V. Grigoryan
These two reports by V. Grigoryan, of September and December 1949, summarise, in the context of the reactionary pro-imperialist and pro- feudal Nehru government, the problems associated with the politics and practice of the three principal groups within the CPI. First, the limitations of the right-wing P.C. Joshi group which had a conciliatory role with regards to the Nehru regime; second the left-sectarian Trotskyite-Titoist group headed by B.T. Ranadive which refused to recognise the semi- colonial and semi-feudal character of the Indian state and considered that socialist revolution was the order of the day. This group took a Trotskyist position on the role of Mao’s understanding embodied in On People’s Democratic Dictatorship which recognised the need for further development of capitalism in China, along the lines of the views of Lenin with regard to Russia, and the requirement of a multi-class dictatorship led by the working class in that semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. Grigoryan further evaluates the third communist group headed by M. Basavapunnaiah and Rajeswara Rao for its attitudes to the kulaks. In later writings Soviet communists including Stalin indicated the limitations of the Andhra Committee in drawing lessons from the Chinese revolution when they did not take into account the benefits which had existed from the liberation of northern China by the Red Army which advantage the Indian democratic forces would not have in the absence of an adjacent socialist country. The polemics of the Indian communist movement in the period 1947-1953 maintain their relevance as the profound errors of that period were reproduced in the post-Stalin period. The CPI and the CPI M rapidly dropped the understanding of the semi- colonial character of the Indian economy despite the multiplication of foreign capital in the country while the CPI ML reproduced the limitations of the Andhra Committee in a concentrated form with the addition by Charu Majumdar of individual terrorism allied with the focoism of Che Guevara. The Trotskyist-Titoist understanding of BTR of the end of imperialism and the survivals of feudalism and the need for socialist revolution, as opposed to People’s Democracy, as the immediate objective, have been repeated from the 1980s by neo-Trotskyists such as Ram Nath and Moni Guha and those inspired by their reformist ideology.
Vijay Singh.
I
Top Secret
On your instructions the Foreign Policy Commission of the CC of VKP(b) has gathered and reviewed the following materials, characterising the position of the Indian communist party.
1. Report of the Secretary General of the CP of India, Ranadive, “Strategy and tactics in the struggle for the people’s-democratic revolution in India”Besides that, we have looked through the editorials of the theoretical organ of the Indian CP, “Communist”, written in development of Ranadive’s report, “Strategy and tactics in the struggle for the people’s democratic revolution in India”.
Documents and materials of the Indian CP suggest that its new leadership, elected at the 2nd Party Congress in March 1948, is facing serious difficulties, caused by changes in the political situation in India after it had received the so-called “independence” in August 1947.
As a result of a deal between the English imperialists and the Indian bourgeoisie which has betrayed the national interests of its people, the English imperialist power has left the visible stage, and the political power in India was given to the Indian bourgeoisie.
The current ruling party of the Indian bourgeoisie, the National Congress, which was leading the national liberation movement before India has received the dominion’s rights, was promising that it would fight for the full independence of India, for the formation of the sovereign democratic state. The National Congress had promised to the India’s popular masses that it would nationalise the main branches of the Indian economy, to abolish the feudal land ownership, to conduct a series of social reforms, in order to improve the living conditions of the working people.
But once it came to power, the Indian bourgeoisie did not fulfil any of its promises. It has abandoned the slogan of the struggle against the British imperialists in India, trying to assure that India has received the independence it was struggling for, while in reality India remained as a dominion in the British empire renamed into the “Commonwealth of Nations”. Hypocritically declaring that India has an independent foreign policy, in reality the Indian government conducts foreign policy in the interests of the British imperialists and the Anglo-American bloc as a whole, which is confirmed, in particular, by the position of India in the voting on the most important issues in the UN, and also in already signed and being in preparation agreements between India and the US, which open the doors to India widely for the American capitalism. The dependence of India from the British imperialists is also confirmed by the fact that the English remain in many important posts in the army and in the civil service, in particular, they are at the head of the Indian navy and air forces.
In the economic sphere the position of the British monopolies in India remain totally unshaken. The British imperialists have kept their monopoly in the banking sphere, in insurance companies, in the jute industry, in the sea transport, in the manganese ore mining, in tea plantations. The main branches of economy remain in hands of the British colonialists. The Indian “national” government officially declared that it abandons its plans of nationalisation for at least 10 years, in practice – forever.
Being afraid of its own people, Indian bourgeoisie has made a deal with the British imperialists, is attempting to gain support from the US imperialists, is consolidating the internal reactionary forces, having became allies with the Indian feudals and landlords. The proof of this is the method of solution of the issue of the Indian feudal princely states and the refusal of the Indian bourgeoisie to fulfill its promise to the people, about the liquidation of the landlords’ land ownership. The unification of the princely states and the inclusion of their parts to the existing administrative units in India is conducted in such a way that in practice, all the fullness of rights to exploit the peoples remain in the hands of the princes. The land remains completely in ownership of the feudals and landlords.
Instead of the promised democratic order the peoples of India have received despotism and unseen terror of the military and police authorities, aimed against all democratic parties and organisations, in the first place, against the Communist Party of India.
The political situation formed in India after the transmission of power from the British imperialists to the Indian bourgeoisie, has changed the relations between classes, various social groups and their political parties and organisations, has led to a new balance of the class forces.
The Indian bourgeoisie, a significant part of which is connected by many threads with English imperialism, as well as it is deeply connected with the land ownership and the whole system of feudal exploitation of the broad masses of the Indian people, as confirmed by the experience of the last 2 years, is unable to resolve any of the tasks of the development of India, of turning of India into a truly independent, democratic state.
At present, the only force that is truly capable of gathering and leading the popular masses to the struggle for a true national independence, for the abolition of feudal landlords’ exploitation, for the establishment of the people’s democracy regime, for the realisation of the most urgent demands of the broad popular masses, is the working class of India.
Due to changed conditions the leadership of the Indian CP had to make a decision on the main issue, the definition of the current stage of India’s revolutionary development, so that then, taking it as a base, the CP of India could outline correctly the strategical and tactical tasks, in particular, to decide correctly the issues of the direction of the main strike and of the allies of the working class.
It is precisely these issues that are causing serious difficulties for the leadership of the CP of India, there is no clear understanding of the new conditions in India, there is also no certainty and unity in defining the party’s task, which can be explained by the insufficient armament of the party by the Leninist-Stalinist theory and by the insufficient experience of revolutionary work.
For example, the Secretariat of one of the biggest provincial organisations of the CP of India, Andhra, in which there are 2 members of the Politbureau and 4 members of the Central Committee of the CP of India, has published a document in which the current stage of India’s development equals the stage of the February Revolution in Russia, and the Nehru government equals that of Kerensky, and they come to the following conclusion:
“The revolution in India, being a revolution in a semi-colonial country, where only the bourgeoisie has full power, is a bourgeois democratic revolution, a new democratic revolution and not a proletarian revolution.
That is why we should not conduct struggle against the kulaks. Not only kulaks, but also other groups of middle class bourgeoisie can be neutralised, if we consider that only the big bourgeoisie can be comprador.”
Sharply criticising the point of view of the committee of Andhra, Secretary General Ranadive declares in his report “Strategy and tactics in the struggle for the people’s democratic revolution in India”, that has been approved by the Politbureau of the CC of the CP of India, on the issue of the current stage of the revolution in India: “This is not a February revolution, because our goal is not the overthrow of autocracy, but depriving of bourgeoisie of their rights. This is not October Revolution, because, even though we destroy the political rights of the bourgeoisie, we are still unable to put forward the slogan of the immediate establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, because the in-between layers, parties and classes have not fully exhausted all their abilities yet, and because of that we cannot exclude a possibility of a bloc with them...” and “we can establish that the stage of revolution on which we find ourselves, partially has the specifics of both of the stages of the Russian revolution”.
After that Ranadive gives the following definition of the strategic tasks of the Indian CP at the current stage (with the approval of the CP of India), “If we have to define our strategy following Lenin’s example, then we can present it in a following way: Our goal is to overthrow the capitalist government, led by a coalition of the imperialists, bourgeois and feudals, to abolish completely the remains of the middle ages and to move forward towards to the period of economic transition, by realising nationalisation etc. The main force of the revolution is the proletariat. The closest reserve force is the agricultural workers, the poorest peasantry, the middle class of farmers, and also the oppressed part of the small bourgeoisie in the cities. The direction of our main strike is the isolation of the ruling bourgeoisie circles from the masses, and also isolation of other bourgeois and petit bourgeois parties and groups (Socialist Party etc), The plan of the disposition of forces: the proletariat should realise the people’s democratic revolution, by joining forces with the agricultural workers and the poorest peasantry, that will be followed by the middle class farmers, in order to break the ranks with the bourgeoisie, to isolate it and to break its resistance forces”.
On the issue of the attitude towards the Indian bourgeoisie and the current government, the materials of the Indian CP state that the current government serves the interests of the capitalists and the landlords, that it serves the interests of imperialists, that it is subservient to the imperialists, that the bourgeoisie has achieved the unlimited freedom of exploitation of its own people, and that is why not just the large bourgeoisie, but the whole bourgeoisie is interested in the defence of the new state.
The direction of the main strike against the new bourgeoisie is described as following reasoning:
“The Indian bourgeoisie is the most militant and the most active partner in the coalition of three forces: bourgeoisie, feudals and imperialists…” “…In the conscience of a people and also in the reality the struggle for the revolution should mean the struggle for the overthrowing of the National Congress’s power. It should be so because the Congress government and the bourgeoisie are no longer puppets, but also active partners and the leading force in that coalition”.
But the leadership of the Indian CP does not have as a goal the overthrowing of the power of the bourgeoisie, and finds the most important task to be the unmasking of the Indian bourgeoisie, of its deal with the imperialists and the union with the feudal, of its betrayal of the interests of the broad popular masses. The materials of the CC of the CP of India say on this matter:
“We have to remember that the majority of the people continue to consider those persons who are in power as their leaders, that the people still consider the current government as the national government, as the opposite of the previous imperialist government...”, “…the masses have not yet realised the fact that the national government is a collaboratory one, that the country is being sold out to the Anglo-American imperialism...”, “…If the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois government didn’t have any influence on the masses, and if they would have unmasked and discredited themselves in the eyes of the people, then the necessity of putting forward the slogan of immediate overthrowing of the government would have become clear.”
There is also no united opinion in the CP of India about the attitude towards the peasants, especially the kulaks. The leadership of several party organisations, including the regional committee of Andhra, thinks that because the landlords’ ownership of the land and the feudal relations in the countryside are not abolished, the kulaks will be interested in eliminating of feudal remnants that put breaks on the development of agriculture based on capitalist principles. Based on this, several party organisations came to a conclusion that it is not necessary to have a struggle against the kulaks on this stage, and in practice they have allowed the kulaks to lead peasants’ organisations and even accepted them as party members.
The Politbureau of the CP of India has condemned this policy in relation to the kulaks and has defined it as opportunistic distortion of the general party’s line, pointing out that:
“Under no circumstances should we consider kulaks as our allies. The experience of Telengana (the area of peasants uprising in the county of Hyderabad) also shows that the kulaks betray the struggle and that in reality, they belong to the enemies’ camp.” “A wrong position towards kulaks was adopted which has led to a situation when in many places they took upon themselves the leadership of the uprising, only in order to betray it”.
As for the help to the CPI in unmasking of the revisionist ideas of the former Secretary General of the party, Joshi, it is necessary to recommend to the Indian comrades to openly criticise him themselves first of all, because we have not seen any materials on this published in the open press.
The Chairman of the Foreign Policy Commission of the CC of the VKP(b)
RGASPI. F. 82. Op. 2. D. 1208. LL 53-66.
II
To comrade MOLOTOV V. M.
Hereby I attach the information note about the situation in the Communist Party of India.
The Chairman of the Foreign Policy Commission of the CC of the VKP(b)
<> (Signed)
III
Secret
The Communist Party of India (CPI) was founded in 1933.
The first Party Congress of the CPI took place in May 1943. 16,000 members were represented at this Congress. The Congress has adopted the Party statutes and has elected the Central Committee. Joshi was elected as the Secretary General of the party.
The Second Party Congress took place on February 28th-March 6th 1948 in Calcutta. 800 delegates were representing 90,000 party members. The Second Congress has adopted new party statutes and has elected the Central Committee led by the Secretary General Ranadive.
Almost all the time of its existence the party had to work in clandestine conditions. In July 1942 the British authorities have formally lifted prohibition on the party, but in practice they never stopped repressions against its members. Nehru’s provisional government that was created in August, 1946, has even strengthened the policy of repressions against the CPI. At present approximately 25.000 party members are detained in India, in prisons and concentration camps.
The All India Congress of Trade Unions is under the leadership of the CPI. It is the biggest and the most respected trade union organisation of India that unites approximately 600 trade union organisations and up to 800,000 members.
According to the Programme of the All India Congress of Trade Unions, its final goal is the nationalisation of the means of production and creation of a socialist state in India.
In 1936 The All India Peasants Union was created, with the direct involvement of the Communist Party, the “Kisan Sabha”. In 1938 the programme of this organisation was adopted, that included the issues of struggle against the rule of the British imperialism in India, and against the rule of Indian landlords, against the high rent, against forced labour, against illegal requisitions etc.
As a rule, important activists of the Communist Party were elected into the leadership of the All India Peasants Union. At present the “Kisan Sabha” counts up to 1 million members.
The CPI takes active part in the all people’s struggle for the national independence of India, involving new layers of the people into this struggle, those who previously were staying away from it, for example, population of certain princely states, soldiers, policemen.
Before the partition of India the CPI attempted to impede the deal between the British imperialists and the Indian bourgeoisie and has proclaimed to the Indian people the following slogans of the struggle against the British colonial rule in India: withdrawal of all English troops, nationalisation of the English companies in India, abolition of landlordism.
After the partition of the country the Communist Party explained to the masses that the British imperialists in fact continue to maintain power over both the newly created dominions and attempt to include them into the already created and newly projected by the Anglo-American bloc the military pacts, aimed at the Soviet Union and the countries of People’s Democracy. In the decisions of the ruling organs and in its media, the CPI points out that the position of British monopolies in India, after it was given “independence”, remain virtually the same, and that the leading branches of the economy continue to remain in hands of the British colonisers.
The Communist Party unmasks the betrayal of the top of the Indian bourgeoisie and the leadership of the Indian National Congress (the ruling party in India) who made a deal with the British imperialists, and points the popular masses towards continuation of the struggle for the national independence.
The Second Congress of the CPI in its decision on the political report has given a correct evaluation of the Soviet Union as the leader of the democratic camp and the organiser of the peoples struggle for peace, against the dangers of a new war.
The Congress has adopted a broad programme of struggle for a truly independent and democratic India. In order to achieve this, it was decided that it’s necessary to form a broad democratic front based on the union of workers with working peasants and other exploited layers of the Indian people, under the leadership of the working class. The following main demands became part of the programme of this broad democratic front: true national independence, total break with the British Empire and the Anglo- American bloc, close approachment with the Soviet Union and the countries of People’s Democracy, nationalisation of the main branches of the economy, confiscation of foreign, in the first place, British companies, abolition of the landlords’ land ownership without compensation, and giving of the land to those who work on it, abolition of the feudal Indian princely states, turning of India into a Union of the People’s Democratic Republics, based on the principle of national self determination.
The decisions of the documents adopted at the Second Congress of the CPI have sharply condemned the statements and the activities of the current Indian government. The Communist Party pointed out that the leaders of the Indian National Congress, after taking power, have not fulfilled even a single promise given by them to the popular masses. The Indian “national” government has officially declared that it is abandoning its plans of nationalisation for at the very least 10 years.
The CPI unmasks the lies of the Nehru’s government that it has an independent course in its foreign policy, and shows with concrete examples that the Indian government becomes more and more closely involved with the Anglo-American bloc, that it opens the doors of India more and more broadly to US capital.
The Second Congress of the CPI uncovered and sharply criticised the flaws in the party’s work. The old leadership with the Secretary General Joshi was promoting the reformist theory of the automatic collapse of Imperialism, together with the defeat of fascism in the Second World War. Using as an excuse the unwillingness to weaken the military efforts of the Allied Forces, the old CC of the CPI in practice did not factually maintain any struggle against the British imperialists and the feudal princes and landlords in India who gave them support.
The old CPI leadership also did not figure out the true nature of the collaborationist tactics of the Indian bourgeoisie, which was maintained in India by Nehru, did not understand the defeatist intentions of the leadership of the National Congress, did not unmask them and practically trailed in the tail of the leadership of the Indian National Congress.
The Second Congress has condemned the reformist bias in the party, and Joshi was not elected in its Central Committee. He made a speech at the Congress, admitting his mistakes, and agreed with the new line of the party which was adopted unanimously by the Congress.
But in reality Joshi continued to maintain his reformist line and began fractionalist activities which has led to his expulsion from the party in December 1949.
In November-December 1948 the Politbureau of the CC of the CPI has adopted a number of decisions which confirm that there is no unity in the CPI on a number of serious issues of policy and tactics. The leadership of the CPI has no clear understanding of a new reality in India, it has no confidence and no unity in defining the party’s tasks. In their fight against the right wing flaws the new leadership of the CPI is making left wing sectarian mistakes.
The main disagreements within the party are on the issue of the definition of the current stage of India’s revolutionary development, and on defining the main strategic and tactical tasks of the party, on the issue of the direction of the main strike. There are also some disagreements on the issue of the allies of the working class.
For example, the secretariat of one of the biggest provincial party organisations, in Andhra, which includes 2 members of Politbureau and 4 members of the Central Committee of the CPI, has published a document where it equals the current stage of the development of India with the February Revolution of 1917 in Russia and compares the Nehru government with the government of Kerensky.
Sharply criticising this position of the Committee of Andhra, the Secretary General of the CPI, Ranadive, in his report “Strategy and tactics in the struggle for people’s democratic revolution in India”, which was approved by the Politbureau, declares that the stage of the revolution in India at present partially has similarities with both stages of the Russian Revolution.
Thus, both the Committee of Andhra and the CC of the CPI mechanically transfer the conditions of development of the Russian Revolution onto the soil of the contemporary India, having forgotten about the colonial status and about the level of India’s development.
The leadership of the CPI declares that the current strategic task of the revolutionary movement in India is the overthrowing of the bourgeois government, realisation of the nationalisation of the main branches of economy and transfer towards the economy of transitional period.
The direction of the main strike against the national bourgeoisie is defined by the CC of the CPI as follows: “The Indian bourgeoisie is the most militant and the most active partner in a triple coalition – of the bourgeoisie, the feudals and the imperialists.” The CC of the CPI points out that the bourgeoisie as a whole is the enemy, because it has received unlimited freedom for the exploiting of its own people, and that is why the whole bourgeoisie has an interest in the protection of the existing system. The CC of the CPI enlists the whole bourgeoisie as enemies, not taking into account that there is no unity among the Indian bourgeoisie, and that there are some serious contradictions between the national bourgeoisie and the Anglo-American imperialists.
Speaking about the people’s democratic revolution in India, the CC of the CPI equals it with a socialist revolution, which causes the task to fight against the British imperialists to be disregarded as an independent task by the Indian communists in their practice. This is confirmed in the declaration of the leadership of the CPI that “freedom and independence now mean freedom from the world’s capitalist system, and not just from one or another imperialism.”
Such an approach covers up the fact that the British imperialists not only continue to maintain the leading positions in the most important branches of the economy of the country, but also, by using various forms of economic and political dependence of the current Indian government which has surrendered to them in practice, they practically continue to turn the internal and the foreign policy of India in their own interests.
Orientating of the popular masses on fighting against “forces of the world imperialism” can lead towards weakening of the struggle against a concrete enemy – the British imperialism – towards forgetting of the fact that the “independence” granted to India is in fact only a different form of the British colonial rule in India.
There are also differences within the CP of India on the issue of attitude towards the kulaks. The leadership of several party branches, including the provincial committee of Andhra, thinks correctly that because the landlords’ ownership and the feudal relations in the countryside have not been abolished, the kulaks will be interested in the abolition of the feudal remnants, which put brakes on the development of agriculture on a capitalist basis.
From their side, the Politbureau of the CC of the CPI declares the kulaks to be one of the main enemies, that a kulak as a capitalist will consider any movement aimed against the current bourgeois government of India as aimed also against him. In its decisions and its party documents the CC of the CPI attempts to prove that the current Indian countryside have moved already far along the capitalist path of development, that under current conditions the struggle against feudal relations in the countryside merges with the struggle against the new, capitalist exploiters in the countryside. Thus, the CPI’s leadership, by obviously overestimating the role of the capitalist elements, pushes to the background one of the most important tasks of the Indian revolutionary movement, — the struggle for the abolition of land ownership by landlords and the struggle against the feudal landlord order in India.
The CPI also mistakenly put forward the slogan of land nationalisation. The Second Party Congress which did not discuss the agrarian programme as a whole, has put forward a demand for the confiscation of all the landlords’ lands without redemption, and of dividing them among the peasants, under the motto “land to those who work on it”. But in one of Ranadive’s reports and in the article on the agrarian issue in the theoretical organ of the CPI they put forward the slogan of the nationalisation of the land.
Considering the fact that the nationalisation of land can put off from the Communist Party the numerous layer of the poor farmers, who own a very tiny plots of land, but nevertheless would not want to let it go, and also the middle income peasants who are being considered allies of the revolution at this stage, the CPI’s leadership thinks that it is possible to convince the middle income peasants that the nationalisation of land does not threaten their interests.
By putting forward in the current Indian conditions the slogan of the nationalisation of the land the CPI’s leadership puts under threat the possibility of attracting to their side of this very numerous, even though hesitating, ally.
The CPI’s leadership has committed a serious leftist error by criticising Comrade Mao. In an article published in their organ, “Communist” (issue 4, for June-July 1948) they placed the following quotation from one of Mao’s works: “Some cannot understand why the Communist Party of China is far from disapproval of capitalism, and even allows its development in practice. China first and foremost entirely does not wish to have foreign imperialism and national feudalism, but this not the case with national capitalism which is too weak.”
This article is a re-telling of the Report of Ranadive that has been approved by the Politbureau. The Report says that “new democracy is already defined in the opportunistic quotation of Mao as “dictatorship of many classes.”
Both the Ranadive Report and the article in the “Communist” contain accusations against Comrade Mao of opportunism, of moving away from the Marxist-Leninist positions, and they declare that “not a single Marxist can agree with this reactionary formulation”.
The examples given here demonstrate that in their struggle against right wing opportunist errors that have taken place and still do take place in the party, the CC of the CPI commits leftist sectarian errors which can lead towards the isolation of the Communist Party of India, towards its loss of the leading role in the workers’ and peasants’ movement in India, towards making it impossible for the CPI to create a broad democratic front, without which a people’s democratic revolution cannot be realised.
In the decisions of the Politbureau of the CC of the CPI in December 1948 and also in the reports of the provincial party committees some facts were revealed of the organisational weakness of certain party organisations, of the incorrect understanding and violations of the organisational principles of the party.
They also find it worthy to mention the extremely low ideological and political level of the majority of the party members and weakness of work aimed at the ideological and political education of the party members.
The majority of the party members have joined the party ranks during and after the war. The party ranks were filled to a large extent by those who come from the ranks of the petty bourgeoisie of the cities and the countryside. Representatives of the bourgeois intelligentsia and of the petty bourgeoisie dominate in the leading organs of the local party branches, on all levels, those who frequently were members of other parties before, and there are very few workers. Because of this leadership of several party branches has an arrogant and dismissive attitude towards workers.
The government’s terror against the Communist Party and the mass organisations led by it has caused a shaking and ideological mess among the least stable party members. Substantial part of the new party members has moved away from the party, being influenced by the repressions, several personages appeared to be traitors, several small groups of “putschists”, “leftists” were formed, mainly from those who were previously members of the petty bourgeois parties and terrorist groups.
In the conditions of those fluctuations and lack of unity, as well as the leadership of the CPI having committed the leftist sectarian errors, the right wing reformists have sharply strengthened their struggle against the CC of the CPI, after the expulsion from the party of their leader, Joshi. This struggle has led to a split within the party. According to the report from a TASS correspondent in November 1948, Joshi has created a separate “Communist Party of India”. It is not known yet how many members Joshi managed to split up, but the very fact of the split means that there is a great danger for the Communist Party of India, that its leading role in the struggle of the popular masses for the national independence has been weakened.
RGASPI F. 82. Op. 2. D. .1208 LL. 68-75.
Translated from the Russian by Irina Malenko.
Click here to return to the April 2019 index.