The run-up to the initiation of the communist movement in India covered the first seventeen or eighteen years of the twentieth century. Let us, therefore, take a quick glance at
Communism in India arose on the high road of Indian people’s movements briefly discussed above. But to understand the historical conditions of its genesis, it will be necessary now to
The first world war, arising out of inter-imperialist conflict for redivision of world resources and territories, sharply exacerbated all the contradictions of Indian society. The principal contradiction — that between
Already on the eve of the first world war, Lenin in his “Right of Nations to Self-Determination” had laid down the essence of proletarian approach to the national question very
From the late nineteenth century onwards, Indian national struggle had been quite receptive and responsive to international political currents. There are many evidences to show that enlightened Indians were aware,
The chronology of events relating to the emergence of an Indian communist group in the Soviet Union is as follows.
1. Mahendra Pratap[1], arrived in Tashkent in February 1918, followed by
Almost simultaneously with but quite independently of the formation of a communist centre in Soviet Russia, the first communist elements and groups sprang up in India during 1921-22. These were:
(1)
From the Second Congress onwards, the Comintern was repeatedly advising communists in colonial countries to support and influence the national liberation movements. The communists in India, particularly those with a
Treason, treachery and conspiracy have always been the catchwords of the British imperialist rulers and their successors — the modern Indian ruling classes, against the Indian communists. Thus the conspiracy
One of the many curious events hi the history of communism in India was that the credit for organising the historic conference which united the scattered communist groups into one
Despite all these major weaknesses, it was this conference that adopted the first Party Constitution and elected the nucleus of an all-India leadership where all the erstwhile communist circles were
The Third Congress
The Third Congress met from June 22 to July 12, 1921 – only three month after the famine-stricken Soviet Land had concluded a peace treaty with Poland and
We have already surveyed the Indian scene upto February 1922, i.e., upto the withdrawal of the non-cooperation movement on the pretext of Chauri-Chaura. To the enthused fighters this came as
Any account of communist literary work in India has to start with SA Dange’s Gandhi Vs. Lenin, written in April 1921 and published openly from Bombay in the middle of
This was the period when the post-non-cooperation lull reached its lowest and then began a turn-around to culminate in the Civil Disobedience Movement starting in 1930. And this was the
After Chauri Chaura the two streams of Congress activities — one of swarajists in legislatures and the other of constructive workers and satyagrahis mainly in villages — dragged monotonously on
During the period under review (1926-early 1929) WPPs sprang up in Bengal, Bombay, Punjab, UP and Ajmer-Marwara with basically the same orientation and programme, but the actual process of their
After its foundation at the fag end of 1925, the CPI routed all its anti-imperialist agitations (e.g. against Simon Commission), TU activities and propaganda work through the WPPs. Originally and
The long-drawn sessions of this Congress (July 17 to September 1, 1928), the first one to be held after the new Soviet and Comintern leadership headed by Stalin had consolidated
The year 1928 presented the British government with a series of nightmares : the grand resurgence in workers’ movement, their increased involvement in national politics and the very prominent role
