Indian
National Congress
From its foundation on 28 December 1885 until the
time of independence of India on 15 August 1947, the Indian National Congress
was the largest and most prominent Indian public organization, and central and
defining influence of the Indian Independence Movement.Founded upon the
authority of British civil servant Allan Octavian Hume, the Congress was
created to form a platform for civic and political dialogue of educated Indians
with the British Raj. After the First War of Indian Independence and the
transfer of India from the East India Company to the British Empire, it was the
goal of the Raj to support and justify its governance of India with the aid of
English-educated Indians, who would be familiar and friendly to British culture
and political thinking.
Communist
Party of India
The Communist Party of India (CPI) has officially
stated that it was formed in 25 December 1925 at the first Kanpur Party
Conference. As per the version of CPI(M), the Communist Party of India was
founded in Tashkent, Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic on 17
October 1920, soon after the Second Congress of the Communist International.
The founding members of the party were M.N. Roy, Evelyn Trent Roy (Roy's wife),
AbaniMukherji, Rosa Fitingof (Abani's wife), Mohammad Ali (Ahmed Hasan),
Mohammad ShafiqSiddiqui, Rafiq Ahmed of Bhopal and M.P.B.T. Acharya, and
Comrade Sultan Ahmed Khan Tarin of NWFP. So,According to their declaration
only,Party formed in Foreign land with 3 governing body members are Bengali,3
from Muslim community & 2 fireigners who were wives of their prominent
leaders. Most of the members were from Minority communities. The CPI says that
there were many communist groups formed by Indians with the help of foreigners
in different parts of the world and the Tashkent group was only one of them.
Communist
Party of India (Marxist)
Communist Party of India (Marxist) (abbreviated
CPI(M) or CPM) is a communist party in India. The party emerged from a split
from the Communist Party of India in 1964. The strength of CPI(M) is
concentrated in the states of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura. It is notable
these 3 states were having maximum or notable presence of minorities. As of 2015, CPI(M) is leading the state government in
Tripura. It also leads the Left Front coalition of leftist parties. As of 2013,
CPI(M) claimed to have 1,065,406 members. CPI(M) is organised on the basis of
democratic centralism, a principle conceived by Vladimir Lenin which entails
democratic and open discussion on policy on the condition of unity in upholding
the agreed upon policies. The highest body of the party is the Politburo.
Recently Mr Gautam Deb, a Communist leader from West Bengal, has given
a statement where he admitted the declining strength of the Communists is West
Bengal is no match to take Trinamool Congress (TMC) head-on in election and
further advocated for coalition of Communists and Congress in West Bengal to
fight TMC in assembly election which is due to be held on first half of 2016.
In another statement Mr Somnath Chatterjee, ex-Speaker of Lok Sabha, endorsed
Deb’s statement. With this recent development in West Bengal Politics, we would
like to bring in front of our reader, the chemistry between these two political
parties. In this article we will take a
look at the stances of Communist Party of India and Indian National Congress at
various historical events of India. At some they were at different poles and
for many they were at same pole.
Quit India Movement
The Quit India Movement (Hindi: भारत
छोड़ो आन्दोलन Bharat Chhodho Andolan), or the India
August Movement (August Kranti), was a civil disobedience movement launched in
India on 8 August 1942 by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The All-India Congress
Committee proclaimed a mass protest demanding what Gandhi called "an
orderly British withdrawal" from India. It was for the determined, which
appears in his call to Do or Die, issued on 8 August at the Gwalior Tank Maidan
in Mumbai in 1942. What was the precise
Communist position at the Bombay AICC and how did the Congress leadership
tackle them? At that time, the Communists had a small but active
contingent in the AICC. Many of them did not go to the Bombay AICC; they
knew by that time what its outcome would be. Just over a dozen of them were
present at the AICC and the amendments they moved were mostly to avert the
immediate unleashing of a mass campaign against the British Government but to forge unity between the Congress and the
Muslim League so that they together might extract a national government as
a prelude to freedom. They knew these amendments were fore-doomed. In his final
speech Gandhiji congratulated the Communists for their courage to dissent, to
“learn not to lose courage even when we are in a hopeless minority and the
laughed at”. One can argue whether Gandhiji mocked or laughed at the communists
by that sentence.
In the nationwide ‘Quit India’ struggle that followed
the Bombay AICC, the Communists not only kept out but at many places actively
intervened so that strikes did not disrupt production which might hamper war
efforts. Their political campaign was totally ineffective and thoroughly
isolated them from the entire segments of the public who came forward to
participate in the ‘Quit India’ struggle.
On 5 May 1944, when Gandhiji came out of prison, the
Communist Party leadership represented their position before him seeking to
neutralise the angry complaints of many Congressmen against the Communists. One
of the young Communists so sent to Gandhiji was Mohan Kumaramanglam who later on, in
the late sixties, himself left the CPI and joined the Congress and became an
important Minister under Indira Gandhi after the 1971 elections.
But these representations to Gandhiji did not help
the Communists. When the bulk of the Congressmen were released from prison in
1945, there were angry attacks on the Communists at many places and the raiding
of their office premises. What is significant is that this outburst of
Congressmen was confined against Communists alone and not against those
Congress leaders who had stayed away from the ‘Quit India’ movement. The formality of Communist expulsion from
the Congress came towards the end of 1946. Two years later, the
Socialists on their own left the Congress, thereby making it clear that
nonconformists would have no place within the Congress.
This was the turning point within the premier party
in the country. In five years, one found many of the heroes of the
storm-centres of the ‘Quit India’ struggle of 1942 finding themselves in the
company of the Communists—Nana Patil of Satara, AjoyMukherje of Tamluk,
VirBahadur Singh in Balia-Azamgarh, and ArunaAsaf Ali herself.
During India’s Independence
 |
| Shripad Amrit Dange |
Around the time that the British decided to transfer
power to the Indians, the CPI found itself in a not very happy situation. For
once their disassociation with the Quit India movement made them unpopular with
the people. Secondly huge support that the Congress garnered ran contrary the
CPI's portrayal of it as a mere bourgeoisie party.
Internationally also CPI found itself lost. At the
start of World War II, the Communist International (Comintern) supported a
policy of non-intervention, arguing that the war was an imperialist war between
various national ruling classes. But when the Soviet Union itself was invaded
on 22 June 1941, the Comintern changed its position to one of active support
for the Allies. Stalin disbanded Comintern
in 1943. It is inferred that the dissolution came about as Stalin wished to
calm his World War II Allies (particularly Franklin Delano Roosevelt and
Winston Churchill) not to suspect that the Soviet Union was pursuing a policy
of trying to foment revolution in other countries.
The CPI was in a state of confusion and the Party
clearly needed advice. In July 1947, P.C. Joshi, the then General Secretary,
secured Shripad Amrit Dange's entry to USSR.
 |
| Andrei Zhdanov - Chairman of the Soviet of the Union (12 March 1946 - 25 February 1947) |
On the day India got freedom, 15 August 1947 Dange was in
Moscow talking to the Soviet leaders. Andrei
Zhdanov and Mikhail Suslov, leading Soviet theorists of the period,
participated in the 1947 talks with Dange. The following free and frank
exchange between Dange and Zhdanov on the day after the India's Independence
day, that is, on 16 August 1947, brings out the chaotic situation in which the
Communist Party of India found itself at that historical juncture. Further
Zhdanov asks Dange to explain why the Congress managed to strengthen its
authority. Dange opines that during the war the Congress, taking into account
the anti-English sentiments of the wide masses, opposed the English and by this
action acquired a semblance of a national organisation fighting for the
national sovereignty. The Communist Party during the war supported the allies,
including the English and by this action weakened its influence as a lot of
people could not correctly understand the position of the Party. A considerable
part of the supporters of the Communist Party during the war shifted to the
Congress.
 |
| Mikhail Suslov - Head of the Department of Relations with Foreign Communist parties |
The Soviet leaders closely questioned Dange about the
Congress. For years questions regarding what attitude should be taken toward
the Congress would be debated inside the left parties in India. The following
portion shows Dange's attitude towards the Congress and Muslim League, at that
time.
Zhdanov: What is Nehru – a capitalist or a landowner?
Dange: A bourgeois.
Zhdanov: And Jinnah?
Dange: Also a bourgeois. He is an eminent advocate,
has acquired a lot of money and has invested it in enterprises. Nehru also
belongs to a family of eminent advocates and has invested his substantial
savings in the Indian company of Tata...
This
article will continue……
Reference
Þ
Later arrested, tried and
sentenced to hard labour in the Moscow-Peshawar Conspiracy Case in 1922; see
NWFP and Punjab Government Intelligence Reports, Vols 2 and 3, 1921-1931, at
the IOR, British Library, London, UK
Þ
M.V. S. KoteswaraRao. Communist
Parties and United Front – Experience in Kerala and West Bengal. Hyderabad:
Prajasakti Book House, 2003. p. 88-89
Þ
Ganguly, Basudev. S.A. Dange –
A Living Presence at the Centenary Year in Banerjee, Gopal (ed.) S.A. Dange – A
Fruitful Life. Kolkata: Progressive Publishers, 2002. p. 63.
Þ
M.V. S. KoteswaraRao. Communist
Parties and United Front – Experience in Kerala and West Bengal. Hyderabad:
Prajasakti Book House, 2003. p. 89
Þ
Robert Service, Stalin. A
biography. (Macmillan - London, 2004), pp 444-445
Þ
"Transcript" of the
Discussion held on 16.VIII.1947 from 6 pm to 8 between Comrade A.A. Zhdanov
with Com. ShripadAmritDange, Member of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party Of India.
Þ
This freedom is bogus.
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