The arrests of March 1929 were a staggering blow to the CPI. With the leaders in the Meerut prison the party split into a few groups in different cities, among whom there was little co-ordination.
The Bombay group, which included S.V. Deshpande, B.T. Ranadive and Mrs Nambiar formed the `Young Workers' League' and published the Workers Weekly. This group which controlled some big trade unions like the Girni Kamgar Union and the G.I.P. Railwaymen's Union, issued a call, against the opposition of non-communists, for a general strike of the textile workers from about the end of April in order to fight the offensive of the employers --rationalization, wage-cuts, intensified work, retrenchment, etc. Though the workers responded to the call, the strike, which lasted several weeks, eventually failed, for the problem before the millowners during those days of almost world-wide economic crisis was not how to produce but how to sell accumulated stocks. A few other strikes called by the communists in Bombay were also unsuccessful. Gradually, the communists lost control of the powerful trade unions like the Girni Kamgar Union and the G.I.P. Railwaymen's Union to the Royists and others. After his expulsion from the Comintern towards the end of 1929, M.N. Roy sent a few emissaries to India who started work in the trade unions before his arrival in December 1930. Bombay's small communist group broke up into two quarrelling factions, one led by Deshpande and the other by Ranadive.
In Bengal the communists continued to work under the banner of the Workers and Peasants Party for some time, brought out communist literature and led strikes in jute mills and other industrial strikes in 1929, some of which ended in partial victory. They tried to assist in the defence of the Meerut prisoners and maintain contact with the Communist International. Calcutta communists also were divided into groups. In 1931 Abdul Halim, Somnath Lahiri, Ranen Sen and a few others formed the `Calcutta Committee of the Communist Party of India'. Factionalism outside was being encouraged by the communist prisoners in the Meerut jail, who themselves were divided into factions. They expelled Dange from the party for his anti-party activities. In 1931 Ranadive formed a party of his own -- the Bolshevik Party.
At the Nagpur session of the AITUC, held towards the end of 1929, the communists, supported by other militant trade unionists, pushed through the Executive some resolutions of a radical nature like the resolutions boycotting the Royal Commission on Labour (the Whitley Commission), rejecting the proposal to send delegates to the International Labour Organization (ILO), affiliating the AITUC to the League Against Imperialism and the Pan-Pacific Trade Union Secretariat, rejecting the Nehru Report, etc. The trade union leaders like N.M. Joshi, B. Shiva Rao, V.V.Giri and Dewan Chaman Lal -- many of whom were pro-British and some the millowners' men -- left the AITUC to form the Indian Trade Union Federation. Deshpande became the general secretary of the AITUC and Subhas Bose its president. At about the middle of 1929, N.M. Joshi told Albert Thomas of the ILO that the `Moscow influence' on the imagination of the workers was on the rise and that absolute priority should be given to measures to fight it out.(1)
At the next congress of the AITUC, there was a further split. The communists lost to the Royists and their allies and left the organization to found the Red Trade Union Congress.
The years 1930 to 1932 witnessed an upsurge of struggles -- the civil disobedience movement, the peasant struggles in various provinces of India, the uprising of the Sholapur workers who established their own regime for a few days, the heroic struggles of the people of the NWFP, the Chittagong uprising followed by death-defying struggles of national revolutionaries and so on.(2) But the communist leaders -- the Ranadives and others -- engaged in squabbles among themselves, remained aloof from the struggles of the people, from the Congress-led civil disobedience movement as well as the peasant struggles.
Previously, without losing their independence, without serving as an appendage of the Congress leadership, the communists had worked within the Congress. It is the communist delegates who moved or supported at successive Congress sessions in the twenties resolutions defining the Congress goal as independence outside the imperialist framework, only to be rejected by the Congress leadership in most of the years. When the first phase of civil disobedience opened in 1930, the communists tried in places to turn the struggle into a genuine anti-imperialist one and appealed to so-called leftist leaders like Nehru to support the move.(3) But they met with opposition from the Congress machinery, which, in Bombay for instance, organized anti-communist campaigns among the industrial workers.(4) The Congress opposition to their activities, the Congress leaders' real indifference (in spite of temporary spectacular moves by them)(5) to the arrests of communists in March 1929 and so on convinced the communists that the Congress-sponsored civil disobedience was no better than a manoeuvre for wresting not freedom but some minor concessions from the raj for themselves. Muzaffar Ahmad, one of the Meerut accused, has written that the Congress leaders communicated their advice to them through Jawaharlal that they should plead guilty to the charge of having conspired "to deprive the King-Emperor of his sovereignty" (instead of challenging that sovereignty itself) and escape with light punishment.(6)
Attempts were made by communists in late 1930 to hold an all-India conference of all genuine anti-imperialists and build an "Anti-Imperialist League" -- the "Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist United Front of the Toiling Masses of India". The appeal convening the conference correctly said:
"Behind this [a revolutionary] mask the capitalist Congress leadership is pursuing unhampered its efforts to strike a bargain with imperialism."
But what was wrong was that the communists did not participate in the struggles the peasants, the workers and the petty bourgeoisie were waging.
An important document of this period was "Draft Platform of Action of the C.P. of India", which appeared in Imprecor (International Press Correspondence), organ of the Communist International (Comintern), in December 1930.
The document pointed out :
"An agrarian revolution against British capitalism and landlordism must be the basis for the revolutionary emancipation of India."
This bourgeois democratic revolution in India, which included the overthrow of British rule, could be led not by the bourgeoisie but by the working class. To fulfil this task it was immediately necessary to build a "united, mass, underground Communist Party". According to this document, the main domestic enemies of the Indian people were the native princes, the landlords and the native bourgeoisie. It stated:
"Linked up as it is with the system of landlordism and usury, and terrified at the thought of revolutionary insurrection by the toiling masses, the capitalist class has long ago betrayed the struggle for the independence of the country and the radical solution of the agrarian problem. Its present `opposition' represents merely manoeuvres with British imperialism, calculated to swindle the mass of the toilers and at the same time to secure the best possible terms of compromise with the British robbers. The assistance granted to British imperialism by the capitalist class and its political organization, the National Congress, takes the shape at the present time of a consistent policy of compromise with British imperialism at the expense of the people, it takes the form of the disorganization of the revolutionary struggle against the native States, the system of landlordism and the reinforced exploitation, jointly with the imperialists, of the mass of the people, of the working class in particular."
The "Draft" upheld the right of the nationalities of India to self-determination including the right to secede. One of the tasks of the CPI would be to fight "for the complete social, economic and legal equality of women". The CPI would also organize revolutionary work among the soldiers and ex-soldiers. The "Draft" asserted that "Only the ruthless abolition of the caste system in its reformed, Gandhi-ist variety, only the agrarian revolution and the violent overthrow of British rule, will lead to the complete, social, economic, cultural and legal emancipation of the working pariah and slaves" and called upon them to join the united revolutionary front. It sharply exposed Gandhism and its role in Indian politics.
This document, which made many correct formulations, was not free from left-sectarian weaknesses characteristic of the period. Among some of its weaknesses were its failure to comprehend that the colonial bourgeoisie was divided into two sections: comprador and national; its inability to distinguish between the genuine left wing and the pseudo-left wing (represented by leaders like Nehru) of the Congress; its failure to envisage that the liberation of India, a sub-continent where social, economic and political development was very uneven, could not be achieved through what it called "a general national armed insurrection".
The "Draft Platform" became the CPI's programme in the early thirties.
In "Manifesto on the Round Table Conference" published in February 1931 and "the Karachi Congress and the Struggle against Imperialism", a pamphlet distributed at the Karachi Congress in March, the CPI unmasked the treachery of the Congress leaders and issued calls to the rank and file of the Congress to desert it to "join a revolutionary anti-imperialist united front of Indian workers and peasants". In July 1932 an "Open Letter to the Indian Communists" from the Central Committees of the Communist Parties of China, Great Britain and Germany regretted that "the Communist Party [of India] still consists of a small number (though the number is increasing) of weak groups, often isolated from the masses, disconnected with each other..." It upbraided the Indian communists for standing "aside from the mass movement against British imperialism". "A distinction", it said, "must be made between the bourgeois Congress leadership and those sections of the workers, peasants and revolutionary elements of the town petty-bourgeoisie, who, not understanding the treacherous character of the Indian National Congress, followed it, correctly seeing the basis of their slavery in the domination of British imperialism". It advised the Indian communists to form an all-India party, break their isolation, lead the `no-rent and no-tax' movement which the peasants themselves had been waging, organize the workers and other toiling people. "Communists", it said, "must always take part in them [reformist trade unions] and carry on work among the workers, urging them to join the united fighting front of the proletariat."(7)
Again, another "Open letter to the Indian Communists from the C.C. of the C.P. of China" appeared in Imprecor in November 1933. Like the earlier one, this, too, was quite a long one. It advised the Indian communists that "the chief and decisive question is the formation of a militant mass Indian Communist Party" (emphasis in the original). It said that while the "Indian bourgeoisie, which stopped the civil disobedience campaign and continues its capitulatory policy, clears the path for the rule of British imperialism" and when "ever wider sections of the toilers are turning their eyes towards the path of the revolutionary struggle against the imperialists and feudalists", "the rapid formation of the Communist Party is the central task of the Indian revolution" (emphasis in the original). Like the open letter from the Central Committees of the three parties, this letter also upheld the "Draft Platform of Action" of 1930 and affirmed that "the task of Communists is to enter and take charge of all these democratic movements (emphasis in the original), of all movements of discontent against the existing order, whatever questions cause them to arise, and to go everywhere with Communist agitation,...constantly explaining and showing in practice that the path of the national reformists is the path of defeat and slavery". While preserving the independent class character of the Communist Party, it should strive to "create the united front of workers, peasants and urban petty-bourgeoisie (emphasis in the original), utilize any temporary allies, carrying [on] the struggle for leadership of the national movement for independence, land and freedom". It said that it would be "wrong to counterpose the anti-imperialist to the strike struggle" of the workers, that it would be "necessary to conduct both at the same time.... Even while organizing political strikes it is necessary, along with anti-imperialist and other political slogans, to put forward economic demands which are close and vital for all the workers, including the most backward strata of the working class. It is necessary to begin serious work in the reformist trade unions and every kind of mass reformist organization, with the aim of winning over to our side the masses who are in these organizations." Continuing, it advised the Indian Communists to "develop the movement for the non-payment of rent and taxes", to "create peasant committees and committees of struggle, supporting and extending the partisan struggle. By carrying out these tasks, it will not be difficult for you in the future to rouse the struggle of the peasant masses to a higher level, to the level of the agrarian and anti-imperialist revolution which will sweep away the rule of the hated British imperialism along with feudalism". Emphasizing the importance of a consistent exposure of the entire policy and action of the National Congress and the national reformists, who were eagerly waiting to work the new "feudal imperialist constitution" British imperialism would impose, it pointed out: "The victory of the Indian people will be impossible unless the masses are liberated from the influence and leadership of the national-reformists, unless an independent Communist Party is formed and leads the struggle of the entire people." Before it concluded, it said: "We are entering a new period of revolutions and wars."(8)
Another very important document of this period is "The General Statement of the Eighteen Communist Accused" before the Additional Sessions Judge, Meerut.(9) This remarkable document, after clarifying the ideological position of the accused, dwelt on the stranglehold of British imperialism over India, gave an analysis of Indian society and problems, the conditions and roles of different classes, the ways of solving the problems, formulated the tasks of the Indian communists and so on. Despite its limitations, it is a major Marxist work that has appeared in India. Its main formulations about the stage of the Indian revolution, its character and the roles of the different classes in it, the character and role of Gandhism, the tasks of the communists, etc., are in the main correct. This document rightly points out:
"Only those sections of the population, chiefly the princes and the landlord class, and those upper sections of the bourgeoisie and professional classes whose interests are closely bound up with the imperialist machine, which profit from the imperialist connection, must support Imperialism and can be considered definitely counter-revolutionary."(10)
It emphasized that "the agrarian revolution has been and remains the axis of the national revolution".(10a)
The extremely severe sentences passed on the Meerut prisoners by the Sessions Court were reduced on appeal by the Allahabad High Court. Like Romain Rolland's denunciation(11), the savage sentences had invited world-wide condemnation and as Michael Brecher writes, "The sentences were reduced later under the pressure of the British Trade Union Congress and others".(12) The process of reorganization of the CPI was helped with the release of several Meerut prisoners. In December 1933 several communists including Gangadhar Adhikari, Patkar, P.C. Joshi and some comrades of Bengal, Punjab and the Central Provinces met in Calcutta and formed the `nucleus' of the Provisional Central Committee of the CPI. Adhikari became the temporary secretary. The meeting also adopted a political resolution and a new constitution.
The nucleus of the Provisional Central Committee tried to build up a united Communist Party and made arrangements to hold an all-India Party Convention. This convention, a more representative meeting, was held in March 1934. At this meeting a Draft of Political Thesis which was based on "The Draft Platform of Action" was adopted.(13)
The "Thesis" regretted the mistake committed during the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930-1, when the communists had "objectively isolated themselves from the struggle of the masses" and resolved to correct this sectarian deviation. It said that while exposing the policies of the Congress leadership, including its left wing, the communists would "use the Congress platform and systematically combat the Congress reformism and its `Left' varieties". It criticized the slogan of `Constituent Assembly' under the British aegis, a slogan first raised by M.N. Roy and then taken up by Nehru and the Congress, as a "reformist slogan" intended to divert the people from the anti-imperialist struggle. Referring to the Harijan movement, it stated that "The problem of the untouchables, who are for the most part landless labourers and semi-serfs, cannot be radically solved until imperialism and landlordism and all remnants of feudalism are overthrown". It gave a call for building the Anti-Imperialist League -- a "United anti-imperialist front under Proletarian Leadership". The "Thesis" wanted the communist cadres to combine "legal" and underground activities.
Later, in the same year, appeared "The Manifesto of the Anti-Imperialist Conference 1934". The "Manifesto" analysed the character of the Indian bourgeoisie having links with British capital as counter-revolutionary, denounced the Congress as "an organization of the Indian bourgeoisie and working in alliance with princes, landlords and zamindars", decried the slogan of a constituent assembly and urged the necessity of building an All-India Anti-Imperialist League.(14)
In "Problems of the Anti-Imperialist Struggle in India", which was published in Imprecor in March 1935, the CPI placed before the people a "minimum programme of the united front for the anti-imperialist struggle". The programme included, among others, "Complete and unconditional independence of India from Britain", "Refusal to participate in legislative councils and the cessation of all negotiations with British imperialism" and "Organization of the struggle of the masses against imperialism and against the imperialist sham comstitution". One may remember that the White Paper, outlining "the imperialist sham constitution" of 1935 which the Congress leaders were preparing to work, had already been published. The document stated that the CPI "will develop inside the Congress organizations a wide independent mobilization of the masses for the struggle against imperialism, and will constantly put into effect the tactics of the united front when organizing any anti-imperialist action". The document decried the Congress slogan of a constituent assembly as intended "to distract the attention of the masses from the struggle against the draft of the sham constitution brought forward by imperialist Britain".(15)
The "Draft of the Provisional Statutes of the C.P. of India (Section of the Communist International)" appeared in Imprecor on 16 May 1934. (16) The politics that it upheld was the politics of the "Draft Platform of Action". This Party constitution insisted that the Party must be a strictly underground organization with its "central task to develop most widely mass work to establish its leadership in the mass revolutionary movements". Its aim was one of "combining the methods of underground work with semi-underground work and open work", and the Party should work in "all the mass organizations of the toilers, including the most reactionary organizations" seeking to win over the masses and isolate the reactionaries.
On the occasion of the Congress session in Bombay 1934, the CPI addressed an appeal to "the anti-imperialist rank and file of the Congress", entitled "Independence or Surrender?". It was a sharp criticism of Gandhi and the Congress leadership. The resolution that the AICC adopted at Patna in May 1934 against "a background of ruthless imperialist horror", the appeal said, "completely demonstrates the hypocrisy and the treachery of the Congress leadership. For the Patna resolution repudiates the struggle of the masses, it repudiates the Independence struggle; it puts its faith in the very councils and the Assembly wherefrom Congressmen were forced to resign only a few years back under the rising tide of popular discontent." It correctly pointed out: "The open repudiation of mass struggle is the preliminary step towards an acceptance of the White Paper proposal." It predicted that the Congress leadership was preparing to thrust "the slave constitution on the people of India in collaboration with British imperialists, landlords, feudal princes, capitalists and communalist traitors". The CPI made an appeal to the "sincere, anti-imperialist revolutionary fighters" not "to be dragged into counter-revolutionary paths by the Congress": it urged them "to build up the new organ of struggle, the anti-imperialist united front".
By 1935 the CPI overcame many of the sectarian deviations and again emerged as the leader of the working class in many industrial centres.
At the beginning of 1933 the communists raised the slogan of unity on the trade union front and began to try to bring about co-operation between the Red Trade Union Congress and the AITUC.(17) The working class struggle began to recover early in 1934. An All India Textile Workers Conference was held in January 1934, and the CPI and the followers of M.N. Roy decided to organize jointly a country-wide strike of textile workers. A series of strikes started -- in Sholapur, Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Ajmer, Calcutta, Bombay, Delhi, Nagpur, etc. By 27 April almost all Bombay mills were on strike, which lasted until some time in June. Some of the demands were purely political.(18) The Bombay Trade Disputes Conciliation Act of 1934 was enacted by the government with the declared aim of preventing "Communists and extremists from entering the textile affairs of Bombay City". It provided for compulsory arbitration of labour disputes and served as a model to Congress governments afterwards who added more teeth to similar legislations they framed. Leading communists like Joglekar, Mirajkar and Adhikari were arrested during the strike in Bombay.
According to Intelligence reports, the RTUC had "fairly numerous" activities in Bengal.(19) Anti-Gandhi demonstrations were organized in Calcutta in July 1934 jointly by the CPI and other groups. A "Gandhi Boycott Committee" which was later renamed "League against Gandhism" was set up in Calcutta.(20)
In Punjab the Kirti Kisan Party (the Workers and Peasants Party) was functioning and had its influence on the peasantry.
An Intelligence Bureau publication stated:
"The Party's field of activities had been extended to cover the three main railway systems, the entire textile industry in the Bombay Presidency and a part of the jute industry in Bengal and the cotton industry in Kanpur.... only a small beginning had been made with the work among the peasantry."(21)
In July 1934, the CPI, the Young Workers' League and other communist organizations, and a dozen trade unions led by the CPI were banned by the government. The Kirti Kisan Party of Punjab as well as its ally, the Nau Jawan Bharat Sabha, was declared illegal in September.
But no repression could prevent the spread of the influence of the CPI or the steady increase in its membership. At the CSP's all-India conference in October 1934, the CPI distributed a pamphlet with an appeal to the Congress socialists and revolutionary youths. It gave an elaborate analysis criticizing the betrayal of the Indian masses by the Congress leadership. About Nehru, it said :
"Socialism in words and counter-revolutionary Gandhism in deeds, revolutionary phrase-mongering in words and abject surrender to Gandhism in deeds -- that sums up our great `Socialist' Mr J. Nehru."
The CPI invited the Congress socialists and revolutionary youths to "an anti-imperialist conference of all the revolutionary elements to draft the immediate programme of action on the basis of the united front". It rightly denounced the slogan of a constituent assembly as "a slogan of inaction and surrender".
The Calcutta Committee, while admiring the heroism and self-sacrifice of the "terrorist youths", made a fervent appeal to them to give up terrorist methods as futile and to join the CPI to fulfil their cherished object. Many national revolutionary youths in prisons and concentration camps had already been reappraising their policy and were accepting Marxism. Gradually a large number of them joined the CPI and strengthened it.
After the formation of the CSP, this party and the communists started joint work on the trade union front. On the CSP's initiative, agreement between it, the AITUC, the Red Trade Union Congress and the National Trade Union Federation was achieved for joint work on specific issues.(22) The communists joined the AITUC at its annual session in Calcutta in April 1935 on the basis of an agreed programme and dissolved the Red Trade Union Congress.(23)
Many communists joined the CSP on an individual basis in 1934 and, as Masani writes, "by 1937-38 the CSP had two communists as Joint Secretaries and two others in the Executive Committee".(23a) When the CSP decided in March 1940 to expel the communists from its organization, it lost to them its entire branches in Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala and many members and units in northern India.
Writing in March 1935, the Director of the Intelligence Bureau, GOI, regretted that "we are now back in the same position as in 1929 when the [Meerut] case was instituted, with the drawback that our enemies have gained considerably in experience".(24)
To repeat, by 1935 the CPI had corrected many of its left-sectarian mistakes. It was trying to build up a genuine anti-imperialist united front of the toiling masses. It was the only party in India working with an anti-imperialist programme when the Congress leadership, guided by the Birlas, had not only abjured mass struggle but given commitments to the raj to work the imperialist constitution, "a charter of slavery", and looked forward to serving as a partner of British imperialism in the oppression and exploitation of our people. The period that was opening was rich in possibilities. The CPI alone could come out as the leader of the anti-imperialist masses by shattering their illusions about the Congress leadership which was going to accept openly the role of an appendage of the British imperialist machinery in India.
But all possibilities were wasted away as the line and policies of the CPI were completely reversed under the influence of foreign mentors. "The Anti-Imperialist People's Front in India", a joint work of R. Palme Dutt and Ben Bradley of the Communist Party of Great Britain, known as the "Dutt-Bradley thesis", appeared in Imprecor on 29 February 1936 and in the CPGB's organ, Labour Monthly, on 6 March. It was a line entirely worked out by the foreign mentors, who dismissed the CPI as irrelevant in formulating the CPI's own line and policies.
The "Dutt-Bradley thesis" was followed by another article "The United National Front", authored by Harry Pollitt (General Secretary of the CPGB), Palme Dutt and Ben Bradley on behalf of "the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain". The "United National Front" was carried by Imprecor on 7 November 1936.
While "The Anti-Imperialist People's Front" asserted that the Congress, though "not yet the united front of the Indian people in the national struggle", "can play a great part and a foremost part in the work of realizing the Anti-Imperialist People's Front", the second document instructed the CPI "to make the Indian National Congress the pivot of the United National Front". The first document stated that, despite some surrenders on the part of the leadership, the Congress stood for "irreconcilable struggle against imperialism for complete independence" and prescribed that the CPI should try to bring about some changes in the Congress constitution to make it a democratic organization and get the organizations of the workers and peasants affiliated to the Congress with the help of the CSP and other `left' Congressmen and thus complete the process of the evolution of the Congress as the anti-imperialist people's front. When the object of the foreign mentors was to turn the CPI into an appendage of the Congress, there was no end to wishful thinking. They neither analysed the class character of the Congress leadership nor did they hesitate to recant whatever they had said earlier or to contradict whatever the Communist International and the CPI had written about the Congress. "The United National Front" lauded Nehru as the great leader of the anti-imperialist struggle and builder of the united front against imperialism. Reviewing Nehru's Autobiography and Subhas Bose's The Indian Struggle 1920-1934, Palme Dutt wrote that "Nehru's Presidential address at Lucknow in April [1936]...marked a historic turning point..." He observed:
"With regard to the future, both Nehru and Bose are convinced of the necessity for a radical change in the policy, organization and leadership of the national movement in order to realize the aim of independence."(25)
One marvels where Palme Dutt discovered all this about Nehru!
The idea of a united anti-imperialist front was not a new one. Before 1936, the CPI had been trying to build such a front and achieved some success. In 1937 Mao Tsetung put the question:
"Is the proletariat to follow the bourgeoisie, or is the bourgeoisie to follow the proletariat? This question of responsibility for leadership in the Chinese revolution is the linchpin upon which the success or failure of the revolution depends." (26)
The Marxist-Leninist thesis that in the era after the Russian revolution the national liberation struggle can achieve victory only under the leadership of the proletariat was thrown overboard. Though not directly, the foreign mentors asked the CPI to abandon the task of fighting colonialism and rally behind the Congress to build a sham anti-imperialist front instead of a genuine one. The Congress leadership, guided by the Birlas, had capitulated to British imperialism and made commitments of abjuring mass action and serving as its tool. By rallying behind the capitulationist Congress leadership including Nehru (whose rhetorical verbiage and actual deeds were poles asunder), the CPI leadership under the influence of foreign mentors changed its line from a revolutionary one to an opportunist one, trailed politically behind the big collaborationist bourgeoisie and pursued essentially the same capitulationist line.
On the issue of `non-violence', the `Dutt-Bradley thesis' conceded that "it has been used...to shackle and hold in all effective mass activity and the development along the lines of the class struggle of the most powerful weapons against imperialism", but warned: "This issue should not be allowed to split the national front."
"The United National Front" went still further. It affirmed that besides violence and "non-violent passive resistance" a "third way" existed. Whether there would be violent clashes depended on the imperialists. According to these eminent theoreticians, the Indian sub-continent might accomplish the anti-imperialist revolution pursuing the "third way" of boycotts, strikes and so on and avoiding a violent revolution!
The `Dutt-Bradley thesis' asserted: "The question of the elections is of cardinal importance for the anti-imperialist front" and enjoined the CPI to run some candidates in agreement with the Congress leadership. The participation in the elections that would be held a little later would obviously mean not a struggle against the most reactionary British-imposed constitution but acceptance of it. That is exactly what the Birlas and the Gandhis sought to do. They had abjured even sham struggles against the raj and decided to follow the path of sham parliamentarism. "The United National Front" document hailed the Congress election manifesto as "an inspiring document", though it did not touch on any of the basic anti-imperialist, democratic tasks -- the confiscation of imperialist capital, the abolition of landlordism without compensation, the distribution of land among the tillers, etc.(27)
Both the `Dutt-Bradley thesis' and the later document insisted that the demand for convening a constituent assembly should be launched as the central slogan. As noted before, this slogan had been first raised by M.N. Roy, then picked up by Nehru and the Congress leadership and approved by G.D. Birla. The manifesto of the Congress Parliamentary Board drafted by Gandhi and adopted by the Board at its joint meeting with the Congress Working Committee explicitly said that the constituent assembly, as they contemplated, could "be convened only by an agreement between the Governing Powers and the people...."(28) Haithcox is quite right when he says:
"The Congress leadership envisioned it [the constituent assembly] as a body to be convened under the auspices of the British government and as a means of avoiding revolutionary conflict."(29)
Now the object of the foreign mentors was not different from that of the Congress leaders, though earlier the CPI and the Communist International had decried this slogan of the constituent assembly, replacing the demand for national freedom, as a move to derail the people's anti-imperialist struggles. For instance, a contributor had observed in Communist International: "this slogan was intended to bribe the masses with its `revolutionary' appearance. At the same time, it makes it possible to replace the struggle against the British imperialist project of a fake constitution by the decorative and fruitless preparations for the calling of a constituent assembly, which is to receive constituent rights, no one knows how or whence [emphasis added].
"The slogan of the constituent assembly came just at the right moment for the Congressmen [and then for the Pollitts and Palme Dutts], for the additional reason that it provided additional concealment for the capitulatory comprador entrance of the Congressmen into the legislative councils."(30)