It was only after Gandhi’s suspension of non-cooperation following the killing of a number of policemen at Chauri Chaura in 1922 that Roy’s criticism of the movement really came into its own. The abrogation nourished Roy’s disdain towards the INC in general and Gandhi (the last of a “long line of ghostly ancestors”249) in particular. To him, the factions
emerging in the aftermath of non-cooperation—the Swaraj Party headed by Motilal Nehru advocating entry into the representative organs created by the 1919 Montagu-Chelmsford reforms in order to blockade them from inside, the “responsivists” or Independents around Mohammed Ali Jinnah who took a more constructive stance towards council entry, and those who altogether rejected participation in British institutions and opted for the implementation of Gandhi’s “constructive programme” of spinning in the villages—were more or less interchangeable: None represented the interests of the ‘masses,’ and Dominion Status, as demanded by the Swarajists, would only perpetuate the subcontinent’s slavery.250
Accordingly, Roy’s turn towards the broad population as the only remaining agent and addressee of his progressive ambitions was all the more determined. This was borne out by the CPI’s first theoretical intervention, the Manifesto to the 36th Indian National Congress. Giving shape to Roy’s endeavor to set up counterweights against colonial, bourgeois, or
248 Sinha, The Left-Wing, 36.
249 Shanti Devi, “How to Organize a Working Class Party?,” Vanguard, 15 May 1922. Although written by
Evelyn Roy, it is representative of Roy’s stance as well.
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colonial bourgeois ‘reactionaries,’ it undertook to identify resistance among the ‘masses’ apart from nationalism in general and the Gandhian leadership’s spiritualized brand of mobilization in particular. The manifesto counselled “fellow countrymen” that the “mass revolt is directed against the propertied class, irrespective of nationality.”251 Only if the “immediate grievances” of the people were addressed would they continue to lend their support. Despite contradicting evidence, Roy deemed it impossible for the striking workers and protesting peasants to be moved by the “redemption of the Khilafat” instead of the “petty, but imperative necessities of everyday life” in their “sober moments.”252
Notwithstanding the conservatism of its guiding ideals, to him the movement highlighted that “the masses are showing unmistakably their desire for material betterment.”253
Indeed, the non-cooperation movement’s appeal seemed to have convinced Roy that conditions on the subcontinent were ripe for revolution. His India in Transition (1922), the first major Marxist work on South Asia, abounded with revolutionary optimism. It was to expose the mobilization’s “deep-rooted social character” and unveil the “revolutionary trend of the growing mass movement.”254 This diagnosis was holistic in scope: India was not
merely liberating itself from foreign domination, but was treading the path of comprehensive human emancipation, on which religious tradition barred the way. In consequent disregard of the slogans so effectively mobilizing the “growing mass movement,” Roy declared the country’s “entire store of popular energy” to be revolting against all “which has so far kept it backward and still conspires to do so,” even deeming the upheaval the “essence of the present transition.”255 To Roy, it was clear that “like all other
political movements in history,” Gandhi’s popular campaign for the restoration of ram rajya was an “expression of the urge of social progress.”256
In his zeal, he dug ever deeper into the mass protest’s layers of meaning, eventually concluding that its core was secular. His own mechanisms of selective perception developed during the muhajirin episode at Tashkent greatly assisted him during the process: to him, for example, Muslims’ susceptibility to the khilafat propaganda merely indicated the degree of economic discontent.257 Consequently, he opined that “politically speaking there is no
251 Roy, “Manifesto to the 36th Indian National Congress, Ahmedabad, 1921,” in Documents 1:132. 252 Roy, “Manifesto to the 36th,” quoted in Ahmad, Myself and the Communist Party, 148.
253 “Our Immediate Task,” Vanguard, 1 July 1922.
254 Roy, India in Transition (Bombay: Nachiketa [1922] 1971), 16. The book was a considerable success and
immensely influenced many of South Asia’s communist and socialist pioneers: Kumar, Communist Movement
in India, 9. For a more critical assessment, see Lieten, Colonialism, Class and Nation, 107.
255 All quotes in Roy, India in Transition, 18; see also ibid., 206. 256 “Constructive Programme,” Vanguard, 15 May 1922. 257 Roy, India in Transition, 235–8.
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question of sects in India’s liberation struggle,” and reasoned that there remained little justification for not establishing links with religious revolutionaries.258 In a direct inversion
of the various protest movements’ distinct metaphysical tinges, and in vivid contrast to the slogans that brought people into the streets, Roy fashioned them into “a reaction against the age-long resignation, created by religious teachings and the tenets of spiritual culture.”259
This stance granted no role to the religio-cultural complex other than that of an ephemeral nuisance. Subsequent publications would treat it as such: Roy’s first Program for
the Indian National Congress, written for the 1922 Gaya session, contained only a single
reference to religion. It curtly demanded freedom of conscience and the separation of religion and state. A contemporary phrase of his captured the unshakable conviction underneath his approach by congratulating himself to have found, at last, a philosophy that “enables us to untangle so easily every complicated social and historical phenomenon.”260
However, by untangling the “complicated social and historical” phenomena in this manner, Roy set about entangling the nascent communist party in what he would himself much later assess more lucidly as unfavorable terrain. His autobiography conceded that the “religious appeal certainly moved the masses, and it was indeed the motive force of the non-co- operation and Khilafat movements. […] The socio-cultural atmosphere, therefore, inhibited the growth of a democratic revolutionary spirit.”261
And yet, Roy’s zeal to conjure up a situation amenable to his revolutionary tastes did not solely derive from wishful thinking. His reports on the “powerful mass revolutionary movement” widely read in communist papers all over the world had been manufactured on the basis of unreliable evidence. For example, Usmani wrote in spring 1923 that the ‘masses’ were ready for immediate revolution, with the army standing by for a sign from the INC. Only much later he admitted that even from a contemporary perspective armed rebellion would not have been possible without foreign intervention.262 The upheaval on the subcontinent and its representation in the communist mind drifted ever further apart. However, there was a more realist string, too. Activists on the spot soon demonstrated that
258 “The Political Crisis in India,” Inprecorr, NMML, Roll No. 1921/3-B, 29.
259 Roy, India in Transition, 205; see also Engels, “The Condition of the Working,” 352–3.
260 “A Program for the Indian National Congress,” Vanguard, 1 December 1922; “On Gaya Congress,” in Roy,
Political Letters (Zürich: Vanguard Bookshop 1924), 9.
261 Roy, Memoirs, 412.
262 Ganguly, Leftism in India, 63. Roy himself conceded as much later: Roy, Memoirs, 541. On Usmani, see
Shaukat Usmani (interviewee), recorded by Hari Dev Sharma (interviewer), 20 December 1976,NMML-OHP, AccNo 307, 23–4, 28.
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theoretical shenanigans were not even required to appropriate a revolutionary movement for communism.