Could the Communist Party of India (CPI) have made a decisive
difference? Here Jamil shows they had their own organisational
weaknesses. Above all they were prisoners of the policies imposed by
Stalin on the international communist movement. In backward and colonial
countries, Stalin decreed, the movement had to go through two stages -
democracy, then socialism. In Russia this had actually been the policy
of the Mensheviks, successfully overcome by the Bolsheviks in the
October Revolution. Jamil has demonstrated that, in India as everywhere
else, the 'progressive national bourgeoisie' was a myth. Yet this was
the non-existent class the CPI proposed to march behind in a 'Popular
Front'.
The policies imposed on the international communist movement by
Stalin were normally reformist, indeed counter-revolutionary. But
occasionally he lurched into an ultra-left phase as in 1947-48, called
the 'Zhdanov offensive.' In lurching from right to left, a drunk will at
one point be found upright. That is the significance of the correct
perception of what was happening in India by the Moscow commentators
Dyakov and Zhukov.
In
the 1940s the Communist Party of India (CPI) was a prisoner of the
policies imposed by Stalin on the international communist movement. In
backward and colonial countries, Stalin decreed, the movement had to go
through two stages - democracy, then socialism. This proved disastrous
for the workers of the whole of the Indian subcontinent.
In the Indian communist movement, there are different views on exactly when the Communist Party of India (CPI)
was founded. The date maintained as the foundation day by the CPI is 26
December 1925. But the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which
split-off from the CPI, claims that the party was founded in the USSR in
1920. During the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s the party was badly
organized, and in practice there were several communist groups working
with limited national coordination. The British colonial authorities had
banned all communist activity, which made the task of building a united
party very difficult. Only in 1935 was the party ready to be accepted
as the Indian section of the Communist Third International.
The Communist Party of India (CPI) could have acted as a powerful
factor in taking up the interests of national minorities in identifying
their specific interests and to fight for them within the framework of
their struggle for independence. It is true that the CPI arrived rather
late historically as an effective political force at a time when
communalism had already become a very powerful factor in Indian
politics; but even then if they had meaningfully linked up class
struggle with the struggle of national minorities since the early 1930s,
then the political developments in India could have taken a different
turn.
The importance of various national minorities, emphasised by Lenin as
far back in the early 1920s, was not properly grasped by the leaders of
the CPI, though in their own way they tried to formulate a policy on
the national question and unity of India as late as 1942. The CPI could
have acted as a powerful factor in taking up the interests of national
minorities, but in spite of making some efforts in that direction they
floundered on the national question and failed to expose the communal
designs and conspiracies of Indian big capital.
Role of the CPI
The CPI failed to inspire and mobilise the people and play an
effective role for two basic reasons. The CPI did not extend the
national question to properly embrace the various national minorities
other than the Muslim religious minority. The CPI depended too much,
almost entirely, on Congress-League unity as the outcome of the national
minority question and thereby left that question in real terms in the
hands of those who were already divided quite decisively as communal
parties of the upper and middle class Hindu and Muslim communities
respectively.
Thus they failed to inspire the religious, ethnic, linguistic and
other minorities, as well as the scheduled castes (untouchables) among
the Hindus, in identifying their specific interests and to fight for
them within the framework of their struggle for independence. The
failure of the CPI was disastrous because they could open separate
dialogues with Jinnah and the Sikhs and others on the question of
national minorities. But instead, they pursued a policy of uniting the
hands of Gandhi and Jinnah as leaders of the two most important and
dominated religious communities and depended in a ridiculous manner on
the prospect of a Congress-League understanding under the given
conditions. It is because of a wrong analysis of the Indian national
question and this failure of policy that the communist movement in India
suffered a terrible setback from which it has not yet been able to
recover.
It should be mentioned that at the second congress of the CPI in
February-March 1948, greatly influenced not only the communist party of
India and Pakistan but the history of the entire sub-continent. The
central committee of the CPI in the last week of June 1947 arrived at
certain decisions which were published as a ‘Statement of Policy'. In
that Statement of policy laid their attitude towards Nehru, in that they
characterised Nehru as a person who was capable of guiding the
democratic movement in India. The statement said, "In the area of
building the Indian Republic on a democratic basis, the Communist Party
would proudly extend full co-operation." Extending their policy to
Pakistan, they said that the Communist Party also thought that in order
to implement any democratic programme in the Sub-continent it was
necessary to unite the left of the Muslim League and the Congress.
Withdrawal
In order to extend their support to the Congress and Muslim League
regimes in Pakistan and India, the Communist Party virtually withdrew
all the programmes they were following just preceding independence. They
even withdrew the Tebhaga (sharecroppers) Movement in Bengal in
November 1947. The CPI made an appeal to the peasants not to initiate
any direct action in demanding two-thirds of the crops, because the new
government was to be given an opportunity to fulfil their promise. In
fact, no promise was ever given to the peasants regarding ‘Tebhaga' by
the new Muslim League in East Pakistan.
It is quite amazing that shortly before the division of India in June
1947, the Soviet theoretician A. Dyakov, in an article called "The New
British Plan for India" published in the Soviet paper, New Times,
on 13 June 1947, said "the division of the Indian sub-continent is a
well-planned conspiracy to keep the sub-continent under the British
imperialist control." He added that by submitting themselves to it the
Indian leaders had compromised with imperialism and in this they had
been forced by the Indian big commercial interests. Through this
arrangement imperialism and commercial interest had tried to sabotage
the revolution by dividing the home market between themselves.
Following Dyakov's article another article by Soviet theoretician E.
Zhukov called "Concerning the Indian Situation" was published in which
he said more clearly and in a straightforward manner that the Indian
National Congress was nothing but a representative of the Indian big
bourgeoisie and monopoly capital and in reality Congress entered the
reactionary camp. He also said that the bourgeoisie were afraid of the
people much more than imperialism.
From the articles of Dyakov and Zhukov it can be said that the Soviet
leaders and the CPI were well aware of the situation in India before
partition. Despite their awareness of the situation they were still
following the Stalinist stance of the Popular Front.
Following the Popular Front stance, the CPI theoreticians totally
failed to take into account the very clear power factors and the state
of the existing production relations. Thus they failed miserably to
analyse the actual situation in India after partition. In the absence of
such analysis their political line was full of imaginary ideas and
doomed from the very outset. It was nothing short of surrender to the
Indian ruling classes. In order to justify their line the Indian
communists involved themselves in the stupid exercise of separating
Nehru from Indian monopoly capital which he represented.
One of the biggest mistakes of the second congress of the CPI was
lumping India and Pakistan together as one unit. Much of their analysis
rested on their attitude to Jawaharalal Nehru, a factor totally
irrelevant to the situation of Pakistan. It is true that till that time
the CPI remained formally undivided, but this did not mean that exactly
the same strategy could be applicable to both India and Pakistan.
The relations of the class forces and the strength of the
organisation of the working people, the state of the party
organisations, as well as the power of the Indian big monopoly capital,
of the state and its armed forces, were not taken into consideration at
all while evaluating the situation in India at that time. Nothing could
be more futile than this blindness to obvious facts, and soon the
organisation of the CPI was deeply endangered more by their own stupid
acts than by any repressive measure of the governments of India and
Pakistan.
Colonial masters
All the problems of minorities survived after partition and there was
no sign of any attempt to improve the situation. The partition that
both the Hindu and Muslim majorities carved out with the help of the
colonial masters to their own advantage, was to the utter detriment of
the interests of minorities of all descriptions.
Large scale migrations followed in the wake of partition which
happened in its worst form and maddening proportions in West Pakistan
and West India, particularly on both sides of the Punjab, where
widespread riots broke out between Muslims on one side and Hindus and
Sikhs on the other, resulting in the killings of tens of thousands of
people and almost a total exchange of population.
The partition of India was, in a very real sense, a game of
majorities, and as such the interests of Muslim and Hindu minorities in
India and Pakistan respectively, and along with them, the interests of
scores of other minorities of British India remained a matter of
indifference to the Congress, the Muslim League and the British, who
presided over the partition of India.