"The United National Front" document stated that "there must be no idea lurking in the minds of any of the participants that they have the right to exploit the United Front or that one or other of the participants must win at the expense of the other". When a united front of several classes is built, the question with which Marxists are concerned is not which group or group of persons use or exploit it in their interests but which class -- that is, the politics of which class -- exercises leadership over it. There can be no united front the leadership of which is non-class or above classes. If the working class fails to establish its hegemony, the bourgeoisie or the comprador big bourgeoisie will. In such an event the united front becomes pro-imperialist, not anti-imperialist. And that is what happened. When from 1937 the Congress leadership acting in close association with big compradors like G.D. Birla openly played a counter-revolutionary role, the CPI leadership started playing a non-revolutionary, non-Marxist, opportunist role.
The Pollitts and Palme Dutts were pinning much hope on the CSP as the vanguard of the left wing within the Congress. As noted before, the CSP, the membership of which was open only to Congressmen and which was a strange assortment of Gandhians, anti-Marxists and near-Marxists, had no desire to act as an independent party of the working class. Rather, as Palme Dutt had written in an article "`Congress Socialism' -- A Contradiction in Terms", which appeared in Ganashakti (Calcutta) in September 1934, the real essence of the CSP's programme was "the subordination of the working class and peasantry to the political leadership of the bourgeoisie, represented by the National Congress".(31) This was the programme imposed by the Pollitts and Palme Dutts on the CPI in 1936.
Over the heads of the CPI Palme Dutt and Bradley addressed an appeal to non-communists to help in setting up the united national front and this appeal entitled "An Open Letter to Indian Patriots" was published in the March 1936 issue of the CSP's organ Congress Socialist -- almost at the same time when their thesis appeared in Imprecor.
The foreign mentors did not stop with theorizing about the tasks of the CPI and non-communist patriots and providing guidelines to them. Palme Dutt and Bradley met Nehru in Switzerland early in 1936 (when the CPI had not arrived at any decision) and appealed to him "to work in close collaboration with the communists". Nehru on his part refused "to abandon Gandhi's leadership or the method of non-violence".(32) The Seventh Congress of the Communist International met in July and August 1935, when fascism -- "the open terrorist dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance capital" -- proved a menace to the people of the world. On the basis of Georgi Dimitrov's report to the Congress, the Comintern Congress, in order to fight back the fascist offensive, asked the Communist Parties in capitalist countries to persevere in building the unity of the working class, a united front of all workers including those who were under the influence of the Socialist Parties and willing to cease their collaboration with the bourgeoisie and to fight the bourgeoisie and fascism. The resolution also urged these communist parties to strive for "the establishment of a wide anti-fascist people's front on the basis of the proletarian united front..."(33)
In respect of the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the Comintern resolution stated that "the most important task facing the communists consists in working to establish an anti-imperialist people's front" in order to do away with imperialist exploitation and win independence for their countries. It advised the communists "to take an active part in the mass anti-imperialist movements [emphasis ours] headed by national-reformists and strive to bring about joint action with the national-revolutionary and national-reformist organizations on the basis of a definite anti-imperialist platform [emphasis ours]."(34)
The line that the British communists imposed on the CPI made a significant departure from the Comintern Congress resolution or what Dimitrov said at the Congress.(35) First, when the British mentors formulated the new line for the CPI, the Congress leadership had abandoned all anti-imperialist movements and accepted the role of the junior partner of imperialism in its crimes against the people. Second, they asked the CPI to make the Congress the "pivot" of the anti-imperialist front not "on the basis of a definite anti-imperialist programme" but on the basis of a pro-imperialist programme like participation in elections to sham legislative councils and making the demand for a constituent assembly the central slogan of struggle. In those days when the Congress leaders transformed the Congress into an electioneering organization and into an adjunct to the colonial state machinery, it was the task of the CPI to expose this collaboration, this partnership, and rid the minds of the people of the illusions about the Congress leadership. Instead, guided by foreign mentors, the CPI leadership chose to confuse the people and strengthen their illusions about the Congress leadership, especially about Nehru, Gandhi's best shield against the leftists. The CPI leaders sank into opportunism from which they hardly recovered afterwards. Since then the CPI leadership's loyalty to Nehru and his kin, instead of to Marxism-Leninism and the people, has survived almost for decades. In a statement "For the United National Front", issued in March 1936, the Polit Bureau of the CPI welcomed the "Dutt Bradley thesis". The party's Central Committee met in April and elected a new Polit Bureau with P.C. Joshi as general secretary.
Though the CPI leadership accepted the new line there was much antipathy among the ranks to it until the middle of 1937.(36)
The CPI leadership prepared to participate in the elections to the provincial assemblies scheduled for early 1937. In a circular the Polit Bureau said:
"Every time demanding that the Congress candidates accept our united front platform we must support them even though they do not accept the platform."
It pledged all support to the Congress candidates in the election.(37)
The CPI leaders came out in December 1936 with a pamphlet entitled "Transform the Elections into Mighty Anti-Imperialist Demonstrations". It stated :
"Today the focal point of imperialist attack on India is the new constitution.... Transform the elections into a weapon to forge an anti-imperialist United Front.... Smash the New Constitution!"(38)
So the CPI leaders' new battle cry was: Smash the new constitution by forging an `anti-imperialist' united front with the Congress as the pivot. The Congress leaders also had raised the slogan of wrecking the constitution while taking part in the elections, while deciding to work it as an accomplice of imperialism.
As already noted, the working class struggle showed signs of recovery from 1934 and began to cause worry to the British raj. Peasant associations also were formed in different provinces and the All India Kisan Congress, which was renamed All India Kisan Sabha in 1938 with the Red Flag as its flag, was founded. Kisan struggles also became a feature and the communists started participating in them. During 1937 to 1939 working class and peasant organizations made significant progress and their struggles spread. We have seen that the Congress ministries which functioned in eight out of eleven provinces did not hesitate to resort to penal laws like the Criminal Law Amendment Act and to frame new laws to put down the workers and peasants fighting for their rights. Even lathi-charges and firing by the police on them were no rare events. Braving repression, CPI cadres participated in these partial struggles.
How did the CPI leaders react to the Congress policies which were openly pro-imperialist, pro-capitalist and pro-zamindar, which forged new chains for the workers and peasants in collusion with the imperialists? An article in New Age, organ of the CPI, stated in May 1938:
"...the Congress Ministries, inspired by the false ideology of the Gandhi Seva Sangh, were seeking to curtail the workers' right.... The recent Bombay bill threatens to extinguish the right to strike. The Madras proposals go one step further and openly deny the workers' right to resort to direct action."(39)
In another article, entitled "On Trade Union Policy", in New Age, May 1939, B.T. Ranadive, while talking of combating "misguided legislation by some Congress Ministries" like the Bombay Trade Disputes Act, "which endanger freedom of the TU movement", affirmed:
"The main task that faces the proletariat today is that of national unification under the banner of the Congress.... It is under these difficult circumstances that the task of drawing the workers into the Indian National Congress has to be carried forward."
What were the difficult circumstances to which Ranadive referred? He mentioned "a certain estrangement and apathy" of the workers towards the Congress, the influence of communal leaders like those of the Muslim League and Ambedkar on "the backward section of workers" and the hostility of a section of the TU leadership to the `national' organization.(40) It is worth noting that the CPI leaders spoke of a "false ideology" being instrumental in "curtailing the workers' right" and of "misguided legislation" but deliberately kept silent about the class whose "ideology" swayed the Congress leaders or whose guidance shaped the anti-worker legislations. The CPI leadership deliberately closed their eyes to the class war that was going on and followed a class collaborationist line.
In CPI's organ National Front in September 1938, P.C. Joshi wrote that the UP Kisan Committee (UPKC), a branch of the AIKS, was pledged to "work through the UP Kisan Sangh as the leading provincial organization of all kisans". As noted before, the UP Kisan Sangh had been founded under the auspices of the Congress to stem the wave of kisan struggles against the oppression of the landlords and the raj in the early thirties. Joshi wrote that "A Congress-Mazdoor united front has already been achieved". He hoped that the UP Kisan Sangh, which had become defunct, would be revived to function as the "Kisan headquarters" in the province and "Congress-Kisan unity as well will get forged".(41) In another article in National Front of 2 April 1939 Joshi wrote:
"The major class division is between Imperialism on the one hand and the Indian people on the other, the greatest class struggle today is our national struggle, the main organ of our struggle is the National Congress."(42)
So Joshi prescribed that the Kisan movement, like that of the workers, should be an appendage of the Congress.
In an appeal "To all Anti-Imperialist Fighters", the Central Committee of the CPI lauded Nehru as the "man standing at the head of the Congress high command -- who is today perhaps the best exponent of the whole leftward trend inside the Congress". It continued: "The stage is set for bursting the fetters of the reactionary leadership...." One may remember that when approached by Palme Dutt and Bradley, Nehru had told them that he would not "abandon Gandhi's leadership or the method of non-violence". Yet, as Masani writes, "the communists did their best to woo Nehru, offered him leadership of the United Leftist Forces and tried to divide him from his colleagues in the Congress Working Committee".(43) For all practical purposes Nehru became the unofficial leader of the `left' wing, including the communists.(44) Soon, as we shall see, the next step of the CPI leaders would be to refurbish Gandhism and uphold it.
It was one thing to work within the Congress where a large section of the masses were, to use the Congress platform to win over the anti-imperialist ranks, while pursuing an independent political line. But it was another thing to act, as the CPI leadership practically did, as the appendage of the Congress, submit to its leadership politically and sow illusions about it among the masses, abandoning the party's revolutionary task of organizing them for an offensive against imperialism.
The CPI leadership tried to prettify the Congress leadership as best as it could. Flying in the face of facts, it observed in an article published in The Communist, one of their organs, that "the INC leadership as a whole and the section of the bourgeoisie which support it have, during the last few years, moved to the left".(45)
On the issue of acceptance of ministerial offices by the Congress, the CPI leaders held that "Wherever the Congress would have been returned a majority they should not hesitate to accept office to carry through their major election pledge within a stipulated short period of time and actively help the development of the mass movement outside". They criticized the CSP and left nationalists for opposing office acceptance. But realizing that the `Anti-Ministry slogan' had become "part of the platform of all left nationalist and other Anti-Imperialist elements", the CPI chose not to be isolated from them and declared that it was "unequivocally opposed to the slogan of ministry acceptance as it is being put forward by the Right Congress leadership..."(46)
The CPI supported Subhas Bose in the election as President of the Tripuri session of the Congress because of his "militant plan of action to fight the Federation" and because of "the bureaucratic manipulation of certain members of the Working Committee who wanted to prevent the election of [a] leftist President". But when Gandhi and his associates took the offensive after Subhas's victory, the CPI leadership grew panicky. On behalf of the British Party, Harry Pollitt had sent the instruction on the occasion of the Tripuri session:
"The question of paramount importance in India in our view is the unity of all national forces under the leadership of the Indian National Congress."(47)
The CPI leadership became terribly concerned with unity in the Congress -- unity between Birla's men who were actually serving imperialism and anti-imperialists within the Congress -- and insisted that the latter must submit to the former in the interest of preserving unity. They opposed the Pant resolution in the AICC and decided to remain neutral on this resolution in the open session, but because of the revolt of the ranks, they had to oppose it. An article by A.K. Ghosh in the National Front stated:
"Let it be clearly understood that the slogans of the Left today must be such as can be made the slogans of the entire Congress..."(48)
This could be achieved if the Left surrendered to the Gandhis, Patels and Birlas. This is what the CPI leadership did.
It became the task of the CPI leaders to "resurrect, burnish and replenish" the Gandhism of 1919-20 and to extend "the hand of co-operation" to Gandhi because, under current conditions, he served a "progressive role". An article by S.G. Sardesai in the National Front warned the Leftists against continuing "their old attitude towards Gandhism and Gandhian leadership". It said: "With the new strength at their command the time and the opportunity have come for them to weld even Gandhism with the new nationalism..."(49)
When attacks on the workers and peasants were intensified by the Congress ministries and the Congress leadership deprived Congress members of the democratic right to criticize them, Subhas formed the Left Consolidation Committee. The CPI joined it and then ditched it. The degeneration of the CPI leadership had started in 1936 and the downward slide was quite rapid.
The increase in the CPI's membership and its increasing control over the growing mass organizations like the AIKS, All India Students Federation and Progressive Writers' Association were no index of the strength of the revolutionary forces, for the CPI headed by the Joshis, Ranadives and Ajay Ghoshes, was pursuing a class-collaborationist, anti-Marxist line.
1. Lieten, op cit., 267, note 11.
2. See Vol.I of this book, 346-54; Chap. 3 above.
3. Sinha, op cit., 251-2; also Lieten, op cit., 166, 172-4.
4. Ibid, 174-5; also A.D.D. Gordon, op cit., 221.
5. Muzaffar Ahmad, Introduction, Communists Challenge Imperialism from the Dock, pp. vii - viii.
6. Ibid, viii.
7. "Open Letter to the Indian Communists" from the Central Committees of the Communist Parties of China, Great Britain and Germany, Communist International, 1 July 1932, reprinted in Radical Periodicals in the United States, 1932, 303-14.
8. Emphasis added where not otherwise stated.
9. See Communists Challenge Imperialism from the Dock (with an Introduction by M. Ahmad).
10. Ibid, 81-2 -- emphasis added.
10a. Ibid, 200.
11. Romain Rolland, "To the Meerut Prisoners, and against Colonial Terrorism", I will Not Rest , 281-6.
12. Brecher, op cit., 136; cited in Muzaffar Ahmad, Introduction, op cit., xiv.
13. Subodh Roy (ed.) Communism in India, 1935 --1945, 2,5.
14. See ibid, 8-23.
15. See ibid, 29-43 -- emphasis added.
16. One may note that the "Draft of the Provisional Statutes", as reproduced in Indian Communist Party Documents 1930-1956 by the Democratic Research Service, Bombay, and the Institute of Pacific Relations, New York, in 1957, bristles with many inaccuracies and omissions.
17. Gene D. Overstreet and Marshall Windmiller, Communism in India, 156; Sinha, op cit., 276.
18. See Subodh Roy (ed.), Communism in India, 1925-1934, 188-9.
19. Ibid, 429.
20. Ibid, 414-5.
21. Horace Williamson, India and Communism, 201.
22. M.R. Masani, The Communist Party of India, 54; Sinha op cit., 405.
23. Ibid, 406,407.
23a. Masani, op cit., 68.
24. Williamson, op cit., Preface, ix.
25. R. Palme Dutt, "Left Nationalism in India", Labour Monthly, Oct. 1936, 635,637.
26. Mao Tsetung, "The Tasks of the Chinese Communist Party in the Period of Resistance to Japan", SWM, I, 273.
27. For the Congress election manifesto, see The Congress Encyclopaedia, XI, 134-40.
28. Manifesto of the Congress Parliamentary Board, 29 July 1934, drafted by Gandhi, CWG, LVIII, 255-6.
29. John Patrick Haithcox, Communism and Nationalism in India, 292.
30. G. Safarov, "The Congress Socialist Party and the New Manoeuvres of the National Congress in India", Communist International, 20 Nov. 1934, op cit., 791.
31. Ganashakti, 30 Sept. 1934, reprinted in Arindam Sen and Partha Ghosh (eds.), Communist Movement in India, I, 661.
32. Gopal op cit., 202,203-4 -- emphasis added.
33. "Fascism and the Unity of the Working Class", Resolution adopted by the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, in Dimitrov on United Front, esp. 124 -- emphasis in the original.
34. Ibid, 130 - emphasis in the original except when otherwise stated.
35. See Georgi Dimitrov, "The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism", in ibid, 57.
36. Sinha, op cit., 426; Overstreet and Windmiller, op cit, 162.
37. "Circular no.5: On Elections", reprinted in Sen and Ghosh (eds.), op cit., 613-6.
38. Masani, op cit., 64.
39. "Indian Working Class in Action", reprinted in Sen and Ghosh (eds.), op cit., 368 -- emphasis added.
40. B.T. Ranadive, "On Trade Union Policy", reprinted in ibid, 373-4 -- emphasis added.
41. P.C. Joshi, "The U. P. Kisan Movement", reprinted in ibid, 395-8.
42. Joshi, "Kisan Movement", reprinted in ibid, 399-402 -- emphasis added.
43. Masani, op cit., 65-6.
44. Sinha, op cit., 428.
45. See Sen and Ghosh (eds.), op cit., 631, fn.1 -- emphasis added.
46. "The Issue of Ministry Vs. Anti-Ministry", editorial in The Communist, see ibid, 620-6.
47. National Front, 19 March 1939, 103; cited in Overstreet and Windmiller, op cit., 170.
48. A.K. Ghosh, "Our Stand at Tripuri", reprinted in Sen and Ghosh (eds.), op cit., 642 -- emphasis in the original; see also Overstreet and Windmiller, op cit., 169-70.
49. Ibid, 169; S.G. Sardesai, "Tasks before the Left-Wing", reprinted in Sen and Ghosh (eds.), op cit., 645-7.