In the meantime Palme Dutt's article "India and Pakistan" had appeared in Labour Monthly. Palme Dutt criticized the Muslim League as a communal organization and its Pakistan demand as undemocratic.(58) He expressed himself in favour of one "democratically elected Constituent Assembly". He came to India when the Cabinet Mission arrived in late March 1946.
The political resolution entitled "For the Final Assault", adopted by the CPI Central Committee in August 1946, condemned the Pakistan demand as undemocratic and reactionary and accused the Muslim League of hoping to "gain its demands from imperialism by obstructing the building of a joint front for freedom".(59) In "Resurgent India at the Crossroads", written in early 1947, Adhikari criticized the Pakistan demand as undemocratic and blamed the League for diverting "the anti-imperialist and freedom urge of its following against the Congress and the Hindus, instead of directing it against imperialism".(60)
It was because of its opportunism that the CPI position on the Pakistan issue went through several twists and turns. It changed from qualified to unqualified support for Pakistan and then to one of condemnation of it. In June 1947, after the Mountbatten award, when the emergence of Pakistan was no longer in dispute, the Central Committee of the CPI sharply criticized the vested interests -- the would-be ruling classes of Pakistan -- and hoped that an "era of voluntary Indian unity, full democracy and new life" would open in Pakistan.(61)
On Gandhi's release from the Aga Khan Palace, People's War in an editorial welcomed him back as "the beloved leader of the greatest patriotic organization of our people, the mighty National Congress". It wrote:
"Every son and daughter of India, every patriotic organization of our land, is looking to the greatest son of our nation to take it out of the bog..."(62)
In "Congress and Communists", Joshi stated: "To us the Congress is our parent organization, its leaders our political fathers..." He described his own party men as "Communist Congressmen".(63)
Despite the CPI leaders' filial devotion, the Congress Working Committee, after the release of its members from prison, formed a sub-committee with Nehru, Patel and Pant to investigate the activities of the communist members of the Congress. On the recommendation of the sub-committee a charge-sheet was presented to the communist members of the AICC, accusing them of following an anti-national and anti-Congress policy during the war. The Working Committee removed the communists from the AICC and banned communists from holding elective offices in the Congress. The CPI had in the meantime directed its members to quit the Congress.
Joshi wrote a voluminous reply to the Congress Working Committee's charges, which appeared in two parts in December 1945 under the title Communist Reply to Congress Working Committee's Charges. Earlier, in May 1944, immediately on Gandhi's release, Joshi had started a correspondence with Gandhi, which lasted for more than a year, to convince Gandhi of the party's political and moral integrity. Though Joshi greeted Gandhi as "the most loved leader of the greatest patriotic organization of our people" and as "the nation's father",(64) Joshi failed to rid "the nation's father" of his "prejudices" about the CPI. In Communist Reply, Joshi, while defending the CPI, criticized the Working Committee for the `Quit India' slogan and for refusal to settle with the League. He dilated on the CPI's favourite theme that a Congress-League settlement and formation of a national government would have wrested control over defence and other matters from the imperialist bureaucracy and laid the basis of India's freedom. He accused the Congress leadership of refusing to recognize in principle the demand for "Pakistan as the right for sovereign freedom of Muslims in their own homeland". He also chided the League leadership for including Assam within their proposed Pakistan though it was not a Muslim-majority area, and stood for the partition of Punjab and Bengal, which were not entirely Muslim homelands. At this time the CPI was virtually in favour of the partition of India on a religious basis.(65) In Communist Reply Joshi blamed the Congress leaders for wasting "opportunity after opportunity" to liberate the country during "the six most revolutionary years in world history".(66) Joshi refused to comment on the role of his own party -- the party which claimed to be the vanguard of the working class and whose task was to lead the national democratic revolution to victory. He did not even realize that the task of the Congress leadership was not only not to utilize the opportunities but to oppose any revolutionary party, if it attempted to do so. Though critical, Joshi acclaimed the Congress leaders as "the oldest political leadership of our greatest political organization of which we have been very proud to be members". He said: "The more you slander our Party, the more shall our Party glorify the Congress." He declared his party's resolve to wage "the battle for `Congress-League-Communist' unity".(67)
By hanging onto the coat-tails of the Congress leadership since 1936 and then of both the Congress and the League, the CPI leadership helped to defuse a revolutionary situation when it arose, particularly in the post-war days.
When anti-imperialist mass struggles had broken out and a revolutionary situation was fast developing soon after the end of the war, the CPI was putting up candidates for election to provincial assemblies. It contested in 108 constituencies in the whole of India out of 1,585 and won 8 seats. In the general (that is, Hindu) constituencies where they had no candidates, they supported the Congress and in the Muslim constituencies the Muslim League.
In a booklet with the pretentious title For the Final Bid for Power!, which appeared on the eve of elections, Joshi explained:
"The crux of our freedom plan is to make the Indian demand against British rule not only a morally unanswerable case but a practically irresistible freedom movement, and for this we must apply the same principle of self-determination among ourselves."
He further said: "The strategy for the freedom struggle that our Party puts forward is the strategy of building up a brotherhood of all freedom-loving Indians", which would include the Congress, the League, the CPI and others.
But how that "brotherhood" would wage the "practically irresistible freedom movement" was left unsaid. The CPI's "final bid for power" seemed to take the form of the battle for the ballot-box. Its election manifesto declared that its "only call" was: "Indian must not fight Indian but all Indians together must fight the British enslavers!" Though the manifesto did not clarify how the fight would be conducted, it seemed to suggest that the victory of the Congress and the League in the elections would convert India into a People's State. It would be the task of the CPI to put pressure on "the Popular Ministries", which would then pass "People's Ordinances", and the goal would be attained.
It is worth noting that the CPI has participated in every general election held since 1937 -- whether in colonial or post-colonial India. The CPI leadership has never deviated from the `parliamentary' path.
The CPI leaders never inquired why the Congress stood for a unitary state and whose interests it would serve. They did not also ask why the Muslim League demanded the partition of India on religious lines and whose interests would Pakistan serve. These demands were, no doubt, `stamped with the brand of a class', but a class analysis could hardly be expected from the CPI leaders. They undertook the task of mobilizing the workers, the peasants and other revolutionary sections of the people behind the Congress and the League, that is, behind the two sections of the Indian big bourgeoisie and big landlords. It is also significant that in the enormous CPI literature, one never comes across any reference to the Marxist truth "Violence is the midwife of an old society pregnant with a new one".
It was this non-Marxist, non-revolutionary Communist leadership which submitted a memorandum before the British Cabinet Mission in mid-April 1946. In this memorandum the CPI asked British imperialism to furnish proof of its "sincerity" by making a declaration recognizing India's independence and sovereignty and by withdrawing British troops within six months. It urged the British government to proceed "along the lines laid down in this Memorandum..." One may remember that it was after the upheavals in Calcutta, after the naval revolt in Bombay which shook the whole of India, after unrest had spread even among the armed forces, and after Viceroy Wavell had reported to his King that "India is in the birth-pangs of a new order", that the CPI leadership was presenting its memorandum -- its blueprint of a future independent India -- for the consideration of the British imperialists, and for their implementation of it, while it itself did little to make that blueprint a reality.
The wave of struggles in the post-war days, which swept the sub-continent to the great alarm of the imperialists and native reactionaries, found the CPI leadership, as Madhu Limaye wrote, "confused and bewildered". To quote Limaye, it "reluctantly followed in the wake of these demonstrations, appealing for the creation of a united front".(68) The CPI leadership not only failed to anticipate the post-war upheaval but also failed to realize its revolutionary potentialities: it did not deviate during this period -- 1945 to 1947 -- when India was on "the edge of a volcano", from its consistent class-collaborationist line. At the root of its disease was its fear of mass revolutionary struggle. "In the early postwar period, then", observed Overstreet and Windmiller, "the CPI was seeking not revolution but respectability in the Indian body politic."(69) As noted before, it set up candidates for election to provincial assemblies and, when the Cabinet Mission came, submitted its blueprint for India's independence for the British imperialists to consider.
When the storm of struggle broke, first in Calcutta in November 1945, pro-CPI students and its cadres took at first a leading part in it. But the CPI leadership was unable to grasp the revolutionary significance of the struggle or understand the people's mood. While CPI cadres had instinctively reacted to the great INA demonstration and other happenings in Calcutta -- which sent "shivers down the imperialist spine" and which brought the whole lot of Congress leaders to that city, besides Viceroy Wavell, and prompted them to have long confabulations with Governor Casey -- "the central committee which held its meeting in December", Ranadive, who was a Polit Bureau member at the time, wrote later, "in its resolution did not even mention the INA demonstration or the great upsurge that was already working itself through strikes, meetings and anti-imperialist conflicts".(70) When Abdul Rashid of the INA was sentenced to rigorous imprisonment for 7 years and Calcutta erupted again,(71) CPI leaders joined Congress and League leaders in appealing to the people to remain calm. On 13 February Swadhinata, the Bengali organ of the CPI, issued a call for struggle against indiscipline and disorder as Congress president Azad did. Joint peace brigades composed of Congress-League-Communist volunteers moved about in Calcutta and neighbouring industrial areas to maintain peace. Though many CPI cadres instinctively stood by the people and displayed great courage, it became the task of the CPI leadership to extinguish the revolutionary flame and to continue to trail behind the Congress and League leaders.
In his report Ranadive wrote:
"There is no call for struggle, there is only a programme of mass amelioration. It will be seen that neither the working class strikes that were developing one after another, nor the huge demonstrations and strikes of the armed forces was [were] making any meaning on the members of the central committee."(72)
When the naval revolt supported by the working class of Bombay sent a thrill throughout India, the CPI leadership's stand was revealing. In its memorandum to the Royal Indian Navy Enquiry Commission, an official body, it tried to represent that the rebels had waged their heroic fight merely to improve their service conditions.(73) It ignored the fact that the rebels' demands included the demands for the release of all Indian political prisoners, including the INA personnel, withdrawal of Indian troops from Indonesia, and `Quit India'.(74) (The CPI publication "Towards a People's Navy" acknowledges that the first two of the above demands were raised by the rebels but mentions the demand for "impartial judicial enquiry into the police shootings that have taken place all over India" in place of `Quit India'). B.C. Dutt, who lit the spark that kindled the revolt, wrote that on the Navy Day, 1 December 1945, "Political slogans in foot-high letters were staring from every wall [of the Talwar, a shore establishment]: `Quit India', `Down with the Imperialists', `Revolt Now', `Kill the British'".(75) And on the night before 2 February, when the Commander-in-Chief was to visit the Talwar, Dutt, despite very strict security measures, painted `Jai Hind' and `Quit India' on the wooden platform from which the Commander-in-Chief was to take the salute.(76)
Dutt wrote that not one of the political parties of the left "was in our midst. Neither did they try to contact us directly even though we were still accessible to anyone who cared to reach us." To quote him again,
"On February 22 when the workers were challenging the might of the British Empire with bare hands on the streets of Bombay and the ratings were still behind the guns, the Communist Party of India was appealing to the Congress Party [which was placing `volunteers' at the disposal of the Bombay Governor to fight workers and the ratings] to see that `justice' was done to the ratings."(77)
A somewhat redeeming feature was that the CPI leadership issued an appeal to the people to observe a complete hartal in Bombay on 23 February -- "as a mark of their disapproval of Government repression and to demand immediate cessation of repression, the opening of negotiations, and the satisfaction of the just demands of the strikers".(78) The CPI did not want the revolt but negotiations and a settlement and was in favour of non-violence, not violence. When on 22 February, the British military units indiscriminately fired on the people in the streets and killed many, none of them who came out into the streets, according to a British officer, "was armed, not even with sticks or stones" on the advice of the Communist Party.(79)
But, during this period many of the CPI cadres remained with the workers in their innumerable struggles. Big strikes like the one in Calcutta on 29 July to express solidarity with striking postal employees were led by communists. Communist cadres, courageous and self-sacrificing, built up peasant struggles in some pockets -- the movement of the Warli tribals in some taluks of the Thana district in Maharashtra, the Tebhaga movement in several districts of Bengal, particularly in North Bengal, the Tanka movement in North Mymensingh in which mainly a tribe of Hajong peasants and some Muslims participated, the Bakasht struggle by the peasants in Bihar, etc. Besides, the CPI cadres and local leaders built up the most remarkable peasant struggle -- the struggle in Telangana in the native state of Hyderabad -- and the peasant-worker struggle in Punnapra and Vayalar in the Alleppey district of the Travancore state. These struggles were not planned by the central leadership nor were they encouraged by it. Though militant, the struggles in British India were all struggles to realize partial demands -- not for land and power. When peasants asked for arms in some areas, for instance in Dinajpur, to fight back the armed attacks of the police on them during the Tebhaga movement, the leadership preferred suppression of the movement to armed confrontation. Only in the Telangana region, the peasant struggle developed into a struggle for land and power. (It may be noted that at a later stage, for the first time in India, the local communist leadership stood for the implementation of the Maoist strategy of revolution in colonies and semi-colonies, which was opposed by the then central leadership including General Secretary of the Party Ranadive and PB member P. Sundarayya.) But, as Ranadive wrote in 1948, the central leadership headed by P.C. Joshi was panicky in 1946-7. To quote him,
"...Joshi wanted the words like `agrarian revolt' to be banned and all revolutionary significance of partial struggles to be forgotten. His advice is `agrarian revolt must be denounced as mythical to cover the suppression of the peasant movement invented by the bureaucracy'."(80)
In August 1946 the CPI Central Committee adopted a resolution entitled "For the Final Assault". It criticized the Congress and League leaders for setting their followers against each other, leading often to communal riots, while they pursued a policy of compromise with imperialism. Yet it held that pressure from below would suffice to make these "patriotic parties" join a united front of different organizations including the CPI to accomplish the democratic revolution. It decried the leaders of the CSP and the Forward Bloc and opposed the formation of a bloc of `Left parties' within the Congress as it wanted to rally the "entire Congress" to build the joint front. It is curious that while criticizing the Congress and the League for following a policy of compromise with imperialism, the CPI leaders called them "patriotic parties" and held that the "entire Congress" and the League would, under pressure from below, join a united front for carrying out an anti-imperialist democratic revolution.
The resolution said:
"The central slogan of rallying the entire people for the joint front must be the Constituent Assembly..."(81)
The resolution claimed that the membership of the party had risen to 50,000.(82) In "Communist Reply" (December 1945), Joshi had claimed that the party had a membership of more than 30,000 and that 3 lac workers organized in the AITUC and 8 lac-strong All India Kisan Sabha were under the Party's influence.(83)
When CPI cadres were being ruthlessly persecuted by Congress as well as League ministries and by the Interim Government at the centre, of which Patel was Home Member, the CPI leadership drew a distinction between "popular ministries" and the bureaucracy. Instead of blaming and exposing the "popular ministries" for the raids, numerous arrests without trial, shootings and so on, they concentrated their fire on the bureaucracy. In the political-organizational letter of February 1947, Joshi wrote:
"How do we destroy the strength of imperialism? By driving a wedge between the imperialist bureaucracy and the bourgeois leadership by rousing the common people, its [the bourgeois leadership's] own followers to intervene."(84)
The CPI leadership also distinguished between the "popular ministries" and "the vested interests"(85) and expected the former to curb the attacks of the latter on the toiling people. Even when communist cadres, workers and peasants were facing the brunt of repression unleashed by the "popular ministries" and the Interim Government, the CPI refused to get off the bandwagon of the Congress. Different provincial committees of the CPI issued statements in the form of memoranda to the Congress high command, appealing to them to intervene so that the provincial governments would not sanction police repression or allow free rein to "the greedy interests".(86) Significantly, the Andhra Committee's Zamindar-Police Terror in Andhra, to quote Overstreet and Windmiller, "did not even mention the peasant revolts in Telangana, and took pains to show that the Communist campaign in Andhra was, with one minor exception, completely non-violent".(87)
When the imperialist plan named after Mountbatten was formally adopted by the Congress and the League on 3 June, when the deal was struck between British imperialism and the representatives of the big compradors and big landlords, the Central Committee of the CPI stated in a political resolution in June 1947, entitled "Mountbatten Award and After", that the award was "the culmination of a double-faced imperial policy which, while making concessions to the national demand to transfer power, sets in motion disruptive and reactionary forces to disrupt the popular upsurge, obstruct the realization of real independence, throttle the growth of democracy and destroy the unity and integrity of India". Yet those who colluded with British imperialism to carry through this imperial policy were acclaimed as "the national leadership" of the "national movement". According to the CPI, British imperialism was "forced...to make important concessions to the urgent demands of the national liberation movement..." So, instead of exposing the sordid deal, the CPI was "of the opinion that new opportunities for national advance have been won. The two popular Governments and Constituent Assemblies are the strategic weapons in the hands of the national leadership." (All the words quoted above are in bold type). They were strategic weapons, no doubt, but weapons against the people.
"The Communist Party", said the resolution, "shall mobilize popular and Ministerial support behind" the democratic struggles of the workers and peasants and "compel the capitalists and landlords to meet their demands." The CPI's own bitter experience of the "Ministerial support" was not enough to convince its Central Committee that the ministers were not above classes, nor friends of the proletariat.
The resolution also stated:
"The Communist Party realizes that the new situation demands the broadest Joint Front based on the principle of fullest co-operation between the popular Governments and all popular organizations for the noble task of national liberation and reconstruction and final unification."(88)
On the eve of the transfer of power, the CPI declared its ardent loyalty to the new government.(89) Declaring full support to both the Indian and Pakistani governments, Joshi said:
"It is the duty of us all to rally wholeheartedly and enthusiastically behind them and pledge them all our support."(90)
The CPI's "final bid for power" culminated in the election battle. Its "final assault" took the form of the "fullest co-operation between the popular governments and all popular organizations". Even after the bitter offensive by the "popular" Interim Government and "popular ministries" against the CPI and against militant workers and peasants and after the artificial division of India and change from direct to indirect rule by the British, the CPI leadership continued to trail behind the leaders of the Congress and the League.
In "India and Pakistan" (March 1946) Palme Dutt urged that "every effort within the national movement should be directed towards the establishment of a united national front" including the Congress and the League, "the two principal political organizations standing for the aim of Indian independence". He held that the Indian big capitalists had an anti-imperialist role to play in the post-war phase and that they hoped "to break the stranglehold of British monopoly, win the leading position and enter on a course of profitable large-scale industrial development under a National Government". The powerful influence of the biggest of them was "reflected in an increasingly dominant position of the right wing sections of the leadership (Patel, Prasad, Kripalani, etc.) and a right wing anti-communist offensive". (The bitterest anti-communist offensive was launched by Nehru, regarded by Palme Dutt as the leader of the `left wing'.) Yet he wished that "this breach [between the Congress and the CPI] may be overcome at the earliest possible moment, in view of national unity in the coming period.... It is of the greatest importance that effective co-operation in the coming national struggle should be established between the National Congress and the rising force of the political working-class movement and of the peasants' movement, as well as of younger radical opinion represented by the Communist Party".(91)
To heal the rift Palme Dutt met Gandhi, Patel, Nehru and S.K. Patil. Though the eminent `Marxist' theoretician believed that the biggest Indian capitalists who had hugely profited from war contracts, shortage, high prices, inflation and black-marketing at the cost of immense suffering, starvation and deaths of millions, were powerfully influencing the Congress, he had no hesitation to try to make the CPI and the organizations of the toiling people line up behind the Congress leadership, that is, behind the Indian big capitalists, corrupt and anti-national.
Palme Dutt was of the view that the Mountbatten award marked an "enforced retreat of imperialism" and permitted a "signal advance" and would "open the way" to future democratic progress. He wanted collaboration between the CPI and the Congress, implied that the Nehru government was progressive and envisaged the "combined leadership of the Soviet Union, India and the progressive democratic countries" in world affairs.(92)
In the meantime an important event occurred. On 15 May 1943 the presidium of the Executive Committee of the Communist International recommended the dissolution of the International. Its resolution said among other things that, though the Communist International had served some purpose at the first stages of the working class movement, it became "a drag on the further strengthening of the national working class parties".(93)
By a statement of the presidium of the ECCI, the Communist International was dissolved with effect from 10 June 1943.
The world is vast and conditions differ from country to country, from region to region. No party, group or individual, however great or wise, can have a correct understanding of the specific conditions in various countries other than their own -- conditions rich in complexity and many of them unique in character. With Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought as the guide and learning from the experiences of other countries, every communist party should be free to formulate its own policies, even to make mistakes. Learning from his bitter experience, Mao Tsetung, while welcoming mutual consultations and help, opposed in principle the interference of one Party, however big, in the affairs of another Party.
Mao Tsetung said that the works of Marx and Lenin are "necessary reading. That comes first. But communists of any country and the proletarian philosophical circles of any country must create new theory, write new works, produce their own theoreticians to serve the political tasks facing them".(94) Instead of realizing the importance of producing theoreticians of their own, the CPI depended on foreign mentors whose understanding of the complexities of the Indian situation was rather poor. The CPI also refused to learn from the experiences of other colonial and semi-colonial countries like China and Vietnam.
Mao Tsetung said: "Without a people's army the people have nothing".(95) Summing up revolutionary China's experience, he stated:
"A well-disciplined Party armed with the theory of Marxism-Leninism, using the method of self-criticism and linked with the masses of the people; an army under the leadership of such a Party; a united front of all revolutionary classes and all revolutionary groups under the leadership of such a Party -- these are the three main weapons with which we have defeated the enemy".(96)
Without these three weapons the people of a colony can hardly break the chains of colonial or semi-colonial slavery. But the CPI leadership was badly equipped with Marxism-Leninism and had weak links with the masses; it had a wrong conception of the anti-imperialist united front the leadership of which it offered to the representatives of the pro-imperialist classes; and it never thought of building an army under its leadership.
At a crucial period of history -- 1936 to 1947 -- the CPI failed in spite of the dedication, courage and sacrifices of thousands of cadres and supporters. If it had not failed, a different India would have emerged influencing the whole world. It was because of its failure that the plans of the British imperialists, the Birlas and the Ispahanis, the Nehrus and the Jinnahs, could succeed and that the sub-continent was artificially divided into satellite states -- both orbiting imperialist powers. The cost was inconceivable suffering of hundreds of millions for generations.
The primary responsibility for the failure was that of the CPI leaders, their ideological and political weakness and immaturity. But the frequent interference by foreign mentors who imposed a class-collaborationist line on the CPI in 1936 also played its role.