Chapter 24

The Rise of the Left-wing

Introduction
A powerful left-wing group developed in India in the late 1920s
and 1930s contributing to the radicalization of the national
movement. The goal of political independence acquired a
clearer and sharper social and economic content. The stream of
national struggle for independence and the stream of the
struggle for social and economic emancipation of the
suppressed and the exploited began to come together. Socialist
ideas acquired roots in the Indian soil; and socialism became
the accepted creed of Indian youth whose urges came to be
symbolized by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose.
Gradually there emerged two powerful parties of the Left, the
Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Congress
Socialist Party (CSP).
Impact of Russian Revolution
If the common people the workers and peasants and the
intelligentsia could unite and overthrow the mighty Czarist
empire arid establish a social order where there was no
exploitation of one human being by another, then the Indian
people battling against British imperialism could also do so.
Socialist doctrines, especially Marxism, the guiding theory of
the Bolshevik Party, acquired a sudden attraction, especially for
the people of Asia.
Socialist ideas now began to spread rapidly especially because
many young persons who had participated actively in the
NonCooperation Movement were unhappy with its outcome and
were dissatisfied with Gandhian policies and ideas as well as
the alternative Swarajist programme. Several socialist and
communist groups came into existence all over the country.

Student and youth associations were organized all over the

country from 1927 onwards. Hundreds of youth conferences
were organized all over the country during 1928 and 1929 with
speakers advocating radical solutions for the political, economic
and social ills from which the country was suffering.
Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Bose toured the country attacking
imperialism, capitalism, and landlordism and preaching the
ideology of socialism.
The Revolutionary Terrorists led by Chandrasekhar Azad and
Bhagat Singh also turned to socialism.
Trade union and peasant movements grew rapidly throughout
the 1920s.
Socialist ideas became even more popular during the 1930s as
the world was engulfed by the great economic depression.
Unemployment soared all over the capitalist world. The world
depression brought the capitalist system into disrepute and
drew attention towards Marxism and socialism.
Within the Congress the left-wing tendency found reflection in
formation of the Congress Socialist Party.
Jawaharlal Nehru and Socialism
It was above all Jawaharlal Nehru who imparted a socialist
vision to the national movement and who became the symbol
of socialism and socialist ideas in India after 1929. The notion
that freedom could not be defined only in political terms but
must have a socioeconomic content began increasingly to be
associated with his name.
Nehru became the president of the historic Lahore Congress of
1929 at a youthful forty. He was elected to the post again in
1936 and 1937. As president of the Congress and as the most
popular leader of the national movement after Gandhiji, Nehru
repeatedly toured the country, travelling thousands of miles
and addressing millions of people.

In his books (Autobiography and Glimpses of World History),

articles and speeches, Nehru propagated the ideas of socialism
and declared that political freedom would become meaningful
only if it led to the economic emancipation of the masses; it
had to, therefore, be followed by the establishment of a
socialist society, Nehru thus moulded a whole generation of
young nationalists and helped them accept a socialist
orientation.
Nehru developed an interest in economic questions when he
came in touch with the peasant movement in eastern U.P. in
1920-21. He then used his enforced leisure in jail, during 192223, to read widely on the history of the Russian and other
revolutions. In 1927, he attended the international Congress
against Colonial Oppression and imperialism, held at Brussels,
and came into contact with communists and anti-colonial
fighters from all over the world. By now he had begun to accept
Marxism in its broad contours. The same year he visited the
Soviet Union and was deeply impressed by the new socialist
society.
In 1928, Jawaharlal joined hands with Subhas to organize
the Independence for India League to fight for complete
independence and a socialist revision of the economic
structure of society.
It was also not possible for the Congress to hold the balance
between capital and labour and landlord and tenant, for the
existing balance was terribly weighted in favour of the
capitalists and landlords.
Nehrus commitment to socialism found a clearer and sharper
expression during 1933-36. During these years, Nehru also
emphasized the role of class analysis and class struggle.
Nehru developed a complex relationship with Gandhiji during
this period. He criticized Gandhiji for refusing to recognize the
conflict of classes, for preaching harmony among the exploiters
and the exploited, and for putting forward the theories of

trusteeship by, and conversion of, the capitalists and landlords.

In fact, Nehru devoted a whole chapter in his Autobiography to
gently combating some of the basic aspects of Gandhian
ideology. At the same time, he fully appreciated the radical role
that Gandhiji had played and was playing in Indian society.
Defending Gandhiji against his left-wing critics,
Moreover, Gandhijis actions and teachings had inevitably
raised mass consciousness tremendously and made social
issues vital. And his insistence on the raising of the masses at
the cost, wherever necessary, of vested interests has given a
strong orientation to the national movement in favour of the
masses.
Nehru, therefore, did not favour the creation of an organization
independent of or separate from the Congress or making a
break with Gandhiji and the right-wing of the Congress. The
task was to influence and transform the Congress as a whole in
a socialist direction. And this could be best achieved by working
under its banner and bringing its workers and peasants to play
a greater role in its organization. And in no case, he felt, should
the Left become a mere sect apart from the mainstream of the
national movement.
Formation of Communist Parties
Attracted by the Soviet Union and its revolutionary
commitment, a large number of Indian revolutionaries and
exiles abroad made their way there. The most well-known and
the tallest of them was M.N. Roy, who along with Lenin, helped
evolve the Communist Internationals policy towards the
colonies.
Seven such Indians, headed by Roy, met at Tashkent in October
1920 and set up a Communist Party of India. Independently of
this effort, as we have seen, a number of left-wing and
communist groups and organizations had begun to come into
existence in India after 1920. Most of these groups came
together at Kanpur in December 1925 and founded an all-India

organization under the name the Communist Party of India

(CPI). After some time, S.V. Ghate emerged as the general
secretary of the party. The CPI called upon all its members to
enroll themselves as members of the Congress, form a strong
left-wing in all its organs, cooperate with all other radical
nationalists, and make an effort to transform the Congress into
a more radical mass-based organization.
The main form of political work by the early Communists was to
organize peasants and workers parties and work through
them. The first such organization was the Labour-Swaraj
Party of the Indian National Congress in Bengal in November
1925.
Formation of The Workers and Peasants Party
In late 1926, a Congress Labour Party was formed in Bombay
and a Kirti-Kisan Party in Punjab. A Labour Kisan Party of
Hindustan had been functioning in Madras since 1923. By 1928
all of these provincial organizations had been renamed the
Workers and Peasants Party (WPP) and knit into an All
India party. All Communists were members of this party. The
basic objective of the WPPs was to work within the Congress to
give it a more radical orientation and make it the party of the
people and independently organize workers and peasants in
class organizations, to enable first the achievement of complete
independence and ultimately of socialism. The WPPs grew
rapidly and within a short period the communist influence in
the Congress began to grow rapidly, especially in Bombay.
Moreover, Jawaharlal Nehru and other radical Congressmen
welcomed the WPPs efforts to radicalize the Congress. Along
with Jawaharlal and Subhas Bose, the youth leagues and other
Left forces, the WPPs played an important role in creating a
strong left-wing within the Congress and in giving the Indian
national movement a leftward direction. The WPPs also made
rapid progress on the trade union front and played a decisive
role in the resurgence of working class struggles during 1927-

29 as also in enabling in Communists to gain a strong position

in the working class.
The rapid growth of communist and WPP influence over
the national movement was, however, checked and
virtually wiped out during 1929 and after by two
developments. One was the severe repression to which
Communists were subjected by the Government.
By 1929, the Government was deeply worried about the rapidly
growing communist influence in the national and trade union
movements. It decided to strike hard. In a sudden swoop, in
March 1929, it arrested thirty-two radical political and trade
union activists, including three British Communists who had
come to India to help organize the trade union movement. The
basic aim of the Government was to behead the trade union
movement and to isolate the Communists from the national
movement. The thirty-two accused were put up for trial at
Meerut. The Meerut Conspiracy Case was soon to become a
cause celebre.
Speeches of defence made in the court by the prisoners were
carried by all the nationalist newspapers thus familiarizing
lakhs of people for the first time with communist ideas. The
Government design to isolate the Communists from the
mainstream of the national movement, not only miscarried but
had the very opposite consequence. It did, however, succeed in
one respect. The growing working class movement was
deprived of its leadership. At this early stage, it was not easy to
replace it with a new leadership.

Separation from Congress

As if the Government blow was not enough, the Communists
inflicted a more deadly blow on themselves by taking a sudden
lurch towards what is described in leftist terminology as
sectarian politics or leftist deviation.

Guided by the resolutions of the Sixth Congress of the

Communist International, the Communists broke their
connection with the National Congress and declared it to be a
class party of the bourgeoisie. Moreover, the Congress and the
bourgeoisie it supposedly represented were declared to have
become supporters of imperialism. Congress plans to organize
a mass movement around the slogan of Poorna Swaraj were
seen as sham efforts to gain influence over the masses by
bourgeois leaders who were working for a compromise with
British imperialism. The Communists were now out to expose
all talk of non-violent struggle and advance the slogan of armed
struggle against imperialism. In 1931, the Gandhi-Irwin Pact
was described as a proof of the Congress betrayal of
nationalism.
Finally, the Workers and Peasants Party was also
dissolved on the ground that it was unadvisable to form a twoclass (workers and peasants) party for it was likely to fall prey
to petty bourgeois influences. The Communists were to
concentrate, instead, on the formation of an illegal,
independent and centralized communist party. The result of
this sudden shift in the Communists political position was their
isolation from the national movement at the very moment
when it was gearing up for its greatest mass struggle and
conditions were ripe for massive growth in the influence of the
Left over it. Further, the Communists split into several splinter
groups. The Government took further advantage of this
situation and, in 1934, declared the CPI illegal.
The Communist movement was, however, saved from disaster
because, on the one hand, many of the Communists refused to
stand apart from the Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) and
participated actively in it, and, on the other hand, socialist and
communist ideas continued to spread in the 298 | Indias
Struggle For Independence country. Consequently, many young
persons who participated in the CDM or in Revolutionary
Terrorist organizations were attracted by socialism, Marxism
and the Soviet Union, and joined the CPI after 1934.

The situation underwent a radical change in 1935 when the

Communist Party was reorganized under the leadership of P.C.
Joshi. Faced with the threat of fascism the Seventh Congress of
the Communist International, meeting at Moscow in August
1935, radically changed its earlier position and advocated the
formation of a united front with socialists and other anti-fascists
in the capitalist Countries and with bourgeois-led nationalist
movements in colonial countries. The Indian Communists were
to once again participate in the activities of the mainstream of
the national movement led by the National Congress. The
theoretical and political basis for the change in communist
politics in India was laid in early 1936 by a document popularly
known as the Dutt-Bradley Thesis. According to this thesis,
the National Congress could play a great part and a foremost
part in the work of realizing the anti-imperialist peoples front.
The Communist Party now began to call upon its members to
join the Congress and enrol the masses under their influence
to the Congress. In 1938, it went further and accepted that the
Congress was the central mass political organization of the
Indian people ranged against imperialism.
At the same time, the party remained committed to the
objective of bringing the national movement under the
hegemony of the working class, that is, the Communist Party.
Communists now worked hard inside the Congress. Many
occupied official positions inside the Congress district and
provincial committees; nearly twenty were members of the All
India Congress Committee.
Socialist Party
The move towards the formation of a socialist party was made
in the jails during 1930-31 and 1932-34 by a group of young
Congressmen who were disenchanted with Gandhian strategy
and leadership and attracted by socialist ideology. Many of
them were active in the youth movement of the late 1920s. In
the jails they studied and discussed Marxian and other socialist
ideas. Attracted by Marxism, communism and Soviet Union,

they did not find themselves in agreement with the prevalent

political line of the CPI. Many of them were groping towards an
alternative. Ultimately they came together and formed the
Congress Socialist Party (CSP) at Bombay in October
1934 under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan,
Acharya Narendra Dev and Minoo Masani. From the
beginning, all the Congress socialists were agreed upon four
basic propositions: that the primary struggle in India was the
national struggle for freedom and that nationalism was a
necessary stage on the way to socialism; that socialists must
work inside the National Congress because it was the primary
body leading the national struggle
The CSP from the beginning assigned itself the task of both
transforming the Congress and of strengthening it. The task of
transforming the Congress was understood in two senses. One
was the ideological sense. Congressmen were to be gradually
persuaded to adopt a socialist vision of independent India and a
more radical pro-labour and pro-peasant stand on current
economic issues. This ideological and programmatic
transformation was, however, to be seen not as an event but as
a process. The transformation of the Congress was also seen in
an organizational sense, that is, in terms of changes in its
leadership at the top.The CSP was to develop as the nucleus of
the alternative socialist leadership of the Congress.
This perspective was, however, soon found to be unrealistic and
was abandoned in favour of a composite leadership in which
socialists would be taken into the leadership at all levels. The
notion of alternate Left leadership of the Congress and the
national movement came up for realization twice at Tripuri in
1939 and at Ramgarh in 1940. But when it came to splitting the
Congress on a Left-Right basis and giving the Congress an
executive left-wing leadership, the CSP (as also the CPI) shied
away. Its leadership (as also CPIs) realized that such an effort
would not only weaken the national movement but isolate the
Left from the mainstream, that the Indian people could be
mobilized into a movement only under Gandhijis leadership

and that, in fact, there was at the time no alternative to

Gandhijis leadership. However, unlike Jawaharlal Nehru, the
leadership of the CSP, as also of other Left groups and parties,
was not able to fully theorize or internalize this understanding
and so it went back again and again to the notion of alternative
leadership.
The CSP was, however, firmly well-grounded in the reality of the
Indian situation. Therefore, it never carried its opposition to the
existing leadership of the Congress to breaking point.
Whenever it came to the crunch, it gave up its theoretical
position and adopted a realistic approach close to that of
Jawaharlal Nehrus. This earned it the condemnation of the
other left-wing groups and parties
From the beginning the CSP leaders were divided into three
broad ideological currents: the Marxian, the Fabian and the
current influenced by Gandhiji. This would not have been a
major weakness in fact it might have been a source of
strength for a broad socialist party which was a movement.
But the CSP was already a part, and a cadre-based party at
that, within a movement that was the National Congress.
Moreover, the Marxism of the 1930s was incapable of accepting
as legitimate such diversity of political currents on the Left. The
result was a confusion which plagued the CSP till the very end.
The partys basic ideological differences were papered over for
a long time because of the personal bonds of friendship and a
sense of comradeship among most of the founding leaders of
the party, the acceptance of Acharya Narendra Dev and
Jayaprakash Narayan as its senior leaders, and its commitment
to nationalism and socialism.
Several other groups and currents developed on the Left in the
1930s.
M.N. Roy came back to India in 1930 and organized a strong
group of Royists who underwent several political and
ideological transformations over the years.

 Subhas Bose and his left-wing followers founded the Forward

Bloc in 1939 after Bose was compelled to resign from the
Presidentship of the Congress.
The Hindustan Socialist Republican Association, the
Revolutionary Socialist Party, and various Trotskyist groups
also functioned during the 1930s. There were also certain
prestigious left-wing individuals, such as Swami Sahajanand
Saraswati, Professor N.G. Ranga, and Indulal Yagnik, who
worked outside the framework of any organized left-wing
party.
The CPI, the CSP and Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Bose and other
Left groups and leaders all shared a common political
programme which enabled them, despite ideological and
organizational differences, to work together after 1935 and
make socialism a strong current in Indian politics.
The basic features of this programme were: consistent
and militant anti-imperialism, anti-landlordism, the organization
of workers and peasants in trade unions and kisan sabhas, the
acceptance of a socialist vision of independent India and of the
socialist programme of the economic and social transformation
of society, and an antifascist, anti-colonial and anti-war foreign
policy.
Appraisal of Left Movement
Causes for Failure
Despite the fact that the Left cadres were among the most
courageous, militant and sacrificing of freedom fighters, the
Left failed in the basic task it had taken upon itself to
establish the hegemony of socialist ideas and parties over
the national movement. It also failed to make good the
promise it held out in the l930s. This is, in fact, a major
enigma for the historian.
The Left invariably fought the dominant Congress
leadership on wrong issues and, when it came to the

crunch, was either forced to trail behind that leadership or

was isolated from the national movement.
Unlike the Congress right-wing, the Left failed to show
ideological and tactical flexibility. It sought to oppose the
right-wing with simplistic formulae and radical rhetoric. It
fought the right-wing on slippery and wrong grounds. It
chose to tight not on questions of ideology but on methods
of struggle and on tactics.
The Left also failed to make a deep study of Indian reality.
With the exception of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Left saw the
dominant Congress leadership as bourgeois its policy of
negotiations as working towards a compromise with
imperialism any resort to constitutional work as a step
towards the abandonment of the struggle for independence
It constantly counterposed armed struggle to nonviolence as
a superior form and method of struggle, rather than
concentrating on the nature of mass involvement and
mobilization and ideology. It was convinced that the masses
were ever ready for struggles in any form if only the leaders
were willing to initiate them.
It constantly overestimated its support among the people.
Above all, the Left failed to grasp the Gandhian strategy of
struggle.

Achievements
The Left did succeed in making a basic impact on Indian
society and politics. The organization of workers and
peasants, discussed elsewhere, was one of its greatest
achievements.
Equally important was its impact on the Congress.
Organizationally, the Left was able to command influence
over nearly one-third of the votes in the All-India Congress
Committee on important issues. Nehru and Bose were
elected Congress presidents from 1936 to 1939.
Politically and ideologically, the Congress as a whole was
given a strong Left orientation.

The Congress, including its right-wing, accepted that the

poverty and misery of the Indian people was the result not
only of colonial domination but also of the internal socioeconomic structure of Indian society which had, therefore, to
be drastically transformed. The impact of the Left on the
national movement was reflected in the resolution on
Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy passed by the
Karachi session of the Congress in 1931, the resolutions on
economic policy passed at the Faizpur session in 1936, the
Election Manifesto of the Congress in 1936, the setting up of
a National Planning Committee in 1938, and the increasing
shift of Gandhiji 305 | The rise of the Left- Wing towards
radical positions on economic and class issues.