exclusive democratic
adivasi consciousness. The analysis in the essay shows that the Warli
struggles provide a good example of this and help to broaden the theoretical
analysis of adivasi struggles in contemporary histories.
Lastly, the essay has shown that the historical memory and the
continuous process of struggle are dialectically related to each other.
Collective memories of struggles contain important organizational lessons
and also influence leadership skills and knowledge. The interviews of
several younger generation leaders help to build the genealogies of the
struggle and show that augmented oral memories form the foundations of
organizational commitment and work. In this sense the recording of oral
memories is a political exercise that can help to further the ideology and
organization of the movement. Thus the histories of struggle are not only
alive in the archives, but in the minds and actions of activists in the present
day. In this sense they are indeed living histories.
[1]
Godavari Parulekar, Adivasis Revolt: The Story of the Warli Peasants in Struggle, Bombay:
People’s Publishing House, 1975.
[2]
D. Rycroft and S. Dasgupta (eds.), The Politics of Belonging: Being Adivasi, London:
Routledge, 2011.
[3]
Archana Prasad, ‘Capitalism, Forestry and Tribal Labour in Central India’, Social Action, 60, 2,
April-June 2010.
[4]
Archana Prasad, Environmentalism and the Left: Contemporary Debates and Future Agendas,
New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2004.
[5]
Archana Prasad, ‘On the Margins of Indian Planning’, in V. Upadhyay, Shakti Kak, Kaustav
Barik and T. Ravi Kumar (eds.), From Statism to Neoliberalism: The Development Process in
India, New Delhi: Daanish Books, 2008.
[6]
Archana Prasad, Against Ecological Romanticism. Verrier Elwin and the Making of an Anti-
Modern Tribal Identity, New Delhi: Three Essays Press, 2011 and Vanita Damodaran,
‘Customary Rights and Resistance in Singbhum’, The Politics of Belonging.
[7]
Maurice Godelier, Economic Anthropology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978;
Claude Meillassoux, Maidens, Meals and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Community,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978; David Seddon (ed.), Relations of Production:
Marxist Approaches to Economic Anthropology, London: Frank Cass, 1978.
[8]
A.R. Desai (ed.), Peasant Struggles in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979.
[9]
D.D. Kosambi, Culture and Civilisation in Ancient India, London: Routledge, 1965, pp. 107-
118.
[10]
Surajit Sinha, ‘State formation and Rajput Myth in Tribal Central India’ (1962), in H. Kulke
(ed.), The State in India, 1000-1700, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997.
[11]
Prabhat Patnaik, The Value of Money, New Delhi: Tulika, 2007, and M.A. Rasul, A History of
All India Kisan Sabha, Calcutta: National Book Agency, 1974, pp. 5-6.
[12]
P. Sundarayya, People’s Struggle and Its Lessons, New Delhi: CPI-M, 1972, and Ranga Rao,
‘Peasant Movement in Telangana’, in M.S.A. Rao (ed.), Social Movements in India, New Delhi:
Manohar, 2004, p. 154.
[13]
Rasul, A History, p. 29.
[14]
Parulekar, Adivasis Revolt, pp. 1-3.
[15]
Interview with L.P. Dhangar, December 2010.
[16]
Interview with Llahnu Kom, June 2012.
[17]
Parulekar, Adivasis Revolt, p. 5.
[18]
Ibid., pp. 38-39.
[19]
Ibid., p. 50.
[20]
Ibid., p. 53.
[21]
Ibid., p. 57.
[22]
Ibid., p. 82.
[23]
Ibid., Adivasis Revolt, pp. 86-87.
[24]
Interview with Dhangar.
[25]
Parulekar, Adivasis Revolt, p. 47.
[26]
Ibid., p. 91.
[27]
Ibid., p. 93.
[28]
Interview with Ratni Sathvi, Zari Village, October 2012.
[29]
Shivrao Dhabare, Aundhani Palghar, January 2014.
[30]
Report by P.B. Rangnekar, Peoples Age, 19 January 1947. Symington’s report is quoted in a
box entitled ‘Facts about Warlis’.
[31]
P.B. Rangnekar, Peoples Age, 27 October 1946.
[32]
Parulekar, Adivasis Revolt, p. 47.
[33]
P.B. Rangnekar, People’s Age, 26 October 1946.
[34]
Saqib Khan, ‘Adivasi Struggles in Thane District Since 1947: The Role of Kisan Sabha’,
M.Phil Dissertation, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, May 2013, p. 24.
[35]
Com. Dongarkar, Uplat, Talasari, June 2012.
[36]
Quoted in Saqib Khan, ‘Adivasi Struggles in Thane District’, p. 26.
[37]
Ibid., p. 47.
[38]
Ibid., p. 60.
[39]
Edward Vartha, Dahanu, December 2012.
Lin Chun
The Lost International in the
Transformation of Chinese Socialism

Post-revolutionary China aspired to proletarian internationalist

principles.[1] Socialism and internationalism are twins – bound together
ideologically and geo-politically.[2] Any erosion of socialism would cause
the corrosion of internationalism, and vice versa. This essay traces the
People’s Republic of China’s ethnic and foreign policy trajectories as the
two mutually interconnected wings of the ‘international’ against a changing
background of the formation and transformation of Chinese socialism.
Initially a main player in the historical movement of international
communism and later a willing participant in capitalist globalization,
China’s position remains unsettled and ambiguous in a world increasingly
integrated as much as torn apart.
This essay begins by discussing the emergence of modern China as an
exploited and oppressed ‘class nation signified by the rise of revolutionary
Chinese nationalism following imperialist encroachment since the mid-
nineteenth century. The next section looks into new China’s internal and
external relations after 1949, in terms of its socialist commitment and
policy frameworks within the economic and geopolitical constraints
imposed on the country. The third section focuses on the negative impacts
of the Sino-Soviet split on both the communist and non-aligned Third
Worlds; China’s rapprochement with the US is also evaluated in that
context. The last section briefly and critically examines globalist and
traditionalist responses to the present crises in the country, and argues for a
socialist alternative. Only by resuming and developing socialism can the
lost world of the international be reclaimed in China as the answer to its
national and global challenges.
THE MAKING OF CHINA AND THE EMERGENCE
OF A CLASS NATION

The growth of historical China originated in the Yellow River basin

drew upon a rich array of sources in the longue durée, from east and inner
Asia as well as the west via Eurasia and the south into the Oceania. Many
ties have since formed over millennia among the interacting cultures and
peoples in the regional ‘spaces of flows’.[3] It would be banal to stress that
turning a traditional empire or civilization into a nation in modern times did
not require and had not involved a negation of the inherent multiplicity of
the Chinese identity. This identity encompasses diverse demographic,
geographic and socioeconomic constituents. With its vast and fluid inner
and outer frontiers often bypassing formal regional, ethnic, territorial and
other institutional boundaries, China cannot be and has never been a
singular monolith but always one country comprising many worlds.
One ramification of this formative and interactive history is the general
pattern of gradual amalgamation, rather than rapid conquests, between and
among the natives of the central plain descendants and other communities
near and far. The synchronic agencies of this integrative course on all sides
should be properly appreciated. Different groups, at least the larger ones,
intermingled with one another rather than assimilated in either direction.
The prevailing conception of Sinicization is likely to be a myth.[4]
Domination and subordination inevitably divided rulers and subjects, but
the former were not always of a Han origin and the latter always included a
significant non-Han population. This population was diverse and mostly
self-ruled in various local forms, substantively or superficially. By and
large, a resourceful society loosely identified as Chinese and aided by a
politically minded central state, managed multi-ethnicities and different
religions within and without the Han majority. Moreover, the Han was just
as plural in its own historically amalgamated constitution, and regionally or
culturally differentiated by local dialects and customs. The gradual
formation of ‘national’ China did see countless conflicts, from the warring
states before Qin to recurring peasant rebellions and border wars after, but
the process still clearly differed from the nation states emerging from ethnic
cleansing and unification warfare in the West. The ‘pacified empire’, as
Max Weber calls it, rarely engaged external military aggression due to its
time-honoured, inward looking worldview. The revolutionary
reconceptualization of Chinese commitment and its post-socialist
transmutation are discussed in the next sections.
Economically, China had a sophisticated specialization of productive
and commercial advances centuries prior to European capitalism. When
China led the way in outputs and short and long distance trade in a disparate
world economy, Europe was peripheral. As acknowledged by comparative
economic historians, from the collapse of the Roman Empire up until
around 1800, China was ahead of most countries in material production,
technology, commercialization, urbanization, and monetary wealth and a
driver of the regional economy.[5] If the Weberian question of why the
Chinese nevertheless did not launch their own industrial revolution can be
raised with renewed relevance, it is not because of any conceptual
acceptance of western universality or anybody’s failure in the European
shadow. Rather, Weber’s question remains interesting in that the presence or
absence of the necessary dynamics in the genesis of industrial capitalism
can be better elucidated. Steep silver drain or languishing of cottage
industries in the Yangzi Delta traceable to the late Ming and early Qing
period, for example, was part of the same process of the rising global
dominance of capitalism and its imperialist imposition and colonization.[6]
China’s economic fate was profoundly political, not only because it was
tested against an ailing Chinese state but also because the failure of the state
was symptomatic of an utterly contradictory global transformation as a
whole. It was about how a traditional advantage had been translated into a
sheer disadvantage in an era of intensified globalization of capital. In
particular, imperialism is endemic to the global system of capitalism as the
vehicle of primitive accumulation where ‘trade’ and looting/conquest were
interchangeable. The Europeans extracted resources and wealth on a far-
reaching and colossal scale, which allowed them to afford various degrees
of ‘ecological substitution’ or relief, as in the case of appropriating and
owning the New World as both a population outlet and a source of land-
intensive primary products.[7] The colonies became a vital means of
production, buttressing a ‘division of labour’ for the imperial powers to rely
on slave plantations and mines as well as trade and drug wars abroad.
Through forced unequal exchanges this relentless hegemonic agenda
eventually shaped a world divided by rich and poor countries. Countries
became rich by subjugating the poor ones that then sank into poverty
through deprivation. The opium war of the 1840s triggered the physical
‘slicing of China’ by competing imperialist powers – hence the country’s
‘semi-colonial and semi-feudal’ nature as depicted in the communist party
analysis. China’s subsequent social and governing crises were then directly
attributable to foreign invasions and destruction, including war reparations
of astronomic figures from the imposed unequal treaties. An ancient
political economy of continental scope and almost unparalleled wealth and
confidence had fallen prey to the capitalist jungles.
Weber was especially astute on the contrast between a unified China
without ‘armed peace where several competing autonomous states
constantly prepared for war’ and a Europe full of intra-imperialist wars
where the ‘pacification of a unified empire was lacking’. Capitalism was
actually ‘conditioned through war loans and commissions for war
purposes’. The lack of colonial relations handicapped the orient as
compared with the occidental types of economy or ‘the varieties of booty
capitalism, represented by colonial capitalism and by Mediterranean
overseas capitalism connected with piracy’. In Weber’s account, Chinese
geography presented barriers to the similar expansionist impulse and
actions in China, but the more important roadblock stemmed from ‘the
general political and economic character of Chinese society’ and state. ‘Just
as competition for markets compelled the rationalization of private
enterprise, so competition for political power compelled the rationalization
of state economy and economic policy’.[8] Compared with western
imperialism, the Chinese virtue had now been condemned and beaten.[9]
This important emphasis on the crucial role of war and war financing in the
making of modern Europe, as an exception, not the norm, has been
developed extensively by influential contemporary scholars, and anticipated
the massive financialization of entire capitalist operation today.[10]
To follow China’s torturous passage in the modern world is to
comparatively situate its evolving position in the global system of capital
accumulation and expansion since the ‘long 16th century’ – 1350-1650. In
such an era, China, like any other individual societies, might be properly
understood only within its epochal parameters of capitalism, or what came
to be known in the Marxist analysis as ‘uneven and combined
development’. Due to the system’s structural unevenness, a potential
‘privilege of backwardness’ could enable the margins to overtake the center
through learning and leaping.[11] However, unlike the ‘rise of the west’, this
optimism about the ascendance or resurgence of the rest is conditioned on
the subjugated peoples breaking free from the imperialist chains. A logical
implication here is that capitalism cum imperialism entails extraction,
domination and sabotage, and ultimately hampers development. As shown
in the Chinese experience, modernization – through imitating the West for a
homegrown, robust national capitalism – was an illusion that was violently
dismantled by foreign aggressors in collusion with a domestic comprador
class as a byproduct of semi-coloniality. It was not until after 1949 that
China began to recover and develop only because the revolution changed
the country’s international position and fashioned a socialist developmental
state. The argument that ‘incipient capitalism’ appeared as early as in the
Song-Ming period (around the 12th and 13th century) is a politically charged
counterfactual conjecture to implicate imperialist intervention for having
fatally blocked China’s ‘natural’ course. Whether or not this is the case, and
regardless of the virtues and vices of capitalism,[12] what this view
unmistakably clarifies is the causal sequence that national revolutions take
place not where capitalism succeeds but where it fails. Plenty of historical
and empirical evidence shows also that capitalism was far from a model or
panacea ready for every nation to acquire; its growth actually relies on
underdevelopment outside its core zones.[13]
As the totalizing capitalist mode of production and extraction is of a
complex and differential temporality, most obviously ‘at the level of the
class order generated by it’,[14] the modern Chinese story is in essence one
of the struggle and triumph, as well as dilemmas and retrogressions, of a
‘class nation’. Foreign disruptions not only deepened China’s imperial
decline and politico-social crises, but also ‘awakened’ the Chinese people,
as Lenin famously viewed it.[15] Their responses after the upheavals of the
Taiping rebellion to the country’s exploited and oppressed ‘class’ status in
the world culminated in the 20th century Chinese revolutions. In a different
intellectual context, Ernest Gellner writes, ‘Only when a nation became a
class . . . did it become politically conscious and activist . . . [as] a nation-
for-itself’.[16] The image of a nation for itself helps explain how China, a
culture or civilization hard to define within the European ‘nation-state’
perspective, could have emerged as a truly coherent and proud modern
nation and achieved formidable national development.
The prominent ‘new Qing’ historians are stimulating not because they
have correctly discredited Han-centrism in inner Asian regionalist
interpretations of the making of China and its unprecedented territorial
reaches. They are more helpful in that they render it impossible to evade the
critical question about revolutionary Chinese nationalism. Perhaps against
their intention, such interpretations turn out to concur with the communist
argument in the background: Nationalism of oppressed peoples was a
legitimating and popular aspiration that was politically constructed through
integrated national liberation movements. In revolutionary China, it was
cultivated into a cohesive, rallying ideology impacting on a substantively
shared national self-consciousness of an all-inclusive population. Internal
class relations had to be readjusted in accordance with China’s external
class status in the global political economy, in which domestic bureaucratic
capital served as the local pillar of imperialist international capital.
In Europe, the nation state emerged through the unification by financial
and military means of national markets and governments for capitalist
development. This is not the case with the multicultural Chinese
configuration. The existing conceptual model of nation state cannot
therefore adequately explain either China’s national standing internationally
or its ethnic relations domestically. Absent an imperial breakdown into
smaller states, the image of modern China violates the European conception
of ‘nation’ as opposed to ‘empire’. The Chinese temporal-spatial duality of
both state forms of nation and empire, deemed utterly anachronistic, baffles
and disturbs the standard modern sensitivity.[17] However, holding a
benchmark Europe against a deficient China, these binaries are not only
parochial and hypocritical (forgetting a guilty record of racism, colonialism
and imperialism), but also blind to China’s incontestable accomplishment in
its status as a major secular and independent political community. The
centrality of a sovereign people as the new national subject is a definitive
marker of any modern nation. Moreover, the spread of multinational states,
hence the crisis of the established ‘nationalist logic’,[18] is precisely why
ethnic cleansing in the breakup of communist federations in Eastern Europe
and in the aftermath of the Soviet Union was reactionary. Even if cultural
nationalism or ethnicisms are seemingly on the rise, they have been
obsolete for a long time in the stronger historical trend of integration.
Nationalism is not a unitary phenomenon. It needs to be differentiated
into that of imperialist (aggressor) nations and of colonized or oppressed
nations. Certainly, oppressed nations also come in variants of progressive
and conservative. The concept of ‘class nation’ is a useful shorthand for the
progressive variant of oppressed nations in the capitalist epoch of world
history. Only such nations can acquire self-awareness of its class-like
position in a polarized international system and rise to change it.
The identity of a class-nation is rooted in both class and nation.
Apparently such a nation cannot pretend to experience class peace at home
while engaging in anti-imperialist struggles. As yet, the communist
revolution in China pursued simultaneously national and social liberation.
The ‘united front’ of the communist party epitomized a partial suppression
of class interests and conflict at the time of national crisis. The party’s
ethnic policy also had a similar aspect especially when it came to the task of
winning over minority elites. However, the success of united front
fundamentally depended on class oriented political strategies. The
effectively class status of ethnic minorities, hence ‘class ethnicities’ in pre-
revolutionary Chinese social and regional structures, resembled the whole
country being a class-nation in the global system. This was the basis of the
Chinese communist revolution being an all-inclusive popular liberation
movement. For logical consistency, this dual recognition of the liberation of
the whole nation as well as its smaller nationalities also provides theoretical
justification for communist international relations. A conscious nation-for-
itself, China in revolution sought internationalist alliances for support and
security. That class nations of the world should unite is determined by the
global power of a transnational bourgeoisie and world capitalism, and is
perfectly in line with classical proletarian internationalism.

REVOLUTIONARY NATIONALISM AND

THIRD WORLD INTERNATIONALISM

The political revolution of 1911 overthrew the last dynastic court and
set up the first Chinese republic. The Qing territories had been – by and
large – preserved under the banner of the unified ‘republicanism of five
nations’ (Han, Hui, Mongo, Tibet, and Manchu).[19] The communists
subsequently went to great lengths to transform social relations through a
land revolution against ‘imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic
capitalism’, as depicted in the party’s revolutionary programme. This social
revolution’s most innovative strategy was to seize power by encircling the
cities. The cities as counterrevolutionary strongholds were besieged by
means of building grassroots red regimes in rural peripheries. A unique
‘people’s war’ involved peasant mobilization. This state building from
below – as the people’s war – politically trained a people in an optimal
institutional expression in the party’s ‘mass line’ politics. Reversing its
oppressed ‘class’ position in stark contrast with crippled colonial modernity,
new China was able to be largely self-reliant in its socioeconomic
modernization. The Chinese revolution was thus a world historical event
that had created a powerful socialist state, halting capital’s global scramble
in a a country that contained one fifth of humanity.
The Chinese Marxists defined their revolution as ‘new democratic’. It
was new in its socialist outlook (‘maximum programme’), set up as a long-
term goal beyond national independence and the policy of land to the tiller
as specified in its ‘minimum programme’. This anti-capitalist ambition was
what categorically distinguished the communist revolution in China from
the old bourgeois revolutions, which only paved the way for capitalist
development. China’s industrial working class, however small in the early
20th century, was indispensable for sustaining this crucial distinction.[20]
Growing from the worker-peasant alliance, the revolution’s united front was
one of its ‘three magic weapons’ (as Mao put it), along with party
construction and armed struggle. This double class nature of the revolution,
socially and nationally, determined its inclusion of the national bourgeoisie,
along with the intellectual and professional progressives and patriotic
intermediate social groups. Again, it was due to the nation’s proletarian
status and the revolutionary leadership of the communist party as an
ingenious working class organization that the Chinese revolution became
part of the world socialist revolution initiated in October 1917.[21] ‘Class’,
after all, cannot be a positivist sociological category but is meaningful and
denotable only within its concrete political-economic context. Likewise, the
formation of a class nation had to be itself a process of political struggle,
and China as a class nation emerged only through revolutionary nationalist
mobilization. ‘1949’ signifies not the end but the beginning of this new
democratic and socialist revolution, as China went on to nationalize
industries and collectivize agriculture in the 1950s.
In terms of ‘the international’, it had two organically interconnected
policy dimensions: domestic ethnicity and foreign relations. The former was
concerned with ethnic equality against majority chauvinism, and the latter
national sovereignty and peaceful coexistence against imperialist
hegemony. In other words, socialist nationalism and internationalism,
possessing a globally proletarian quality, were tied together to the extent
that any retreat from one would undermine the other. Ultimately, it was
revolutionary nationalism and by extension internationalist solidarity
among the oppressed peoples – class nations of the world and class
nationalities within China proper alike – that conferred on the modern
Chinese identity a cohesive self-consciousness. Indeed the communist
revolution was itself a historical process of forging the multiethnic Chinese
nation.
Consider ethnic relations and minority rights in China first. As
mentioned above, imperial rulers, of Han or non-Han origins, used a
sophisticated mix of mutuality and repression to manage diversity within a
broad tributary fold of protection, subordination, and coexistence. Such
tributary relations, in contrast to early modern European states/empires in
constant competitions/wars, pursued regional stability through (material or
nominal) tributes from peripheral entities and bestowing gifts in return from
the center. Other methods ranged from tribal self-rule and political
marriages to forced expulsion or integration. The late Qing crises included
distrust not only between the Han population and the Manchu aristocracy,
but also among different ethnic groups. Foreign invasions as well as local
despots and warlords only invoked more conflicts. The Republican
Revolution quickly overcame its initial anti-Manchu ‘racial’ perception and
proclaimed universal republicanism. Sun Zhongshan’s notions of
‘Asianism’ or ‘eastism’ emphasized revolutionary obligation of supporting
the ‘bullied peoples’ (shouqu renmin). Following Marx, who claimed that
‘no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations’,[22] the communist
revolution of 1949 engaged in emancipation and extended sympathy for the
‘weak and small nations’. It aimed at liberating China not only from foreign
imperialism but also from ruling class chauvinism at home. This twofold
commitment to national liberation was the political basis of a cohesive
zhonghua minzu or Chinese nation and people, and hence the constitutional
foundation of the People’s Republic. Amalgamating the majority and
minorities into a supreme sovereign subject was ‘we the people’ in action.
In so doing their newly constructed identity became a primary marker of
class power.
The moral commitment to equality and common prosperity of all
nationalities was the prerequisite to socialist ethnic policies and minority
regional autonomy.[23] To address historical injustice, one of the first tasks
the PRC government tackled was to dispatch hundreds of work teams to
carry out a painstaking identification programme for individual and
communal ethnic/religious identities to be formally claimed and classified.
The difference between this work and the notorious colonial techniques of
‘divide and rule’ was obvious and categorical - the former was done only to
protect and promote the minorities. It indeed ended up rescuing
disappearing languages, cultures, certain medical and other beneficial
traditions, and quite a few small (near vanished) groups. However artificial
or excessive the project might have been with hindsight, it conducted
necessary groundwork for implementing preferential treatment towards
minorities and other egalitarian reforms. Remarkably, even major
constitutional amendments have never touched Article 4 on ethnic equality,
solidarity, minority rights and mutual assistance. But the other side of the
same point is that if this article had been ideologically and legally upheld by
the socialist mandate, the weakening or loss of that mandate itself would
lead to neglect or abuse of minority interests and rights. For Mao and
colleagues, combating and curbing ‘great Han chauvinism’ as a main
danger over ethnic nationalism was a constant task. This is regrettably no
longer the case concerning the official agenda in the last two decades.
Under the guidelines of inventive quasi-federalism of multileveled
autonomous governments, five provincial administrations of regional
autonomy were established in the 1950s and 1960s, supplemented by
dozens of autonomous municipalities and prefectures and over a hundred
autonomous counties. This institutionalization was designed with great care
and with an understanding of regional autonomy as more significant than
ethnic differences, given the fact of mixed nationalities in most minority
areas and needed economic cooperation for and in the underdeveloped
regions.[24] In such multilayered jurisdictions, local governments via local
people’s congresses ‘have the power to enact regulations on the exercise of
autonomy and other separate regulations in accordance with the political,
economic and cultural characteristics’ of their localities (section IV of the
PRC constitution). Clearly, this configuration of socialist semi-federalism
was intended to optimize coordination so as to allow unity in diversity and
to allow every group to flourish. Socialist China had thus, for the most part,
avoided the familiar consequences of imposed communal and ethnic
borders and other arbitrary ethnic partition or cleansing in lost homelands,
broken lives, split loyalties and personal tragedies. Also put in place were
affirmative action policies in education, health care, production subsidies
and welfare provisions to redress past hindrances and victimization of
minorities under the old regimes.[25] To reduce regional disparities, the
central government consistently made large investments in infrastructural
upgrading in the poorer minority heartlands while sustaining a large scale of
transfers of funds, technologies, public service facilities and experts from
coastal provinces. A paternalistic overtone notwithstanding, on balance
‘internal peripheralization’ did not happen. Substantial social gains,
vindicated by human development measurements and overall inter-group
peace, sustained themselves until the negative turn of the 1990s.
Concerning the limits of minority rights, the Chinese communists
retreated from their earlier position on national self-determination by
prohibiting secession in the constitution.[26] The 1954 constitution endorsed
autonomy only within a unitary state: the ‘national autonomous areas are
inalienable parts of the PRC’. This change, however, came for a sound
reason. Apart from hostility of the capitalist world toward the new regime
and thus the danger of disunity, China did not follow the USSR due to the
two countries’ different histories and revolutionary experiences. As Zhou
Enlai explained, unlike the Soviet Union where the right to self-
determination was a key policy for the socialist state to distinguish itself
from the Tsarist Empire, China was itself an oppressed nation. The Chinese
revolution rallied its forces from the multiple ethnicities on the rural
margins of China’s expansive territory. People of various ethnic origins
joined the Red Army, as in southwest China during the Long March, and
communist organizations and bases were set up not only in the northwest
Hui region but also Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang. Zhou also argued for
locally congenial institutional mechanisms to counter imperialist attempts at
manipulating ethnic divisions.[27] In other words, the revolutionary project
of national liberation predetermined its unwavering insistence on national
independence and integrity; the former was conditioned on the latter. In a
most unfortunate twist, Zhou’s warning anticipated a central Asian
geopolitical nuisance, which later developed between China and the Soviet
Union, eventually destroying not only the movements for international
communism and Third Worldism but also the socialist assets of the two
countries.
China’s revolutionary path differed significantly from independence
struggle and postcolonial nation-building in much of the Third World,
though many affinities and important ties existed. The victorious revolution
in the world’s largest poor country was itself a major contribution to the
postwar reordering of the world. The Chinese revolution with its far-
reaching global impacts was never a mere Chinese event. That is, socialist
nationalism is a nationalism defined and enlarged by socialism, not the
other way round; and an antithesis of bourgeois nationalism (and, for that
matter, anticommunist sorts of ‘national socialism’). Moreover, socialism is
driven to be international because its enemy – capitalism – is a global
system, and because the continuation of socialism depends on its
development beyond national borders. ‘Socialism in one country’ is by
definition unsustainable. New China thus went out of its way, in spite of its
own acute economic difficulties, to aid socialist revolutions and anti-
imperialist regimes and forces in other countries. These dimensions of
internal and external solidarity were necessitated by the success and
consolidation of the Chinese revolution.[28] The revolution and its
internationalist extension were interpenetrated and mutually reinforcing on
the same agenda of defeating capitalism and replacing it with a socialist
alternative.
The first daring act of newly founded PRC was to enter the Korean War
(1950-53). The Chinese volunteers made great sacrifices defending their
own country while aiding their Korean comrades. Grave danger lay before
the Chinese and Koreans as the United States made several provocative
gestures – the US 7th Fleet deployed in the waters around Taiwan, the US
military contemplated crossing the Yalu River that borders Korea and
China, and the US openly spoke of using nuclear weapons. The Chinese and
Korean forces pushed the US back and forced it to sign an armistice in
1953.[29] The United States feared another defeat; the US State Department
already felt it had ‘lost China’. Korea was the battlefield to prevent a
second defeat, while Vietnam would be the next. The armistice at
Panmunjom in 1953 and the defeat of the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954
signaled the weakening of imperialism. The weakness of puppet regimes in
the southern part of Korea and Vietnam did not bode well for Western
power. These developments intimately mattered to China. China’s
involvement, from field troops to free weapons (as in Vietnam) and other
assistances to its socialist neighbours, was predicated on proletarian
internationalist principles as much as on its own territorial security. China
also supported revolutionary nationalist movements elsewhere morally or
materially – from the communist guerrillas in Southeast Asia to the Arab
and Palestinian nationalists and socialists, onward to the fighters for black
liberation. As typified in Korea, ‘that Chinese generation shed blood for the
construction not only of a new China but also of a new world’.[30]
Meanwhile, the Cold War geopolitics was harshly imposed on the
young communist regime as a tough test. The Soviet aid in the first decade
of the PRC by the bilateral friendship treaty between the world’s two largest
socialist states was crucial, substantive and appreciated.[31] The wide
ranging aid projects helped to lay the foundation for China’s
industrialization. That fraternity, however, did not last. Mounting
disagreements since 1956 led to China’s rejection of the ‘camp analysis’ of
communism versus capitalism in the early 1960s. Instead of the ‘two
camps’, the globe was now seen as divided into three worlds: against the
initial theory of a French origin, in Mao’s map the US and USSR belonged
to the hegemonic first world; Japan, Europe and Canada the second; and
China along with Asia (except Japan), Africa and Latin America the third.[32]
This view highlighted a broad area for popular politics that challenged the
spheres of two competing super powers. Identifying itself with the Third
World rather than the Soviet bloc, China nevertheless firmly defended its
own version of socialism in opposition to what it considered Stalin’s too
statist approach. As such, ‘China was entirely encircled by hostile powers –
the USSR to the north and west, and the US initiated military pacts on
either end. In addition, there was no one to argue China’s case at the UN’
until 1971 when Beijing finally replaced Taipei to represent China.[33] Still,
proud and self reliant, China managed some precious space for itself to
attain genuine autonomy and remarkable development in an extremely
treacherous and complicated geopolitical milieu.
In fact the socialist and Third Worlds were natural allies. At a definitive
level socialism, third-worldism and internationalism were inseparable.[34]
The socialist self-identity of both the Soviet and Chinese states implied in
one way or another anti-capitalist foreign policies. There was also the
attraction of socialist egalitarianism. Since equality ‘held an important place
in the imagination of the anti-colonial movements’, the Third World
emerged as a regional project that aspired to global transformation.[35]
Without ‘exporting revolution’, the socialist commitment to the world’s
‘class nations’ sustained a selective strategy of foreign interventionism.
China took advantage of the situation to exert itself in the anti-colonial
platforms. The Maoist three-world theory echoed the Third World ideas in
the Non-Aligned circles, while its history of fighting colonialism allowed it
entry into these venues. The intensification of the revolution in China from
its 1949 form to the cultural revolutionary radicalism appealed to the 1968
youth upsurge and broader antiwar movement (and set it apart from the
‘revisionism’ of the Soviet leadership). China’s anti-hegemonic stance had
more panache over the narrow and closed Cold War logic. ‘That the
Chinese communists resisted the idea that the darker nations should be
divided into the sphere of influence of the two powers’, writes Vijay
Prashad, ‘made it a principled ally of the Third World’.[36] Eventually,
however, the rigidity of opposing the Soviet Union bore seriously negative
consequences.
Often dismissed by those who mistake the Third World position of anti-
imperialism for political neutrality, the first Afro-Asian conference in
Bandung 1955 enjoyed the backing from both Moscow and Beijing, with
China being a major player. The Soviet Union requested an invitation from
the organizers to its Central Asian republics and published a joint
declaration with Yugoslavia a few weeks later to affirm the concept and
project of the Third World as a significant advance in world peace. Based
on the ‘five principles of peaceful coexistence’, earlier codified between
China and India (1954) concerning trade and communication in the Tibetan
region, the participants agreed on ‘ten principles’ of national sovereignty
and integrity, equality of all races and nations, and nonintervention in
international affairs. Zhou Enlai, the PRC Premier, skillfully secured a
popular front style platform despite some anti-socialist voices, gaining ‘a
diplomatic victory for China’.[37] President Sukarno, the host and a personal
friend of Zhou’s, made a most powerful speech on Third World unity.
Apparently, China had to pursue a balancing act among its contradictory
goals of supporting the communist parties in the region, achieving a popular
front with the Third World regimes, and minimally protecting ethnic
Chinese mostly as business elites in Southeast Asia. It managed for the time
being with no small difficulties ranging from communist organizations
being illegal (e.g. in Egypt under Nasser) to anti-Chinese sentiments and
riots in Indonesia and Malaya.[38]
With Bandung as the precursor, Yugoslavia, India and Egypt initiated
the nonaligned movement, which became an autonomous force in a
superficially bipolar world. The founding event in Belgrade in 1961 was
followed by meetings hosted in Cairo, Lusaka, Algiers, Colombo and
Havana in the 1960s and 1970s. The more radical phase of the movement
followed the 1959 Cuban revolution, which also marked the participation of
Latin America. Che Guevara’s conference speech in Algeria in 1965
identified Cuba as ‘an underdeveloped country as well as one that is
building socialism’.[39] The Tricontinental was founded in Havana 1966,
marking a Third Worldism almost identical with Third World socialism.
While left-wing popular movements spread throughout the three
continents, by the late 1970s neocolonialism and neoliberalism began to
overwhelm many developing countries, deepening their economic
dependency in a changing global political economy in the aftermath of the
oil crisis and relinquishing of the gold standard. The gradual transmutation
of the Third World from a politically transformative agent to an economic
project of capitalist accumulation pitted the poorer nations against each
other in the cold war divide for financial assistance. The formation of the
G77 was again confined to a narrow development agenda under the
monopoly power of the US-led G7.[40] The 7th NAM conference, held in
1983 in India, probably signaled an end of an era, although the labels of
both ‘Third World’ and ‘nonaligned nations’ stayed alive. ‘New Delhi
allows us to write the obituary of the Third World’, as leaders of diverse
ideological persuasions and regime types in the global south had largely
abandoned the ambition of equality and justice for a different world.[41] Yet
from below, Third World socialism also began to find new voices and
forums.
China supported the Second Economic Seminar of Afro-Asian
Solidarity held in Ben Bella’s Algeria in 1965 (before the coup). However,
due to its growing enmity with the Soviet Union and for that matter with the
Warsaw pact and Tito’s ‘revisionism’, and an unexpected border conflict
with India, China increasingly saw the NAM as a rival. This further
alienated some of its earlier socialist as well as bourgeois nationalist allies.
The Cubans moved closer toward the Soviets after a few failed attempts at
mediating between the world’s two largest communist parties after
Khrushchev stepped down. China had otherwise stood fast throughout for
Congolese independence, the Algerian revolution and anti-imperialist
struggles in many other countries. This stance continued and was especially
high-flying during the Cultural Revolution, even though it was also
seriously distorted by the Maoist strategy and rhetoric of ‘anti-hegemony’.
Not exactly replacing traditional communist class analysis, anti-hegemony
did nevertheless highlight nationalist causes with a strong ideological and
cultural dimension. China thus kept intact its development aid and
friendship diplomacy mostly to Africa in the forms of gratis funds, interest
free loans, and direct construction projects as well as technological transfers
and training programmes mostly in agriculture. The TAZARA, designed
and built in the late 1960s and early 1970s to connect two cities in Tanzania
and Zambia respectively, was the single longest railway in sub-Saharan
Africa at the time. It exemplified an alternative practice to the prevailing
first-Third World relationship poisoned by condescension and unequal
exchange.[42]
RETREATS FROM COMMUNISM AND THIRD WORLDISM

In 1964, China’s relations with the Soviet bloc and certain Third World
countries worsened. Mao nonetheless used the occasion of popular anti-US
protest in Panama to call for a ‘broadest united front’ of ‘the peoples of the
socialist camp, of Asia, Africa and Latin America, of every continent of the
world, of all the countries in love of peace and all the countries suffering
from aggression, control, intervention and bullying from the US’ to ‘counter
American imperialist aggression and war policies and defend world peace’.
[43]

By 1962, the year of the Sino-India war, the retreat from

internationalism had already begun. That war was the tragic signpost. Mao’s
sense a few years earlier was that the quarrel was a family affair – ‘family
and friends quarrel; tensions will pass’. Yet Nehru’s ‘forward defence’ did
not help. A pragmatic issue of borders (fueled also by the Tibetan exiles)
was allowed to escalate into a matter of nationalist principle; and ‘such
high-minded ideas on internationalism and mutual respect for sovereignty .
. . could not withstand older ideological and cultural pressures’. Secular
internationalism collapsed on both sides, damaging the hard won dynamic
of the Third World as a promising political platform. India, which led the
nonaligned group at the UN on disarmament and peace, resorted to its own
arms buildup. China’s foreign policy, dictated by its opposition to the
USSR, ‘wound its way from Bandung to a rapprochement with the US and
its impossible alliances with dictatorial regimes’.[44]
Historical tensions between the Soviet (and the Comintern) and Chinese
communist parties since the 1920s were first over the revolutionary
strategies in China and later certain territorial issues that China viewed as
legacies of imperialist Tsarism. Mao recalled in his conversation with the
Soviet ambassador Pavel Yudin, among other occasions, that Stalin had
advised against the communist thrust in China – to fight the civil war after
1945 and then for the PLA to cross the Yangzi River to defeat the
Guomindang in 1949. Mao felt that Stalin ‘never had faith in the Chinese
people’.[45] Yet, it was only after the CPSU 20th congress in 1956 that the
Sino-Soviet relationship fell apart. The Chinese were shocked and angered
by Khrushchev’s secret speech. Despite their grievances against Stalin, the
Chinese were principled and saw de-Stalinization as a serious mistake. The
leadership published two People’s Daily editorials in response to the event,
which was followed by open letters and nine major commentaries in 1963-
64 criticizing Soviet revisionism and ‘social imperialism’.[46] China refused
military cooperation proposed by Khrushchev in the late 1950s. They
conceived it as an attempt by a ‘big country’ for hegemony and as an
example of ‘big party’ chauvinism. China also shelled Jinmen in August
1958 without warning the Soviets – this was the Taiwan Straits Incident.[47]
The shelling was seen as a gesture in support of the Iraqi revolution and in
opposition to the US intervention in the Middle East during the Lebanon
crisis. In 1960, the Soviet Union unilaterally withdrew aid and experts from
China, breaking the contracts and abandoning many of their unfinished
industrial and defence aid projects at a huge economic cost to China.
Without looking into the Sino-Soviet debate, which had a real
theoretical significance, suffice it to note here that the division revolved
around Khrushchev’s new doctrine of ‘peaceful transition to socialism’ and
‘peaceful competition between the east and west’. The Chinese regarded
Soviet revisionism as irresponsible and a betrayal from the Marxist
positions on class struggle and world revolution, hence they saw the Sino-
Soviet split as a ‘line struggle’ of the international communist movement.
The argument involved three main questions about the nature of
imperialism, peace and war, and relationships among the communist
parties.[48] On this China represented the more militant wing of international
socialism, in line with radical Third Worldism and armed national
liberation. Revolutionary violence, for instance, was necessary in Frantz
Fanon’s analysis of the need to launch a colonized people on the path of
freedom by lifting their subjectivity from subservience, which corresponded
to Mao’s emphasis on the ideological function of revolutionary mobilization
and socialization. The USSR was the world’s first ever workers’ state
founded on genuinely communist and internationalist premises – by the
1960s, its bureaucratic degeneration was evident and internationalism was
not as robust.[49] For these reasons, it would be mistaken to take the Sino-
Soviet disputes as mainly of a nationalistic nature. The disputes were rather
genuinely concerned with certain fundamental differences in the two
parties’ interpretations of socialism and capitalism. In the Chinese critiques,
the charge of ‘revisionism’ referred directly to ‘capitalist restoration’ and
other forms of departure from the socialist cause.
The Soviet practice, therefore, did not really live up to its belief in the
possibility of peaceful co-existence. Improvements from a degree of
passivity also became visible in the 1960s.[50] There was a real
internationalist aspect to its foreign commitment and policy as, after all,
‘the USSR is not subject to the logic of imperialism.’[51] In fact, the new
wave of Third World revolutionary movements ‘occasioned a substantial
and visible exercise of Soviet military power in support of them’. The
USSR supplied the heavy military armor and expertise needed for victory in
Vietnam and later also for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, and provided the
airlift and strategic equipment for Cuban force in Angola and Ethiopia when
South Africa intervened (backed by the US, China and Zaire).[52] Soviet
troops were directly deployed in Afghanistan (however disastrous it was)
and its military advisors dispatched elsewhere to oppressed and destitute
fighters in Third World jungles. ‘Even where there was no Soviet military
involvement as such, states allied to the USSR or revolutionary movements
in conflict with the West were in some measure protected’, as in Iran.[53]
Even if such Soviet involvement was motivated less by any ideology than
by its own security considerations or its need of balancing Chinese
influence, it remained the case that the USSR was a brake on imperialist
war and money machines. This can be better appreciated only after the fact:
the disappearance of the Soviet Union was by all good measures ‘an
unmitigated catastrophe’, especially in global politics.[54]
China’s preoccupation with counter-hegemony led to its categorical
misjudgment on the Soviet Union. Whatever its many faults the Soviet
Union could not be an enemy of socialism and national liberation. Rather
the Soviet support was indispensible for the world’s class nations and could
indeed have been a far stronger force in promoting socialist and Third
Worldist causes if intra-communist divisions did not arise. The same can
certainly be said about China. The Soviet power also protected many
progressive governments and movements. Its nuclear umbrella covered
China as well, even at the peak of Sino-Soviet dispute.[55] Against such a
backdrop, it appeared that the Chinese committed a series of errors in
handling internal disagreements among the communist parties as well as the
complicated relationship – congruities or incongruities – between
internationalism (class-based) and third-worldism (nation-based). Similar to
its domestic policy error of confusing the ‘two kinds of contradictions’, the
Chinese party mistook contradictions between China and the Soviet Union
as ‘contradictions among the people’ for those between the enemies.[56] In
its adventurist assertion on world revolution, disregarding its superior
united-front strategies, China suffered from a kind of left infantilism.
Eventually, to relieve itself from an impossible isolation caused by targeting
both the US and USSR, China took a drastic turn toward the United States
of America in order to counterbalance the Soviet threat.
 The defence of the Soviet Union here does not mean that the CPSU was
on the right side of the dispute. Rather, each party must take its due
responsibility for the irreversible or fatal damages they inflicted on the
international communist and pro-socialist movements. Khrushchev was also
personally responsible for much of the dispute – originating from his ‘secret
speech’ in 1956 and developing in his opportunistic foreign policies (e.g.
adventurism followed by surrenderism during the Cuban missile crisis) and
chauvinistic attitude toward the Chinese and a few other smaller communist
parties. He even used the language of ‘yellow peril’. Mao, on the other
hand, eventually abandoned his effort at ‘considering the overall interests’
and allowed nationalistic feelings to dictate Chinese response to the events
since the mid 1960s. By changing struggle against global capitalism to
hegemonic powers, much of the class content of that struggle was overtaken
by nationalist sentiment.
Seeing the Soviet Union as its main enemy, China’s foreign policy and
relations involuntarily became either blurred or outright detrimental to
socialist internationalism. As China started to court the US, it sided with
Pakistan against Bangladeshi independence and sent emergency aid to Sri
Lanka to put down the left-wing Lanka Samaja Party’s insurgency in 1971.
It praised the Greek military junta in 1972 and welcomed Gaafar Nimeiri of
Sudan to Beijing after the dictatorship’s massacre of its communists in the
same year. It hastily recognized the 1973 coup in Chile and expelled the
Chilean ambassador to China when he refused to comply with Pinochet. It
also joined a counterrevolutionary coalition against the popular Angolan
government that just emerged from a long war against Portuguese
colonialism. Later it opposed the Afghan communists as well, again along
with the US, Iran and Pakistan.[57] To be fair, new China’s international
environment had been extremely complex and difficult; and Beijing was
genuinely threatened by Soviet military attacks. Suspicious of US interest in
such an attack, Mao confronted Henry Kissinger in one of their meetings in
1973 and proposed a ‘horizontal line’ of the US, Japan, China, Pakistan,
Iran, Turkey and Europe to counter the Soviet Union.[58]
Meanwhile, communist infighting spread from the Sino-Soviet split to
factional struggles in many communist parties between and among the
Maoist and other Marxist variants. ‘The result was an ever more accelerated
disintegration of the internationalism of the classical communist movement,
as communist states multiplied’. Earlier fractures between Yugoslavia and
the USSR or Albania and Yugoslavia not withstanding, the Sino-Soviet
conflict escalated into an armed border clash in 1969, ‘permanently
destroying any chance of unity in the communist world’.[59] Then, in a
further twist of the spiral, wars broke out between successive communist
states, from Vietnam in Cambodia to China in Vietnam, with the signal
exception of Cuba standing fast as an icon of internationalism.[60] China’s
1979 war against Vietnam was worst of all, as a ‘gift at first meeting’
presented to its diplomatic relationship with the United States. Given Zhou
Enlai’s earnest commitment on behalf of the Chinese leadership in the
1960s to supporting the peoples in Southeast Asia, had he lived to see the
war he would have died of anger. Eventually, the event arguably of the
greatest global and geopolitical significance in the postwar era came in
1991 – when the USSR fell.[61]
If ‘bureaucratic nationalism’ functioned as the culprit in intra-
communist relationships, a Marxist explanation is that it ‘was materially
rooted in forces of production that were objectively less internationalized
than those of the capitalist world. This nationalism in turn blocked any
chance of overcoming the lag’.[62] Aside from the issue concerning cadre
privileges, this ‘nationalist’ pattern was a response to capitalist crusades
against communist regimes ever since 1917. It can be seen in such striking
contrast in Asia as between the blockaded – namely the communist states –
and the fostered – namely the US anticommunist allies, who enjoyed
enormous aid and access to markets from the West and Japan. The related
problem of statism and bureaucratization was debated in Ho Chi Minh’s
Vietnam, redressed in policy experiment in Mao’s China, and fairly kept at
bay in Cuba. Yet in addition to centralized and often also personal powers
and hierarchical privileges that nurtured corruption and degeneration,
internal conflicts demoralized and exhausted both the socialist and Third
Worlds. Decolonization did not live up to its promise of egalitarian
democracy and popular control; in many postcolonial countries the
domestic bourgeoisie or rather feudalistic local regimes were vulnerable to
regression, from military coups and even civil wars to ethnic and religious
strife. Divisive identity politics betrayed the ambition and energy of earlier
liberation struggles.
 Beginning with the Sino-Indian war, which injured the credibility of
both India and China, the Third World became increasingly divided while
competing for favour and aid between China and the Soviet Union. A telling
story of the 1965 Jakarta preparatory conference (before Suharto’s coup) for
the 2nd Asian-African conference scheduled to convene in Algiers shows the
extent of this sad turn. As what India called the troika of China, Indonesia
and Pakistan initiated the meeting, antagonism within the Bandung nations
played out with the Sino-Soviet discord as ‘a major irritant’. A controversy
over India’s proposal of inviting the Soviet Union, deemed to be
geographically Asian, and Chinese delegation’s rejection alone was bitter
enough to stir disunity among the participants.[63] The 2nd Bandung was in
the end aborted – because of China’s insistence (on technical ground that
the Soviet Union was more European) no consensus could be reached. The
conference had to be cancelled. This hurt China’s reputation and its
relations with a number of its Third World friends.[64] The Sino-Soviet split
compromized principles, obstructed progress, and weakened all the
countries while undermining the common anti-capitalist project across the
continents. Departing from socialist internationalism, socialism and Third
Worldism went down together.
Both the PRC and the USSR must bear the responsibility for Third
World diversion from its original agenda of national liberation and
development, as well as the popular drive for a new global order. As the
communist ruling parties failed to either present a coherent model of
socialism or to consistently support the newly independent nations, the
nonaligned movement exhausted itself by toxic wrangling and lost its
appeal even before the end of the cold war. Most nonaligned countries were
aware of how impossible it was for them to gain anything from their former
metropolitan masters for the benefit of their own socioeconomic
development. The communists in these countries, however split as well,
were often the backbone of social changes. The irony is that while
selectively shoring up certain progressive or even revolutionary enterprises,
the socialist states were bound by the capitalist hegemony and had to make
allowances for various regimes in the underdeveloped world. The USSR
often watched with folded arms when dictators cracked down on labour
activists or when the military’s counterinsurgency campaigns wiped out
leftist rebels. Even China, widely accused of being too ‘extreme’, steered
clear of exporting revolution. It stood idly by, for example, when hundreds
of thousands of communists and perceived sympathizers were massacred in
Indonesia in 1965.
While the USSR and PRC each had once played a critically positive
role in world affairs by constraining the Atlantic powers, they had also
compromized ideological and moral commitments and missed many
opportunities for advancing the internationalist cause. Beneath the surface
of relative Soviet passivity in the guise of ‘peaceful transition’ and China’s
passage from radical independence to leaning toward the US was the same
cold war logic of détente. Originated in the Yalta deal of a ‘balance of
terror’, the philosophy of détente was to evade a horrifying third world war,
which could be nuclear holocaust.[65] If the Chinese position was more
regrettable it is because, unlike the Soviet Union, China was itself a Third
World country and baptized in a revolution of national liberation. Moreover,
as the Soviet state grew into a status quo managerial gatekeeper, China’s
Cultural Revolution not only ‘touched the soul’ of its own people but also
altered the orbit of communist movements incarcerated by the statist
impulse. These differences made China’s steady alienation from so many
fellow socialist and Third World countries all the more painful and costly.
An era of raging and promising popular mobilization for global equality and
justice was over.
The following clarification remains emphatically important. If
revolutionary China’s tacitly positive response to the US olive branch in
1971 (after it rebuffed US initiations in 1968-9 as China was engaged in
supporting Vietnam) was still a geopolitical strategic move and conditional
on behalf of its national interest and bilateral equality, reformist China was
prepared to make weightier concessions. The Maoist endeavor was to
weaken global hegemonic powers by playing with their mutual
contradictions against each other so as to lessen China’s pressure from what
was perceived as an imminent war threat, while gaining the country needed
space for development. In contrast, the post-Mao regime largely abandoned
the anti-imperialist stance, as such participating in a wishfully collaborative
yet unipolar world. The reformers hastily reversed initially ‘shallow’,
selective and self-protective ‘relinking’ and tried to appease the rule-makers
of globalization. Obvious continuities notwithstanding, discontinuities
between these two moves are vital. Mao’s era and the post-Mao reform
represented two different Chinas on the world stage: between socialism and
‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ (which in reality is ‘capitalism with
Chinese characteristics’), between internationalism marked by solidarity
among class nations and a globalism of jiegui (getting on the track of
globalization), between independence and subordination, and indeed
between revolution and counterrevolution. If Mao had occasionally
deviated from the socialist and internationalist principles for nationalistic
impulses, he and his colleagues nevertheless retained them as long-term
goals. His successors conversely became cynical about socialism altogether
or even lack of any serious sense of national and popular interests.[66] The
essential difference here then is both ideological and strategic concerning
China’s national orientation and international relations. In retrospect,
China’s eventual shift toward an alliance with the US is of spectacular
significance: By fueling global capitalism with its outstanding labour force
and vast market for capital’s ‘spatial fix’ and further financialization, as
well as certain political collaboration, China in a way ‘rescued’ a global
system in predicament, at the cost of its own distinguished identity and
independence since 1949.[67]
Meanwhile, the decay of socialism also gravely impaired ethnic
relations inside China, most acutely in Xinjiang and Tibet. Socialism is
intrinsically internationalist on its common ground of universal
emancipation – the internal and external are, for socialism, the two sides of
the same coin. A socialist state is thus expected to respect and support its
own national minorities and help the world’s oppressed nations, which is
integral to socialist internationalism. The regressions from communist
solidarity and from anti-capitalism in China twisted both its stances towards
foreign policy and toward ethnic relations at home.
China’s current spatial politics regarding regional and ethnic relations is
a blending of old socialist paternalism, new capitalist developmentalism,
and iron fisted campaigns against ‘separatists’ and ‘terrorists’. This has
resulted in a vicious circle of resistance and oppression, attack and revenge,
involving mounting fear and alienation. Without any formal change in the
ideology of equality or institutions of autonomy, ethnic and religious
tensions seem a byproduct of a general legitimation crisis. The state-
sponsored, relentless accumulation of capital has wounded minority pride,
cultures and peace, and undermined the entire edifice of socialist
fundamentals geared toward popular power and welfare across
communities. In particular, the return of unchecked Han prejudice began to
be institutionalized,[68] which has begun to breed social polarization as much
as national disintegration. Inequalities are not ethnic specific during
economic reforms, but market pathologies appear more lethally in the
minority regions. This impasse amounted to an identity or legitimacy crisis
of the People’s Republic itself. The socialist aspiration is not only to
manage multi-ethnicity, but also to celebrate it within a common
citizenship. In its absence a contentious domestic politics puts ethnic
concerns at the heart of social issues and uses a fixed idea of ethnicity in
interpreting social relations. However, it is class that is at the root of a
deformed world of ‘class nations’, nationally and globally;[69] and changing
that world requires a long ‘war of position’ beginning with reclaiming
socialist internationalism.
GLOBALISM, TRADITIONALISM, OR
UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION

The post-Mao economic reform, pursued in parallel with capitalist

neoliberal mutations, has since the 1990s (save the first reform decade)
turned China into an open, willing and rule-obeying participant in
globalization, and hence the largest new market and growth center of the
global system. Along the way, China’s political class – nominally still
communist – has allowed what, in effect, must be recognized as the
processes toward bureaucratic-capitalist transition. In China, as elsewhere,
capitalism keeps inflicting calamities upon societies and nature, producing
commercial homogeneity as much as social disparities by its polarising
tendency. In these circumstances, China may still grow bigger
economically, but only at the price of being exploited, subordinated,
unstable, even in some visible way colonized (concerning, for example,
how penetrating foreign capital has already become in the Chinese
industries and finance), and probably explosive and reactionary – recall
Marx’s fear of counterrevolution in newly converted capitalist regimes.[70]
Without a decisive political reorientation, China will lose its original
substance and distinction as a people’s republic established at the immense
cost of the lives of its devoted and heroic sons and daughters. Such a
reorientation is realistic not only because the existing model of
development is socially and ecologically unsustainable and continues to
generate resistance, but also because innovations increasingly emerge for
change. Where to next then, if past missteps can still be turned around for a
new beginning?
A most self-deceptive option, officially promoted, straightly or tacitly,
is ‘deepening the reform’ or shengai, involving fuller global integration
through further economic opening, privatization, financial liberalization and
market deregulation. The antisocialist liberals endorse this economic
agenda while advocating a specific ‘political reform’. Such a reform, even
if it would tighten state control over dissent, mainly seeks designated policy
and legal changes to match, facilitate and protect elite wealth and power.
Without accepting the diagnosis on the damages of departing from
socialism and internationalism to be mended, the globalist project is both
illusive and dangerous. On the one hand, unprecedented inroads of casino
capital and multinationals have created super rates of profit for themselves
and of exploitation for Chinese workers, pushing the country toward wider
and deeper economic dependency, financial market volatility, and political
incapacity. On the other hand, to move up from the low end of the global
productive chain, China’s position in the global division of labour is such
that paradoxically the country must also handle its own overcapacity-cum-
under-consumption – due to the large size of a low-income population as a
result of inequalities. As its outbound investment and acquisition attempts
hype, China has joined the global scramble for resources – from minerals to
land – driven by its growing demand for both energy supply and space for
surplus capital.
While the new China had once categorically distinguished itself from
the old colonial powers in its Third World aid programmes, today it is not
obvious if Chinese capital and businesses overseas, via state and private
companies alike, are not purely motivated by profits or on a quest for
energy, or even a diversion of attention from internal discontents. It would
be too early to liken the Chinese overseas pursuits to the familiar patterns of
capitalist imperialism because of their very different historical records. And
depending on political struggle, China is still open to adjustment and may
well stand firm against exploitative international relations and
expansionism. However, as the world’s largest importer of certain essential
commodities, China is already in the game of global accumulation and
competition.[71] The alarming concept of ‘sub-imperialism’ in the shadow of
an overblown discourse of China rising, debated in China (and Taiwan,
concerning cross-strait economic relations), is a sensible warning against a
looming peril.
China’s ‘one belt, one road’ strategy, hyped to define the country’s
future development, has to be viewed in the context of these factors in the
background. Focusing on huge exploration investments and grand
infrastructural constructions, the new silk roads by land and sea are
intended to reach mines, ports and markets in Central Asia, Southeast Asia
and Africa, connecting South America as well and Europe through western
and southern Chinese provinces. The optimists are hopeful that such a
strategy, if free of imperial or territorial ambitions, would counter the US-
Japan maritime dominance in the region and even move further to alter the
entire capitalist system. As such, it could be a ‘world historical’ initiative.[72]
Others point out that disregarding the stated intention, such a project will
involve varieties of actors in ‘an unbridled commercial frenzy’, as
especially private enterprises can venture out and make deals without any
public plan or state direction.[73] But more seriously, it would be hard to
imagine anything like a transnational commercial network operating by
socialist means within the overriding order of global capitalism. In the
shadow of its own collective memory, China knows only too well about
colonial and imperialist practices, and how the richer and stronger countries
could endure ‘surplus retention’ unrealisable in the poorer and weaker ones.
To change the situation the socialist states had previously followed their
moral duties to aid the Third World,[74] including a noble tradition of ‘China
in Africa’. But that mandate is hardly there any longer as the Chinese
socialist state receded. The new silk road ambition would have little chance
to appeal to the people or succeed politically if the Chinese leaders are
unwilling or incapable of reversing the recent course while tapping into the
resource of socialist and internationalist legacies.
China’s non-expansionist pledge is grounded on its historical record but
this cannot be a guarantee for the future. Moreover, this strategy has to be
scrutinized in terms of its economic and geopolitical viability in the first
place. If the Chinese economy is still lacking a self-reliant foundation for
security, if it is open to financial vulnerability and turmoil in the global
markets, and if its domestic needs are unfulfilled concerning food
sovereignty, integrated welfare, technological upgrading and much else,
then are not there less wasteful and less risky ways to develop than
investing massively abroad? Operating globally provides no assurance on
local benefits, and could worsen vicious competition or racing to the bottom
domestically as well. Potential drain of reserves or piling of debts could
also instantly wipe out short-term gains. Further still, it is above all a
question of realpolitik as to what extent China can continue its overseas
adventures. Unlimited expansion of Chinese capital is hardly rational
without the backing of minimal parity between China and its competitors in
terms of military capacity and geopolitical spheres of control and influence.
Despite its market integration and collaborative gestures, China remains a
quasi-enemy in the perpetual cold war mentality, and the US has reaffirmed
its ‘pivot to Asia’, aiming at containing China. The world’s hegemonic
power and its obedient ‘international community’ are left with little space
for any illusion. Ultimately, the logic of global rivalry over power and
resources could lead to conflicts and war with unimaginable devastations.
At home, state-led and market-centered developmentalism aggravates
the already dire environmental and demographical conditions. And related
problems multiply for the minorities. Neglected or misconceived in the
strategic ‘going west’ thinking are the ethnic relations, which are socially
and politically sensitive. The blind belief that economic growth can redress
local grievances and solve pressing problems, ethnic or social, has long
proven deadly wrong. Muslim societies in the vast and resourceful region of
Xinjiang, for instance, resent their ever more marginalized position in
language education and cultural heritages, and in the job market,
government posts and professional circles, and regular points of service.
Similar situations and attitudes are visible in the Tibetan areas as well, both
in response to the ever greater scale of commercial standardization and Han
migration, and certain repressive impositions. To be sure, China’s ethnic-
religious minorities should and can succeed socioeconomically, culturally
and politically in a context of beneficial and positive linkages with overall
national development. They have both constitutionally enshrined moral
right and institutional means at hand to modernize in their own terms and
rhythms as a matter of self-determination. But that would require a full set
of policies faithfully implemented according to the constitutionally granted
minority rights, ethnic autonomy and religious freedom under the principle
of the solidarity of all nationalities and equal citizenship. Presently no
democratic agenda is on the table for sincere consultation and conversation
with substantial minority participation for policy reconsideration. Yet
popular trust has to be there before any grand plan, however beneficial to
the locals and regions as it may be, can be carried out.
Now if the globalist option is either reckless or illusory, would
traditionalism be an alternative? Leaving aside the literature of cultural
conservatism from the left (in terms of ‘Confucian socialism’, etc.) and
from the right (that reverses the communist negation of traditional values),
old fashioned or radical in advocacy, the concern here is limited to the most
promising interpretations of tianxia. This sinological idea signifies a
spatially insensitive cosmology of grand unification, claiming diverse races
and cultures ‘all under heaven’ to be embraced in constant amalgamation
and universal harmony. One of its self-contradictions is the theoretical
difficulty of identifying the ‘barbarians’ (yi) from the civilized (xia). As
such, the modern application of tianxia is confronted above all with the
formidable obstacle of the entities of nation states and international
relations, conceptually and practically. Without firm, stably definable outer
boundaries, tianxia is an imaginary of moral ruling by the ‘mandate of
heaven’: from equal sharing of land and wealth to the Confucian belief in
‘people as the foundation’ of state and government (minben, as elaborated
in Mencius). Among the most idealist readings of the ancient wisdoms is
that the Chinese word for ‘politics’ (zhengzhi) means ‘justified order’,
which defines a polity not opposite but alternative to politics as public life.
‘[The Greek] polis developed state politics, while all-under-heaven invented
world politics.’[75] Hailed as a superior theory for global governance and
world peace, tianxia is centered on harmony and based on ‘an ontology of
coexistence’, seeking ‘reasonable resolutions of conflicts and stable security
by building truly reliable correlations of mutual benefit in the long run, as
well as reciprocal acceptance of the other’s values’. Ideally then, it
represents a framework of ‘relational universalism’ or ‘compatible
universalism’, transcending the Kantian uniform universalism of perpetual
peace.[76]
Undoubtedly, against cultural nihilism, useful elements in China’s
indigenous traditions comprising a rich array of thoughts can be
dialectically reappropriated.[77] But like it or not, the revolutionary and post-
revolutionary modern traditions are overwhelmingly more powerful. After
all, the epic communist revolution has remade China and lifted its
multicultural peoples. It is this ‘revolutionary break with the past’ required
by modern transformations that defines the nation after 1949, completely
recasting its internal and external relations. The transformation has also a
potent cultural dimension. As Mao put it, a great revolution has rejuvenated
a great culture of the Chinese people, and the process would continue. ‘This
culture, concerning its spirituality, has exceeded that of the entire capitalist
world’. Using Lu Xun as an example, Mao depicted the literary giant’s
unyielding integrity without bowing and cringing as representing ‘the most
precious quality’ of an oppressed nation.[78] Some affinities might be found
here with both individual uprightness and moral justice of removing
tyranny by a rebellious populace in ancient teachings. But today’s
Confucian revivalism signals a politics of defeat and escapism, and as such
it certainly does not intend to invoke that particular radicalism. However
bizarre (if one looks at the communist secretaries kneeling in an ancestral
temple in Qufu, Shandong, the birth place of the saint, for instance), it
bespeaks the acute social crises and ideological bankruptcy that official
China should appeal to Confucius.
Confucianism, decorated or modernized, is no ‘soft power’ to match the
capitalist ideology of liberal democracy and market efficiency. Its
conservative doctrines from belittling women to endorsing elitism and
submission make it hopelessly obsolete. It is, after all, an ideology of the
ruling class. Concerning tianxia in particular, even if it does offer some
positive imaginaries, it has an imperial stigma and is entirely toothless
facing the capitalist industrial-financial-military complex, which also
extends a long arm of cultural and media power. A uniformly benevolent
and ascendant Chinese tradition and its potential globalization are a fantasy
and no valid alternative to either Eurocentric or capitalist vices anyway. Yet
often as part of the ‘rise of China’ discourse, traditionalism can be
politically inflected for a post-socialist function. It is projected that with the
rising influence of China, a peaceful Chinese state would enhance the
chance of greater equality in the world and for a non-capitalist, East Asian
model development to be globally emulated.[79] Similarly, a ‘universalist’
geopolitical narrative is to blend the two ideas of tianxia, of which
‘frontiers’ are intentionally unfixed and non-hegemonic, and the new silk
roads distinguishable from the old colonial order of trade and conquests.
Such a blending would be a cure of global fragmentation and conflicts as
the Westphalia system becomes ever more anachronistic.[80]
Yet, neither globalist uniformity as opposed to internationalism, nor
culturalist particularism antithetical to socialism, can be the future for
universal emancipation. The only plausible position will still find recourse
to the communist original. In the end, socialism is not a national variant to
pluralize globality or modernity or capitalism. The global nature of capital
and capitalist unilateral integration necessitates the universality of its
opposition; nothing less, and nothing of an ethnocentric disposition, can
possibly be up to the role.[81] Meanwhile, as socialism cannot have a
foothold and grow only ‘in one country’, socialist nationalism has to be
simultaneously internationalist. In other words, socialism is also the only
assurance against chauvinism and expansionism. This indivisibility and
mutuality of socialism and internationalism, or incompatibility between
socialist internationalism and exploitative expansionism, is again not only a
matter of morality but also realpolitik. Any credible political argument on
China’s direction today would require its domestic and foreign relations to
be articulated in the same streak.[82] Without attending to relevant critical
theories of nationalism and international relations, the point here is simply
that nationalism needs to be checked by socialism and internationalism.[83]
In other words, nationalism could be empty or reactionary without the
constitutive role of a democratically organized people, which is proudly
multicultural and equal. This people must also form alliances with other
peoples in changing the world by surmounting its fundamental
contradictions.
Instead of neo-Confucianism that tends to be Han centered, or capitalist
globalism that promotes market values and profits over needs, socialism
remains the only global prospect capable of protecting and developing a
social contract of universal liberation and welfare. The PRC state
presupposes cultural and institutional multi-ethnicity and carries with it a
sacred duty of securing sovereignty, integrity, unity and harmony. This duty
is socialist in the sense that it is taken as a matter of defending and
completing the revolution ultimately measured by its victory over
capitalism and imperialism. In the socialist past the Chinese treated
struggles of other class nations as their own. In contrast, China’s current
foreign policy and general attitude toward the world are rightly criticized
for its indifference or even hostility toward progressive causes and the
global social movements, ranging from the Palestinian cause to green
politics. Its pro-US stance, in particular, needs to be rectified. If socialism is
still valid for China, the country should join the global reconstruction of a
‘Southern front’ or ‘Bandung 2’, with a long view of restricting capital,
socialising monopolies and de-financialising economic management the
world over – the opposite of what is going on under present policies.[84]
China is yet to be an active participant in the World Social Forum
(previously Third World Forum created in Dakar 1975 and the World Forum
for Alternatives in Cairo 1997). And China is yet to honestly scrutinize its
claimed ‘socialism’ full of theoretical inconsistencies and policy
discrepancies. By the internationalist logic, only such a move would
improve China’s own conditions and environment so as to overcome its
multiple crises.
To recover the lost international in China is to regain and develop
Chinese socialism. The two projects merge and are embedded in each
other’s ambition of overcoming capitalism. The retreat of the People’s
Republic from a challenger to a collaborator in the global system marks a
world-historical defeat, no less than that of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But neither of these two formerly socialist countries has to be stuck where
they are. The class nature of the state is key; and depending on politics or,
more concretely, popular struggle against a now powerful bureaucratic-
comprador-financial capitalist interest group, it is not unchangeable. As
social and environmental unsustainability under capitalism keeps fueling
resistance and reconstruction, politics would be back in command.
Ultimately, socialism and socialist internationalism remain the only contour
to be reclaimed for Chinese renewal as much as universal emancipation.
[1]
This article was originally written for Ban Wang (ed.), Chinese Vision of World Order, Duke
University Press, 2016. I am grateful to Prof. Wang for his encouragement and editorial help. For
the present version, Prof. Vijay Prashad’s keen interest and critical editing are much appreciated.
Part of this work was presented at the ‘Twentieth-Century Soviet and Chinese Socialism’
conference at Qinghua University, September 2015. I thank the organizers and participants of the
conference for their valuable comments.
[2]
Perry Anderson, ‘Internationalism: A Breviary’, New Left Review, no. 14, March-April 2002, p.
10.
[3]
Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (1940), Boston: Beacon, 1967; Joseph Fletcher,
‘Integrative history: parallels and interconnections in the early modern period, 1500—1800’,
Journal of Turkish Studies 9, 1985: 37-57; Peter Perdue, ‘History without borders: China and
global history’, YaleGlobal, 24 Feb. 2015.
[4]
A typical example is given by Lattimore in Inner Asian Frontiers about changing functions of
the Great Wall in a long history of interactions between an ‘agricultural China’ and its nomadic
neighbours through the ebb and flow of not only wars but also and more often peace making and
integration. For an influential debate over assimilationist interpretations in historiography, see
Evelyn Rawski, ‘Reenvisioning the Qing: The Significance of the Qing Period in Chinese
History’, Journal of Asian Studies 55:4, Nov 1996: 829-50; and Ping-Ti Ho, ‘In Defence of
Sinicization: A Rebuttal of Evelyn Rawski’s “Reenvisioning the Qing”’, Journal of Asian Studies
57:1, Feb 1998, pp. 123-155.
[5]
Peter Nolan, ‘China’s traditional international trade was tiny in comparison with the vast volume
of internal trade. However, it was highly significant in terms of the deep interconnections
between China and the regions immediately around it to the West and the South’. Trade relations
‘stimulated nautical technical progress’ as well as ‘a deep long-term symbiotic, two-way flow of
culture . . .’. ‘The Silk Road by Land and Sea’, China Development Forum, Beijing, Mar 2014.
[6]
See, for example, Giovanni Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the 21st Century,
London: Verso, 2007, parts 2 and 3.
[7]
Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: Europe, China, and the Making of the Modern World
Economy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000: 22, 239, 287-8; Andre Gunder Frank,
ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, pp.
30, 172-3, 334-9.
[8]
The Religion of China (1951), trans. and ed. by Hans Gerth, NY: Free Press, 1964: 26, 103-4,
61-2. See also, ‘the original accumulation of capital during late medieval times in Europe
entailed violence, predation, thievery, fraud and robbery. Through these extra-legal means,
pirates, priests and merchants, supplemented by the usurers, assembled enough initial “money
power” to begin to circulate money systematically as capital.’ David Harvey, The Enigma of
Capital and the Crises of Capitalism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 47.
[9]
China, ‘unlike the major European states, has not tried to colonize areas of the world poorer or
weaker than itself’. Comparatively, ‘unlike pre-World War II Japan, it has not waged ruthless
warfare against its neighbours . . . Unlike the United States, it has not set up military bases all
over the world . . . Unlike the Soviet Union, it has not engaged in a massive arms race with the
world’s other “superpower”, nor has it installed client governments in nations on its border.’
David Schweickart, After Capitalism, Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011, p. 174. ‘In sharp
contrast to the European powers and their colonial-settler descendants, China did not seek to
construct an overseas empire.’ Peter Nolan, ‘Imperial Archipelagos: China, Western Colonialism
and the Law of the Sea’, New Left Review 80, Mar/Apr 2013, p. 80.
[10]
For example, see Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States: AD 990–1992,
Oxford: Blackwell, 1992 and Thomas Ertman, Birth of the Leviathan: Building States and
Regimes in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
See especially Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century, London: Verso, Ch.1 and pp. 96ff.
[11]
This thesis has an origin in the Russian revolutionaries and the dilemma of ‘socialism and
backwardness’. For its contemporary revival see, for example, David Harvey’s work on
geopolitical economy. For Harvey, ‘uneven geographical development is not a mere sidebar to
how capitalism works, but fundamental to its reproduction.’ The Enigma, pp. 58–60, 213.
[12]
As Immanuel Wallerstein put it, nothing is regrettable for ‘China, India, the Arab world and
other regions’ to have not gone forward to capitalism, thus being ‘better immunized against the
toxin’. The End of the World as We Know It: Social Science for the 21st Century, Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1999, pp. 179-81.
[13]
See Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (1913), London: Routledge, 1951, pp. 370-
3, 376, 454-55. Pockets of successful ‘late development’, such as the cases of ‘Asian tigers’,
heavily depended on the aid and markets the US offered to its Cold War allies in the region.
Insofar as such pockets cannot alter the basic pattern of a polarized world between rich and poor
countries, the main propositions of dependency theory holds.
[14]
Perry Anderson, referring to Marx’s conception of the historical time, ‘Modernity and
Revolution’, New Left Review 144, Mar/Apr, 1984.
[15]
V.I. Lenin, ‘The Awakening of Asia’ (1913), Collected Works, vol. 19, Moscow: Progress
Publishers, 1977, pp. 65-66.
[16]
Nations and Nationalism, 121.
[17]
The conflation, both descriptively (of an awkward and backward political entity) and
conceptually (concerning disparities between the Sino-zone and Europe), indicates impeded
development: ‘empire’ signifies pre-modernity and despotism in contrast to the sovereign modern
‘nation’ capable of progress and democracy. See Wang Hui, ‘The Politics of Imagining Asia: A
Genealogical Analysis’, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 8:1, 2007, pp. 16-18.
[18]
Gellner, ‘The political and the national unit should be congruent’, Nations and Nationalism, p.
1.
[19]
The Chinese nation was conceived as encompassing more than these main national groups, as
Sun Zhongshan pointed out in The Three Principles of the People (1924), in Selected Writings of
Sun, Beijing: Chinese Publishing House, 1956.
[20]
In the first half of the twentieth century, China’s relatively small industrial working class was
still significantly larger in size and stronger in political capacity than the national bourgeoisie,
due to substantial foreign presence in the Chinese economy. Workers in foreign-controlled
factories were a growing class, while domestic industrialists and merchants were a shrinking one
squeezed between landed interests and foreign capital. Even after their heavy losses during the
counterrevolutionary slaughter of 1927, workers were a vital revolutionary force and core to both
the red army and urban underground party work.
[21]
Against orthodox Marxism and developed from Lenin’s insight on the awakening of Asia and
the Bolshevik revolution and its peasant-solider soviet, these ideas, best articulated in Mao
Zedong’s The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party (1939) and On New
Democracy (1940), are among the theoretically most significant Chinese contributions to
Marxism.
[22]
Addressing the Irish question, Marx warned, ‘The English working class will never accomplish
anything until it had got rid of Ireland’ (to Engels, 11 Dec 1869). Lenin restated this position in
‘The Right of Nations to Self-Determination’ (1914). See Shivdan Singh Chauhan, Nationalities
Question in USA and USSR, New Delhi: Sterling, 1976, pp. 101–112.
[23]
Despite old and new criticisms of the notion ‘nationality’ for its Soviet origin or allegedly
negative functions of impairing unity, I consider it to remain appropriately useful and indeed
necessary from a socialist internationalist perspective. A similar statement could be made about
‘self-determination’ in the Chinese context. See Lin Chun, ‘Modernity and the Violence of
Global Accumulation: The Case of Ethnic Question in China’, in Breno Bringel and Jose
Mauricio Domingues (eds.), Global Modernity and Social Contestation, Sage 2015.
[24]
Again, Zhou Enlai explains these considerations with superb clarity, as quoted in Wang Hui,
The Politics of Imagining Asia, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011, pp. 179-87.
The Xinjiang Autonomous Region, for example, is home to forty-seven mostly Muslim
communities with a Uyghur majority alongside the Han.
[25]
For example, the programmes were so effective that they had ‘encouraged Han people to marry
into or otherwise seek to join these nationalities’. Between 1982 and 1990 alone, the Hui
population grew by 19 per cent. See Vincent Goossaert and David Palmer, The Religious
Question in Modern China, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, p. 375. Thomas Heberer
notes that the proportion of China’s minority population grew from 6.1 per cent in 1953 to 9 per
cent in 1995: a few groups doubled and tripled. Some Considerations on China’s Minorities:
Conflict or Conciliation, Duisburg Working Papers on East Asian Studies 31, 2000, p. 3. By
2005, the population of the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR) had grown 15.6 per cent, of
which the Tibetans accounted for 11.3 per cent, as compared with the national average of 5.9 per
cent. Ma Rong, Social Development and Ethnic Relations in Chinese Minority Regions, Beijing:
Social Science Academic Publisher, 2012, p. 68.
[26]
One of the ‘ten great demands’ published by the communist party in 1928 was to ‘unify China
and recognize . . . [minority] national self-determination’. The Jiangxi Soviet emulated the USSR
in 1931 to pledge for the non-Han tolling masses to ‘have the right to determine for themselves’
whether they wish to establish their own state, or join the socialist Chinese union, or form a self-
governing unit inside the union. Mao told Edgar Snow in 1939 that after revolutionary victory
Tibet, Mongolia, Burma, Indo-China and Korea could become autonomous republics voluntarily
attached to a Chinese confederation. The party then formally envisioned a democratic ‘federal
republic based on the free union of all nationalities’ in 1945. See, for example, Walter Connor,
The National Question in Marxist–Leninist Theory and Strategy, Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1984, pp. 68, 74, 82-83. Relevant original documents are collected in Conrad Brandt et al.
(eds.), A Documentary History of Chinese Communism, New York: Atheneum, 1967.
[27]
‘On a few questions concerning our nationality policy’ in Selected Writings of Zhou Enlai,
Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1984.
[28]
Mao, ‘The people who have triumphed in their own revolution should help those still struggling
for liberation. This is our internationalist duty’, ‘Talk with African Friends’, 8 Aug. 1963, in
Quotations from Mao, Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1966, p. 178. Wang Xiaoming notes that
similar ideas were held by Liang Qichao and other bourgeois revolutionary thinkers in the early
twentieth century. Hangzhou, Apr 2015,
http://www.wyzxwk.com/Article/shidai/2015/04/342767.html, a case for the conception of class
nations.
[29]
For a comprehensive historical account, see Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History, New
York: Penguin Modern Library Chronicles, reprint edn. 2012.
[30]
Wang Hui, ‘The Korean War in the 20th Century Chinese Historical Perspective’, Beijing
Cultural Review, 2013.
[31]
Yet the Soviet aid was not gratis and loans were not interest free. They were repaid by the
Chinese exports and international currency. Of China’s debt to the Soviet Union of 15.2 billion
Rubles, only about a third was economic and the rest was half-priced weaponry used in the
Korean war. See Wu Lengxi, Ten Years of Debate: 1956-66: Memoir of the Sino-Soviet
Relationship, Beijing: Central Documentary Press, 2013, pp. 216-17, 232, 443.
[32]
The label was first coined by Alfred Sauvy in France and popularized mainly into an alternative
perspective to the basic premise of the Cold War. See Mark Berger and Heloise Weber,
 Rethinking the Third World: International Development and World Politics, London: Palgrave,
2014.
[33]
Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, New York: The
New Press, 2007, p. 37 (also available from New Delhi: LeftWord Books). Mao referred to the
event that ‘it was our Third World brothers who have brought us in’. Indeed without radical
enlargement of UN members the PRC seat would not have been possible.
[34]
For a useful critique of taking the Third World as merely anticolonial nationalist in orientation
(and hence Third World literature as a national allegory as by Fredric Jameson), see Aijaz
Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, London: Verso, 2008.
[35]
Prashad, The Darker Nations, p. 9. See also Berthold Hoselitz, The Progress of
Underdeveloped Areas, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1952.
[36]
Prashad, Darker Nations, p. 37.
[37]
There were the left (China), center (India and Burma) and right (Turkey and the Philippines)
speaking at the conference, and praises as well as attacks on the Soviet Union and China. Premier
Zhou took a conciliatory tone and had tea with Nehru and U Nu as well as the rightists. ‘The
pacific approach by the Chinese delegation reflected the general Chinese communist orientation
toward foreign and domestic policy’, although ‘if the communists within China found alliances
among the peasantry and some fractions of the middle class, they had a harder time on the
international stage’. See Darker Nations, pp. 34-37.
[38]
The case of China’s ambivalence toward Indonesia exemplifies such difficulties where Beijing
concurrently maintained its comradeship with the PKI, united front with the government, and
expected duties to help Indonesian Chinese. See, for example, Taomo Zhou, ‘Ambivalent
Alliance: Chinese Policy towards Indonesia, 1960–1965’, The China Quarterly 221, Mar 2015,
pp. 208-28.
[39]
Che Guevara, ‘On the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria (February 24, 1965)’, Che Guevara
Reader. Writings on Politics and Revolution, New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2004.
[40]
It must be clarified that struggles for development are both rightful and important.
Development is apparently also politically charged. Examples worth mentioning are The New
International Economic Order and New World Information and Communications Order among
others. They were adopted in the 1970s; and the latter was incorporated by the UN, leading to
many more antipoverty and development projects in the next three decades, including the UN
Millennium Development Goals, 2000.
[41]
In New Delhi, Castro turned over the chair of the NAM conference to Indira Gandhi as new
leader of the movement. It nominally still represented two-thirds of the UN members and
contained more than half of the world population. Darker Nations, p. 210.
[42]
The Chinese practice was probably also a contrast, though in a very different context, with
trade relations between the Soviet Union and its satellite states within the Warsaw pact.
[43]
‘The Chinese people firmly support patriotic struggles for justice by the Panama people’,
People’s Daily, 12 Jan 1964.
[44]
Prashad, Darker Nations, p. 174.
[45]
Michael Lynch, Mao, London: Routledge, 2004, pp. 142-43; Dieter Heinzig, The Soviet Union
and Communist China, 1945-50: The Arduous Road to the Alliance, ME Sharpe, 2015, ch.3. Also
notable is the intention of the Chinese communists at the eve of their victory that they would like
to have diplomatic ties and good trade relations with the US rather than leaning on the one side of
the Soviet Union.
[46]
See relevant documents in https://www.marxists.org/history/interna-tional/comintern/sino-
soviet-split/ and John Gittings, Survey of the Sino-Soviet Dispute: A Commentary and Extracts
from Recent Polemics, 1963-67, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968.
[47]
See Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2001, ch.7.
[48]
See Wu, Ten Years of Debate, p. 312.
[49]
The regime emerged from the Bolshevik revolution ‘was the first and only state in history to
include no national or territorial reference in its name – it would simply be the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics’. That is, ‘the intention of its founders was unconditionally internationalist’.
Perry Anderson, ‘Internationalism: A Breviary’, New Left Review 14, Editorial, Mar-Apr 2002.
[50]
Perry Anderson, ‘such developments persuaded many communists shaken in 1956 that the
legacy of the October Revolution was, if with zigzags, being gradually redeemed rather than
irretrievably abandoned’. Spectrum, London: Verso, 2005, p. 285.
[51]
Ralph Miliband, Class War Conservatism, London: Verso, 2015, p. 255.
[52]
Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions. Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959-1976, Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
[53]
Miliband, Class War Conservatism, p. 255; and Fred Halliday, quoted on p. 266.
[54]
Eric Hobsbawm in Age of Extremes, quoted in Anderson, Spectrum, p. 313. According to
Wallerstein, for the US too, the Soviet collapse was ‘an absolute geopolitical catastrophe’
because it eliminated on the one hand the US argument that the noncommunist world should
follow its leadership, and on the other the Soviet role in restraining actions that might lead to
military confrontations among major states. See ‘What Cold War in Asia? An Interpretative
Essay’, in Zheng Yangwen et al. (eds.), The Cold War in Asia: The Battle for Hearts and Minds,
Leiden: Brill, 2010, pp. 23-24.
[55]
An earlier example is Khrushchev’s letter to Eisenhower in September 1958 after the Taiwan
Strait crisis over Jinmen, in which he declared that any aggression in China would be taken as
aggression in the USSR and the Soviets would defend China. Ten Years of Debate, p. 117.
[56]
In ‘On the Historical Experience of the Proletarian Dictatorship II’ published in the People’s
Daily, 29 Dec 1956, it was stated that the basic contradiction of the era was between imperialism
and socialism, and against this general background contradictions among socialist countries and
communist parties must be considered ‘contradictions among the people’ so as to pursue unity in
the anti-imperialist struggle. Mao did continue to stress, such as in December 1959 and early
1960, that the Chinese must prioritize solidarity, which was seen as ‘in the fundamental interest
of the Chinese people as well as the peoples throughout the world. The two big socialist countries
should unit’. Ten Years of Debate, pp. 54, 151, 157.
[57]
Miliband, Class War Conservatism, p. 232; Prashad, Darker Nations, p. 174.
[58]
Mao’s two conversations with Kissinger in 1973 are recorded in The Chronology of Mao, vol.7,
Beijing: Central Document Press, 2014.
[59]
Wallerstain, ‘What Cold War in Asia?’, p. 24.
[60]
It is reasonable to assert – as Piero Gleijeses does – that it was Cuba’s intervention into Angola
in 1988 brought the downfall of apartheid South Africa. It was a high-point of Cuba’s
internationalism. The Cuban Drumbeat, Calcutta: Seagull Books, 2009.
[61]
Although, as Wallerstein argues, ‘the slow collapse of the Soviet Union began with the 1956
Congress of the CPSU, and the split with China in 1960.’ Wallerstein, ‘What Cold War’, p. 24.
[62]
Anderson, ‘Internationalism’.
[63]
Franklin Weinstein, ‘The 2nd Asian-African Conference: Preliminary Bouts’, Asia Survey 5:7,
July 1965, p. 370.
[64]
In the case of Africa, this was primarily attributable to ‘the basic incompatibility between
Chinese foreign policy objectives and the goals of the African states’, as between the outlook of a
world revolution with the Third World as the global countryside and African desire for peace and
development after decades of conflicts and destruction. George Yu, ‘China’s failure in Africa’,
Asian Survey 6: 8, Aug. 1966, p. 468.
[65]
At the first Afro-Asian-Latin American people’s solidarity conference in Havana January 1966
where ‘the Sino-Soviet dispute aired fully’, Wu Xueqian, leader of the Chinese delegation,
challenged the Soviets by posing to them such questions as why did the Soviet Union discourage
national liberation wars, saying that ‘a little spark may cause another world war’? Why did it
collaborate with the US in the UN by voting to send troops to suppress the Congolese people’s
struggle, support the Dominican cease fire resolution, and back South Rhodesian racism? Why
had the Soviet Union sat with the representatives of Taiwan, South Korea and South Vietnam to
discuss the founding of the Asian Development Bank? Why had it demanded Soviet-Chinese
joint action while also attacking China on its aiding communist Vietnam? And why had the
Soviet Union also ‘guaranteed’ in its communication with the US that there should be no war in
the west thereby enabling the US to transfer troops to South Vietnam? See Yu, ‘China’s Failure’,
p. 464. These were serious charges, though not all necessarily fair.
[66]
For example, see Deng Xiaoping on why socialism is not what Africa should be hurry to pursue
in his conversations with the African guests in Beijing during 1980-1989, in Selected Writings of
Deng, vols. 2 and 3, Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1993, 1995.
[67]
The resilience of capitalism is nowhere better demonstrated than in its transformation of China
– ‘neoliberalism with Chinese characteristic’. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, ch. 5. See also Minqi Li, The Rise of China and the
Demise of Capitalist World-Economy, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009, chs. 3 and 4; Lin
Chun, China and Global Capitalism: Reflections on Marxism, History and Contemporary
Politics, Palgrave, 2013, ch. 4.
[68]
By the PRC constitution and relevant laws regarding regional autonomy, seventy per cent of
regional and lower level administrators are required to be from local ethnic groups. However, in
reality the Han now regularly outnumber non-Han cadres especially on more responsible
positions like the party secretary. Moreover, minority nationalities are seriously under-
represented in the national legislature and government bodies, and their members take far fewer
leading posts than in the socialist past. The army and police are also grossly disproportional in
their ethnic compositions. See, for example, Ma Rong, Social Development and Ethnic Relations
in Chinese Minority Regions, Beijing: Social Science Academic Publisher, 2012. In particular,
lack of democratic consultation and conversation between the centre (along with its regional
appointees) and local leaders and intellectuals fortifies a dwindling mutual trust. The latter’s
allegedly diminishing civic loyalty to the Chinese nation in turn rationalizes an overestimation of,
and excesses in handling, the ‘separatist’ tendencies. Ilham Tohti, ‘Why have the Uyghurs felt
defeated’, interview, 6 July 2013, http://www.chinese.rfi .fr/node/132192013.
[69]
Lin Chun, ‘Modernity and the Violence’.
[70]
Commenting on an expanding bourgeois society still ‘in the ascendant over a far greater area’
in Asia in the mid 1850s, Marx asked the difficult question as whether the European continent
revolution, which ‘is imminent and will, moreover, instantly assume a socialist character’, would
‘not necessarily be crushed’ by the global bourgeoisie. ‘To Engels’, 8 Aug. 1858, Collected
Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 40, pp. 345-46.
[71]
Issa Shivji in Utsa Patnaik and Sam Moyo, The Agrarian Question in the Neoliberal Era:
Primitive Accumulation and the Peasantry, Oxford: Pambazuka Press, 2011, p. 3; Sam Moyo et
al., ‘Imperialism and Primitive Accumulation: Notes on the New Scramble for Africa’, Agrarian
South: Journal of Political Economy 1: 2, pp. 181-203.
[72]
Wang Hui, ‘The Taiwan Question in the Great Change of Contemporary Chinese History’,
Beijing Cultural Review 1, 2015. He is however not blind to purely materialist motives as an
expression of ‘political philistinism’.
[73]
For a sketch of the plan by a skeptical observer see http://qz.com/415649/china-is-building-the-
most-extensive-global-commercial-military-empire-in-history/: ‘Chinese financed and built
dams, roads, railroads, natural gas pipelines, ports, and airports are either in place or will be from
Samoa to Rio de Janeiro, St. Petersburg to Jakarta, Mombasa to Vanuatu, and from the Arctic to
Antarctica. Many are built in service of current and prospective mines, oilfields, and other
businesses back to China, and at times to markets abroad’. Steve Levine in Quartz, 9 June 2015.
[74]
This has been best and most consistently exemplified by Cuba. As Che Guevara explained, it is
‘our profound conviction’ that the socialist countries must help pay for the development of
countries now starting out on the road to liberation: ‘There should be no more talk about
developing mutually beneficial trade based on prices forced on the backward countries by the law
of value and the international relations of unequal exchange that result from the law of value’ (25
Mar 1964, the UN world conference on economics and development in the Third World).
Insisting on unconditional support for the Third World, he considered such support to be
necessitated by the collective fight against imperialism (Afro-Asian Conference, Algiers, 24 Feb
1965). Similarly, Mao told President Nyerere of Tanzania that the Chinese and Africans are
friends and China’s relationship with Africa could not be exploitative or imperialist. 19 Feb 1965,
in Selective Writings of Mao, Vol. 8, Beijing: People’s Publishing House, 1999.
[75]
Zhao Tingyang, ‘All-under-heaven and Methodological Relationism’, in Fred Dallmayr and
Zhao (eds.), Contemporary Chinese Political Thought: Debates and Perspectives, Frankfort:
University Press of Kentucky, 2012, p. 46.
[76]
Philosophically speaking, ‘methodological relationism’ is superior to methodological
individualism in the actual world and hence a ‘worldview constituted by and defined in terms of
relations, other people stand out as paramount’. Consequently, human obligations and human
rights are treated as parallel values. Ibid., pp. 48-51, 62-65.
[77]
It is often argued that the ancient Chinese teaching is nature-friendly and can be revived to help
addressing ecological and environmental problems today. For an empirically based critical
evaluation, see Mark Elvin, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China,
Ithaca: Yale University Press, 2006.
[78]
‘The Bankruptcy of Idealist Conception of History’, Selected Writings of Mao, vol. 4, Beijing:
People’s Publishing House, 1960.
[79]
Giovanni Arrighi in Adam Smith in Beijing, summarized in Zhao, ‘All-under-heaven’.
[80]
For example, Yin Zhiguang, ‘De-frontiers: The Global Order, the Caliphate Empire and the Xin
Jiang Question under the Crisis of Ideology’, Sociology of Ethnicity 187, 15 July 2015, pp. 7-9,
18.
[81]
On the capitalist international, exemplified by the supra-nationalist European Union, note the
structural change from the mid 1960s of the primacy of democratic over national values: ‘A key
consequence of this change was a shift, within the reigning ideology of the advanced capitalist
state, from the nation state to liberal democracy as the dominant means of discursive integration
of the labouring classes of the west’. That is, the decline of nationalism in the west corresponded
 to the rise of liberal representative democracy as the modal type of capitalist state and a superior
legitimating tool of social integration and control. Anderson, ‘Internationalism’.
[82]
Lu Xinyu, ‘The Narrative of the Images of Ethnic Minorities in New China: History and
Politics’, manuscript, 2015; Lin Chun, China and Global Capitalism, ch. 8.
[83]
‘When the idea of the nation had begun to move away from its national liberation origins and
into one that would be more familiar in the European context, the dominant ethnic community
(often also the dominant class or military caste) exerted its power over minorities’, Prashad,
Darker Nations, p. 327.
[84]
Samir Amin, ‘China 2013’, Monthly Review, 64, 10, 2013, pp. 24-27.
Contributors

Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair of South Asian History and Professor of
International Studies at Trinity College. For LeftWord Books, he has authored No Free Left: The
Futures of Indian Communism, The Death of a Nation and the Future of the Arab Revolution, The
Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South, The Darker Nations: A Biography of the
Short-Lived Third World and other titles. He is the Chief Editor at LeftWord Books.
Suchetana Chattopadhyay is Assistant Professor in the Department of History as well as Joint
Coordinator of the Centre for Marxian Studies at Jadavpur University. She is the author of An Early
Communist: Muzaffar Ahmad in Calcutta, 1913-1929 (New Delhi: Tulika, 2011). She is currently
working on the urban social history of Kolkata during the First World War, on the impact of
Komagata Maru’s voyage and the Ghadar Movement on Bengal and on the Bolshevik Revolution’s
influence on early communists from South Asia and imperial surveillance directed against them.
Fredrik Petersson is Lecturer in General History at Åbo Akademi University. He is the author of
‘We Are Neither Visionaries Nor Utopian Dreamers’. Willi Münzenberg, the League against
Imperialism, and the Comintern, 1925 – 1933 (Queenston Press, 2013). He is currently working on
‘The Elephant and the Porcelain Shop’. Transnational Anti-Colonialism and the League Against
Imperialism, 1927– 1937 (for publication 2017 by Brill).
Margaret Stevens is Associate Professor in the History faculty and Director of Urban Issues
Institute at Essex County College.
Elisabeth Armstrong is professor and director of the Program for the Study of Women and Gender
at Smith College in the United States. Her book Gender and Neoliberalism: The All India
Democratic Women’s Association and Globalization Politics (Tulika, 2013) describes the changing
landscape of women’s politics for equality and liberation during the rise of neoliberalism in India
between 1991-2006. Based on long-term ethnographic research in Haryana and Tamil Nadu, this
book charts the growth of an extraordinary socialist women’s organization, the All India Democratic
Women’s Association.
Archana Prasad is Professor at the Centre for Informal Sector and Labour Studies, Jawaharlal
Nehru University. Her books on adivasi issues include Against Ecological Romanticism (Three
Essays 2011) and Environmentalism and the Left (LeftWord 2004), apart from many scholarly and
popular articles on contemporary adivasi history. For the past few years she has been doing an oral
history of the Communist-led Adivasi movements and also contemporary history adivasi struggles
with a focus on complex links between class and community based politics.
Lin Chun has a doctorate from Cambridge University and teaches at the London School of
Economics. She is the author of The British New Left (1993), The Transformation of Chinese
Socialism (2006), China and Global Capitalism (2013), and, in Chinese, Reflections on China’s
Reform Trajectory (2008). She is also the editor of China I, II and III (2000) and co-editor of Is Mao
Really a Monster? (2009) and Women: The Longest Revolution (1997, in Chinese).
 LeftWord Books is a New Delhi-based publishing house that seeks to
reflect the views of the left in India and South Asia. We publish critical and
analytical works on a range of subjects, and pay special attention to works
on Marxist theory. We project the interests of the working people and
movements for social transformation.

Set up in 1999, LeftWord runs and manages May Day Bookstore and Café,
which is next door to a theare space, Studio Safdar.

LeftWord Books is the publishing division of Naya Rasta Publishers Pvt

Ltd.

www.leftword.com