FREEDOM OF INDIA
Despite generally being neglected and discarded in the
historiography of India’s glorious freedom movement, it has to be accepted that
the Communists played a crucial role in the country’s freedom struggle, As the
country commemorates its 70th year of Independence Day, honouring
thousand of stalwarts and freedom fighters who laid down lives for the vision
of Independent India, only a few would acknowledge the contribution of
communists in the freedom movement up to 1947.Despite generally being neglected
and discarded in the historiography of India’s glorious freedom movement, it
has to be accepted that the communists played a crucial role in the country’s
freedom struggle.
While the
communists were ideologically at loggerheads with the India National Congress
(INC), even Viceroy Lord Irwin, in his 1929 speech to the Legislative Assembly,
stated that “the disquieting spread of Communist doctrines has been causing
anxiety” and declared that the government would take strict measures. But the
Communists believed India’s freedom could neither be achieved through British
government’s reforms nor by Congress’ idea of peaceful means. For them, socialism
was the only way to emancipate the masses from poverty and destitution, ones
the country is freed from the imperialist rule.
During the period of 1920-29, a series of conspiracy
cases had been levelled against the Communists, including the Meerut Conspiracy
case (1929) which resulted in harsh prison sentences. In fact, the Communist
Party of India (CPI) was an illegal party for most of the time under the
British rule. It was only in 1937 when the Congress ministries came to power in
several states that the ban was lifted. But it had to go underground again in
1940, and could only start functioning openly after it supported the
anti-fascist allies in the World War II.
Apart from being the first to endorse socialism, the
Communities were also the first to advocate complete independence and raise it
before the National Congress. At the 1921 session of the INC, Maulana Hazrat
Mohani and Swami Kumaranand moved the reasolution for complete independence for
the first time. Signed by M N Roy and Abani Mukherjee, the manifesto called
upon the Congress to adopt complete independence as its mission and render full
support to the struggles of the working class and peasantry.
The year 1928 also saw the Communists succeed in
forming big unions, leading plenty of strike-struggles of the working class
while advocating complete independence of the country. Workers strike in
Bombay, in which railway, textile and municipal workers participated when the
Simon Commission reached the port of Bombay, became a part of the national
movement for boycotting the Commission.
Although the Mahatma Gandhi-led Congress initially
opposed the resolution and sought Dominion status till 1929, the party
eventually adopted Purna Swarajya as its own Platform of Action in 1930,
listing out a complete programme for achieving independence. Determined to oust
the colonisers, the platform emphasised a radical change while calling for
confiscation and nationalisation of all 13 British factories, banks, railways,
sea and river transport and plantation. Among other outstanding demands
included an eight-hour working day and improvement in conditions of labour.
Before the launch of the platform, the Communists had
gradually started striking a chord among the workers, the peasants and youth.
Sensing their rising power, the British government countered with a spree of
case against Communists in Peshawar and Cawnpore in which stalwarts like Muzaffar
Ahmed, Shaukat Usmani, S A Dange and Das Gupta were sent to prison.
Meanwhile, revolutionary Mastarda Surya Sen’s daring
Chittagaon Armoury raid in 1930 saw the participation of Communist leaders,
though the movement was eventually suppressed. However, it managed to send the
alarm bell ringing for the Britishers.
In 1934, the Communists succeeded in organising an
all-India textile strike with the help of other trade unions as the working
class wave continued to surge a year before. The release of political
prisoners-mostly jailed in the Andaman and elsewhere-was one of the major
demands of the strike.
Later, the communists joined forces with Congress but
refrained from surrendering their class outlook and there approach to the
national liberation struggle. Many left leaning political activities the
newly-formed congress Socialist party under the leadership of jayprakash narayan.
The alliance resulted in rapid growth of the communist influence and of the
communist party, which made great strides in Bengal, Andhra, Madras, the states
of states of Travancore and Cochin.
The communist along with congress socialists deftly
utilised the period of congress ministers to mobilise the peasants with an aim
to raise anti-imperialist consciousness among them to face the impending battle
imperialism. The peasant movement received a shot in the arm following the
victory of the congress following the victory of provincial polls in 1937.
Formed in 1936, the Kisan Sabha’s membership witnessed a jump of half a million
by the time it met its second session at commmila.
When war started in 1939, the communists were the first
to launch an anti-war protest strike, which witnessed the participation of then
90.000 workers in Bombay in 1940. They believed that people across the world had
been dragged into a destructive war by the imperialist powers. However,
following Hitler’s attack on the USSR, the communists underwent a change in
their narrative and realist that the victory of anti-fascist combination headed
by the USSR was in the interest of the people of the people of the world as
well as of the national freedom struggle of India.
Between 1945 and 1946, the British government received
a sample of the Indian mind when they put on trail of the officers (Shah Nawaz
Khan, Prem Sahgal and Gurubaksh Singh Dhillon) of the Indian Nationality Army.
The Hindu and Muslim masses came out together despite difference and put up
formidable demonstrations because of which arrested officers had to be
released. In February 1946, Indian sailors of the Royal Indian Army in Bombay,
Karachi and Madars launched a rebellion against Britishers with navel ratings
carrying the Communist Party flag and raising slogans of the Jai Hind, Inquilab
Zindabad, Hindus and Muslims Unite, and Down with British Imperialism in
Bombay. While the naval rebellion was condemned by Sardar Patel, the Communist
Party backed the strikers.
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