Great Depression and India

A severe depression gripped the world capitalist economy from the end of 1929 and influenced the colonial economy and polity as well as people’s movements in India in more ways

The Civil Disobedience Movement

In Parts II and III we have seen how the Gandhian leadership scuttled the non-cooperation Khilafat movement when it went out of Congress control and started injuring landlord interests and

Political Role of CPI

Thus ended the great COM in the very first year of which almost a lakh of people went to jail and the import of foreign cloth was reduced by 50%

Documents on Party Line

As we have seen, the CPI during 1929-34 refused even to try to unite with the Congress as a conditional and probably temporary mass ally against the main enemy, thus

From Fragmentation to Reorganisation

“The building of a centralised, disciplined, united, mass, underground communist party is today the chief and basic task long ago overdue” — declared the Draft Platform of Action in December

CPI And the Congress : 1937-39

Having already studied the experience of Congress ministries, we can now take up the important CPI documents on this score and on relations with the Congress in general. The general

Agitprop And Party Building

The process of Party reorganisation started in late 1933 (see the chapter from Fragmentation to Reorganisation in Part IV) progressed through the next two years amidst severe repression. After the

CPI Leads Workers’ Struggles

In this chapter we shall briefly examine the metamorphosis of the Indian working class from a 'class in itself to a 'class for itself in the process of continued struggle

The Neglected Peasant Movement

In this chapter we shall give an outline sketch of the peasant movements in our period and try to understand the communists’ efforts and weaknesses in this most crucial front. National

CPI on Other Fronts

In the formative period the Party could take very little planned initiative to organise the following fronts, though from time to time it would issue calls to students and youth,