5. HEALTH REGULATIONS AND RISK MANAGEMENT PLAN
5.3. Risk management plan
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LEFT-WING IN THE CONGRESS HOW DID THE LEFTISTS COME TO THE FOREFRONT IN THE CONGRESS?
The Socialist movement in India, however, did not pursue a common idealogy. A section of the Indian Socialists remained within the Indian National Congress and formed its left wing. This left-wing within the Congress consisted of a small minority and was led by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose. In May 1933, when Gandhi suspended the Civil Disobedience Movement, Subhash Chandra Bose and Vithalbhai Patel issued a statement from Europe repudiating his leadership. More significant, as representing an ideological alternative was Jawaharlal's intellectual radicalisation in prison. His letters to his daughter, later published as Glimpses of World History (1934) , and the autobiography written in jail in 1934-35, mark the height of Nehru's interest in and partial commitment to Marxiam Socialist ideas.
Out of jail for a brief period between July, 1933 and February 1934, Nehru made clear his theoretical differences with Gandhi in letters and articles published as 'Whither India' repeatedly emphasizing the need to combine nationalist objectives with radical social and economic programmes. The election of Nehru as president of the Congress in 1929 and 1937 and that of Bose in 1938 and 1939 reflected the left-wing attitude of the Congress.
WHAT WAS ITS OUTCOME?
The aim of the left wing within the Congress was to remove the sufferings of the poor and the downtrodden sections of the Indian society, though not through violent means, but through gradual legislative process. But they could not succeed fully in achieving their objective mainly due to the domination of the Congress by the right-wing. Nehru drew back from any total breach with Gandhi and the Congress since he saw no reason why he should walk out of the Congress, leaving the field clear to the social reactionaries'. And opposition of Gandhi and his supporters compelled Bose to resign from the presidentship of the Congress in 1939. So he and many of his left - wing within the Congress towards the socialist movement in India remained inegligible.
However, it was due to the efforts of this left-wing that Congress agreed to declare the achievement of a socialist pattern of society as its goal after independence.
CONGRESS SOCIALISM WHAT LED TO ITS RISE?
Outside the Congress, the Socialist tendency led to the foundation of the Congress Socialist Party (1934) under the leadership of Acharya Nerendra Dev and Ja i Pr ak as h Na ra ya n, an d th e gr ow th of th e Communist party from 1920's itself. The founders and the supporters of the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) consisted of mainly those congressmen who broke away from the National Congress in order to establish a socialist order by non-violent means. The idealogy of its founders ranged from vague and mixed up radical nationalism to fairly firm advocacy of Marxian Scientific Socialism which Nerendra Dev distinguished sharply from mere 'social reformism'.
WHAT WAS THE OUTCOME?
The Congress socialist Party's quick advance in provinces like Uttar Pradesh was purely illusionary.
Much of the support was purely opportunistic, coming from groups with factional quarrels with the established Congress leaderhip at various levels, and most of the party's founding-fathers were to have extremely chequered and by no menas consistently leftist political careers in the future.
Yet the Congres Socialist party propaganda did help considerably in stimulating thinking in Congress ranks and leadership on questions like radical agrarian reform, problems of industrial labour, the future of princely states, etc.
COMMUNIST MOVEMENT WHAT WAS ITS ORIGIN?
Despite repeated allegations of British officials and some scholars that the whole Communist movement in India was no more than a foreign conspiracy organized from Moscow, it really sprang from roots within the national movement itself, as disillusioned revolutionaries, Non-cooperators, Khilafatists, and labour and peasant activists sought new roads to political and social emancipation. Its founder was the famous Yugantar revolutionary, Naren Bhattacharya (later known as M.N. Roy), who came into contact with Bolshevik Mikhail Borodin in Mexico in 1919, and went to Russia in the summer of 1920 to attend the second Congress of the Comunist International (Comintern). Here he embarked upon a celebrated
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and significant controversy with Lenin in deciding the strategy of Communists in the colonial world.
Lenin urged the necessity of a broad support to the predominantly bourgeois-led national movements in the colonies and semi-coeonies. Roy with the enthusiasm and sectarianism of a new convert argued that the Indian masses were already disillusioned with bourgeois-nationalist leaders like Gandhi and were moving towards revolution independently of the bourgeois-nationalist movement. The attitude towards the 'national bourgeoisie' and the nationalist mainstream in general would remain the basic issue in Communist controversies in India and else where till independence and even after it.
HOW WAS IT ORGANISED IN THE FIRST STAGE?
The rise and growth of the Communists in India can be seen in five stages, the first stage convering 1920 to 1928. In October 1920, M.N. Roy, Abani Mukherji (another ex-terrorist convert) and some Mujahirs (Khilafat enthusiasts who had joined the Hijrat in 1920 and crossed over through Afghanistan into Soviet territory) like Mohammad Ali and Mohammed Shafiq founded a Communist party of India in Tashkent, together with a political cum-military school. When hopes of penetrating India through Afghanistan faded away in early 1921, some of the new Indian recruits joined the Communist University of Toilers of the East at Moscow. Roy himself shifted his headquarters to Berlin in 1922. By the end of 1922, through emissaries like Nalini Gupta and Shaukat Usmani, Roy had been able to establish some tenuous and often-interecpted secret links with embryonic communist groups which had emerged.
The Non-cooperation and Khilafat experience in Bombay (S.A. Dange), and Lahore (Gulam Hussain), Left nationalist journals like 'Atmasakti' and 'Dhumketu' in Calcutta and 'Navayuga' in Guntur had started publishing eulogistic articles on Lenin and Russia, while from 1922 Dange was bringing out the weekly 'Socialist' from Bombay, first definitely communist journal to be published in India.
The veritable British panic in the face of emergence of a few tiny communist groups in India far exceeded the real immediate significance of such activities and be explained only by the world-wide ruling class fear inspired by 1917 Russian revolutions.
Mujahirs trying to re-enter India were tried in a series of five Peshawar Conspiracy cases between 1922 and 1927 and in May 1924 Muzaffar Ahmmad, S.A. Dange,
Shaukat Usmania and Nalini Gupta were jailed in the Kanpur Conspiracy Case. The setback caused by such repress measures, however, proved only temporary. An open Indian Communist Conference was held in Kanpur in December, 1925. Though floated by rather diverse groups, the skeleton organization set up by this conference was soon taken over by the determined Communists, and the united CPI in 1959 acknowledged the 1925 meeting to have marked the formal foundation of the party. Of much greater practical significance, however, was the embodiment, in a number of organizations set up between 1925 and 1927 of the idea of a broad front workers and peasants party to serve as a legal cover.
As a result, four workers and peasants parties were set up in Bombay, Bengal, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.
But these associations could achieve nothing till some communists arrived in India from Britain. One of them, Philip Spratt arrived in India in December, 1925, and infused new life in the Communist party of India.
He, with the financial assistance from Moscow increased the number of unions, conducted strikes and used all other possible methods of propaganda.
His efforts resulted in success and number of Communist members reached a high figure.
During this period, that is till 1928, the Indian Communists on the whole tried to work within the nationalist mainstream even while sharply criticizing Congress leadership for its many compromises with imperialism. They felt that the Congress should be opposed only on well defined, specific issues, for, otherwise, they might enable their opponents to the end of 1928, they had followed a unity-cum-struggle policy with regard to the Congress, criticizing its limitations but striving nevertheless to build an anti-imperialist united front.
WHAT WERE ITS ACTIVITIES IN THE SECOND STAGE?
The Second stage (1929-34) began with the adoption of a new ultra-leftist policy by Indian Communists according to the directions provided by the Sixth Comintern Congress held in December 1928.
They began to keep aloof from the nationalist mainstream in a highly sectarian manner, and severed all relations with the bourgeois elements. They launched an all-out attack on the Congress and its leaders, including Nehru, leading to its isolation in the Indian political scene. Thus, the communists were weakened during this period not just by repression
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(which was important enough, since they were still no more than a handful) but by this major change in their strategy.
The only success of the CPI during this period was the capture of the leadership of the All India Trade Union Congress. The party however, brought the wrath of the Government on it when it gave a call for a general strike by all textile workers on April 3, 1934. The strike succeeded but the government took its revenge. The party along with a dozen trade unions under its control was declared illegal. The party had no other alternative except to go underground.
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE THIRD STAGE?
The Third stage (1934-1940) began with the adoption by the Communists of the policy of infiltration into the Indian National Congress, Congress Socialist Party, the Forward Bloc and different students organizations. They gained large success. The Congress Socialist Party under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan and the left Consolidation Committee under the leadership of Subhash Chardra Bose welcomed them. The Communists took full advantage of this, placed their members in influential positions in these organizations and even succeeded in getting into the Congress Working Committee. But their game could not continue for very long, and they were thrown out of both the Forward Block and the Congress Socialist Party in 1940, while the left-wing within the Congress was forced to submit to the majority opinion of the right-wing by the end of 1939.
WHAT HAPPENED IN THE FOURTH STAGE?
During the fourth stage (1941-1947) the World War II created another problem for the CPI. When Germany invaded Russia and Russia joined the camp of the Allies, it asked the Indian Communists to support the British Indian Government. Since they agreed for it in December 1971, the party was declared legal by the Government. The Government, in turn,
secured its loyalty so much so that when the Congress started the Quit India Movement on 1942, the Communists acted as spies and stooges of the Government. That again brought down the image of the party among the Indians. The party, therefore, failed to win a single seat at the general elections to the Central Legislative Assembly in 1945. That was the reason which compelled the party to seek the goodwill of Jawaharlal Nehru and the Congress party after Independence. Yet, it was the only party which popularized genuine socialism and communism in India prior to Indian Indpendence.
WHY DID COMMUNISM FAIL THEN?
To begin with, the Communists lacked good and mature leadership which could make a proper assessment of the Indian conditions and rally the masses. Due to this, they blindly followed the dictates of the Comintern and in the process lost the sympathy of the Indian masses. This was quite evident in 1930 (Civil Disobedience Movement) and in 1942 (Quit India Movement).
Further, the Communists were also weakened by the internal rivalries, which led to the establishment of splinter groups. The ultra-leftism of 1929-34 led to a multiplicity of totally hostile groups and general isolation from the nationalist mainstream. Things were further complicated by the efforts of the Comintern dissidents, M.N. Roy and Soumendranath Tagore, to start the groups of their own.
Finally, the failure of the Communists was also due to the repression by the British Government which was terribly scared of the 'Red Menace' right from the Russian Revolution of 1917. The arrest of many communist leaders in several conspiracy cases such as the Peshawar Case (1922-27), Kanpur Case (1924) and Meerut Case (1929) definitely created many setbacks for the Communist movement. And the final ban on the CPI between 1934-41 also created problems for the communists.