When the war broke out, the CPI, like all communists elsewhere, described it as an imperialist war -- a war between rival imperialisms for a redivision of the world. It led a one-day political strike of 90,000 workers in Bombay against the war on 2 October 1939. It held that the imperialist war would give rise to revolution in capitalist countries as well as in colonies and semi-colonies.
But the CPI was least prepared for organizing or leading any revolutionary struggle. During the years from 1936 to 1939, it had sought to rally the workers, peasants and the petty bourgeoisie behind the Congress leadership. Instead of clarifying the issues before the people and breaking their illusions about the Congress leadership, it strengthened their illusions. As Joshi, the CPI General Secretary, lamented early in 1940,
"The bourgeoisie dominated the national movement and it would not launch a struggle; the proletariat, the only truly revolutionary class, was too weak to initiate one on its own."(1)
The source of this weakness was the CPI itself, supposed to be the vanguard of the proletariat.
Speaking of Gandhi's strategy after outbreak of the war, Adhikari said:
"Firstly it [Gandhi's strategy] will mean that the revolutionary vanguard is decimated in isolation through imperialist repression.... Shorn of its moral embellishment, it [Gandhism] is the line of the cowardly and compromising bourgeoisie.... It is seeking to use its position to overtake and imprison the rapidly growing forces of revolution, to isolate and eliminate them. It is paving the way for the most ignoble compromise and defeat at a time when all the factors [except a revolutionary party] are favourable for decisive victory over Imperialism."(2)
Yet the CPI leadership showed little inclination to climb out of the morass of opportunism where it had been wallowing. A few weeks before the war started, it had formulated the policy of rallying communists, socialists, peasants, students and workers into a united front of leftists, powerful enough to direct "Congress policy by pressure from below instead of control from above when the crisis broke..."(3) After the outbreak of the war, the CPI leadership, despite the realization that the Gandhian leadership wanted to shackle all struggles and worked for "the most ignoble compromise and defeat", affirmed that "a national struggle today was a practical possibility only through the Congress. The Congress had to be led into action." The CPI strategy was to create the necessary pressure from below to compel the leadership of the Congress to issue the call for an anti-imperialist struggle.(4) According to Joshi, national unity was "embodied in the Congress". He condemned Subhas and the Forward Bloc for proposing to launch a struggle without the sanction of the Congress leadership and accused him of disrupting "the very organ of struggle", which was the Congress, though experience showed that the Congress, instead of being the organ of struggle, was opposed to it. The signals that were coming from afar were not particularly helpful. Even in the months after the war had begun, Soviet spokesmen described the Congress as "the organization of the anti-imperialist front, which embodies the leadership of the anti-imperialist struggle".(5)
The CPI raised the slogan -- `na ek pai, na ek bhai', neither any monetary contribution nor any participation in the war as a recruit. On the occasion of the Congress session at Ramgarh in March 1940, it brought out a pamphlet entitled "The Proletarian Path". The "immediate task", according to it, was "conquest of power by the Indian people".(6) To fulfil this task, the "first steps" would be "political general strike in the major industries together with country-wide no-rent and no-tax action". The next step would be a "nation-wide armed insurrection", which would overthrow colonial rule. The CPI's programme included the establishment of a "Democratic Republic of the People", a "People's Army", etc. Its "proletarian path" was modelled on the Russian revolution and destined to remain a grandiose plan on paper. The CPI did very little theoretical work on the complex problems of the Indian revolution as it always looked up to foreign mentors for guidance. The CPI leadership ignored the uneven social, economic and political development in this vast country and failed to understand that no nation-wide insurrection was possible. The CPI leadership actually paid lip-service to revolution instead of seriously meaning it. If it was really serious, it would have done some theoretical work and, while organizing the working class and other revolutionary classes, would have given priority to arousing and organizing the peasants, particularly in those areas which were the enemy's weakest links in the chain of political domination, develop and expand the struggle and carry on a protracted war for seizure of country-wide power. Most lamentably, the CPI leadership never took the work among the peasantry, the main force of the Indian revolution, seriously.
Interestingly, while "The Proletarian Path" decried Gandhism as "the most disruptive, most demoralizing, most anti-struggle force within the National Congress", it hoped "to build up the Congress as the organ of people's movement"!
In March 1940, there was a general strike of textile workers in Bombay, which was led by the CPI. Arrests of communists started. By early 1941 the CPI was crippled by the arrests. Its illusion about Nehru faded away for the time being. In October 1940, while accusing the Gandhian leadership of sabotaging the national struggle, it criticized Nehru, too. Nehru's role, it said, was "to bark at the Communists and to hang revolutionary drapings round the Working Committee's resolutions".(7)
At its Nagpur session in December 1940, the All India Students Federation split over the question whether to accept Gandhi's recommendation that students should shun politics. The AISF, led by the communists, meeting separately, questioned the Congress claim to speak for the whole of India, condemned the Muslim League's `Pakistan' demand as well as the Hindu Mahasabha's `Hindustan' slogan as reactionary and disruptive, and stood for a "voluntary federation of regional states based on mutual confidence" instead of a unitary India.(8)
The Nazi blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union marked a new phase of World War II. Though an alliance was formed between imperialist Britain and the Soviet Union, which was soon joined by the U.S.A., the question was whether the character of the war had changed from an imperialist to a people's war, when the people of the whole world were threatened by the menace of slavery to the fascists.
At first the CPI did not recognize any change in the character of the war. Its Polit Bureau issued a pamphlet in July, which held that the war continued to be an imperialist war and stated that the Indian people could "help in the just war which the Soviet Union is waging...by fighting all the more vigorously for their own emancipation from the imperialist yoke" and that they "can render fully effective aid to the Soviet Union only as a free people".(9) For some time the CPI policy remained unchanged.
In a statement made in July 1941 on the colonies and the war, the CPGB said that the colonial people "will understand the need for immediate building of a great united front for the defeat of Hitler" and that opposition to the war was "detrimental to the true interests of the Indian people".(10)
In Labour Monthly of September 1941, Palme Dutt wrote:
"The interest of the people of India and Ireland and of all the colonial peoples, as of all the peoples of the world, is bound up with the victory of the peoples against Fascism; that interest is absolute and unconditional, and does not depend on any measures their rulers may promise or concede."(11)
According to Overstreet and Windmiller, an article by I. Lemin, entitled "The Role of the British Empire in the Current War", appeared in the September 1941 issue of Bolshevik, the organ of the CPSU(B). It assigned to the British empire "the highest place side by side with the U.S.S.R." in the "great coalition of democratic peoples" fighting fascism. Pointing out that India had not yet mobilized its forces for the war effort, it stated: "The further the mobilization of these forces for struggle against Hitlerite fascism proceeds, the better."(12)
Then in the course of his speech on 6 November 1941, Stalin said that "all honest people must support the armies of the U.S.S.R., Great Britain and other Allies, as armies of liberation".(13)
By November 1941, rethinking started within the underground CPI. It was in mid-December that the Polit Bureau recognized in a resolution that with the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union the war had been transformed from an imperialist to a people's war, and undertook to organize a People's War movement.(14)
In a Party letter, dated December 1941, the CPI leadership acknowledged that British comrades had corrected them. They circulated among their members along with the Party letter "two important documents which the British Communist Party published in the very first month after Hitler's attack upon the Soviet Union" and which had just reached them.(15)
A lengthy note from imprisoned Communist leaders, known as the jail document or Deoli thesis, was smuggled out. It also emphasized the change in the character of the war and strongly urged a change in the Party line.(16)
Though the new line met with some opposition from the party ranks,(17) the CPI leadership tried to implement it on different fronts. At its session in Patna in December 1941, the All India Students Federation adopted the new line. The communists also pushed it through the All India Kisan Sabha executive. But Nehru's opposition at the Kanpur session of the AITUC did not allow the communists to get it adopted by that body.
When Stafford Cripps came, the CPI greeted the British constitutional proposals "as a suitable basis for a settlement, inadequate though they are" and appealed to the Congress and the League to set up a `national government' to rally the people for defence.
To help those friends who were negotiating with the government for the release of communist prisoners, the party drafted a "Memorandum on Communist Policy and Plan of Work"(18) for the consideration of the authorities. Among other things, it gave the government the assurance that all communists -- those who were underground and those who were in prisons or detention camps, if released -- would help "existing war-efforts" in every way possible.
In May an Intelligence official and Home Member Maxwell interviewed Joshi separately. Joshi gave them all assurances of help and co-operation.(19) While seeking release of his comrades, he told the Intelligence official that the release might depend on their signing the "Memorandum", that is, on giving an undertaking to help "existing war-efforts".(20) Joshi told Maxwell that when Russia became involved in the war, "it became apparent that the object of the allied nations was to fight a war on behalf of world liberation and freedom..." When Maxwell suggested that after the defeat of the fascist powers the Allied governments like that of Britain might pursue their old policies, Joshi dismissed such a suggestion and asserted: "World freedom would in fact be established by an Allied victory".(21) Both of them noted that Joshi was not much interested in Kisans and their grievances.(22)
In July 1942 the ban on the CPI was lifted by the government and the release of communist prisoners started.
At the AICC meeting in Bombay on 7 and 8 August, which passed the `Quit India' resolution, communist members moved amendments which were rejected. One such amendment urged the Congress to take the initiative in building a united national front of parties and sections of people who wanted to secure India's immediate freedom and who were prepared to participate in or support the formation of a `National Government' which would undertake the organization of armed as well as non-violent defence against Fascist aggressors in close co-operation with the United Nations and their armies.(23)
The communist leaders held that it was the bounden duty of India's working class to defend the Soviet Union, the land where Socialism had emerged and which was fighting a grim war against fascism. In Forward to Freedom by Joshi, which appeared in February 1942 under the pen-name Hansraj, Joshi characterized the war as "the war of world liberation". He affirmed that the united Indian people's participation in the world-wide anti-fascist war led by the Soviet Union and its victory would automatically liberate India and the world from the imperialist yoke.(24) He also theorized that the Anglo-American imperialists had been "passing more and more into the grip of people's unity" (the words quoted are all in capital letters in the original) and that the people "are now in a position to seize the government by the scruff and make it do their bidding..."(25) The strength of the imperialist rulers", affirmed Joshi, "is the same in all the colonies: Nil."(26) There was also glowing praise of Chiang Kai-shek.(27) There was some fulsome eulogy of the Congress, too. About the League, Joshi wrote that it "is to the Muslim masses what the Congress is to the Indian people as a whole". He further asserted that the Congress "remains the main army of the national movement", "the organized embodiment of India's will to freedom".(28)
The underestimation of world imperialism and the refusal to analyse the class character of the leaders of the Congress and the League were products of the same vice -- the CPI leaders' deep-seated opportunism. As we shall see, throughout this period until 1947, they made statements and put forward arguments which smacked of infantile disorder, in order to evade the responsibility of organizing and leading a revolutionary struggle.
The CPI envisaged that there would be no need for revolutionary struggle to achieve India's freedom. According to it, the key to national independence was national unity, the basis of which was Congress-League unity. Once the Congress and the League united and, together with others, formed a `national government' (under the British aegis), and rallied all forces for national defence in co-operation with the Allied forces against Japan, the `national government' would be able "to take our war out of imperialist hands" and achieve "our liberation by leading India into the world war of liberation".(29) The CPI leadership was ecstatic over the `National Government' which, if formed, would necessarily be a product of compromise with British imperialism. In order to build national unity, the CPI campaigned to persuade the Congress to accept the `essence' of the Pakistan demand.
In September 1942, when an insurrectionary situation had developed in large parts of the country in response to the `Quit India' slogan, an enlarged plenum of the CPI Central Committee adopted a political resolution which blamed imperialist repression and "mad patriots" for the `Quit India' movement, for sabotage and disruption. It held that "the fifth column elements and fascist agents" were taking advantage of the situation and the plenum resolved to fight them on different fronts. It undertook to "organize a countrywide campaign for national unity", based on Congress-League unity. It would explain "what is just in this Pakistan demand" and stress "the urgency of the Congress conceding the right of self-determination of the Muslim nationalities", including the right of separation.(30) In another resolution the plenum stated that while seeking satisfaction of the partial demands of the workers, the Party's task would be "to mobilize the entire working class through the trade unions for our patriotic policy on production..."(31)
Earlier, in the "Memorandum on Communist Policy and Plan of Work" of April 1942, the CPI leaders had assured the raj that if the Government released imprisoned communists and recognized trade unions, "it will have no need to fear strikes as far as we Communists can help it". They had undertaken also to "work out schemes for speeding up production and launch mass drives calling upon the workers to speed up production..."(32)
In an article on the decisions of a plenary session of the Central Committee, which met in February 1943, P.C. Joshi wrote that the `Quit India' "struggle failed, as it was bound to fail, because it was not national struggle but nation-wide sabotage". As it became usual with the CPI, Joshi condemned the C.S.P. and Forward Bloc workers as `fifth columnists' deluding "mad patriots". The way out of the crisis was to get Gandhi released. Gandhi had already decried underground activities and violence and was expected by the CPI to break the stalemate by opening negotiations with the Government and the Muslim League. It shifted the responsibility for the `Quit India' struggle to the shoulders of the `saboteurs' and `fifth-columnists' and trailed behind the big bourgeois leadership of the Congress as well as behind British imperialism.
To shield the government from the anger of the people, prevent food riots, etc., when food scarcity was getting acute and food prices were shooting up, for which Government policies and the insatiable greed of hoarders were responsible, the CPI Central Committee decided to launch a `Food Campaign' and a `Grow More Food Campaign'. Besides, they decided to launch a `Production Campaign' for more production in factories and for prevention of strikes as far as possible when workers were being ruthlessly exploited.
The CPI leaders wanted the party to serve "as the crusader for national unity which acts as the bridge between the premier political organizations of our people, the Congress and the League", and which "seeks nothing for itself except to be acclaimed as a young brother party..."(33) This kind of stuff was being poured out by the CPI leaders. In the name of coming to the aid of the Soviet Union, they had abandoned Marxism.
The CPI leaders acclaimed not only the Congress but also the League as an anti-imperialist, freedom-loving organization. Their adulation of the Congress and Congress leaders, mainly Gandhi and Nehru, as well as of the League and Jinnah was sickening.
The first Congress of the CPI was held in Bombay from 23 May to 1 June 1943. To quote from the Indian Annual Register,
"On either side of the dais...were hung two big portraits of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Mr M.A. Jinnah against the background of the Congress and Muslim League flags respectively."(34)
This was symbolic of the rank opportunism of the CPI leaders and their desertion of Marxism-Leninism. It is significant that in a reprint of Stalin's Report to the Sixteenth Congress of the CPSU(B), Adhikari deleted Stalin's references to Gandhi "as a liberal compromiser in the service of the imperialist bourgeoisie against the colonial national-revolutionary movement".(35) This reflected not only the political attitude but also the political dishonesty of the CPI leadership.
The CPI Congress adopted a political resolution and a new Party Constitution. The political resolution "Forward to Unity in Action" said: "Our people must unite to defend the Motherland, shoulder to shoulder with the peoples of the United Nations. That alone leads to freedom." It stated:
"The basic slogan of today is national unity for national defence to win National Government of national defence. To implement this slogan, to win National Government the urgent need today is to build unity in action for defence, food and production. That alone would lead to freedom and victory."(36)
The resolution blamed the Congress leadership for the `Quit India' resolution, which had been `exploited' by the CSP and the Forward Bloc -- the `fifth column'. They were held responsible not only for causing widespread sabotage and anarchy but also for accentuating the food crisis as well as the crisis on the production front. The CPI congratulated itself on its "heroic fight against the Fifth Column".
As Home Secretary Tottenham noted in his circular to all provincial governments, the CPI leaders had become bolder and more self-confident and chided both the Congress and the League for their "negative policy" which did not allow them to unite. The CPI also criticized its own "left nationalist deviations": it had concentrated on "wordy abuse" of the bureaucracy while failing to expose the "negative and defeatist policy" of the national leadership; overemphasized the repression theme; and in its food campaign wrongly aimed at exposing bureaucratic inefficiency. As official documents including Tottenham's circular noted, this criticism of the government had been intended "to catch the public ear", "to retain a national and popular appeal".(37) Interestingly, the Home Department's "Communist Survey, April-June 1943" observed:
"People's War [the CPI organ] may in future be more critical of Congress, but it is evident that it will at the same time aim at reducing the risk of reprisals by blending such criticism with a sickly adulation of the `great' Congress and its leaders."(38)
The Party Congress decided "to popularize the Allied armies in India as the defenders of the country and organize `anti-fascist cultural patriotic squads' to raise the morale of the troops".(39) Significantly, the new Party constitution dispensed with an illegal apparatus and formed the basis of a purely legal communist party. It appears that the Party felt no need for going underground again in future, for combining legal with illegal activities.
Ranadive presented a long report "Working Class and National Defence" at the Party Congress. The substance of that report was that the workers, though driven to "hellish" and "intolerable" conditions by their employers who were reaping super-profits as well as by the government, must not go on strikes to improve their conditions, for that would mean stabbing the country "for the misdeeds of selfish employers"; instead, they should organize themselves and co-operate with the employers and the government to produce more. The task of the communists was to prevent strikes -- and break them, if they occurred in spite of the communists -- and get the workers to maximize production and avoid waste.(40)
To meet the acute food crisis, when prices of food had soared and were soaring still higher, the political resolution urged the formation of representative food committees to have control over stocks, etc., and co-operate in official schemes. Popular anger was sought to be diverted against hoarders alone and not against the policies of the raj and landlordism, main causes of the crisis. In his "Report on Reformist Deviation" of 1948, Randive wrote that in a party letter dated 4 October 1943, praise was showered on even big landlords and moneylenders.(41) The peasants were advised to grow more food for national defence and freedom. The demands of the poor and landless peasants for land reform, fair wages, etc., were ignored.
The political resolution claimed that the Party membership had leapt up from 4,464 in July 1942 to 15,563 on 1 May 1943 --a spectacular achievement. A Party letter subsequently expected the membership to rise to 56,000 by the end of the year. A Central Committee of 22 members was elected. Joshi, Adhikari and Ranadive formed the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and Joshi continued to be the secretary.
In "Congress and Communists", which appeared in November 1944, Joshi was confident that the achievement of national unity would be followed by a political settlement with Britain. It would be in the interests of Britain to arrive at such a settlement, for without it the war would be more prolonged and demand more sacrifices from her people. Moreover, to quote Joshi, "a prosperous postwar Britain can be built only in alliance with a free India with its expanding market..."(42) In another lengthy article "Victory -- Whose?" which was first published in People's War of 20 May 1945, after the Allied victory over Germany, Joshi made many interesting formulations. He said:
"Europe after the last war was the cockpit of imperialist powers, but Europe after this war has slipped out of imperialist hands into the hands of its own people".(43)
About theU.S.A., he stated that "Reactionary forces in the U.S. suffered a decisive defeat in the Presidential election;..." and that "The American ruling-class are not out to build a colonial empire; they want markets".(44)
Joshi expected the British Labour Party to win in the next general election, to "build a People's Britain", and liberate India and the colonies. "Independent India", he wrote, "will be prosperous India and a good market. Thus if the British people fight for their bread, they will have to agree to our freedom too!... British bread and Indian freedom go together."(45) This General Secretary of the CPI preached that no revolutionary struggle would be necessary to achieve India's freedom, that there would be peaceful transition from colonial slavery to independence.
Joshi asserted that a united national movement in India would lead to the formation of a provisional `National Government', which would not only build a wonderful India but "rush increased aid to China", reconcile the Kuomintang with the Communist Party of China and help her to shorten her agonies under Japan and escape U.S. domination after the war! What was needed was Congress-League unity.
The CPI leadership betrayed a woeful lack of understanding of the nature of imperialism and chose to remain blind to the class character of the Congress and League leaders. The enormous literature they produced in a verbose, self-righteous and boastful style was imbued with deep opportunism -- a besetting vice of theirs with which they were afflicted in 1936 and of which they never got cured. Instead of arousing and organizing the people for political, revolutionary tasks, they pursued a non-class, anti-struggle (except against militant political workers and "traitor Bose") line and did whatever they could to fill the people's minds with complacency. It is no wonder that, when in the post-war days the struggles of the people broke out, the CPI failed miserably.
It appears that the characterization of the war after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union as people's war was not wrong. Nothing could be a greater calamity for the people of the world than the victory of the Axis Powers -- Germany, Japan and Italy. World War II passed through several phases. In the beginning it was an imperialist war. The situation changed when the Soviet Union was attacked, and when, soon after, Japan entered the war and overran the countries of South-East Asia. At this phase the contradiction between India and British imperialism, then an ally of the Soviet Union, became secondary and the contradictions between the Soviet Union (and China) and the Axis powers and then the contradiction between the Indian people and Japanese militarism became primary. The situation again changed in late 1942 or early 1943 when the victory of the Soviet Union and other Allied Powers over the Axis Powers was assured. The alliance between the Soviet Union and the imperialist powers was only temporary and the contradictions between them became more and more mainifest as the victorious end of the war came nearer. The CPI leadership overlooked this aspect. If it did not, it would have to assume the responsibility of organizing the people for the national democratic revolution at the appropriate time, which it was reluctant to do. It seems it was haunted by the fear of revolution throughout this period.
The optimism that all the Allied Powers were fighting for world liberation and that their victory would automatically lead to India's freedom was indeed a product of infantile reformist disorder. Even such nonsense was preached that the British and U.S. imperialists had become prisoners in the hands of the people. Such optimism was not dispelled even by Churchill's declaration in September 1941 that the Atlantic Charter did not apply to India and other British colonies or the later declaration on 10 November 1942 that he had "not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire".
It is worth noting that on 12 October 1942 Mao Tsetung hailed the Soviet victory achieved on 9 October in the protracted, bitter battle of Stalingrad as a turning point in the world war. To quote him, "In short, after October 9 there is only one road open to Hitler, the road to extinction." He also noted the contradictions within the Allied camp. He referred to Britain's and the U.S.A.'s delaying to open the second front. He said: "On the western front, even if Britain and the United States continue their policy of looking on and stalling, the second front will eventually be opened, when the time comes to belabour the slain tiger."(46)
The CPI leaders failed to realize that the contradiction between the Indian people and British imperialism would become primary in the phase that was opening. They did not change the direction of their policies in time to prepare for the post-war upsurge of the people's struggles. As seen before, both the British and the Congress leaders anticipated and prepared for the post-war upheaval, but not the CPI.
Instead, the CPI as led by the Joshis trailed behind the British raj as well as behind the leaders of the Congress and the League. While slandering many patriots as "fifth columnists" it indulged in sickening adulation of the Congress leaders who had been waiting before the `Quit India' struggle to make terms with the Japanese.
Dissociating itself from Gandhi's gamble in 1942 does not appear to have been wrong. But the alternative to opposition to Gandhi's manoeuvre was not surrender to imperialism and co-operation with it as its underling. Mao Tsetung had been putting in practice his theory of revolution in colonies and semi-colonies since 1928. His writings in which his theory was elaborated -- the strategy, the tactics, the military line, etc. -- had already come out. By 1942 the Communist Party of China, fighting single-handed against the Japanese fascists and other very heavy odds, had established extensive liberated areas by acting according to Mao Tsetung's theory. But the CPI leadership did not think it worthwhile to learn from China's experience. As noted before, the most lamentable fact was that the CPI leadership hardly ever gave the importance to the peasant question in India, which it deserved. The alternative to surrender to the raj and to what the CPI called "national leadership" was learning from China's experience and arousing and organizing the peasantry, without neglecting the working class and other revolutionary sections of the people, for the liberation war when the conditions for it would mature.
In a brief message to the Central Committee of the CPI dated Yenan, 5 April 1943, Mao Tsetung on behalf of the Central Committee, CPC, reminded the former that the victory in the anti-fascist war was near, and said:
"We believe that under the concerted efforts of the Communist Party of India and the Indian people, a way will certainly be found out of the present difficult situation so that both the objects -- to vanquish fascism and strive for Indian independence -- will be attained."(47)
The CPI leaders did not think any striving on their part for Indian independence was necessary. They were sure that the defeat of fascism plus Congress-League unity, which appeared to them as a magic wand, would automatically open the gate to India's independence.
In Forward to Freedom Joshi spoke of the "red herrings of Pakistan and Akhand Hindustan".(48) The enlarged plenum of the CPI Central Committee, held in September 1942, stated in a resolution "On Pakistan and National Unity" that each one of the various nationalities of India should enjoy "the right to exist as an autonomous state within the free Indian union or federation and will have the right to secede from it if it may so desire". This guaranteeing "the right of autonomous state existence and of secession" to "nationalities having Muslim faith" should "form the basis for unity between the National Congress and the League". The resolution added: "In the case of the Bengali Muslims of the Eastern and Northern districts of Bengal where they form an overwhelming majority, they may form themselves into an autonomous region in the state of Bengal or may form a separate state." The resolution recognized "Western Punjabis (dominantly Muslims)" and Sikhs, besides the Muslims of East and North Bengal, as separate nationalities. In his report entitled "Pakistan and National Unity" to the enlarged plenum, Adhikari said:
"The demand for Pakistan, if we look at its progressive essence, is in reality the demand for the self-determination and separation of the areas of Muslim nationalities of the Punjab, N.W. Frontier, Sind, Baluchistan and of the eastern districts of Bengal."(49)
To the CPI religion became at this time an important criterion of nationality.
In People's War of 12 November 1944, Adhikari described the Pakistan demand as "the freedom demand of the Muslim League".(50)
Not to see the classes and their interests behind the policies of the Congress and of the League was not communism. Both these parties dominated by the rival sections of the big bourgeoisie of the Hindu (and Parsi) and Muslim communities were enemies of the principle of self-determination of nationalities. While the Congress leadership was striving to become the sole heir to the British raj in an akhand Bharat, the League leadership wanted to carve out several provinces which the Muslim big bourgeoisie could dominate. Both relied on British imperialism to give them what they wanted; both wanted to remain within the framework of dependence on British imperialism; and both were enemies of the toiling people.
The task was not to appeal to the Congress and League leaders and whine day in and day out for Congress-League unity, which actually meant the unity of the rival sections of the big bourgeoisie, dependent on imperialism, but to expose them and their policies, to fight them for independent mobilization of the people of all communities, especially the major communities, under the leadership of the Communist Party.
Instead of exposing the game of the Muslim League and asking progressive Muslims to fight it, the CPI leadership urged them to join the League.
A prominent CPI leader Sajjad Zaheer wrote :
"It is a good and fine thing, a happy augury, for Indian Muslims and for India as a whole that the Muslim League continues to grow and gather around it millions of our liberty-loving people.... In the increasing strength and capacity of the League to move the Muslim masses on the path of progress and democracy lies the salvation of millions of our Muslim countrymen and the possibility of Congress-League unity."(51)
The CPI leadership lent support to Rajagopalachari's formula for the partition of India on religious lines. In a pamphlet "They Must Meet Again", which Joshi wrote after the failure of the negotiations between Gandhi and Jinnah in September 1944, the CPI General Secretary unequivocally supported the Pakistan demand of the Muslim League and boasted that the CPI had made it popular among the supporters of the Congress.(52) Joshi insisted that the Muslims should have the right to form their state comprising all the Muslim-majority areas and that there should be no plebiscite before its establishment.(53)
In "Congress and Communists" Joshi wrote :
"...just as in one simple slogan, `Swaraj', Gandhiji gave expression to our freedom urge, so Mr Jinnah through the slogan of Pakistan has given expression to the freedom urge of the Muslims, for absolute independence in their own homelands."(54)
The CPI was not content only with propagating that the League was a freedom-loving, anti-imperialist organization. In Bengal it tried its best to defend the policies of the League ministry, dominated by big compradors like the Ispahanis and by big landlords like Nazimuddin who headed the ministry, and dependent for survival on British expatriate capitalists. It was a corrupt ministry whose policies were accentuating the famine conditions in Bengal in 1943. The CPI did not hesitate to defend this ministry and slandered all those who opposed its policies.(55)
There was a shift in the CPI's stand on the Pakistan issue towards the end of 1945 when it drafted its election manifesto. In this manifesto there is no mention of "Muslim nationalities" or of Pakistan. Instead, it proposed that there should be "17 sovereign National Constituent Assemblies based on the natural homelands of various Indian peoples" -- Pathanland, Western Punjab, Central Punjab, Hidustan, Andhra, Bengal and so on. These 17 constituent assemblies should elect delegates to the All India Constituent Assembly and should "enjoy the unfettered right to negotiate, formulate and finally to decide their mutual relations within an Independent India, on the basis of complete equality". The Muslims of the eastern districts of Bengal were no longer regarded as a separate nation. Instead, the manifesto said:
"The Communist Party stands for a United and Free Bengal in a free India. Bengal as the common homeland of the Bengali Muslims and Hindus should be free to exercise its right of self-determination through a Sovereign Constituent Assembly based on adult franchise and to define its relation with the rest of India."
The CPI was then in favour of "a voluntary Union of sovereign national States".(56)
Within a few months there was again a shift when the CPI drafted a memorandum and submitted it to the British Cabinet Mission in mid-April 1946. The memorandum proposed that the All India Constituent Assembly should be directly elected -- not by the delegates of 17 constituent assemblies -- on the basis of adult franchise, that "linguistically and culturally homogeneous national units" should be constituted after redemarcation of the boundaries of the provinces and the dissolution of the native states. The people of each of these eighteen national units, including Kashmir, "should have the unfettered right of self-determination, i.e., the right to decide freely whether they will join the Indian Union or form a separate sovereign state or another Indian Union". The CPI stood "for a free, voluntary democratic Indian Union of sovereign units".(57)