THE next few years marked a collapse of Congress activity, even as they saw the slow building of a Communist movement and party, the resurgence of the revolutionary `terrorists' with greater mass orientation, and the increasing pressure of the peasant movement with the slogan of zamindari abolition. By 1927, with the resurgence of the whole nationalist movement, the Congress would have to strike more radical postures consistently, even as it actually battled the genuinely radical trends.
In the period (1922-24), when its "sole executive authority" was in jail, the Congress was engaged in a meaningless debate. Its membership had plummeted by March 1923 to 1,06,046. Many of its most militant elements, finding that "Swarajya within a year" had been a cruel joke, had left it or become inactive. For example, the Benares student leader of 1921 who was whipped 15 times during the 1921 non-co-operation - saying "Mahatma Gandhi ki jai" with every lash - was Chandrashekhar Azad, later to become Bhagat Singh's comrade. Other future revolutionary terrorists who had been disillusioned by their active experience of the non-co-operation movement included Jogesh Chandra Chatterjea, Surjya Sen, Jatin Das, Sukhdev, Shiv Verma, Bhagwati Charan Vohra and Jaidev Kapur.
For many Congress leaders, there was the powerful revived temptation to participate in the Councils which they had decided in 1920 to boycott. Others, with Gandhi backing them, were against participation.
However, Gandhi was not for a boycott as such: in fact, his programme was even less militant than that of those interested in participating (known as the "pro-changers", or, later, by the name of their party, "Swarajists".)
The pro-changers, led by C.R. Das and Motilal Nehru, at least claimed they wanted to enter the Councils to "expose" them as "sham parliaments", and "obstruct every work of the Council". C.R. Das made a famous speech arguing for "Swaraj" for "the masses", not simply "the classes". Of course, their behaviour in the Councils was soon to expose this radical posturing itself as sham; but at least the pro-changers were frankly admitting the shallow mass base of the Congress and were providing some concrete programme of activity.
Gandhi, by contrast, wanted the Congress to concentrate solely on "constructive" work. This consisted of spinning thread, temperance campaigns, and uplift of untouchables.
Gandhi's perception was that anti-imperialist struggle had to be shelved temporarily while India was purified of its various evils. The evils he selected and the perspective he chose were very limited.
For instance, in taking up the problems of untouchables he deliberately ignored economic grievances and focussed solely on questions such as their right to enter temples. In contrast to Ambedkar, Gandhi asserted that he was not against the caste system itself, he was against what he felt were its abuses - such as untouchability. Implicitly, if the caste system were rid of such practices, Gandhi would not oppose it. Gandhi in 1925 criticised the anti-caste movement in Travancore led by Sri Narayan Guru, and in 1927 defended Varnashrama. On this profoundly important aspect of Indian society, then, Gandhi's stand was fundamentally reactionary.
At any rate, neither the pro-changers nor the no-changers were preaching any form of class struggle, or even mass movements against the British. The entire controversy was merely between opposing cliques fighting for control of the Congress. It is perhaps for this reason that the Congress managed to resolve it so easily (albeit ingeniously).
The Gaya session rejected Council entry by 1,740 votes against 890, but Nehru and Das went ahead in March 1923 to set up a Swaraj Party for the coming elections to the Councils. By September 1923, a compromise had been struck whereby Congressmen were allowed to stand for elections while expressing faith in the "constructive" programmes.
Gandhi was released from jail in February 1924, and finding that his sole executive authority had not adequately been taken note of, argued at the June 1924 AICC session for a minimum spinning qualification for membership(!), removal of those who had entered the Councils from the ranks of Congress office-bearers, and total condemnation of a recent incident in Bengal in which a young Bengal revolutionary, Gopinath Saha, attempted to murder a notorious English officer.
The first two resolutions were defeated, and the third won by 78 votes to 70. Gandhi would clearly have to look for another opportunity to reassert his authority. Under the conditions, he came rapidly to a compromise: Swarajists would be allowed to work in the Councils "on behalf of the Congress and as an integral part of the Congress", while the constructive workers would be allowed to pursue their meaningless activities. (The compromise on the spinning qualification was arrived at in what is, perhaps, a parable of Gandhian economics: each person was required to spin 2,000 yards, but he could also have a substitute spin it on his behalf!)
The absence of any ideological division between the pro-changers and the no-changers was revealed in 1924 when many firm no-changers, such as Rajendra Prasad and Vallabhbhai Patel, participated in the elections to become the heads of the Patna and Ahmedabad municipalities, respectively. Other Congress mayors included Das (Calcutta), Rajendra Prasad (Patna), and Jawaharlal Nehru (Allahabad).
In the Councils, the Swaraj Party, which had won its election on the basis of a programme of "consistent obstruction" of the Councils, announced its intentions to collaborate wholesale. At the very outset, C.R. Das declared that "his party had come there to offer their co-operation. If the Government would receive their co-operation, they would find the Swarajists their men."
In 1925, C.R. Das declared that he saw signs of "a change of heart" in the Government. The Swaraj Party, in a search for office, soon formed coalitions with all the elements who were loyalists of the Raj. This rendered impossible even mild reformist programmes.
Not that the Swarajists themselves were interested in social change: when a bill came up to protect at least marginally the rights of Bengal tenants against zamindars, the Swarajists, including Subhas Chandra Bose, vigorously opposed it. (This intensified Muslim alienation with the Congress, since the tenants were largely Muslim.)
The Swarajists - including Das in 1925 - were also sorely tempted by the possibilities of holding ministerial office and distributing patronage, and soon a substantial section of them actually did so, breaking away from the party for the purpose. In sum, the so-called "Congress culture" of betraying promises for the fruits of office began, not recently, but as soon as office was available.
At the time that the Congress was debating which form of non-militant programme to take up, a significant tribal peasant guerrilla war was being fought in the Godavari forest area of Andhra under Alluri Seetarama Raju's leadership from 1922 to 1924. Significantly, Seetarama Raju explicitly rejected Gandhian non-violence (he "spoke highly of Mr Gandhi", but considered that "violence is necessary") and prepared groups to carry out armed struggle against exploitation. It took the Madras Government almost two years, Rs. 15 lakhs, and the extra assistance of the Malabar Special Police and even the Assam Rifles in order to crush the rebellion.
During the post-non-cooperation period anti-feudal struggles persisted in Rajasthan (among the Bhils of Mewar, the Bijolia peasantry, and the Alwar peasants), in Bengal (Tippera and Chittagong), and U.P. (Rae Bareli, Bara Banki). In most cases the Congress was absent from the scene; in the case of U.P. it attempted to play a moderating role. The Congress also significantly absented itself from the major anti-caste agitations springing up at this time under the leadership of E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker in Tamil Nadu, Satyashodhak agitators in Satara (Maharashtra), and Ambedkar among the Mahars of Maharashtra.
The same period - 1922 onwards - saw the emergence of the Communist Party as various scattered groups in Lahore, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Kanpur and abroad moved towards some form of co-ordination. The British were thrown into a panic at the very first signs of this development, and instituted a series of major conspiracy cases (five Peshawar conspiracy cases between 1922 and 1927, the Kanpur conspiracy case in 1924, and the Meerut conspiracy case in 1929) despite the small numerical strength of Communists at this stage. What frightened the British, even at the outset, were the ties being forged between Communist groups and mass struggles, and the turn such struggles would assume thereby. It was in this period that the Congress and other compromising leaderships were having trouble restraining the workers in Jamshedpur and Bombay, who carried out major strikes; the Buckingham Carnatic Mills (Madras) and the North-Western Railway too saw massive strikes, but under radical leaderships.
The Communist Party of India (CPI) took clearer shape in the post-1925 period (though the actual date of its formal founding remains a matter of controversy). Most of its early members had a background of militant participation in the nationalist movement. The Bolshevik revolution in Russia had further opened up to them the vision of a state of workers and peasants. Moreover, the new-born U.S.S.R. and the Communist International took clear-cut stands in support of the anti-imperialist struggles of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Within the CPI, according to the available material, there were various trends. The party's policies tended to swing between advocating working rigidly independently of the Congress-led mass organisations, and on the other hand portraying the Congress as the leader of the national struggle.
At any rate, by their emphasis on, and hard work among, the toiling classes, especially workers, their demand for land distribution (albeit not backed by a peasant movement), and their clear demand for full independence, the Communist cadre were able to rapidly expand their following - particularly among the working class. Their categorical demand for full independence (in contrast to the Congress) won many militant nationalists' support.
Simultaneously, a sharp and pointed exposure of the Congress was coming from the Hindustan Republican Association (H.R.A.), started in 1925 by the veteran revolutionary Sachin Sanyal and Jogesh Chandra Chatterji. It soon drew in its fold the Punjab revolutionaries led by Bhagat Singh.
In October 1924, the founding council of the H.R.A. decided "to preach social revolutionary and communist principles". The H.R.A. in 1925 declared its aim to be "the abolition of all systems which make the exploitation of man by man possible". It also declared its intention of starting "labour and peasant organisations" and of working for "an organised and armed revolution".
In 1926 Bhagat Singh's group started open work in Lahore as the Naujawan Bharat Sabha. (A Lahore Students' Union was also started, with some following.) The Sabha held open lectures to students, youth and villagers analysing the world situation, exploitation, and the exploits of the revolutionaries.
The Sabha directly recalled the Punjabi traditions of Ajit Singh's group and the Ghadr revolt. As with those groups, the Sabha abjured all forms of communalism, and its prominent members included Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs.
In the mean time, the Hindustan Republican Association suffered a setback when, after carrying out an action, a number of revolutionaries were arrested in the Kakori conspiracy case of 1925. Raising revolutionary slogans and singing revolutionary songs, they used the court as a platform for propaganda. They also went on a successful hunger-strike to demand political prisoner status. Four revolutionaries - Ramprasad Bismil, Roshan Singh, Rajendranath Lahiri, and Ashfaqulla - were hanged in the Kakori conspiracy case.
With this, the leadership of the groups passed increasingly to Bhagat Singh and his comrades. Bhagat Singh's rapid philosophical development helped the group to broaden its perspective, bringing it closer to the scientific world-view, that is, Marxism.
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